One of the more bizarre ‘jewish invention’ claims I have read is that made by Marnie Winston-Macauley at ‘Aish’ is more implied than explicitly made with her trying to imply that the title of having undertaken the first nonstop transatlantic flight should not really sit with Charles Lindbergh and his ‘Spirit of St. Louis’ but with a jewish businessman named Charles Levine.
She writes:
‘Charles Who?
Raise your hand if you’ve heard of Charles A. Lindbergh? Now, hands up if you’ve heard of Charles A. Levine? Bupkes? The 30-year-old entrepreneur who entered the “Fly me First” competition, and lost to Lindbergh, who flew solo, non-stop across the Atlantic in 1927, announced the very next day that his plane would fly faster and further! Only two weeks later, Levine’s pilot, Chamberlin, landed in a German field 42 hours later (shorter than the flight plan). But, Lindbergh’s distance and speed record was smashed by Levine’s craft! And, along for the ride, he became the world’s first trans-Atlantic air passenger! So, hands up if you now recall Levine? (Still bupkes?)’ (1)
Notice how Winston-Macauley tries to imply that Lindbergh’s achievement doesn’t matter – no doubt in part because Lindbergh was violently anti-Semitic and an ardent fan of the Third Reich in later life – and was ‘quickly eclipsed’ by Levine’s ‘achievement’ but buries the fact that Levine wasn’t in fact the pilot of the plane concerned but rather just a passenger in it at the end of her paragraph.
What is perhaps more interesting about this is that Winston-Macauley leaves out the backstory of why Levine’s plane ‘Columbia’ didn’t leave before Lindbergh’s ‘Spirit of St. Louis’ in May 1927 given that they were both at the same airfield on Long Island, New York at the time. (2)
The reason being that Levine wasn’t supposed to be on the plane at all since he wasn’t a qualified pilot and merely the co-owner of the company – the ‘Columbia Aircraft Company’ – that owned the plane; indeed Levine didn’t even design the ‘Columbia’ he just paid others (the ‘Bellanca Aircraft Company’) to design and build it as a prototype.
Originally the ‘Columbia’ was supposed to be piloted by Clarence Chamberlain with Lloyd Bertaud as his co-pilot, but at the last-minute Levine decided that – as a serial publicity hound – he didn’t want to just to be the owner of the ‘first plane to cross the Atlantic nonstop’ but one of the ‘pilots’ resulting in him kicking Bertaud out of the cockpit in favour of himself. Bertaud – a fervent proponent of aviation and an experienced pilot – didn’t take this open slight lying down and promptly sued Levine for breach of contract. While Bertaud ultimately lost his case; the lawsuit grounded the ‘Columbia’ for weeks allowing Lindbergh to make the first nonstop transatlantic flight in the ‘Spirit of St. Louis’ in May 1927.
So put another way despite Winston-Macauley trying to make out that Levine was the ‘real pioneer of nonstop transatlantic aviation’: he was neither a pilot or an aircraft designer unlike Bertaud, Chamberlain and Lindbergh. He just owned the plane and then tried to cheat his way into the record books and ended up being all but forgotten.
If I might be frank: this was simply a case of good riddance to jewish hubris.
References
(1) https://aish.com/91795029/
(2) On this cf. Phil Munson, 2002, ‘Conquest of the Atlantic: Pioneer Flights 1919-1939’, 1st Edition, Stenlake: Catrine
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