Wrong Way Corrigan, the Patched-Up Curtiss Robin, and the Twenty-Eight Hour Flight to Ireland He Swore He Never Meant to Take

On July 17, 1938, Douglas Corrigan took off from Brooklyn, New York, in a nine-year-old Curtiss Robin he had rebuilt by hand, supposedly bound for California. Twenty-eight hours later he landed near Dublin, Ireland, and told officials he must have read his compass wrong. Almost no one believed him - and that was exactly the point.

Who Was “Wrong Way” Corrigan?

Douglas Corrigan was a young American mechanic who became a folk hero in 1938 for an “accidental” solo crossing of the Atlantic Ocean. He earned the nickname “Wrong Way” because his official story was that he intended to fly west to California and ended up in Ireland by mistake.

The setting matters. It was the golden age of aviation, eleven years after Charles Lindbergh crossed the Atlantic in 1927. The country had gone flying-mad, and Corrigan was one of countless young men who caught one whiff of avgas and never recovered.

How Corrigan Helped Build the Spirit of St. Louis

Before Ireland, there was San Diego. In 1927, Corrigan was a mechanic barely twenty years old, working at Ryan Aeronautical when a quiet airmail pilot named Charles Lindbergh walked in and ordered a custom monoplane.

That airplane became the Spirit of St. Louis, and Corrigan helped build it. He worked on the wing and the instrument panel. On the morning the aircraft left on its first hop toward New York and then Paris, it was Corrigan who pulled the wheel chocks.

He watched Lindbergh climb out and become the most famous man on Earth. Something got planted in him right there on the ramp: if Slim can do it, so can I.

What Airplane Did Corrigan Fly Across the Atlantic?

Corrigan had no syndicate of backers and almost no money, so he built his own airplane. In 1933 he bought a used Curtiss Robin, a high-wing cabin monoplane originally built around 1928–1929. He paid roughly $310 for it - a price that tells you everything about its condition.

Then he went to work like only a broke mechanic with a dream can:

He assembled a Wright Whirlwind engine out of the best parts of a couple of worn-out ones, ending up with about 165 horsepower.
He packed the cabin with homemade fuel tanks, fitted by hand until there was barely room to sit.

Here is the detail that matters most: those tanks ran across the front of the cabin, blocking his forward view entirely. To see ahead, Corrigan had to open a side window and stick his head into the slipstream - or fly on instruments, dead reckoning, and faith.

Why Was Corrigan Denied Permission to Cross the Atlantic?

Corrigan wanted one thing: to fly the Atlantic like Lindbergh. He repeatedly applied to the authorities for permission - and was repeatedly refused.

The Bureau of Air Commerce (the predecessor to today’s FAA) looked at his patched-together, nine-year-old Robin and declared it unfit to cross the ocean. They wouldn’t even grant a full unrestricted license. Instead they certified it as an experimental aircraft, cleared only for cross-country flight over dry land.

So Corrigan flew it cross-country. In July 1938 he flew the Robin from Long Beach, California, to Floyd Bennett Field in Brooklyn - roughly 27 hours nonstop - a remarkable flight nobody remembers. In Brooklyn, officials signed off on a return trip: westbound, back to California.

The Flight to Ireland

On the hazy morning of July 17, 1938, Corrigan fired up the Whirlwind at Floyd Bennett Field with roughly 320 gallons of gasoline aboard. The overloaded Robin lumbered nearly the full length of the runway before staggering into the air - witnesses said it barely cleared the wires.

Then Corrigan turned east, flew straight into a bank of clouds, and headed out over the Atlantic Ocean.

Twenty-eight hours later, the little airplane sputtered down at Baldonnel Aerodrome outside Dublin, Ireland. A makeshift fuel line had let go, and gasoline had been sloshing around his feet for hours. Out climbed an exhausted, grinning American whose first words to the astonished officials were: “I just flew from New York. Where am I?”

They told him. He scratched his head, looked at his compass, and said he must have flown the wrong way.

Did Corrigan Really Fly the Wrong Way by Accident?

Corrigan’s story - the one he stuck to for life - was that he climbed on top of an overcast in the Brooklyn haze, settled onto his compass, and mistakenly followed the reciprocal, the wrong end of the needle. With the fuel tanks blocking his forward view and clouds below, he claimed he saw nothing to correct him until about 26 hours in, when he spotted an endless blue ocean and a green coastline that was definitely not New Jersey.

Nobody believed a word of it. Everyone knew he had spent years seeking permission to cross the Atlantic, had built the airplane specifically for it, and had flown across an entire continent to reach the best jumping-off point for Europe. His compass and charts worked fine. The man who helped build the Spirit of St. Louis did not confuse east and west by accident.

He flew the Atlantic on purpose - and every time he was asked, for the rest of his life, he’d just get a twinkle in his eye and say, “That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it.” He even titled his autobiography That’s My Story.

What Happened to Corrigan After the Flight?

The authorities were furious, so they threw the book at him - and suspended his pilot certificate for 14 days. In a cosmic wink, the suspension ended on the exact day the ocean liner carrying him and his crated-up Robin steamed back into New York harbor. The moment he touched American soil, he was legal to fly again.

America adored him. In 1938 the country was still climbing out of the Great Depression, with war clouds gathering over Europe. A cheerful, penniless mechanic in a homemade jalopy who thumbed his nose at the rule-makers and cheated the ocean was exactly the hero people needed.

New York gave him a ticker-tape parade up Broadway - reportedly drawing crowds even bigger than Lindbergh’s, over a million people. He got newspapers, a movie, endorsement deals, even a watch that ran backwards named in his honor. And he never broke character.

Corrigan didn’t chase the fame. After ferrying and test-flying aircraft during World War II, he settled on an orange grove in Santa Ana, California, and kept mostly to himself. He held onto the Curtiss Robin for the rest of his life, crated in his garage, wheeling it into the sunlight only on occasional anniversaries. He died in 1995 at age 88 - and never once confessed.

Key Takeaways

Douglas “Wrong Way” Corrigan flew from Brooklyn to Dublin, Ireland, in 28 hours on July 17, 1938, then claimed he’d meant to fly to California.
As a young mechanic at Ryan Aeronautical, he helped build the Spirit of St. Louis and pulled Lindbergh’s wheel chocks in 1927.
His aircraft was a $310 used Curtiss Robin rebuilt with a cobbled-together 165-hp Wright Whirlwind and homemade fuel tanks that blocked his forward view.
Authorities deemed the plane unairworthy for an ocean crossing and suspended his license for just 14 days afterward - a punishment America treated as a joke.
Corrigan kept the plane and his story until his death in 1995, never publicly admitting he crossed the Atlantic on purpose.