Given America’s global dominance of aviation over recent decades, it is remarkable that the country had only the most primitive air industry in the 1920s. The Wright brothers may have pioneered powered flight, and US capitalism may have been the driving force of the world economy, but when it came to the development of air travel and technology, America lagged far behind Europe in the period immediately after the First World War.

One man played a dramatic role in changing that. He was not a senior politician or business tycoon, but a shy young postal worker. Aged just twenty-five, Charles Lindbergh captivated the imagination of the world in May 1927 when he completed a heroic flight from New York to