Union reporter saw start of epic flight 95 years ago

On May 20, 1927, Charles Lindbergh departed from Roosevelt Field on Long Island in a San Diego-built monoplane named Spirit of St. Louis on first successful solo transatlantic flight.

A number of San Diegans played a role in that epic aviation milestone, including chief engineer Donald Hall, who designed the plane, B.F. Mahoney, the builder, sales manager A.J. Edwards and a reporter for the San Diego Union named Howard Morin.

In early 1927, Morin learned that a skinny, 25-year-old airmail pilot was having a plane built here and about to attempt a New York-to-Paris solo flight. Morin was sworn to secrecy on the condition that he'd have the story first. Morin kept his word, and the Union gave the world the first story on the planned flight.

Fifty years after the epic flight, this is how Morin recalled covering the biggest story of his career.

From The San Diego Union, Sunday, May, 21, 1967:

MORIN KEPT HIS WORD —AND LINDY KEPT HIS

For Howard Morin, it was one of those frustrating experiences that can happen only to newsmen. He had a big story in his pocket—and couldn't write a word about it.

The story was that a young air mail pilot named Charles Lindbergh was in San Diego to get an airplane built for a nonstop flight from New York to Paris.

“I gave him my word I wouldn't publish the story until he gave me permission,” says Morin, who was then—and still is— a reporter for The San Diego Union. “we worked together that way all the time he was here. I kept my word and he kept his, and I got the first crack at all the stories.”

It was in February 1927, that A.J. Edwards, sales manager for Ryan Airlines, Inc., introduced Morin to the tall, thin Midwesterner who had just arrived to iron out the details of a contract with the Ryan firm to build him a plane.

Though financed by St. Louis money, Lindbergh had come to San Diego for his airplane because of the proven record of T. Claude Ryan's single-engine, high-wing monoplanes. Ryan, whose life in aviation has been intermingled with San Diego's involvement in the air age, operated the country's first airline—flying from San Diego to Los Angeles daily—during the mid-1920s.

Ryan had recently sold his Ryan Airlines, Inc., to Franklin Mahoney, but remained as general manager at the time of Lindbergh's first visit here.

From one end of the country to another there was talk about aviators and their backers planning to compete for the prize posted by hotel man Raymond Orteig, $25,000 for the first nonstop

By Robert Zimmerman: The San Diego Union’s Military Writer

flight across the Atlantic.

The plans of Charles Lindbergh hadn't been reported— and they weren't until Lindbergh gave Howard Morin the nod to release his story.

“It was eight days before he agreed to let me write something, and I'm glad I waited,” Morin recalled in an interview last week. “From then on he respected my confidence, and kept me posted as his plans developed.”

A two-way flow of information developed between Morin and Lindbergh. At the Union office, Morin would file stories about Lindbergh on the Associated Press wire. When stories about the progress of other pilots planning an Atlantic flight would come in on the same AP wire, Morin would get on the phone and relay the news to Lindbergh at the Ryan shops on Harbor Drive.