The Pilot Who Forgot Where West Was

The Ultimate 'Whoops' Moment\n\nOn July 18, 1938, an American pilot named Douglas 'Wrong Way' Corrigan performed one of the most hilariously suspicious 'accidents' in aviation history when he touched down at Baldonnel Airport in Dublin, Ireland.\n\n#### The $300 'Flying Jalopy'\nCorrigan was a skilled mechanic (he actually helped build Charles Lindbergh’s Spirit of St. Louis), but the government didn't trust his own craftsmanship. His modified 1929 Curtiss Robin was so rickety that inspectors called it a 'flying coffin' and strictly denied him permission to fly across the Atlantic. Undeterred, Corrigan filed a flight plan to go from New York back to California.\n\n#### A Very Long 'Wrong Turn'\nHe took off into a heavy fog and, instead of turning west toward the Pacific, he pulled a U-turn and headed east. Twenty-eight hours and 2,800 miles later, he stepped out of his plane in Ireland and asked a confused ground crew, 'Just got in from New York. Where am I?'\n\n#### The Legend of the Lie\nDespite the fact that he was carrying extra fuel tanks he'd installed himself and had no radio, Corrigan maintained with a straight face that his compass must have malfunctioned. The public absolutely loved his audacity. Instead of being jailed, he returned to New York for a ticker-tape parade bigger than Lindbergh’s and even endorsed a watch that—you guessed it—ran backward.\n\nDid You Know? The aviation authorities were so amused (and pressured by his popularity) that they only suspended his license for 14 days—which was the exact amount of time it took for him to sail back to America by boat!