Seth Kaller, Inc.

Charles and Anne Morrow Lindbergh planned this pathbreaking flight to chart a route for future Pan American flights to Japan and China. They flew by way of Canada, Alaska, and Siberia over the north Pacific.

On July 27, 1931, they took off from New York, flying over Ontario and Canada’s Northwest Territories, feasting during a stop in Barrow, Alaska, before flying over the Bering Sea. A month after departing, they arrived on Hokkaido Island, Japan, before continuing to China.

CHARLES A. LINDBERGH. Map of China and Japan, signed and inscribed "Lindbergh, Orient Flight, 1931” in pencil. 1 p., 27¾ x 20¾ in.

Inventory #27570.04       Price: $24,000

From June through August 1931, catastrophic Yangtze–Huai River floods hit major cities in China including Wuhan and Nanjing, resulting in a dike breach along Lake Gaoyou. The floods killed 150,000 people immediately, but more than a million ultimately died from the floods, resulting diseases, and starvation. The Lindberghs’ first sight of the Chinese countryside revealed thousands of homeless people in need of medical supplies and food. Upon landing at Nanking, they offered to help, as their floatplane was able to land on the flooded fields to distribute supplies.

When they moved on to survey the valley, the Yangtze River’s currents were so strong, at Hankow, they decided to hoist their plane onto the deck of the British aircraft carrier HMS Hermes anchored there. As they were hoisted, the current began to whip the aircraft around. As it began to flip over, they jumped into the river. Locals had said of the Yangtze, “No one who goes under its waters ever comes up again,” but they both emerged uninjured.

Pan Am decided that the best route to Asia was across the Pacific. Today, however, most flights from America’s East Coast to Asia follow the northern great circle route that the Lindberghs charted for their 1931 flights.