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Hall: He wasn’t actually a designer but he had his own ideas, some of which I accepted and some I disagreed with. He had cut all his own maps from New York to Paris and plotted his course on them. He was an excellent cross-country navigator by means of dead reckoning, just by following maps. Physically he was very good, had excellent vision-maybe better than normal, which helps a lot in flying. He was the most composed man I ever ran across. Lindbergh was not a bit nervous about the flight. All we used from the M2 were the wing ribs and the tail surfaces. The Spirit had a J5C 200-horsepower Wright Aeronautical engine. The M1 had a Wright engine, though a few had J4 engines, for mail flights from San Diego up to Seattle. There were no major problems and the engine was excellent. Hall: The water had disappeared when he arrived, and we had no rain at all during flight tests. Leech: What were his first thoughts about the site? Lindbergh came by train about a week later. You couldn’t leave San Diego except by way of El Centro. Just before Lindbergh got here, we had heavy rains and floods for two weeks.

When it rained heavily you might have two to three feet of water. It was not paved it was a natural tidal ground with sand and muck. I think they built up a dike so water wouldn’t flow in. Dutch Flats was a tidal flat at one time. Hall: We flew from Dutch Flats, just opposite from Marine Corps Recruit Depot. Leech: Where did you make the test flights? When test flights started, people in San Diego heard about it. I don’t think we talked about it but gradually it leaked out. A few aeronautical people were always interested in anything and they’d walk around we didn’t keep anything from them. We kept the office door locked so nobody could walk in. Hall: I was all alone during the design of the plane, except for two evenings when a purchasing agent helped me with weight analysis. Lindbergh felt confident he could do it solo. One advantage is that one person could rest while the other was flying. With two people, you need a much larger airplane. Hall: It surprised us but right away we saw the merit. Leech: What was your first reaction to Lindbergh’s planning to fly alone? The earth inductor wasn’t working too well and failed in flight. We had an earth inductor compass and a magnetic compass. We had more than the usual instrumentation. The main job was to get good flight data in the limited time we had.

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I was worried that with a full load and sudden gusts, the wing might have structural failure. Lindbergh wanted it unstable so he’d stay awake. You had to make a side-slip landing to see.

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Vision was pretty good after all straight ahead was blind, but it had big windows on each side. Sat on the right-hand arm of the wicker chair. No one else tested it that was one of Lindbergh’s requirements. We started about the 28th, then test-flew on April 28. Hall: The contract was signed Friday, February 25. Leech: When did the Spirit activity get started? Did it take you just 60 days? I basically enlarged the airplane and kept the same wing chord. I had to increase wingspan some more and increase length. With wide-tread landing gear and bigger span, it gave me a little lead on what would be the Spirit. While I was working on that, another party wanted a passenger job, so I switched to that temporarily. Hall: I’d been hired to get government approval from the Bureau of Air Commerce for the Ryan M2 mail airplane. Leech: You’d been with the company such a short time.

His name wasn’t even used in the telegrams. And the first I knew of it again, Lindbergh walked in the door on February 21. It looked questionable for the short time in which they wanted it, for spring, but we said yes anyway. I was the first engineer working full time Jack Northrop was a consultant on weekends.Ī telegram four days after I’d arrived came from Lindbergh’s backers, asking if we could build an airplane to fly from New York to Paris nonstop. I joined Ryan on January 31, 1927-three weeks before Lindbergh came out there. Jack Northrop and another man were working at Douglas and found it too hard coming down weekends they wanted to quit. Things were slow-very dull-and they said Ryan needed an engineer. In 1927, I had been on leave from Douglas to go to Army Air Corps flying school in San Antonio, Texas. Hall: I was from Brooklyn, and started out with Curtiss on Long Island. Last year, Leech donated the transcript to the National Air and Space Museum. A portion of the interview ran in a 1967 AIAA newsletter. In the mid-1960s, Tom Leech, on behalf of the San Diego chapter of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, interviewed Donald Hall, who in the late 1920s was the chief engineer at Ryan Airlines and the designer of the Spirit of St.