Daily Prayer, 18 July

It has been a few weeks since I’ve been able to add some of these prayers, so I will be adding them out of sequence a bit, maybe adding the ones I’ve missed to the end. This one was date specific and reflects the period of our deployment. Several months away from home port, already extended once and expecting another extension, trying to keep equipment functioning and our spirits up. As popular culture continues to insist that religion is darkness and faith a limitation, I continue to see that resilience is harder to obtain for those Sailors who have been raised without them. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that most of my commanding officers have been raised Catholic, and only one was not a sincere believer. Nevertheless, even the best equipment and people wear down if not given a break, and this prayer was meant as a reminder that God can work even with broken or worn out equipment.

Doug landed at Floyd Bennet Field in Brooklyn, NY 27 hours after he’d left Long Beach, CA. He’d had to slow down a bit towards the end of his flight to conserve fuel that was running low because he had sprung a leak in his fuel tanks. Unlike CHENG’s fuel leaks, though, Doug could be blamed for his leaks since he was the one who had redesigned and modified his aircraft all by himself on a shoestring budget. He could have fixed the leak, but decided it would take too much time. The flight plan he’d logged required him to return to Long Beach the next day, July 17^th.

When the morning of the 17^th arrived, Doug launched at 0515. Ten hours later he felt his feet go cold and looked down to see his feet awash in fuel from the leaky tank. To reduce the chance of an explosion, he used a screwdriver to punch a hole in the cockpit floor so the fuel could drain out. He then increased his speed in an attempt to shorten his flight time.

He landed at 0928, July 18^th 1938, after a 28 hour 13 minute flight, touching down at Baldonnel Aerodrome in Dublin County Ireland. Douglas “Wrong Way” Corrigan had flown, not west across the U.S, but east across the Atlantic Ocean.

Corrigan never claimed that his trans-Atlantic flight was anything other than a mistake, largely because he had been denied the proper permissions and certifications to do so when he’d applied for them in the preceding years. It took 600 words in a telegram to list all of the regulations he’d broken by making his flight. But in the era of the Great Depression his achievement was a source of great inspiration, and upon his return to the U.S was given a ticket-tape parade down Broadway in New York City and in Chicago. President Roosevelt even hosted him at the White House.

A reporter at the time compared Corrigan’s solo flight across the Atlantic to the one previously accomplished by Charles Lindbergh quite favorably:

You may say that Corrigan’s flight could not be compared to Lindbergh’s in its sensational appeal as the first solo flight across the ocean. Yes, but in another way the obscure little Irishman’s flight was the more audacious of the two. Lindbergh had a plane specially constructed, the finest money could buy. He had lavish financial backing, friends to help him at every turn. Corrigan had nothing but his own ambition, courage, and ability. His plane, a nine-year-old Curtiss Robin, was the most wretched-looking jalopy. As I looked over it at the Dublin airdrome I really marveled that anyone should have been rash enough even to go in the air with it, much less try to fly the Atlantic. He built it, or rebuilt it, practically as a boy would build a scooter out of a soapbox and a pair of old roller skates. It looked it. The nose of the engine hood was a mass of patches soldered by Corrigan himself into a crazy-quilt design. The door behind which Corrigan crouched for twenty-eight hours was fastened together with a piece of baling wire. The reserve gasoline tanks put together by Corrigan, left him so little room that he had to sit hunched forward with his knees cramped, and not enough window space to see the ground when landing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Corrigan

American history is replete with heroes who accomplished amazing things, even without the best equipment—sometimes making things up as they go.

All of you should be proud of what you’ve been able to do so far with our, shall we say, seasoned and salty ship. It isn’t often easy—as a bit of a relic myself, I can know we can be rather cantankerous at times. But you’ve met—and continue to meet—the challenge well in crossing even more than just one ocean. Keep up the good work.

LET US PRAY

Almighty God, you make all things new and are able to restore and revive each of us by the power and movement of Your Holy Spirit. Revive us again tonight. Give us the strength to sustain ourselves and our ship for the remainder of our long journey. Guide us and protect us, for You are holy always, now and forever and to the ages of ages.

AMEN