Douglas Corrigan

Douglas "Wrong Way" Corrigan (January 22, 1907–December 9, 1995) was an American aviator born in Galveston, Texas. In 1938 after a transcontinental flight from Long Beach, California, to New York, he flew from Floyd Bennett Field in Brooklyn, New York, to Ireland, even though he was supposed to be returning to Long Beach. He claimed that this was due to a navigational error caused by heavy cloud cover that obscured any landmarks and low-light conditions that caused him to misread his compass. Corrigan, however, was a skilled aircraft mechanic (he was one of the builders of Charles Lindbergh's The Spirit of St. Louis) and he had made several modifications to his own plane rendering it suitable for transatlantic flight. Between 1935 and 1937 he applied several times for permission to make a nonstop flight from New York to Ireland, and it is likely that his "navigational error" was a protest against government "red tape"; however, he never publicly acknowledged having flown to Ireland intentionally.

Legacy

Corrigan's "error" caught the imagination of the depressed American public and inspired many jokes. His nickname, "'Wrong Way' Corrigan," passed into common use and is still mentioned when someone takes the wrong direction (and was used in The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show for the name of Captain Peter "Wrong Way" Peachfuzz, the world's worst sailor). Among aviation historians he is remembered as one of the brave few who made early transoceanic flights.

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