page_title: Spirit of St. Louis
section_title: Airworthy examples
hierarchical_section_title: Spirit of St. Louis / Reproductions / Airworthy examples
caption_attribution_description: English: Spirit of St Louis Replica
context_page_description: The Spirit of St. Louis is the custom-built, single-engine, single-seat, high-wing monoplane that was flown by Charles Lindbergh on May 20–21, 1927, on the first solo nonstop transatlantic flight from Long Island, New York, to Paris, France, for which Lindbergh won the $25,000 Orteig Prize.
  Lindbergh took off in the Spirit from Roosevelt Airfield, Garden City, New York, and landed 33 hours, 30 minutes later at Aéroport Le Bourget in Paris, France, a distance of approximately 3,600 miles. One of the best-known aircraft in the world, the Spirit was built by Ryan Airlines in San Diego, California, owned and operated at the time by Benjamin Franklin Mahoney, who had purchased it from its founder, T. Claude Ryan, in 1926. The Spirit is on permanent display in the main entryway's Milestones of Flight gallery at the Smithsonian Institution's National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C.
context_section_description: The Mahoney Ryan B-1 "Brougham" was also used as the basis of a reproduction of the Spirit of St. Louis. The reproduction was used in the 1938 Paramount film Men with Wings starring Ray Milland.
  All three reproductions from the Warner Bros. film The Spirit of St Louis (1956) have survived with B-153 on display at the Missouri History Museum, in St. Louis, B-156 is part of the collection at The Henry Ford museum in Dearborn, Michigan, and B-159 belongs to the Cradle of Aviation Museum located in Garden City, Long Island, New York, not far from the site of Roosevelt Field from which the original departed in 1927. According to information at the Henry Ford Museum, their copy (B-156) was actually owned by James Stewart, who portrayed Lindbergh in the film.  Stewart is credited as having donated the aircraft to the museum.  Lindbergh was reputed to have flown one of the reproductions during the film's production, however, the connection to Lindbergh is now considered a myth.
  On the 40th anniversary of Lindbergh's flight, a new reproduction named Spirit 2 was built by movie stunt pilot Frank Tallman. It first flew on April 24, 1967 and  appeared at the 1967 Paris Air Show where it made several flights over Paris. In 1972, Spirit 2 was bought for $50,000 by the San Diego Air & Space Museum (formerly San Diego Aerospace Museum) and placed on public display until it was destroyed by arson in 1978. The museum built a replacement named Spirit 3 which first flew on April 28, 1979; it made seven flights before being placed on display. In August 2003, the Spirit 3 was removed from display and was flown as a 75th Anniversary tribute to Lindbergh. The aircraft is now on display in the museum's rotunda.
  Through the efforts of both staff and volunteers, the Experimental Aircraft Association in Oshkosh, Wisconsin produced two reproductions of the Spirit of St. Louis, powered by Continental R-670-4 radial engines, the first in 1977 (the first of which was to be based on a conversion from a B-1 Brougham; the aircraft proved to be too badly deteriorated to be used in that manner) to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Lindbergh's flight across the Atlantic Ocean and subsequent tour of the United States. This example is now on display in the main museum gallery. A second reproduction, started from scratch in 1977 and first flown in November 1990, continues to fly at air shows and commemorative events. Both of the EAA reproductions were registered under the original's N-X-211.
  Another airworthy reproduction was built by David Cannavo and first flown in 1979, powered by a Lycoming R-680 engine. In 1995, it was bought by Kermit Weeks for his Fantasy of Flight Museum in Polk City, Florida.
  A reproduction of the Spirit (Registration ES-XCL), which had been built and certified in Estonia in 1997, was written off on May 31, 2003. Shortly after takeoff at an air show in Coventry, England, structural failure occurred, resulting in a fatal crash, killing its owner-pilot, Captain Pierre Holländer.
caption: Spirit of St. Louis replica at EAA Aviation Museum
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