St Pierre and the transatlantic aviation mystery

A FRENCH island off the coast of Canada is thought to hold the key to the mystery of a plane that vanished attempting the first transatlantic crossing.
L’Oiseau Blanc disappeared in 1927 as French pilots François Coli and Charles Nungesser were flying from Paris - aiming for New York.
The most common theory says the plane was lost in a squall over the Atlantic, but pilot and author Bernard Decré said it crashed off the St Pierre and Miquelon archipelago, south of Newfoundland.
Mr Decré, 77, has visited St Pierre every year since 2008 to try to find out what happened, and has written a book on the subject. “The first books I read about it clearly weren’t written by pilots, so I decided to look into it myself.”
The story begins in 1919 when hotelier Raymond Orteig offered $25,000 to the first pilot to fly Paris to New York.
By 1927 the prize was still unclaimed – although British pair Alcock and Brown had flown from Newfoundland to Ireland. On May 8, Coli and Nungesser took off from Paris in their biplane L’Oiseau Blanc.
With news stories claiming that they were about to land in front of the Statue of Liberty in New York, crowds gathered in a Manhattan park to welcome the pilots - but they never arrived.
Mr Decré said the key to the plane’s disappearance could lie in prohibition; with bootleggers shooting down what they feared was a US surveillance plane. In the 1920s the manufacture, transportation, and sale of alcohol was banned in the US, and during this period, the French islands of St Pierre and Miquelon were a favourite stop-over for bootleggers.
Pieces of damaged wing were found that would support this theory, Mr Decré said, but he has never managed to track them down. “Due to damage to the wings, the plane had to land on the water next to St Pierre. It was seen by a fisherman, who called for help, but the plane was lost in the fog.”
Two weeks later, US pilot Charles Lindbergh won the Orteig prize flying solo from New York to Paris. His historic crossing was done on a whim: “He finished dinner late in the evening, then decided to leave around 5 or 6am.”
Mr Decré has now conducted years of research, backed by the French government and the town hall and prefecture on St Pierre and Miquelon. Yet L’Oiseau Blanc has never been found and the mystery - which features in a host of films and books - lives on.