Remembering Douglas "Wrong Way" Corrigan: Does he serve as an inspiration for modern-day right-wingers?

by Ken

We've celebrated "Postcard Thursday" -- courtesy of the Inside the Apple blog team of Michelle and James Nevius, authors of Inside the Apple: A Streetwise History of New York and Footprints in New York: Tracing the Lives of Four Centuries of New Yorkers -- before, and today we're, you know, doing it again. I'll have a little something more to say in a moment, but first let's just do "Postcard Thursday." (If you're not signed up to receive it, or other updates from the team, you can take care of that here.)

Today's postcard, as you may have figured out, is posted above. Here's what the Inside the Apple team has to say about it:

Postcard Thursday: "Wrong Way" Corrigan

On July 17, 1938, Douglas Corrigan took off from Floyd Bennett Field in Brooklyn. He'd filed a flight plan intending to fly west to Long Beach, California (from which he'd arrived a week earlier). Instead, Corrigan flew east and, supposedly due to a faulty compass and thick fog, found himself 26 hours into the flight approaching Ireland instead of Long Beach. The stunt earned him the nickname "Wrong Way" Corrigan and a place in history.

To this day, it is unknown if Corrigan made the transatlantic flight by mistake or if he had been planning to pull the stunt for some time. In 1935, he'd been denied an application to fly to Ireland because his Curtiss Robin OX-5 plane was deemed unsound. A skilled mechanic, he had made numerous modifications to the aircraft (the $900 he spent in upgrades is what is referenced in today's postcard), but still his application to file a transatlantic flight plan was turned down. Eventually, Corrigan made so many custom changes to the Robin that it was deemed unsafe for flight.

Finally, on July 9, 1938, Corrigan flew from Long Beach to Brooklyn, his flight hampered only by a small fuel leak. Upon arriving at Floyd Bennett Field, Corrigan decided against repairing the leak, but instead filed a flight plan to return to California. He took off the morning of July 17 and flew 28 hours, 13 minutes, to the Baldonnel Aerodrome in Ireland, becoming an instant celebrity. Upon his return to New York (via steamship) he was feted with a ticker-tape parade. His autobiography was an instant best-seller and he was soon shilling for all sorts of "Wrong Way" products. His story became the film The Flying Irishman in 1939.

Despite mounting evidence that Corrigan had purposefully flown to Ireland, he maintained until the end of his life that it was a simple navigational error.

Since Michelle and James are in the hustle-till-you-drop period for Footprints, and it's worth keeping up to date on their plans, because they've been scheduling a series of events a savvy person might want to go to even if they weren't hoping to get you to buy their book, I'm happy to throw in a book plug here. It is, after all, a product I bought and use myself.

Not that Michelle and James are buddies of mine. I've done two walking tours with James, and I've never actually met Michelle, though last June I got to see her in action along with James as they provided "New York"-based commentary after a performance of Bronson Howard's 1887 play The Henrietta by Metropolitan Playhouse (directed by the company's "producing artistic director," Alex Roe), which "explores America's theatrical heritage to illuminate contemporary American culture." (In the latter part of the 19th century, the now-unknown Bronson Howard was known as "the dean of American playwrights."I thought it was fascinating that the company had invited Michelle and James to share their New York expertise, and they were great.

Beyond that, I can say that they're both very nice and very bright and very knowledgeable and above all very curious, in particular about New York City, and that that high degree of curiousness along with those other qualities makes them excellent guides for anyone who wants to get below the surface of the city. It's reflected in both Inside the Apple and Footprints in New York.

I certainly haven't read either book cover to cover -- meaning that there's still plenty for me still to discover, as well as rediscover. Inside the Apple is special among NYC guidebooks because, while it's organized in walkable geographical units, the text itself ranges through history with such abundant cross-references that you almost invariably start in one chapter and wind up somewhere else entirely, having probably stopped off in several other points along the way. So it's an ideal "dipping in" book, and so is Footprints, as I wrote here earlier, works from the premise that geographical places are made real and alive by the people who have lived and worked there.

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