Though Levine successfully got the order lifted, it came too late – hours after Lindbergh had already taken off. After considering the possibility of a flight across the Pacific Ocean to Honolulu, Levine decided to shoot for a different aviation prize: $15,000 offered by the Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce for a flight to Berlin.
The very next day, he announced his airplane would fly even farther than Lindbergh’s, from America to Germany, and that it would carry an unnamed passenger – who, at the last possible minute, was revealed to be Levine himself.
On June 4, 1927, he climbed into the cockpit with Chamberlin and became the first passenger to fly across the Atlantic, even as he also periodically flew the plane to relieve Chamberlin. Levine’s wife screamed in horror when she witnessed her husband – who, unbeknownst to her, had written a will leaving his fortune to her and their two children, including an infant daughter – take off in the plane.
Chamberlin and Levine followed Lindbergh’s general route from Long Island to Newfoundland and then across the Atlantic – and, in a fascinating and ironic note, flew right over the U.S.S. Memphis, the ship carrying Lindbergh back to America.
In these early days of aviation, however, there was no GPS or other sophisticated navigational equipment, and an argument broke out between the two fliers over the correct direction to Berlin. As a result, they wasted precious fuel and were forced to land in Eisleben, Germany, about 115 short of Berlin, having flown 3,905 miles, a new world record, in 42 hours.
They took off again after refueling – but they had used the wrong fuel, fouling the engine, and they were forced to land a second time, in a muddy field near Kottbus, 70 miles southwest of Berlin. After another refueling, they landed safely in Berlin the next day, June 6, which happened to be Shavuot.
(Years later, when the Columbia was sold to a Canadian group, it became the first plane to cross the Atlantic Ocean twice.)
Six years before Adolph Hitler became chancellor of Germany, the airmen received a tumultuous welcome from a crowd of more than 100,000 wildly cheering Germans. The president of Germany, Paul Von Hindenburg, personally welcomed them, and Jacob Gould Schurman, the American Ambassador to Germany, presented them with a congratulatory cable from President Coolidge. Displayed on this page is a photo postcard, made in Berlin, which shows Chamberlin and Levine being received by Schurman after their successful flight.
However, Coolidge’s cable conspicuously omitted any mention of Levine. According to a furious June 8, 1927 editorial in Der Tog, a New York Yiddish daily newspaper:
At last we, too, are convinced of the great economy of our President. He is so parsimonious, he watches so closely the cash register of Uncle Sam that even the great sum of about 66¢ (the cost of cabling three words [Charles A. Levine] to Germany) is of importance to him…. Two men left New York; two men risked their lives; two men have shown heroism and created a record even greater than Lindbergh’s. Two men left; two men arrived, Americans both. But the President of the United States congratulates only one, and by strange coincidence the one whom the President has not found worthy of being mentioned by one word is named Levine . . .
Secretary of State Frank B. Kellogg’s office issued an official government response to Der Tog’s criticism:
Levine’s name was not mentioned because he was considered as a passenger. Notwithstanding the fact that everyone appreciated Mr. Levine’s courage in undertaking the flight, we felt that the official congratulations belonged to the aviator. Later, when it was learned that Mr. Levine had helped navigate the airship on its flight, recognition was expressed in the congratulations to both. It is regrettable that this incident was given a false interpretation. It must be clear to everyone that this attitude in no way represents an act of discrimination against Levine for any reason whatsoever.
