WRONG WAY, CORRIGAN!

UPDATE (31 OCT 2004): CORRIGAN REACHES DUBLIN!!

Wrong Way, Corrigan has traveled 6248 miles and yesterday reached his goal, the Dublin Airport Bug Hotel. Many thanks to all who helped make his journey safe and successful. History tells us that Corrigan now has to return home to enjoy the adulation of his many fans and admirers. Let's send him back to my own Vargo Trail cache (GCGEVB) located very near the Farmington, Missouri airport. It would be great if he could make a stop near Floyd Bennett Field (see below). Maybe someone local to that area can help him find it again.

ORIGINAL GOAL:

I would really like to reach Baldonnel Airport, near Dublin, where Corrigan landed. But, that may not be practical since this is now a military airfield. So please deposit me in the "Dublin Airport Bug Hotel" geocache (waypoint GCDED3). This looks like the perfect place for me!

On July 17, 1938, Douglas Corrigan filed a flight plan for California and took off from Floyd Bennett Field in Brooklyn, New York in a tiny single-engine plane. 29 hours later he arrived in Ireland, having "mistakenly followed the wrong end of the compass needle." Although Corrigan never quite admitted it, his 'mistake' was surely a ruse to circumvent aviation authorities who had turned down his numerous requests to make a trans-Atlantic flight.

Corrigan's stunt caught the public fancy and he was given a hero's welcome on his return to New York. He was feted, upon his return, by a headline in the New York Post ("!nagirroC yaW gnorW emoH emocleW") and a ticker tape parade on Broadway which was attended by over a million people -- a greater throng than that which had greeted Lindbergh!

What most people do not know today is that Douglas Corrigan learned to fly at the age of 18, was so good at it that he became an accomplished pilot and aircraft mechanic shortly thereafter, and that he built much of Charles Lindbergh's famous custom-designed Spirit of St Louis airplane when he worked in Mahoney & Ryan's aircraft plant. Corrigan was not a man who needed to be told how to fly by any gang of stupid bureaucrats. So, off flew the stubborn Texan to Ireland, land of his ancestors.

Although Corrigan never admitted that his story was a ruse, most people believe that he purposely set out to bypass authorities and accomplish his dream of a transatlantic flight. Despite the humor that his story has provided, it is worth noting that Corrigan flew across the Atlantic during the early years of transoceanic flights, something that only the bravest and best aviators of the day attempted. He deserves recognition for such a daring achievement, even though he had to accomplish the task in such an unorthodox manner. Douglas "Wrong Way" Corrigan died in 1995 at the age of 88.