After the war, Nungesser mysteriously disappeared on an attempt to make the first non-stop transatlantic flight from Paris to New York, flying with wartime comrade François Coli in L'Oiseau Blanc (The White Bird).

[2] Two weeks after Nungesser and Coli's attempt, Charles Lindbergh successfully made the journey, flying solo from New York to Paris in Spirit of St. Louis.

Monuments and museums honoring Nungesser and Coli's attempt exist at Le Bourget airport in Paris and on the cliffs of Étretat, the location from which their plane was last sighted in France.

After attending the École des Arts et Métiers, where he was a mediocre student who nonetheless excelled in sports such as boxing, he went to South America – first to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, to search for an uncle who could not be located and then to Buenos Aires, Argentina, where he worked as an auto mechanic before becoming a professional racer.

Nungesser's rugged good looks, flamboyant personality, and appetite for danger, beautiful women, wine, and fast cars made him the embodiment of the stereotypical fighter ace.

[7] His silver Nieuport 17 plane was decorated with a black heart-shaped field, within which was painted in white a macabre Jolly Roger, a coffin and two candles.

The following day, he shared a win with Marcel Henriot and another pilot and finished the war with 43 official victories,[9][10] the third highest number among French fliers behind René Fonck and Georges Guynemer.

[11] In his flying career, Nungesser received dozens of military decorations from France, Belgium, Montenegro, United States of America, Portugal, Russia, and Serbia.

It was when Nungesser was in the U.S. doing the film The Sky Raider that he became interested in the idea of making a transatlantic flight and told his friends his next trip to America would be by air.

Having been invited by the secretary to the President, José Manuel Cortina, when the latter was vacationing in Paris, Nungesser seemed to have assumed he had received an official tender from the Cuban government.

Two weeks later, American aviator Charles Lindbergh successfully crossed from New York to Paris and was given an immense hero's welcome by the French, even as they mourned for the losses of Nungesser and Coli.

The anti-American sentiment it generated led to Lindbergh being advised to delay his own flight a few weeks, until the furor and resentment had died down.

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.

The first American air fighting super production film, The Dawn Patrol (1930), featured Nungesser flying himself in his own plane with The Knight of Death emblem on it.

Contrary to rumor, Nungesser was not one of the stunt pilots killed during the filming of Hell's Angels (1930), the epic aviation movie by Howard Hughes.

A 1999 Canadian made-for-TV children's special movie, Dead Aviators (airing on U.S. cable TV as "Restless Spirits"), uses the mystery of the disappearance of The White Bird as the key plot device.

While there, she encounters the ghosts of Nungesser and Coli, whose restless spirits constantly relive their own unheralded 1927 crash in a nearby pond.

During the course of his last combat he gave proof of the highest moral qualities by approaching to within 10 meters the enemy machine he was pursuing firing in response up to the last moment.

"[9] Officier de la Légion d'honneur citation, 19 May 1918 "Incomparable pursuit pilot, with exceptional knowledge and magnificent bravery, which reflect the power and inflexible will of his ancestry.

In the cavalry, where during his first engagements he earned the Médaille militaire, then in a groupe de bombardement where for his daily prowess he was cited several times in orders and was decorated with the Legion of Honor, and finally with an Escadrille de chasse, for thirty months his exploits were prodigious, and he always presented himself as a superb example of tenacity and audacity, displaying an arrogant contempt for death.