This month marks the 75th anniversary of a very peculiar moment in the history of Baldonnel Aerodrome here in Dublin.

On 18 July 1938, an American aviator by the name of Douglas Corrigan landed in the aerodrome, after a 28 hour flight. This was all particularly unusual as Corrigan had flown off from Brooklyn in New York, supposedly destined for Long Beach, California! Corrigan returned to the United States to massive fanfare in New York City and California, and was honoured with a brilliant New York Post front page, reproduced below.He was only the eleventh person to fly across the Atlantic, and the parade that welcomed him home even surpassed that of Charles Lindbergh.

Douglas Corrigan was born at Galveston in Texas in 1907, the son of a Construction Engineer. In his younger years, he himself worked as a mechanic of the famed Spirit of St.Louis, the plane that…