Hoisting Charles Lindbergh’s plane ‘Sirius’ from the Yangtze River onto HMS Hermes, Hankow (Wuhan)
Collection
Identifier
JC-s386
Notes
University of Bristol - Historical Photographs of China reference number: JC-s386. Colonel Charles Augustus Lindbergh and Mrs Anne Morrow Lindbergh had intended to make one last survey flight over the flooded Hupeh region, with Dr P.Z. King (Jin Baoshan 金宝善) of the China Famine Commission as passenger. Their monoplane ‘Sirius’ capsized when they were about to take off and they were thrown into the river. A boat was quickly lowered from the Royal Navy aircraft carrier HMS Hermes and the sailors rescued the Lindberghs and Dr King. The plane was hoisted aboard the Hermes and taken to Shanghai for repairs. See an account of the accident in ‘North to the Orient’ by Anne Morrow Lindbergh (1935). The 1931 Yangtze-Huai River floods occurred from June to August 1931, one of the world’s deadliest disasters.
Caption on photograph
Colonel Lindbergh’s plane in the Yangtze at Hankow
