Goofs

When taking off from Roosevelt Field, the plane passes the same distant clump of 2 trees four times.

While training the priest to fly, two trees stand in the middle of the field. These same trees are seen in the middle of the field when Lindbergh takes off for Paris.

Just before Lindberg enters his plane for the flight to Paris his partner Frank drops the St. Christopher medal into his paper lunch sack and crumples the top over to close the bag. A later closeup of the bag in the cockpit shows the top perfectly folded without a crease.

The first time the airfield man gets on the field phone to check the weather for Lindbergh's airmail flight, the carpet flap protecting the phone is properly encrusted with snow or ice on its outer side; however, the next time he answers the phone, the flap is clean on the outside, and encrusted on the inside.

When Lindbergh was preparing to takeoff for Paris, he first looked out of the left side window only to see an open field, distant trees/power lines, and a clear runway. However, a few seconds later, when he peers out of the right-hand window, an ominous-looking ambulance has suddenly materialized, just backing off of the airstrip and into place.

Lindbergh goes to St Louis to get financing for the Paris flight from his St Louis banker friends. The real Lindbergh was a Captain in the National Guard at the time of of the famous flight to Paris. However in the film a couple of the St Louis banker friends refer to Lindbergh as "Colonel Lindbergh". Lindbergh was promoted to Colonel by President Calvin Coolidge only after he returned from his famous flight to Paris.

In the early scenes showing the Spirit of St Louis instrument panel, the altimeter, shown at the top right of the panel just above the airspeed indicator, has a single needle turning counterclockwise from zero to two thousand feet. This is correct for the Spirit. Subsequent scenes show a modern altimeter with two hands, turning clockwise--the big hand for hundreds of feet, and the little hand for thousands.

Ice would not accumulate on the engine cylinder heads after they have been running for over 12 hours.

The calendar in Levine's office says it is for February 1927, but it has February 1st on a Thursday when it should have been a Tuesday.

Sitting in the cockpit before taking off on his flight to Paris Stewart takes a peek through his periscope. The view in the tiny mirror shows the telephone lines, which are several hundred yards down at the end of the runway, as if they are strung barely beyond the nose of his plane.

At Louie's Shack in St. Louis, the long-distance operator tells Lindbergh that a 3-minute call to New York would cost him $5. That's the equivalent of $70 today. It has been said that no 3-minute phone call would cost that much in any era. The cost of a long-distance call from NY to St. Louis was around $5.00. The cost of a three-minute call from NY to California was $15.65, and to London, it was $75.00 for three minutes.

When Lindbergh arrives back in St. Louis with the newly built Spirit of St. Louis, he taxies up to the building where one of his banker friends is waiting for him. Lindbergh then gets out of the plane and starts petting the still hot cylinders of the engine. He would certainly be cautious about touching an engine that had just been running for many hours, which would surely burn his skin off. And as an ex Army Air Corps flyer, Jimmy Stewart himself would have known full well about this.

The plane that crashes in the snow storm near the beginning of the film is a de Havilland biplane with the markings, "110 U.S. Air Mail C.A.M. No. 2". When Lindbergh arrives at the Lambert-St. Louis Flying Field in his car following the crash, that same aircraft is sitting in the hangar in perfect condition, the number 110 clearly visible.

Just after passing St. John's, there is a matte shot of the plane against a sunset, and the left (far) wing of the plane gets cut off in the matte frame at the right of the frame a split second before the edit to the next shot.

When they are initially hand-pushing the Spirit at takeoff, in an effort to exaggerate the muddy conditions, shallow mud-filled trenches have been prepared for the plane's tires to ooze through. The feet of the accompanying men, while wet, are clearly on solid ground.

When Lindbergh lands his DH4 Mailplane to refuel, he asks field hand Bert to get a bucket of gas. After refueling the plane they restart the engine with Lindbergh doing the hand cranking and Bert clicking the ignition switch. The only problem is that he hand-cranks the engine counter-clockwise(as seen from the pilot's seat). DH4s Liberty engines crankcase turns clockwise(as seen from the pilot's seat position). This is quite dangerous as the engine could kick over with the prop tearing Lindbergh to pieces.

When Lindbergh is about to crash into the Atlantic, to climb out of a dive, he pushes his stick forward. He should be pulling the stick back.

After the plane is under construction they are discussing where to place the fuel tank and whether to have a radio, when all those details would have been ironed out in the blueprints before construction.

During the Air Show, Parachutists with Colored Smoke and Balloons, the cheering applauding audience shown are not looking up at the performance but rather straight ahead.

From 1925 to 1934, there was an electric sign on the Eiffel Tower that said "Citroen". In the scene of the night landing, when he flew over Paris, the sign would have easily been visible.

On his flight from NYC, Lindbergh obtained his last land fix at St. Johns, Newfoundland, before the Atlantic Ocean. In the overhead shot of the town, 1950's cars are clearly visible.

When "Mirror Girl" is on the train back to Philadelphia from New York, the entire scene is framed against several of the train's windows with a beautiful view of The Pulaski Skyway, a northern New Jersey landmark, whose construction began in 1930 - three years after Lindbergh's flight.

During his solo flight across the North Atlantic (1927), Lindbergh (James Stewart) opens his lunch box which contains various things to eat. Amongst this array of foods are sandwiches which are clearly made from sliced bread, which didn't become available until the following year (1928).

It is winter 1926 and Lindbergh parachutes from his DeHavilland mailplane to safety in the icy snowstorm. He and his mailbags board a passenger train. On the train a man is seen reading what appears to be an early Life Magazine. Life Magazine didn't start printing until 1936 almost a decade after the famous flight. However what can be made of the font style on the cover is similar to The New Yorker Magazine fonts which 'had' been publishing since early 1925.

When Lindbergh yells at the motorcyclist riding down a dirt road, the biker comes to a quick stop with his tires squealing. The road on which the motorcyclist is traveling would have to be paved for the tires to squeal.

Lindbergh hollers and waves to a motorcyclist riding along a dirt road down below. The motorcyclist skids to a squealing stop rendering a sound of tires on pavement.

Jimmy Stewart (as Lindbergh) and one of his associates drive up the runway to inspect it before the big takeoff. Stewart borrows a white handkerchief to replace a missing flag. When they leave, it's obvious there is a spotlight behind the car, and you can almost make out its reflection in the car's paintwork.

On his approach to St. John's, Newfoundland in the fog, Lindbergh is depicted as being concerned about colliding with a mountain peak. However, there is no even remotely mountainous terrain anywhere in the vicinity of St. John's.

When Lindbergh lands at Brooks Field in San Antonio, there are mountains in the background. There are no mountains near San Antonio.

When Lindbergh is in the New York City office of the President of Columbia Aircraft Co.to inquire about the purchase of a Bellanca, the view out the window shows the western portion of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge, which was not built until 1936, making the skyline that of a more modern day San Francisco, not N.Y.C.

When test flying the Spirit for the first time the dialog correctly identifies the location where the test flights were made as Dutch Flats. However Dutch Flats is the spot of land where Lindbergh Field (San Diego International Airport) now sits which is right on San Diego Bay. The test flying sequences were obviously not shot anywhere near San Diego Bay. The location appears to be somewhere in the Desert probably Mojave or Owens Dry Lake where a lot of westerns were shot.

When flying over Plymouth on the map, the view out of the window is actually Falmouth.

In the movie, Father Hussman was depicted as a comically inept student. However, in Lindbergh's book, Hussman was presented as quite an accomplished aviation pupil and often soloed as Lindbergh daydreamed in the instructor's seat.

When instructing Father Hussman, Lindy's goggles are upside down. The horizontal metallic part of the goggle frames is low on his face and the "v" shape with the leather nose cushion is up. The leather should be resting on his nose, not on his forehead.

At the end of the fogbound scene with Burt in Peoria, Lindbergh is already 200 feet in the air, flying in a windstorm, with an 85 decibel engine roaring, and Burt is yelling at him from the ground about a blizzard in Chicago.

Arthur Space- who plays designer Donald Hall- was 54 when the movie was filmed. The real Donald Hall was 28 at the time the Spirit of St. Louis was designed.