The White Bird - Legacy

Legacy

The disappearance of L'Oiseau Blanc has been called "the Everest of aviation mysteries". TIGHAR, The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery, has called the aircraft, "History's Most Important Missing Airplane". Although it has been claimed that "if the aircraft had successfully completed its journey, Lindbergh would not qualify for the Orteig Prize, the sole reason for his attempt. When Lindbergh did succeed with his own flight across the Atlantic, the international attention on his achievement was probably enhanced because of the disappearance of 'L'Oiseau Blanc just days earlier. It is also suggested that it was Lindbergh's historic success which gave a major boost to the American aviation industry, without which the course of America's military and industrial accomplishments might have been quite different.

A monument was erected in Étretat in 1927, to mark the last place from which the biplane was seen in France, but it was destroyed in 1942 by the occupying German army. A new 24 m (79 ft) high monument, the "Monument Nungesser et Coli", was erected in 1963 atop one of the cliffs. There is also a nearby museum.

Another monument in France was inaugurated on 8 May 1928, at Le Bourget airport. Honoring Lindbergh, Nungesser, and Coli, it is inscribed, "A ceux qui tentèrent et celui qui accomplit" (trans: "To those who tried and to the one who succeeded"). The French issued a commemorative postage stamp in 1967, 40 years after the flight, to honor Nungesser and Coli's attempt. A street, "Rue Nungesser et Coli" is named after the aviators, along the Stade Jean Bouin in the 16th arrondissement of Paris.

In 1928, the Ontario Surveyor General named a number of lakes in the northwest of the province to honour aviators who had perished during 1927, mainly in attempting oceanic flights. Amongst these are Coli Lake (51°19′N 93°35′W / 51.32°N 93.59°W / 51.32; -93.59) and Nungesser Lake (51°29′N 93°31′W / 51.49°N 93.52°W / 51.49; -93.52).

The fate of L'Oiseau Blanc is occasionally mentioned in films. The 1999 made-for-TV Canadian film Restless Spirits, a children's film with the alternate title Dead Aviators, uses the mystery of Nungesser and Coli's disappearance as the key plot device. A young girl, who struggles with her pilot father's death in an aircraft crash years before, visits her grandmother in Newfoundland. While there, she encounters the ghosts of Nungesser and Coli, whose restless spirits constantly relive their own unheralded 1927 crash in a nearby pond. The girl decides to help the pair move on to the afterlife by assisting them in rebuilding their aircraft and completing their flight so they may be released and, by doing so, works through her own emotional distress over her father's test flight death. And in the opening montage of the 2005 film Sahara, based on Cussler's novel, a French newspaper article is displayed reporting a fictional story of NUMA finding the aircraft.

As of 2008, the landing gear is the only confirmed part of the biplane remaining, and is on display at the Musée de l'Air et de l'Espace (French Air and Space Museum), in Le Bourget airport in Paris, the location from which L'Oiseau Blanc took off.