had done what she planned to do. There had been other flights around
the world, but none had been attempted at the equator. Wiley Post, AE’s
good friend, had flown around the world twice in his Vega, the _Winnie
May_, once in 1931 with Harold Gatty, then again by himself in 1933.
In 1935 Wiley Post tried again, this time with Will Rogers as his
passenger. The plane, a half-breed of Lockheed Orion and Sirius with
floats attached, was dangerously nose heavy. “You’ll be in trouble,”
the engineers told him at Lockheed, where they refused to put on
the floats, “if there’s just a slight power loss on take-off.” Post
was stubborn and insistent. He found another company to attach the
pontoons. At Point Barrow, Alaska, in August, the engine stuttered on
take-off. The plane nosed in and crashed, and two of the most famous
men of their time were killed.
Wiley Post’s flights had been made well north of the equator, at a
distance only two thirds the length of the equator.
There had also been some remarkable distance flights by others. In 1933
the Lindberghs made a 29,000-mile air-route survey of Europe, Africa,
and South America. Laura Ingalls in 1934 had flown solo from New York
to South America and return, a distance of 16,897 miles. Also in 1934
the Pacific was flown in a first west-east flight, from Australia to
California, by Sir Charles Kingsford-Smith and Captain P. G. Taylor.
By girdling the globe, Amelia could achieve not only the record for
distance, but also fly around the world. She would like to do it alone.
It would be fun to be the first to fly the equator.
AE made her plans, the most elaborate and time consuming of her career.
The details that had to be worked out, she found, were formidable. But
she began simply, almost casually, to map out the 27,000 miles of the
flight.
One day early in the winter of 1936 she walked across the living room
in her home at Rye. She picked up the globe from the long table behind
the sofa. She turned the globe to the Pacific, placed her thumb on
Oakland, and spanned her hand to Honolulu; then from Honolulu her long,
slender fingers reached easily to two little islands just above the
equator. In another stretch of the hand she reached New Guinea. Seven
thousand miles across the Pacific Ocean were easy to cross by a span of
the hand, but those two little islands, Howland and Baker, were mere
specks on the globe.
She looked closely at Howland, and wondered if she could find it flying
alone after nearly 2,000 miles out from Hawaii. She swept her hand
quickly over her hair and grinned. This was the most exact kind of
flying. She would need the best of navigation equipment. She would need
a navigator to make it.
When GP came home she told him of her need for a navigator; not for the
whole flight, but just for the long over-water legs across the Pacific.
George picked up the phone. He always knew whom to call.
GP first telephoned Bradford Washburn, a young Harvard professor
who had done some distinguished ground navigation and exploration.
Washburn agreed to come to New York for an interview.
AE was sprawled on the living-room floor with her maps when the young
professor came into the house. She liked his cut: he was slim, wiry,
handsome. She liked the set of his jaw and the look of his clear eyes.
She got up from the floor, smiled, and reached out a hand in welcome.
Pilot and prospective navigator sat on the floor and discussed the
problems involved. Amelia traced the itinerary she had marked on the
map, mentioning, as she moved her finger, the distances between points.
Bradford Washburn examined the first two proposed legs of the flight.
He was familiar with the Electra and felt it could easily make the
distance from California to Hawaii. The long stretch over the vast
Pacific to the tiny dot that was Howland Island: that was an immediate
difficulty to overcome.
“How far did you say it was to Howland?” he asked.
“Roughly, about 2,000 miles,” Amelia said.
“Your 50-watt radio isn’t strong enough for that kind of flying. On
such a long leg as that one you’ll be out of range of any ground
stations.” Washburn looked intently at Amelia. “If you’re off just one
degree on your heading, you’ll miss that little island completely.”
Amelia had no intention of being one degree off course. The best
navigator available could hit the island right on the nose.
“What kind of radio signals will there be at Howland to home in on?”
The professor pursued the point.
“None,” Amelia answered.
For Bradford Washburn the interview was over. The project was out of
the question. He did not want to look for a needle in a haystack,
especially if the haystack were the Pacific Ocean--and certainly not
without a strong magnet to find the needle.
Bradford Washburn was convinced that Amelia had rather not have a
navigator, that she had decided on one only as an irritable necessity.
Her self-confidence, her belief in her own flying abilities, was for
him towering and magnificent to behold; but he wanted no part of it.
“One must take chances,” AE had often said before, and she repeated the
same words in the hope of hitting Howland Island.
That she was devil-may-care was perhaps attributable to what seem to
have been premonitions, foreshadowings which she blatantly ignored. AE
and GP had spent an afternoon examining gyroscopes at the Sperry plant
in Brooklyn. On the way home Amelia had stopped the car at a red light
on Flatbush Avenue. In the blue dusk of that winter’s day she noticed
off to the side an old man step off the curb and start to shuffle
across the street. “It’s hard to get old,” the old man muttered as he
crossed, “so hard.” Amelia heard every word.
The light changed. Amelia slammed the clutch to the floor and shifted
the car into gear. Her lips were closed tight, her eyes intent on the
moving traffic. At the next corner she turned into a side street, drove
around the block, and swung back up the street to where the old man had
stepped off the curb. She looked up and down the opposite sidewalk. The
old man had disappeared in the crowd.
That night, before going to bed, Amelia turned to George. Her eyes were
level and serious. “It _is_ hard to be old,” she said. “So hard.” She
walked to the mirror and sat at her dressing table. She looked hard at
her own reflection. “I’m afraid I’ll hate it. Hate to grow old.”
GP said nothing; he waited for his wife to finish.
Amelia turned and faced her husband again. “I think probably, GP,” she
spoke slowly and deliberately, “that I’ll not live to be old.”
On the twenty-second of July, 1936, Amelia went out to Burbank,
California, to inspect the new Lockheed for the first time. The
all-metal plane glistened as it was rolled out of the hangar into the
sun. AE examined the plane closely: she walked the 55-foot span of the
wings, climbed into the cockpit, worked the controls, and started the
engines.
Lockheed, in keeping with its previous stellar designations for its
aircraft, had christened the low-winged, twin-engined monoplane the
Electra, after the “lost” star of the Pleiades.
Amelia, dressed in a mechanic’s white coveralls and inspecting her new
plane, paid no attention to any designations, stellar, mythological, or
psychological. She promptly dubbed the plane “the flying laboratory.”
That was practical and to the point, for that was what the plane in
fact was.
She loved the navigation equipment which had been installed in the
passenger compartment. She climbed in to look it over. The fuselage had
been cleared of passenger seats. Directly behind the cockpit two large
tanks had been bolted in place; they could hold 1,000 gallons of fuel.
That would give the plane an added range up to 4,000 miles. Behind the
tanks was a complete navigation room.
She walked to the wide chart table set up against the bulkhead and
under the far window. Through the round glass in the table she read the
master aperiodic compass placed directly below. Mounted at each window
was a pelorus, for taking bearings from any land mass. She set her
eye to the tube of the one at the window over the table. The special
flat plane of the window allowed for no distortions, especially for
the readings from the bubble sextant. She noted next to the table a
temperature gauge, an air-speed indicator, and three chronometers; and
above the table and to the left side of the window an altimeter.
The arrangement for the use of the drift indicator was brilliantly
simple. On the cabin door a special latch had been installed to keep
the door open about four inches. Down through the opening in the door
she swung the drift indicator. By looking through the instrument at
smoke bombs during the day or flares at night, a navigator could
determine the direction and velocity of the wind. Amelia was satisfied:
her laboratory was adequate to the task from the navigation point of
view.
The communications equipment, however, was at once delightfully modern
and frustratingly primitive. Pilot and navigator had voice radio; but
only the navigator had telegraphic key. Both could transmit and receive
with ground stations, but not with each other. For intercommunications
the navigator would have to use a cut-down bamboo fishing pole, with an
office clip nailed to the end of it, to send messages written on cards
up to the pilot; if he wanted to talk to the pilot, or if he wanted to
dial the radio behind the pilot to a new frequency, he would have to
crawl along the catwalk over the two big tanks between the cockpit and
the passenger compartment.
The radio had a power of only 50 watts. Amelia was not satisfied, and
she tried to borrow a better, more powerful, system. The radio was the
weakest link in the laboratory chain.
For weeks she flew the Electra up and down the California coast,
working out the “bugs.” In August she went to New York to enter the
Bendix Trophy race. The coast-to-coast speed flight, she felt, would be
an excellent “shakedown” for the plane.
Other women joined in for the race and gathered at Floyd Bennett Field.
Louise Thaden, Blanche Noyes, Jacqueline Cochran, Laura Ingalls, Martie
Bowman, Mrs. Benny Howard: all were stiff competitors. Helen Rickey had
agreed to be AE’s copilot.
During the race trouble developed in the Electra’s fuel lines, and
Amelia had to drop out much against her will. But two women did win the
race: Louise Thaden with Blanche Noyes as her copilot.
Preparations moved along for the world flight. Clarence S. Williams
of Los Angeles was engaged to get ready maps and charts. He laid out
compass courses, the distances between points, the exact times at which
to change headings: he prepared sectional after sectional for the many
legs of the flight. His work was invaluable.
Paul Mantz was technical adviser, as he had been for the
Hawaii-California flight. He supervised the mechanical readiness of the
plane, and took it up on many test flights.
GP managed the far-flung problems, and they were many, of stopping
places and alternates for the caching of fuel, oil, spare parts. Red
tape of international length had to be cut and unsnarled. Innumerable
credentials were needed: permissions to land from foreign governments,
passports, visas, certificates of health and character, negative
police records, medical papers. George made all the official advance
arrangements. Before he was finished, he had spotted fuel and oil at
thirty different locations along the route, and had collected several
thick folders of papers for his wife.
Amelia made more and more notes on her charts as new information poured
in. Airports, alternates, emergency landing fields, winds aloft,
weather, terrain, altitudes: each had to be entered at the proper
place. She took the maps and carefully marked the stop-off points, then
drew lines to a double row for entering the exact amount of gas and oil
that would be available along the way.
In preparing for previous flights she had revealed her plans only to
closest friends, but this time Amelia did not shroud her activities
in secrecy. The press received broad clues, and then were blamed,
half-jokingly, as the cause of it all. Late in 1936 AE said to
reporters in Los Angeles, “I’m nearly sold on the idea of flying around
the world because I’d like to do it; but I’m a busy person this year. I
have a lot of other things to do. Next year? Well, one never knows.”
On February 11, 1937, Amelia had flown to New York from California.
Newsmen had surrounded her at the Hotel Barclay; they wanted a
confirmation or denial of all the rumors they had heard about her
plans for a world flight. With AE was the man who had agreed to be
her navigator. He was Captain Harry Manning, her old friend from the
_Friendship_ days, on whose ship, the _President Roosevelt_, she had
returned home.
Amelia smoothed at the hips the dark-blue wool dress she had changed
into. The press rarely saw her in “feminine” clothes. “Well,” she said,
“I am going to try to fly around the globe.” She toyed with the bright
scarf about her neck. “The flight will be as near to the equator as I
can make it, east to west, about 27,000 miles.”
The press moved in. Reporters fired questions at her, photographers
shot pictures at close range, newsreel men turned on their bright
lights and rolled their cameras. Somewhat flustered by the sudden
excitement she had caused, Amelia laughed. “You know,” she said to
them, “I feel you men have pushed me into this. You are the ones who
have kept saying that I was going to fly around the world, until
finally you’ve compelled me to think seriously about doing it.”
Carl Allen, her friend from the New York _Herald Tribune_, would have
none of it. “Oh, come now,” he protested, “nobody has pushed you into
it. You know you’ve been wanting to do it all the time.”
Captain Manning, stolid and silent beside AE, smiled uneasily. Amelia
quickly relinquished her ground. “Yes, I suppose you’re right. I guess
I didn’t get away with that, did I?”
“What are you going for?” one reporter abruptly asked.
AE thought for a moment. The question was one she had heard many times
before. “Well,” she answered, “I’ve seen the North Atlantic. And I’ve
seen the Pacific, too, of course; at least a part of it. But”--she
hesitated--“well, just say I want to fly around the globe. And I think
a round-the-world flight just now should be at the equator.”
She turned to the quiet man beside her. She looked at his thick,
curly black locks. “Captain Manning is going with me part way,” she
explained, “because I don’t believe the pilot on such a flight can
navigate, too.”
Interview over, reporters broke for the nearest telephone. The world
heard and waited.
Amelia dived again into the myriad details of preparation. She was
still dissatisfied with the radio equipment. She realized that a
50-watt transmitter and receiver could reach only about five hundred
miles under normal conditions. On the Hawaii-California flight the Vega
radio had reached up to 2,000 miles, but only because of skipping--a
radio phenomenon in which radio waves bounce up and down from the
ionosphere and move forward for incredibly long distances.
But skipping was something that could not be depended upon. Some of
the ground stations would be much farther than 500 miles apart. The
distance between Hawaii and Howland was 1,940 miles; between Howland
and New Guinea, 2,556 miles. The other navigation equipment was good,
and worked well in test after test. How to strengthen the weakest link?
The problem continued to plague her while she gained more and more
experience flying the Electra during most of the year 1936. Often
she flew cross-country until she attained that assured feeling of
confidence that came when the plane became an extension of her own body
and limbs.
It was during the late morning of one of these flights, with Jacqueline
Cochran acting as copilot, that Amelia landed at Wright Field in Ohio.
The women pilots were met by Manila Talley, AE’s friend from Denison
House days, whose husband was stationed at the field. The three of them
climbed into Manila’s car and drove to the Officers’ Club at adjoining
Patterson Field for lunch. Mrs. Talley noticed that AE seemed somewhat
distraught.
When they sat down to lunch Amelia told her companions how she had
hoped to borrow desperately needed radio equipment. She had been unable
to get better radios from the manufacturers. They told her they had
lost all they could afford on flights that didn’t make it. And, she
was reminded flatly by them, regulations absolutely forbade lending
government equipment.
Mrs. Talley and Miss Cochran tried to dissuade Amelia from making the
flight with inferior equipment.
AE was adamant. “I have to meet my obligations,” she said. “We’ve sold
letter covers to pay for the flight. I have to carry them.” She had
earned $10,000 by selling and carrying letter covers for the Pacific
flight. And for the world flight, Gimbel’s in New York had sold to
collectors 10,000 covers, which had realized some $25,000 to meet
expenses.
Amelia straightened her back against the chair and popped her crumpled
napkin onto the table. “I will simply have to make do,” she said with a
stamp of finality, “with what equipment I have.”
Other equally important matters occupied her days and nights. One at
a time problems had to be faced, solutions had to be worked out. The
preparations were the part of the iceberg that didn’t show.
Paul Mantz wrung out the Electra in shakedown flights and final tests.
GP surveyed the extra-long runway at Oakland, waited for the final
word about the emergency field being completed at Howland Island, and
coordinated final arrangements with the Department of Commerce, Pan
American Airways, and the Coast Guard.
For two weeks Amelia pored over weather maps, waiting for the one which
would let her go: it didn’t have to be completely satisfactory, only
acceptable.
There was plenty of help for the flight to Honolulu. Paul Mantz would
be her copilot, and helping Captain Manning in the navigation room
would be Fred Noonan. They were a right good crew.
Captain Harry Manning, a Congressional Medal of Honor winner for
heroic daring in having rescued thirty-two men from the sinking
steamship _Florida_, had taken leave of absence from his ship to be
the navigator. Paul Mantz, expert pilot, movie stunt flier, aviation
instructor, owner of a flying service, dependable technical adviser,
was as familiar with the Lockheed as AE herself. Fred J. Noonan, a
veteran of twenty-two years of ocean travel before he joined Pan
American Airways, transport pilot, instructor in aerial navigation, had
pioneered routes for PAA flights across the Pacific.
The plan was to drop Mantz off in Honolulu, where he could join his
fiancée; to leave Noonan at Howland, where he could take the Coast
Guard cutter back to Hawaii; and finally to drop Manning at Brisbane,
Australia. From that point on Amelia hoped to continue solo for the
rest of the way around the world.
On March 17, 1937, Amelia and her plane were ready. The Electra waited
in the Navy hangar at Oakland. There was Gaelic festivity in the air:
it was St. Patrick’s Day. In deference to Fred Noonan, AE pinned
shamrocks on the men and herself. But the weather was not favorable; it
drizzled, on and off, all day.
Amelia went to the window of the Navy office and looked out. Time and
again she had waited at windows before, watching and waiting for the
weather to clear. She drove her hands into her brown slacks, then
adjusted the collar of her plaid wool shirt, then twisted the brown
linen scarf about her neck. She turned up the collar of her brown
leather flying jacket. Crow’s-feet gathered at the corners of her eyes
as she squinted at the wet grayness outside.
Several showers passed over the field. Shortly after 3:00 P.M. she
watched the low scud beginning to clear, and heartened as a thin strip
of blue appeared in the higher overcast. The crew was alerted. It was
time to go.
Paul Mantz started the engines, taxied the plane out of the Navy
hangar, and stopped on the apron. Manning and Noonan ran out and
climbed into the passenger compartment. To avoid reporters and
well-wishers, Amelia sneaked into a Navy automobile and was driven out
to the plane. GP drove out with her. Quickly she was hustled up onto
the wing and into the cockpit. GP bent in and wished his wife a final
farewell.
For five minutes AE and Mantz revved up the engines, checking the
rpm’s and magnetoes of first one and then the other, then both of the
powerful Wasps.
The Electra taxied to the east end of the field, to the 7,000-foot
runway. On alternate sides of the take-off strip, cardboard placards
had been staked out every 150 feet. Small puddles of water splotched
the runway. Throttles were advanced and the props blasted back. The
take-off roll was short: the five-ton Lockheed eased into the air after
2,000 feet. It was 4:37 P.M.
The flight to Honolulu proceeded without incident. At 5:40 A.M. the
next morning, 2,410 miles, fifteen hours, and forty-seven minutes after
Oakland, the Electra touched down at Wheeler Field.
Despite the long flight just completed, Amelia, teeming with energy and
anxious to be on her way, wanted to take off for Howland without delay.
But the weatherman dampened her zest.
Bad storms, she discovered, had started to move in from the southwest.
Resigned, Amelia went to the home of a friend and slept. There was no
point in worrying about the weather. “Weather permitting” had always
qualified her every flight plan.
Paul Mantz, meanwhile, moved the plane to Luke Field, for the use of
the longer runway there. Although the Electra would not use the full
fuel capacity of 1,151 gallons to get to Howland, the weight of 900
gallons was still considerable. At Luke, a Pratt and Whitney mechanic
made a thorough final inspection of the two Wasp engines. There was no
time to spare: AE had sent word that she wanted to take off at dawn on
the following day.
Amelia rose early that morning of March 19. Light began to break over
the hills of Pearl Harbor as she drove out to the field. Expecting her,
Paul Mantz had warmed up the engines; and Captain Manning and Fred
Noonan had taken their places in the navigation room.
Amelia climbed into the cockpit. Before her lay the 3,000 feet of
runway. The concrete shone in the morning light, and here and there
gleamed patches of water. AE signaled; the mechanics pulled the chocks
away from the wheels.
She lowered the flaps, held the wheel firmly, then slowly inched the
throttle forward. The 1,100 Wasp-stung horses fought to go. The Electra
started to roll. Halfway down the runway one wing dipped.
Amelia applied opposite aileron. The plane pulled to the right. AE
yanked the left throttle all the way back. The nose swung from right to
left, but the wing would not lift. She watched helplessly as the wing
tip hit the runway and scraped the concrete in a shower of sparks.
Then the right landing gear collapsed, the plane careened, then swung
around uncontrollably in a swift ground loop. Amelia chopped the
other throttle, cut the switches, and climbed out of the cockpit. On
the ground she met Manning and Noonan jumping out from the passenger
compartment door. They had not been scratched.
The $80,000 Electra lay like a broken bird upon the pavement. The right
wheel had been sheared off; the right wing was battered and crumpled.
Amelia was sick at heart as she looked at her damaged plane. “Something
must have gone wrong,” she said in an attempt to say something.
“Of course, now you will give up the trip?” someone asked.
Amelia shook her head. “I think not,” she said. “If it’s possible, I’ll
try again.” Her voice trailed off. “Repairs. Costs.”
Grave and silent she left the runway. Later she regained her composure
and called GP in Oakland. He was relieved to hear that she was safe.
“They crashed; the ship’s in flames,” a reporter had told him. The
sparks had been mistaken for fire.
A few hours later a newsman came up to Amelia. He tried to be
understanding. “Tough luck,” he said. “Anyway, you’re fortunate to be
alive. By the way, I understand your husband will be greatly relieved,
because now you can’t go on with the flight.”