Charles Nungesser
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Charles Eugene Jules Marie Nungesser (March 15, 1892 - presumably May 1927) was a French ace pilot and adventurer who is best remembered as a rival of Charles A. Lindbergh who mysteriously disappeared while trying to be the first person to fly non-stop between New York City and Paris in a transatlantic flight.
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[edit] Early life
Charles Nungesser was born on March 15, 1892 in Paris and as a child was very interested in competitive sports. After attending the Ecole des Arts et Meiers, where he was a mediocre student who nonetheless excelled in sports such as boxing, he went to South America - first to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil to search for an uncle who could not be located and then on to Buenos Aires, Argentina where he worked as an auto mechanic before becoming a professional racer. His interest in racing soon led him to flying airplanes. He eventually found his missing uncle and worked on his sugar plantation.
[edit] World War One Exploits
[edit] Enlisting in the cavalry
When World War I broke out in July 1914, Nungesser returned to France where he enlisted with a hussar (cavalry) regiment. During one patrol, he and several soldiers commandeered a German patrol car after killing its occupants. This impressed his superiors, and he was subsequently awarded the Medaille Militaire, and was granted his request to be transferred to the Service Aeronautique.
[edit] Serving in the Service Aeronautique
Upon becoming a military pilot, he shot down his first plane, a German Albatros and was awarded the Croix de Guerre. He was then transferred to Escadrille N.65 (the 65th Squadron) and was later attached to the famous Escadrille Lafayette (Lafayette Squadron) composed of American volunteers.
[edit] Undisciplined at times
Despite being a decorated pilot, Nungesser was placed under house arrest on more than one occasion for flying without permission. He disliked strict military discipline and went to Paris to enjoy its many pleasures (e.g. drink and women) as often as possible. He was a leading fighter pilot whose combat exploits against the Germans were widely publicized in France. Nungesser's rugged good looks, flamboyant personality, and his appetite for danger, beautiful women, wine and fast cars made him the embodiment of the stereotypical flying ace. In contrast to the unsociable but nonetheless top French ace René Fonck, Nungesser was well liked by his comrades. Yet, Nungesser suffered a very bad crash in January 1916 that broke both his legs and he would be injured again many times. He was often so hobbled by wounds and injuries he had to be helped into his cockpit.
[edit] 43 victories as a flying ace
Notwithstanding these set backs, Nungesser became an ace in April 1916 and finished the war with 43 official victories, which was third highest among French fliers behind Rene Fonck and Georges Guynemer. His silver Nieuport 17 plane was decorated with a black heart-shaped field, with a macabre Jolly Roger, a coffin and candles painted inside. He had adopted the title 'The knight of Death' paraphrasing the french word 'Mort' for a German vehicle of the 'Mors' mark, like the one he had earlier captured while as a cavalryman. In his flying career, Nungesser received dozens of military decorations from France, Belgium, Montenegro, United States of America, Portugal, Russia, and Serbia.
[edit] Post WWI Activities and Disappearance
[edit] Work in the film industry
After the conclusion of World War One in November 1918, he tried to organize a private flying school but failed to attract enough students. As the post-World War I economic recession had left many WWI aces without a job, he decided to take his chances with cinema in the United States where the days of heroic flying was a very popular theme. It was when Nungesser was in the U.S. doing the film The Dawn Patrol that he got interested in the idea of crossing the Atlantic Ocean on an airplane, something which had yet to be done by any person. The prize of $25,000 offered by Raymond Orteig was also an incentive. Nungesser told his friends his next trip to America would be by air. He and his naviagator Francois Coli did not formally register for the prize, but they were sure it would be waived on arrival in New York.
[edit] Nungesser disappears
Nungesser and his navigator Francois Coli disappeared on 8 May 1927 after they took off from Paris for New York in their aircraft The White Bird, a Levasseur P.L.8 biplane painted with Nungesser's old WWI insignia. Despite an international search, no trace of the men or their airplane was ever found. Two weeks later, American aviator Charles Lindbergh, flying solo, successfully crossed from New York to Paris and was given an immense hero's welcome by the French, even as they mourned for the loss of Nungesser and Coli. During Lindbergh's triumphal tour, he called on Madame Laure Nungesser, Charles' mother, and graciously said that her son's goal had been more difficult than his. Like everyone else Lindbergh believed that if anyone could have crossed the Atlantic, it would have been Nungesser.
[edit] Various theories and investigations
Over the years there have been various investigations to try to determine what happened to Nungesser and Coli. In 1989, the NBC television series Unsolved Mysteries advanced the theory that the two aviators made it across the ocean but crashed and perished in the woods of Maine. One long time resident of the area recalled that one day in 1927, he heard a plane fly over his home and then a crash in the nearby woods. Years later, a hunter reported finding an old aircraft engine buried in the area. An expedition at the time of the broadcast found wood that was similar to the kind used to build Nungesser and Coli's aircraft The White Bird. Famed author Clive Cussler and his NUMA organization also attempted to solve the mystery. Cussler points out that if the theory is true, aviation history would have to be rewritten. The opening montage of the movie Sahara, based on Cussler's work featured a French newspaper article claiming the fictional version of NUMA had found the airplane.
Most believe that he crashed over the Atlantic due to a squall. Either way, his aircraft has never been recovered nor has it been proved he actually died in the crash. In fact, some experts believe that he may have crashed into the sea and possibly swam to an uncharted island. If his course had been altered he may have ended up in the Azores.
[edit] Charles Nungesser in Film
Very few know that in the scenes of the first American air fighting super production film, The Dawn Patrol (1930), Nungesser was flying himself in his own plane with the 'The knight of Death' emblem on it - it was not a Nieuport 17, however, but a Hanriot D1 type. The film became a success due to the many scenes of spectacular dogfighting, shot some 4 years before the film was released and when ,of course, Nungesser was still alive. A number of other aces of WW1 of various nationalities have been used as well to fly planes in similar film productions or airshow demonstrations.
Contrary to what some might think, Nungesser was not one of the stunt pilots killed during the filming of Hell's Angels (1930), the epic aviation movie by Howard Hughes.
In the 1970s, a french film with the same title ( Les as des as ), starring Jean-Paul Belmondo used extensively the many anecdotes on Nungesser's life. Apart from air fighting his night life in Paris had become too, a kind of a legend.
A 1999 Canadian made for TV children's special movie, Dead Aviators (airs on US cable TV as "Restless Spirits"), uses the mystery of The White Bird's disappearance as the key plot device. A psychic young girl, who struggles with her pilot father's death in a plane crash years before, visits her grandmother in Newfoundland. While there, she encounters the ghosts of Nungesser and Coli, whose restless spirits constantly relive their own unheralded 1927 crash in a nearby pond. The girl decides to help the pair move on to the afterlife by assisting them in rebuilding their airplane and completing their flight so they may be released and, by doing so, works through her own emotional distress over her father's test flight death. The depiction of The White Bird and Nungesser's crest and dialog references to Nungesser's wartime achievements are very consistent with some published accounts.
In Attack of the Hawkmen, the 37th episode in the 1992 to 1996 television miniseries The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles by George Lucas, the character Indiana Jones (played by Sean Patrick Flanery) meets French ace pilot Charles Nungesser (played by Patrick Tommey) when the young adult Indiana Jones, as a Belgian officer, is temporarily attached to the Escadrille Lafayette. In this episode, Nungesser is depicted as the squadron's reckless, flamboyent and charismatic hero who parties in Paris and duels with the The Red Baron. During the 38th episode, Nungesser flies Young Indiana in and out of Germany in a German biplane to accomplish an undercover spy mission concerning Dutch aircraft manufacturer Anthony Fokker (played by Craig Kelly), who was building new planes, like the triplane, for Germany's war effort.
[edit] References
Norman Franks and Frank W. Bailey (1992). Over the Front: A Complete Record of the Fighter Aces and Units of the U.S. and French Air Services 1914-1918. Grub Street, London.
