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As portrayed in the movie, “The Flying Irishman,” Douglas Corrigan was a Texan of Irish descent who helped prepare the Spirit of St. Louis for Lindbergh’s flight across the Atlantic. He wanted to make his own transatlantic flight, to Ireland, and did so despite many obstacles. His claims that he “accidentally” misread the compass and had flown east instead of west earned him the moniker, Wrong Way Corrigan.
Upon his return to the U.S., Corrigan was celebrated in ticker-tape parades in New York and Chicago that exceeded the welcome of Lindbergh after his feat. Corrigan’s involvement with the modifications made to the Spirit of St. Louis to accomplish the miraculous flight to Paris, France, several of which Corrigan applied to his own patchwork plane, aided the successful, though unsanctioned, flight to Dublin in 1938.