Barnstormer takes wrong turn into history book

A Texas-born barnstormer coaxed his second-hand airplane into the thick clouds over a New York airfield on Jul. 17, 1938 and to the surprise of puzzled onlookers turned a routine flight into an unscheduled trans-Atlantic crossing. The handful of spectators waited in vain for Douglas Corrigan to set a course for California. When he vanished from sight on an easterly heading, one witness remarked, …