THE STORY

In the summer of 1920, on vacation from her pre-med studies at Columbia University, Amelia Earhart took a trip to California. She found the West exhilarating, but what she enjoyed most of all were the air meets, carnival-like affairs with stunt flying and barnstorming. She attended every air meet she could find and was finally rewarded with a chance to ride with the not-yet-famous barnstormer, Frank Hawks. She later recalled the flight: "By the time I had got two or three hundred feet off the ground I knew I had to fly." With some financial help from her understanding mother and against the wishes of her father, she bought her first plane, a secondhand, bright yellow Kinner Canary on her 25th birthday, July 24, 1922. She recalled: "The motor was so rough that my feet went to sleep after more than a few minutes on the rudder bar."

She did what flying she could afford for the next few years. She had dropped out of the pre-med program and taken jobs teaching English to foreign students in Boston and then doing social work at Denison House, one of America's oldest social settlements. Her salary of $60 a month didn't permit much flying, and, in fact, she was so short of cash that she arranged to lend her plane out for demonstrations so as not to be charged hangar storage, which she said, "would have annihilated my salary."

At Denison House in May 1928, she received a phone call from publishing heir and public-relations promoter George Putnam asking if she was interested in doing something dangerous in the air. She recalled, "At first I thought the conversation was a joke and said so. Several times before I had been approached by bootleggers who promised rich reward and no danger. But the frank admission of risk stirred my curiosity. References were demanded and suppliedgood references." And then Putnam dropped the bombshell that would change her life forever: "Would you like to be the first woman to fly the Atlantic?"

Amelia's reply was a prompt yesprovided the equipment was adequate and the crew capable. She went to New York that same night and met Putnam. It turned out that he was looking for a female passengersomeone with social grace, education, charm, a pleasant appearance, and not necessarily a pilot. Still, Amelia showed Putnam her pilot's license, the first granted to a woman in the U.S. However, she came away from the meeting feeling that Putnam was not impressed with her credentials.

As it turned out, her impression was dead wrong, and three days later she was formally asked to make the flight. Indeed, Putnam was far more impressed with Amelia than he initally let on, and over the next two years he repeatedly proposed marriage, which she, just as consistently, turned down. Late in the fall of 1930, at the Lockheed factory in Burbank, California, Putnam asked Amelia to marry him. Her resistance worn down, she casually accepted, and they were married on February 7, 1931. In a departure for the 1930s, Amelia continued to use her maiden name, preferring to be called "AE." Similarly, she always called Putnam "GP."

Although AE did not pilot the Atlantic flight, she was appointed honorary captain. As it turned out, this demanded far more courage than anyone anticipated. The planecalled "Friendship"was a Fokker trimotor seaplane that had been purchased from Commander Richard E. Byrd by Mrs. Frederick (Amy) Guest. Byrd agreed to act as technical consultant for the flight, while pilot Wilmer L. "Bill" Stultz and mechanic Louis "Slim" Gordon prepared the plane itself.

All went according to plan, and on June 3, 1928, the Friendship, carrying Stultz, Gordon, and Earhart, left Boston Harbor on the initial flight leg to Halifax, Nova Scotia. On June 5, the trimotor reached Trepassey, Newfoundland, and was readied for the transoceanic flight leg.

Unfortunately, a long spell of bad weather set in, and the trio was stranded in Trepassey for 13 frustrating days. Faced with absolutely nothing to do, Stultz gave in to his one weakness, alcohol. For the next 12 days Amelia spent as much time with him as possible playing cards, talking, taking him for long walks on the beach, and otherwise trying to distract him from the bottle.

This was not the first time she had had to deal with alcoholism. Years earlier she had helped her mother hold their family together when her father became an alcoholic. When her parents were finally divorced, it was Amelia who paid all his bills and continued to think of him as an upright and virtuous man.

When, over the North Atlantic, a weather "window" finally opened on June 17, Stultz was totally inebriated and unable to rise from his bed under his own power. Putnam later recalled that "AE did what I suppose either was the bravest or silliest act of her whole career . She simply got hold of her pilot and all but dragged him to the plane. It was a fine-drawn choice. He wasn't in good shape, but perhapsonce he took offhis flying instinct, which was so sure, so complete, would come uppermost."

Stultz tried to take off three times and aborted each time when the plane failed to reach the required 50 mph for liftoff. Finally, on the fourth try, Stultz managed to reach 50 mph, in spite of the two outboard engines "coughing salt water." However, from the moment of takeoff, Stultz drew from a deep reserve of skill and resolve, keeping the Friendship on course for 20 hours and 40 minutes and making an excellent landing at Burry Port, Wales, on the morning of June 18.

As she was not the pilot, Amelia expected the trip to be nothing more than an interesting adventure, after which she would slip back into a life of social work and anonymity. However, it was she who received most of the attention at receptions in Southampton and London. There was to be no return to her old way of life.

From then on, her life became a whirlwind of publicity tours, article writing, and, occasionally, flying. Putnam frequently arranged lecture tours consisting of as many as 27 or 28 engagements in a single month, with barely enough time to get from one to another.

Although she consoled herself that she was doing the causes of both aviation and women some good, she was sorely disappointed that because of her "success," she actually had less time to fly than before. Indeed, in 1932 she confided to some of her friends in the Ninety-Nines, a women's flying group, that she felt a fraud at times because of her lack of experience. As author Vincent Loomis observed in his book, Amelia Earhart: The Final Story, "There was little doubt that she was sincere in wanting to promote the cause of women in aviation, but there was not much regard for her ability as a pilot and she knew it. It was time to make a true record flight."

And make it, she did. Not just one, but many. On May 20, 1932, Earhart piloted a Lockheed Vega across the Atlantic, becoming the first woman to do so. Although her goal had been to land in Paris, she flew through five wicked hours of stormy North Atlantic weather and was forced to land in a meadow near Londonderry, Ireland. Nevertheless, five years to the day after Lindberg made the first solo flight across the Atlantic, she duplicated his feat. A few months later, on August 24, 1932, she set the women's transcontinental speed record, flying nonstop from Los Angeles to Newark in 19 hours and 5 minutes.

A year later, in July 1933, she entered the Bendix east-to-west transcontinental race. She was the third competitor to finish and the first woman. Six days later, flying back to Newark, she broke her own record, making the cross-country flight in 17 hours and 7 minutes.

In January 1934, six Navy aircraft made the first Pacific crossing from the mainland to Hawaii. Amelia resolved to do the same flightsoloas soon as possible, but a heavy lecture schedule prevented her from attempting it until a year later. On Christmas Day 1934, Amelia's faithful Vega was lashed to the aft tennis deck of a Matson cruise ship bound for Hawaii. Shortly after the first of the year, she and the plane were ready for the flight to the mainland. Unfortunately, the weather was not ready; torrential rains doused everyone's spirits for nearly a week. Finally, on the afternoon of January 11, 1935, the weather cleared enough for Amelia to slip out on what she announced was a test flight. Of course, it was no test flight and, after flying through the night and landing at Oakland, California, 2400 miles later, Amelia Earhart became the first person, male or female, to fly solo across any part of the Pacific Ocean. Now she was a legend in truth as well as in Putnam's public-relations campaigns.

Earhart made one more record flight, a 2185-mile trip from Mexico City to Newark nonstop in 14 hours and 19 minutes on May 8, 1935, before turning her attention to preparing for and financing a round-the-world flight attempt.

Amelia was increasingly uncomfortable flying single-engine planes over large bodies of water, so she decided she must have a twin-engine plane for the round-the-world attempt. Moreover, special fuel tanks and a fuel-management system would have to be fitted for the long Pacific Ocean flight legs. Also, a Sperry autopilot was to be installed to give Amelia some relief on the longer flight legs.

While Putnam was busy trying to raise money and obtain political support, Paul Mantz, AE's technical advisor, began to prepare the plane, and Amelia began as tight a flight-training regimen as she could squeeze between her lecture tours. (She gave 150 lectures in 1936.) She also had to learn to fly the Lockheed Electra, a relatively large twin-engine, 10-passenger transport plane.

In August and September 1936, Amelia, along with Mantz and mechanic Bo McKneely, made several long-distance shakedown flights. It was a good thing that they did. On one flight the fuel system didn't work properly, and the recently-installed navigation hatch blew open.

As the planning progressed, it became quite apparent that Amelia would not be able to fly the Electra and navigate at the same time. Thus it was decided that she would take along a navigator, at least for the Pacific Ocean flight legs. Harry Manning, a ship's captain who had explained the rudiments of celestial navigation to AE on the way back from England in 1928, was selected as the navigator.

Amelia decided to give Manning a small practical test of his abilities, and in early January 1937 she took him far out over the Pacific and asked him to plot a course back to Los Angeles. On the return, they hit the California coast about 200 miles north of Los Angeles. AE claimed the navigation was in error, while Manning said Amelia flew off course and tended to drift consistently to the left when trying to follow a heading. In any event, both of them agreed that an assistant navigator would be a wise precaution on the Pacific flights.

The best choice for an assistant navigator seemed to be Fred Noonan, one of Pan Am's finest navigatorsat least until just two months earlier when the airline had fired him for drinking on the job. Pan Am manager Harry Drake recalled of Noonan, "Many were the nights I carried him home and rolled him into bed dead drunk." When Noonan was sober he was one of the ablest navigators in the world, and he promised Amelia that he would stay sober for the trip.

Originally, the round-the-world flight was intended to proceed from Oakland, California in a westward direction, beginning with the three long Pacific flight legs. Preparation was finally completed in early 1937, and the takeoff planned for March 15. The crew was assembled in Oakland in early March, but as it had been so many times in the past, the weather was uncooperative.

Finally, at 4:00 P.M. on March 17, the Electra was pulled from the hangar, and at 4:37 it lifted off for Hawaii. Poor weather returned as night fell, but Amelia handled the plane well while Manning and Noonan took star sightings, manned the radio, and continually plotted and replotted the course.

As the Electra neared Hawaii, the radio operators at Makapuu asked for a radio transmission one minute long from the aircraft to provide a fix on its position. Noonan held down the telegraph key, but the generator could not deliver the power required for such a long transmission and burned out. Fortunately, a second generator powered most of the other electrical gear on the aircraft, so the loss was not too serious.

The Electra touched down at Wheeler Field 15 hours and 52 minutes and 2410 miles after leaving Oakland. Early the next morning, the Electra was flown to Luke Field, which had a longer runway. There 590 gallons of high-octane military fuel were added to her tanks, bringing to 900 gallons the total fuel on board for the 1800-mile flight to Howland Island.

At 7:35 A.M. on March 20, with Manning and Noonan aboard, AE started the long taxi down the runway. As the plane gained speed, suddenly it pulled to the right, and ten seconds later it lay in a crumpled heap on the side of the runway. Witnesses differ in their accounts of the accident. Some claim a tire blew out. Amelia believed the right shock absorber gave way. But Paul Mantz thought that AE was jockeying the throttlessomething he had warned her not to do many times in practice flights.

The plane was taken by ship back to California where$25,000 and five weeks laterit was repaired and readied for another flight attempt. Manning decided to quit the adventure, giving as his reason that his leave time from his company was up. Much later he admitted that he had felt that "Amelia was responsible for the crash in Hawaii. She overcorrected to the left, then to the right."

The repairs delayed departure until May. That meant that AE would be making the Atlantic crossing in late June and the Caribbean flights in early July. Normal weather conditions for that period were considered unfavorable, so the direction of the flight was reversed. It would be made from west to eastfrom Oakland across the U.S., down to South America, across the Atlantic, across Africa and the Arabian Gulf to India, across Southeast Asia down to Australia, then to New Guinea, Howland Island, Hawaii, and back to the U.S.

Early on May 21, Amelia, Putnam, Noonan, and McKneely climbed into the Electra for another shakedown flight. Without a word to the press or anyone else, the round-the-world flight attempt was underway. The flights from Oakland to Burbank to Tucson went off without a hitch. An engine fire on the ground at Tucson caused some minor damage to the rubber fittings but was cleaned up in a few hours.

The next morning a ferocious sandstorm temporarily blocked the way out of Tucson, but the Electra finally reached New Orleans on the night of May 22. On Sunday morning, May 23, AE took off for the 688-mile flight to Miami, where she settled in for a final week of preparation. The plane was fully serviced, checked, and rechecked; long-range weather forecasts were collected; and thousands of details were attended to.

On June 1, 1937, at 5:56 A.M., Earhart and Noonan lifted off from Miami bound for San Juan, Puerto Rico. Gorgeous weather was their welcome companion, and they set down in San Juan at 1:10 p.m., right on schedule. Getting up at 3:45 A.M. on June 2, Amelia hoped for a dawn departure, but she was not able to take off until nearly 7:00 A.M. on the flight to Caripito, Venezuela. The flight was short, 624 miles, but AE had to buck 30 mph headwinds the entire way.

Heavy black rain clouds hung thick about Caripito as the Electra lifted off early on the morning of June 3. Again, strong headwinds cut the average speed, and it took nearly 4 1/2 hours to cover the 610 miles to Paramaribo, Dutch Guiana.

A very early departure from Paramaribo the next day left AE and Noonan without a current weather report; nevertheless, after some ten hours of flying, the town of Fortaleza, Brazil, 1332 miles away, came into view. A fuel-gauge leak had to be fixed, and because Pan Am had excellent facilities there, AE decided to have an engine overhaul in Fortaleza in preparation for the Atlantic crossing, rather than at the jumping-off airport in Natal, Brazil.

The next day they took to the air at 4:50 A.M. and arrived, 270 miles later, in Natal at 6:55 A.M. The weather was unsettled all the way, and a tropical deluge caught the plane just as it landed. Amelia had hoped to leave that evening for Africa, but the rain squalls and muddy field prevented their departure. She finally got off at 3:15 A.M., using a secondary grass runway because a perverse wind was blowing directly across the longer, lighted runway. Noonan had been drinking heavily with his old Pan Am buddies, and observers at Natal sensed a growing tension between pilot and navigator that belied their outward cordiality.

Headwinds prevailed for most of the way. Then came a stretch of doldrums, some clear skies, and finally, in the words of AE, "the heaviest rain I ever saw. Tons of water descended, a buffeting weight bearing so heavily on the ship I could almost feel it." Although Dakar, French West Africa, was their objective, when they reached the coast a thick haze blanketed the landscape and there was no sign of civilization. Noonan thought that they should turn south, a correct judgment, because, as they later learned, they were 80 miles north of Dakar. However, AE decided to turn north, and half an hour later they found themselves at St. Louis, Senegal.

The following day, June 8, they flew the 163 miles to Dakar, where they were forced to lay over to repair a broken fuel gauge. AE also decided to have an overall engine check there. From June 9 to 14, they hopped across the African continent in six flights, varying in length from 340 to 1150 miles. A variety of problems were faced and overcome: weather, navigation, language, minor malfunctions, and fuel.

On June 15, the pair flew from Assab, Eritrea, to Karachi, India. A few hours out, the mixture control lever jammed, preventing AE from regulating the quantity of fuel consumed by the right engine. To economize, she reduced her speed dramatically. Nevertheless, they covered the 1920 miles in 13 hours and 10 minutes and became the first flyers ever to make a non-stop flight from the Red Sea to India.

In 1937, Karachi aerodrome, the main intermediate point for all air traffic from Europe to India, Australia, and the Far East, was one of the biggest in the world. AE and Noonan spent two days in Karachi having a major engine overhaul and replacing many small but important items for the first time on the trip.

On June 17, AE piloted the Electra 1390 miles to Calcutta, India. Despite a series of severe rain squalls, the Electra averaged 163 mph, making the trip to Calcutta in 8 1/2 hours.

Now, in the middle of the monsoon season, AE faced a number of risky situations. On June 18, the field at Calcutta was thoroughly soaked, making a takeoff very dangerous. However, there was a momentary break in the weather, and she knew that she might not get another chance to get out for several days or even weeks. She described the takeoff: "The plane clung for what seemed like ages to the heavy sticky soil before the wheels finally lifted, and we cleared with nothing at all to spare the fringe of trees at the airdrome's edge." A bit over two hours later she put down at Akyab, Burma, refueled, and took off for Rangoon. However, the weather grew increasingly hostile, until the pair found themselves in monsoon rains so savage that they beat patches of paint off the wings. After trying to get through for two hours, AE gave up and retreated to Akyab.

On June 19, the pair set out from Akyab bound for Bangkok, Siam, but again moonsoon rains forced a landing at Rangoon. Horrible weather continued to plague them as they barely managed to get through the following day to Bangkok for refueling, and then on to Singapore.

Early on June 21, they flew to Bandoeng, Java, where AE decided to lay over two days to let the local KLM mechanics give the Electra a good going over. At 3:45 A.M. on June 24, as AE was warming up the plane, she found that an instrument refused to function. Repairs took a good part of the day, and they did not get off until 2:00 P.M. AE reached Saurabaya, Java, late in the day but, because of continued problems with the instruments, she was forced to return to the much better facilities at Bandoeng for more repairs the next day.

The instrument problems seemed finally cured, and on June 27, Earhart and Noonan left Bandoeng for Australia. Bucking strong headwinds most of the way, AE was forced to put down at a tiny airstrip at Koepang on the island of Timor. Early the next morning they set out across the Timor Sea, again bucking strong headwinds, and landed at Port Darwin, Australia, four hours later. There they were pounced upon by a medical inspector and quarantined on the plane for ten hours.

At 6:29 A.M. on June 29, the pair took off for Lae, New Guinea. They covered the 1200 miles over a portion of the Indian ocean dotted with small islands in 7 hours and 43 minutes. Adverse wind conditions and threatening clouds held the flyers at Lae for two days. In addition, Noonan was unable because of radio difficulties to set the chronometers, which were vital to accurate navigation.

Discouraged by these problems and steadily losing faith in Noonan because of his drinking, AE worked out a revised flight plan with the assistance of Harry Balfour, the Guinea Airways radio operator at Lae. Amelia tried unsuccessfully to persuade Balfour to go with her in addition to or instead of Noonan. The new routing was slightly north of the original course but passed over Nauru Island, which, because of its giant phosphate mining lights, was one of the few islands visible at night.

AE took off from Lae at 10:00 A.M. on July 2 and reached Nauru 11 hours later, right on schedule. From there she turned slightly south to Howland. However, her old bugaboo, consistently drifting left when following a bearing, raised its ugly head again. Thus, eight hours later when she thought she was about 100 miles out of Howland, she was indeed 100 miles short but also 170 miles north. After briefly searching and finding no sign of Howland, she made a desperate about-face in an attempt to reach the Gilbert Islands four hours to the west.

However, she was again north of her intended course, so instead of hitting the Gilberts she reached Mili Atoll, one of the southernmost atolls of the Marshall Islands chain. As she tried to put down on a long stretch of coral at Barre Island, the landing gear caught on the coral, the plane was wrenched to a stop, a wing was torn off, and Noonan was thrown forward, injuring his forehead and knee.

Earhart and Noonan were aided by the Marshallese, but word of their landing spread, and several days later they were picked up by the Japanese military, who occupied the Marshalls. On July 14, the flyers and the wrecked Electra were put aboard the Koshu, a small Japanese survey ship. On July 19 the Koshu reached Truk Island, where Earhart and Noonan were transferred to a Japanese Navy seaplane and flown to Saipan, Japanese headquarters in the Pacific.

There they were accused by the Japanese of spying, and were mercilessly questioned. Between interrogations, they were held in small damp cells in Garapan prison where, on a diet of weak soup, both became ill with dysentery. Resenting the treatment, Noonan eventually lost his temper and threw his bowl of soup at a guard. He was immediately taken out and beheaded. Amelia's strong willpower kept her going for 14 months until finally, in August 1938, she died of dysentery.

In 1935, Charles Lindberg had given up flying and moved to England after the kidnapping and death of his son. That same year Wiley Post was killed in a crash on a flight with Will Rogers in Alaska. A few years earlier Eddie Rickenbacker had given up flying to become an airline executive, and Blanche Stuart Scott had given up her role as "Tomboy of the Air" for a career in radio and the movies. Thus, with the death of Amelia Earhart in 1938, the golden age of aviation came to a close.

