4. Wrong Way Corrigan flew across the Atlantic by mistake
Or so he claimed. Clyde Corrigan was an aircraft mechanic and flier, as to the former his skills were sufficient to make him one of the builders of Charles Lindbergh’s Spirit of Saint Louis. He obtained his transport license to fly in October 1929. The following year he began flying passengers between cities and towns along the American east coast. In 1933 he purchased a small monoplane, a Curtiss Robin, and moved to the West Coast and work as an aircraft mechanic to support him as he modified the Robin to give it the range to fly across the Atlantic. By 1935 he applied for permission to fly the Atlantic but the Bureau of Air Commerce refused to certify his airplane for the journey. In 1937, after applying again, his airplane was decertified for flight and grounded.
In 1938 Corrigan flew the aircraft, which by then had been re-certified for flight over land, to New York and applied again for certification to fly across the Atlantic. Again denied, he informed officials that he was returning to California. Told that he could use any runway on the field for takeoff, other than in a westerly direction, Corrigan took off headed east and just kept going. He landed in Ireland 28 hours later, and told officials that he hadn’t noticed his “navigational error” until 26 hours into the flight, far too late for him to have turned back. The entire trip, according to Corrigan, had been a mistake, and in the press he was hailed as Wrong Way Corrigan. His license was suspended for two weeks, and Corrigan never admitted that the flight had been the result of anything other than an error on his part.