Star for the Eagle

In the bitter months before Pearl Harbor, Charles A. Lindbergh stumped the nation, appearing before rallies and speaking over the radio as one of the strongest advocates of U.S. neutrality in World War II. In April 1941, at a press conference, President Franklin D. Roosevelt roundly denounced Lindbergh and likened him to the Copperhead defeatists of the Civil War. Colonel Lindbergh promptly sent a letter to Roosevelt, stating that because of "implications . . . concerning my loyalty to my country, my character and my motives, I can see no honorable alternative to tendering my resignation as colonel in the United States

Army Air Corps Reserve." War Secretary Henry L. Stimson accepted the resignation without comment.

After Pearl Harbor, Lindbergh offered his services to the Air Corps, saying "Now that war has come, we must meet it as united Americans, regardless of our attitude in the past." He was told that his statement was "not enough." that in order to regain his commission he would have to take back everything he had said in the past. Lindbergh refused, went to work as a civilian consultant to the Ford Motor Co. and United Aircraft, helped in the design of the Navy's Corsair. In 1944 he went to the Pacific as a civilian technician and in the course of six months flew some 50 missions and was unofficially credited with shooting down one Japanese plane.

This week Dwight Eisenhower moved to heal the old wounds. In a brief announcement from the White House, the President nominated Lindbergh for a new commission, as a brigadier general in the Air Force Reserve.

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