The French ace, Charles Nungesser, was as famous for his 45 "kills" as he was as a playboy around Paris. Unlike many of his fellow pilots, Nungesser survived the war. When Howard Hughes was developing the idea of a movie based on these World War I pilots, he began to film men flying these same biplanes from the war; one of the pilots in these scenes was Nungesser. Although he did NOT fly his Nieuport 17, the one which he had flown during the war, in these shots, he did fly a Hanriot HD-1 on which he painted his famous "Knight of Death" symbol which showed a skull and crossbones inside a black heart. (This Hanriot can be seen on display in a museum today in Chino, CA.) Contrary to popular beliefs, Nungeser was not killed flying the stunts for this movie. Although the scenes were shot in 1926, the silent movie, "Hell's Angels", did not come out until 1930, 3 years after Nungesser's disappearance.
What about of his disappearance? Nungesser had become a rival to Charles Lindbergh to see who would be the first to fly across the Atlantic Ocean. Nungesser, flying "L'Oisean Blanc" ("The White Bird") took off from Paris on May 8, 1927, accompanied by his navigator, the one-eyed Francois Coli. They were last seen flying over the Atlantic by witnesses in Ireland (today there is a commemorative statue sited on the spot where these witnesses last say the intrepid duo). They were never seen nor heard from again. Rumors soon arose of a wrecked plane in the woods of northern Maine and nearby Newfoundland but nothing was ever found. Two weeks later Lindbergh made his epic, solo flight.
But that wasn't quite the end for our Parisian playboy. In an episode of "The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles" by George Lucas, Nungesser appears as a flashy playboy and helps a young Indiana Jones to accomplish a spy mission. In 1999 a Canadian "made-for-TV" movie called "Dead Aviators" has the ghosts of Coli and Nungesser appear to a young girl whose father, a pilot, has been killed in a plane crash. She helps the ghosts rebuild the "White Bird" so that they can finish their flight and enter the next world; they teach her forgiveness and compassion.
And of course the mystery of his disappearance continues to haunt today's flight buffs. What if proof was found that the two French fliers did make it to North America? (After take-off the pair had dropped the landing wheels to lighten the plane's load......the intended landing was to be on the water of New York harbor alongside the Statue of Liberty!) Rumors persist even to this day and expeditions still trudge into the woods looking for wreckage. There is an island off the coast of Newfoundland and the residents still recall their ancestors talking about hearing a plane's engine.....a crash....and calls for help.
There have even been several television documentaries which investigate the mystery, all having failed, so far, to prove the men's success....and so Nungesser and Coli live on in the imagination not only of World War I aviation buffs, but in that realm of mystery that we all find so eternally fascinating.
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