Amelia Mary Earhart (pronounced AIR-hart) was born July 24, 1897 in Atchison, Kansas to Samuel "Edwin" Stanton Earhart and Amelia "Amy" Otis Earhart. Her father was a drinker and his career was interrupted several times causing them to move to Des Moines, later Saint Paul, Minnesota and still later, requested a transfer to Springfield, Missouri, but the man who had retired leaving an opening there, reconsidered and stayed on, leaving Earhart out of work. Mrs. Earhart took the children and moved to Chicago where Amelia attended Hyde Park High School and was graduated in 1916.
Her college attendance was somewhat haphazard. She started at the Ogontz Junior College in Rydal, Pennsylvania but during Christmas break in 1917 while World War 1 was in full swing, she visited her sister in Toronto. When she saw all the wounded soldiers returning, she took a Red Cross course in nursing and began work at the Spadina Military Hospital. She later attended Columbia University for one year but then left to return to her parents who had reunited and were then living in California.
In December of 1920, she and her father visited an airfield where a pilot gave her a ride which impressed her so much she determined that she must fly. She immediately began working at any position she could secure and soon was able to save up the $1,000 needed to be trained as a pilot. And six months later she purchased a used bright yellow Kinner Airster biplane and named it "Canary". On October 22, 1922 she flew her biplane to 14,000 feet, breaking the record for female pilots at that time. Then on May 15, 1923, she was issued her pilot's license by the Federation Aeronautique Internationale. She was the 16th woman to be licensed by them.
On May 20 and 21, 1927, a 25 year old Charles A. Lindberg, a virtual unknown name, suddenly became a household word by flying a single seated, single engine monoplane, The Spirit of St. Louis nonstop from Roosevelt Field in New York to Le Borguet Field in Paris France. This was indeed a world wide record and brought fame and misfortune to him. He, being an officer in the Army Reserve, was awarded the military Medal of Honor for his achievement. However, due to his fame and fortune, his young son was kidnapped in 1932, and subsequently murdered.
But his flight was so impressive to the world and to Amelia Earhart, that she began planning to be the first woman to fly across the Atlantic. She bought a new plane, a Lockheed Vega 5b, bright red monoplane. On May 20, 1934, she took off from Harbour Grace, Newfoundland intending to fly to Paris, France. She encountered strong winds and icy conditions. After flying for fourteen hours, she began having mechanical troubles and landed in a pasture in Culmore, Northern Ireland. Even though she did not reach Paris, she did successfully cross the Atlantic.
She became an overnight heroine world wide and received commendations and medals, including the Distinguished Flying Cross from Congress, the Cross of Knight of the Legion of Honor from the government of France and the Gold Medal of the National Geographic Society from President Herbert Hoover.
(Photo: Neta Snook on the left, Amelia Earhart, right, with Amelia's first plane the "Canary") She ultimately became known to numerous people in high places including the new First Lady, Eleanor Roosevelt and even took her flying. She determined to set records of her own, rather than simply to emulate others such as her Atlantic flight. On January 11, 1935, she became the first person to fly solo from Honolulu, Hawaii to Oakland California. That same year, she set records by soloing from Los Angeles to Mexico City, and later from Mexico City to New York. These flights were made in her Lockheed Vega.
But she yearned to set a new record by flying around the world from East to West at its widest girth near the equator. She took a position with Purdue University in 1935 as technical advisor in the Department of Aeronautics. Then in 1936, she received a new plane, a Lockheed L-10E Electra, financed by the university and began making her plans to circumnavigate the world. The plane was equipped with the latest technological equipment.
On March 17, 1937, Amelia left Los Angeles on the first leg of her attempt headed to Honolulu. Three men accompanied her on this flight. The Electra had some lubrication problems and galling of the propeller hubs and had to be serviced when they arrived at their destination. Then three days later, as they were taking off, Amelia "ground looped" the aircraft and damaged it to extent that it had to be shipped back to Burbank for repairs. (a ground loop, is when a pilot inadvertently advances the throttle too heavily and quickly so as the torque of the engine lifts one wing up and often causes the opposite wing to dig into the dirt and can twirl the plane around and sometimes flip)
After repairs were complete and additional funds had been raised, Amelia determined to fly in an easterly direction this time due to some prevailing winds and weather over the Pacific. This time only Fred Noonan accompanied her as her flight assistant. Their first leg was from Oakland to Miami, which was made without problems or much fanfare. From Miami, next stop Puerto Rico and then on to Africa and the Red Sea. The Electra was performing well. The next leg was one that had never been flown non-stop before...the Red Sea to Karachi.
From Karachi to Calcutta was made on June 17, and from there to Rangoon, from there to Bangkok then Singapore and Bandoeng. They remained in Bandoeng for several days due to monsoon rains, instrument repairs on the Electra, and also Amelia had contracted dysentery and was sick for several days.
They again took flight on June 27 for Port Darwin, Australia where they had their direction finder repaired and they shipped their parachutes home since all the rest of their trip would be over the Pacific and there would be no need of parachutes. She arrived at Lae, New Guinea on June 29. 7,000 miles remained for their trip home, all of which was over the Pacific. The U.S. Coast Guard cutter, Itasca, had been stationed off Howland Island in the Pacific to provide radio contact. Howland is an island some 1700 miles from Honolulu. They left Lae at 00:00 Greenwich Mean Time loaded with 1,000 gals of fuel which would bring her to to Howland Island. Here are two paragraphs taken from one biography:
Their next destination, and the most dangerous stop of the trip, was Howland Island, a tiny island in the Pacific Ocean, 2,556 miles (4,113 kilometers) away. Before Earhart took off from Lae on July 1, there was confusion about which radio frequencies were to be used, which remained unresolved before she took off. As the scheduled time neared for Earhart to approach the island, several transmissions were received from her, demanding to know the weather. A new weather report describing heavy clouds and rain northwest of Howland had been issued, and Earhart had apparently run into the storm. Earhart transmitted several more times but never reached her destination, disappearing somewhere off the coast of the island. A large search party was quickly organized, but no remains of the crew and the plane were ever found.
There are many theories surrounding the controversial disappearance of the plane on July 2, 1937. The most commonly accepted theory is that the fliers got lost, ran out of gas, and went down somewhere in the Pacific Ocean. However, as war between the United States and Japan was imminent, there were rumors that Earhart had been on a spy mission for the United States and was supposed to photograph Japanese military installations. This theory says that she crash-landed and was captured by the Japanese, who imprisoned or executed her. A third theory was that her disappearance was staged to allow the U.S. Navy to conduct a search in the South Pacific.
Although she was only thirty nine years old when she and her flight assistant, Noonan disappeared, she had made many accomplishments and a name that would live in the history of aviation. No trace of the plane or either of the two passengers have ever been found.
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