Spirit Of St. Louis

About

The Ryan NYP Spirit of St. Louis is one of the most historically significant aircraft ever built. Designed and built by Ryan Airlines Corporation of San Diego, California, in just sixty days during early 1927, the Spirit was a custom modification of the Ryan M-2 mail-plane — extended wings, larger fuel tanks (taking up the entire space where a forward windshield would normally be), and an instrument-panel-only forward visibility that required the pilot to fly using a periscope and side windows to see ahead.

Charles Lindbergh's flight from Roosevelt Field, Long Island, to Le Bourget Field, Paris, on May 20-21, 1927 — 33.5 hours alone in the cockpit, no radio, no co-pilot, navigating by dead reckoning across 3,600 miles of North Atlantic ocean — won the Orteig Prize and changed the course of world aviation history. Lindbergh's safe arrival in Paris turned aviation from an exotic novelty into something that ordinary Americans believed they might one day participate in, and the public response — both in Paris on the night of his arrival and in New York's ticker-tape parade after his return — set a template for celebrity-aviator fame that lasted decades.

The original Spirit of St. Louis survives today, suspended from the ceiling of the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C., where it has been on continuous display since 1928. The unmistakable high-wing strut-braced silhouette — with the registration "N-X-211" painted boldly across the side — is one of the most recognized aircraft images of the twentieth century.

In the simulator

A satisfying golden-age scale subject. The Spirit in our sim flies the way a real Ryan NYP would have — slow, stable, with the kind of long-distance cross-country character that suits a transatlantic record attempt. Use it for relaxed scale flying with serious historical resonance.