Wrong Way Corrigan landed in Ireland 1938 & stuck to his story | Season 2 – Episode 86
Wheels Dec 09, 2022
The 1930s was an era of aviation heroes, the worldwide public were enchanted with the record-breaking exploits of Charles Lindberg and Amelia Earhart. However, there is another name to add to this list of aviation pioneers, Douglas Corrigan (1907 – 1995), the flier who supposedly got lost in the fog, made a unique navigational error and instead of flying west, flew east, accidently crossing the Atlantic to land in Ireland in 1938. This is the incredible story of Douglas ‘Wrong Way’ Corrigan.
Born as Clyde Groce Corrigan in Galveston, Texas into a family of Irish descent he changed his name as a young man to Douglas Corrigan. When he was 18 years of age and living with his family in Los Angeles he paid $2.50 for a short flight in a Curtiss JN-4 biplane nicknamed a ‘Jenny’. Douglas Corrigan was then firmly bitten by the aviation bug and just a week later he began his flying lessons in San Diego and after twenty lessons he made his first solo-flight on March 25, 1926.
Following his qualification as a pilot Corrigan joined The Ryan Aeronautical Company of San Diego and was part of the team that installed the wing, fuel tanks and instrument panel of the custom-built ‘Spirit of St Louis’ plane for Charles Lindberg’s record breaking 33 hour and 30 minute flight from New York to Le Bourget, Paris.
In 1933 Corrigan spent $310 on a battered second-hand plane built in 1929. The plane was a Curtiss Robin and was introduced by the Curtiss-Robertson Airplane Manufacturing Company in 1928. The Robin was a high-wing monoplane with a fabric covered, steel tubing fuselage and a wooden wing and powered by various engines from 90-185 hp. The pilot’s seat was centrally positioned with seating for two passengers behind. The Robin was built as a basic aeroplane as rubber bungee cords took the place of shock absorbers on early versions.
Corrigan’s plane was in poor condition when he bought it and he set to work making repairs and modifications the first change was to name the plane ‘Sunshine’ and then to replace its 90hp Curtiss OX-5 engine with a 165hp Wright J-6-5 Whirlwind engine, fit an extra 16 gallon fuel tank bringing the capacity up to 350 gallons.
In 1935 after all of his repairs and modifications his application to fly the Atlantic from America to Ireland was rejected by the US Bureau of Air Commerce as his pilot’s license was for ‘transport’ cross-country flights only and in addition his Curtis Robin was deemed to be unsuitable for the flight as it did not meet even the relatively lax safety standards of the day. And so began a series of official rebukes over the coming months from the Bureau of Air Commerce for the necessary permissions to allow Corrigan his trans-Atlantic flight.
If Douglas Corrigan just stuck to what his pilot’s license allowed (cross-county flights only) and then turned around and headed back home to California, then we would never have heard of ‘Wrong Way’ Corrigan. Instead on the morning of 17th July 1938 Douglas Corrigan fuelled his tanks, packed two chocolate bars, two boxes of fig bars and a quart of water on board and probably taking the entire length of the runway to take off due to the weight of fuel on board he took to the skies.
Later blaming a combination of fog, poor visibility and a jammed compass, Corrigan turned his plane east instead of west and headed out over the Atlantic on his 3,200 mile journey. On 18th July 1938, after a solo, non-stop epic flight lasting 28 hours and 13 minutes Corrigan had not only crossed the Atlantic, but he had also crossed the island of Ireland as well as he set his Curtiss Robin J-1 down at the military airfield at Baldonnel near to Dublin city.
On landing he was challenged by an officer of the Irish Customs to produce his passport but was unable to do so. Despite the official Irish and (American) scepticism about Corrigan’s story, as this was an unprecedented occurrence, the Irish authorities were uncertain what to do with him and he received only a mild rebuke. He was an instant celebrity and was introduced to the Irish Taoiseach (Prime Minister), Éamon de Valera, who remarked that as Corrigan had not need paperwork to arrive in Ireland he hardly needed paperwork (a passport) to depart from Ireland.
On examination of the Curtiss Robin at Baldonnel aerodrome by the flight mechanics of the An tAerchór (Aer Corps) it was declared a miracle that Corrigan had made it at all as his compass was found to be almost decrepit, he had no radio, no parachute and the plane was said to be unairworthy as amongst other issues he could not see out of the front of his plane and only to the sides due to the size of the extra fuel tanks which on landing still contained 100 of the original 350 gallons.
The U.S. Bureau of Air Commerce were not as bemused as the Irish government and suspended his pilot’s license for two weeks, which coincidentally was exactly the amount of time it took for the steamship he was traveling on to travel from Europe to New York.
Even as the eleventh person to fly across the Atlantic, Douglas Corrigan’s ticker tape parades in New York and Chicago and hero’s welcome was said to be larger than that awarded to Charles Lindberg after his flight, and it is claimed that close to a million people lined the streets of New York. It was 1939 and war clouds were looming over America and ‘Wrong Way’ Corrigan was just the tonic the national spirit needed. The New York Times even entered the spirit of the wrong-way and printed its headline in reverse as a tribute to this ‘accidental’ pioneering aviator.
Fame and fortune followed with the publication of his best-selling book, ‘That’s my story’, a phrase he constantly referred to when asked to explain his flying in the wrong direction over the Atlantic. Along with starring as himself in a 1939 movie, The Flying Irishman he also endorsed a number of unusual products including a watch that went backwards.
In 1988 he came back into the public eye for the golden anniversary celebrations of his notorious flight of 17th to 18th July 1938. On the day of the celebrations, the Curtis Robin was wheeled from storage in Corrigan’s garage and the reliable Wright J-6-5 Whirlwind engine with just a little fettling was started up.
Douglas ‘Wrong Way’ Corrigan died on December 9th 1995 and in October 2019 Corrigan’s son, Harry Corrigan, transported his father’s Curtiss-Robertson “Sunshine” to the Planes of Fame Air Museum in a disassembled state. The fuselage is now on temporary display with eventual plans to restore the entire airplane.
Why did Douglas Corrigan fly in the wrong direction? Was it to visit his relatives in Ireland, display his rebellious streak, or prove to officialdom that he could be just as good as Lindberg and Earhart? Or did he really turn the wrong way? We will never know as he stuck by his story of having taken a wrong turn for the entirety of his life.
Information sources
Fantasticdrivel.com
Irelands Own
Planes of Fame Museum
Seamus Cullen – Douglas Corrigan signature
That’s my story – Douglas Corrigan (1938)
The Flying Irishman – RKO Radio Pictures
The Pittsburgh Press – July 18 1938
UTA Libraries
Wrong Way Corrigan – History Ireland – James Bartlett
