for the steady jerks of the dial to click to the designated hour. She
then looked out to see if she could recognize any telltale signs below.
Just west of what she determined to be Cape Mucuripe she saw a light
brown strip of sand that formed an arc between the mountains and the
seacoast. She checked the map. It had to be her destination. Fortaleza
was the only city on such a topographical boomerang. Fred had hit it on
the nose!
The airport was excellent; and when Pan American put all their
facilities at her disposal, Amelia decided to ready the plane there
for the South Atlantic hop to Africa, rather than at Natal, her actual
point of departure.
The Electra underwent a complete inspection: oil change, greasing,
instrument check, engine overhaul, scrubdown and washing. Amelia and
Fred, after a week of traveling, felt for themselves a similar need
for cleaning and overhaul. AE’s one-suitcase wardrobe contained few
duplicates. There was much laundry to be done.
They stayed at the Excelsior Hotel. Amelia’s room looked out over
red-tiled roofs to the sea. She sat in the cool breeze from the open
window, pulled the chair up closer to the desk, and addressed a letter
to GP. She chuckled as she wrote:
“The hotel people naïvely put F.N. and me in the same room. They were
surprised when we both countermanded the arrangements!... For a female
to be traveling as I do evidently is a matter of puzzlement to her
sheltered sisters hereabout, not to mention the males. I’m stared at in
the streets. I feel they think, ‘Oh, well, she’s American and they’re
all crazy.’”
The city of Fortaleza for Amelia was a remarkable study in contrasts.
As she explored and shopped, she stopped to notice the carts and
donkeys that clogged the streets along with busses, streetcars, and
automobiles; the women carrying loads on their heads, as they walked
past up-to-date shops; old decrepit buildings standing next to the most
modern examples of architecture; and down along the shore primitive
catamaran fishing vessels setting sail, while airplanes roared overhead.
The next day, while the mechanics continued to work on the plane,
Amelia and Fred set things in order. They repacked gear, sent used
maps, gifts, and souvenirs back home, and washed the cloth covers for
the engines and propellers.
That night AE lay on her bed and tried to relax from the day’s
work, the weeks of flying, the hours of anxiety, the months of
tense preparation that had gone into the flight. Her leg jumped as
muscle tensions eased. On the tile roofs outside rain began to fall
and splatter. It became a tropical downpour, sudden, heavy, and
unremitting--like the ones she had known in Honolulu. She feared the
Fortaleza airport might turn into a sea of mud. Luckily, the hop to
Natal was short, and the fuel load would be light. The Electra should
be able to get off. Amelia turned her head into her pillow and fell off
to sleep. There was no need to worry. Even in blackest times sleep was
a gift she cherished.
At four fifty the next morning they were off for Natal; fortunately the
field had drained beautifully, and the runway was more than adequate
for take-off. Natal was only two hours away, and they hoped to get an
early start across the South Atlantic. Off the left wing and far out to
sea rain squalls chased black clouds. Amelia set the automatic pilot
and pulled out her log.
She wrote, then crossed out what she had written, then started to write
again. This did not seem to be a day for composition:
Par One
==Last night was not long enough for two tired fliers.==
==Despite going to bed immediately after==
==Fr== Fred Noonan and I rolled out of bed at three
forty-five after an incredi
It shines on the engine cowls and into the cockpit
Have cover for radios
Get clock I can see at night
Check props
Amelia put down her pencil and looked out to watch the progress of the
black squall line out at sea. It was moving closer. She would have to
race it in.
Down along the edge of the coast and on a tip of land the Natal airport
was unmistakable. The long intersecting runways were a sure landmark.
Amelia nosed the plane down and dived for the field. The rain squall
was right behind her.
The Electra was just rolling to a stop and turning into the taxiway
when it hit. Long whips of rain lashed the wings and cracked along the
fuselage. AE stopped; she could not see out ahead from the cockpit far
enough to taxi any farther: the rain relentlessly hit, spread, and
streamed down the windshield.
From the hangar along the parking ramp mechanics noticed the
difficulty. They rushed out to the Lockheed and pushed the plane up to
the ramp and into the hangar. Once inside, Amelia felt guiltily dry
as she watched the rain gather in small puddles about the feet of the
mechanics. They were soaked to the skin.
To cross the South Atlantic from Natal, AE deferred to the experience
of the French. She checked with the crew of the next plane scheduled
to leave on the flight across. They told her they preferred to leave
very early in the morning, because the worst weather could be expected
during the first 800 miles. Amelia decided to leave very early in the
morning--soon after midnight. If weather prevented then, they would
leave the next afternoon and fly all night to make an African landfall
in the morning.
At three fifteen on the morning of June 7 the Electra stood ready for
the take-off. Amelia fretted: the only runway marked by lights in the
black night could not be used because of a strong cross wind. For an
upwind take-off the run would have to be made across a grass field.
Flashlights in hand, Amelia and Fred walked in the grass, looking for
obstructions and for any landmarks that could serve as guides.
The Electra came through splendidly; as it had so often before, it
sprang easily into the air.
In the blackness of the night, inside the cockpit the instrument
panel glowed. A glimpse at the bright dials pointing at the correct
numbers cheered Amelia. She flew by the instruments she believed in,
had learned to believe in from experience. On such a night it was the
only way. And it was up to Fred in the navigation room to pass up the
right headings to fly by. This was her third crossing of the Atlantic,
she reflected happily; Africa, her third continent to be spanned, and
her second leap over the equator. She hoped Fred was again too busy to
think about dousing her with water.
For the first half of the 1,900 miles across the ocean the Electra
bucked head winds averaging 20 miles in velocity. AE set the throttles
ahead just far enough to average a ground speed of 150 mph. The dial of
the indicated air speed inched forward to 170. She wanted to nurse the
engines, whatever the wind and weather, for the long, hard pull around
the world.
Ahead she noticed jagged mountains of clouds building up with towering
peaks, and below them dark downward-streaking geysers of rain. There
was no way around them. She would have to plow through.
The rain was hard and heavy. Mixed with oil from the propellers, it
spattered and smeared brown and black against the windshield. Amelia
could feel the weight of the rain on the wings against the pressure of
the wheel in her hands. The Electra buffeted and surged in alternating
downdrafts and updrafts. Then, as suddenly as the thunderstorm had hit,
she was through it.
At six forty-five she crossed the equator and reported her position to
Natal radio. At six fifty the left engine, then the right, started to
miss, then to catch again. Too much oil, Amelia guessed. She looked out
to the left and saw a plane streaking across the sky. It was an Air
France plane. She would have liked to talk with it, but she knew it had
only telegraphic key, and she in the cockpit only voice telephone. The
Electra’s key for transmitting code was back in the navigation room
with Fred; and even if she shouted back at him, he could not hear her
over the noise of the engines. With all its modern devices, the “flying
laboratory” lacked an intercom between pilot and navigator.
Locking in the auto pilot, she placed the stenographer’s pad on her
knee. She scrawled hastily: “Gas fumes in plane from fueling made me
sick again this morning after starting. Stomach getting weak, I guess.”
Then she added later: “Have tried getting something on radio. No go.
Rain, static. Have never seen such rain. Props a blur in it.” Fred had
crawled up from in back to sit in the right seat. “Fred dozes,” she
observed. “I never seem to get sleepy flying. Often tired but seldom
sleepy.”
Fred stirred, woke up, and looked about. He got up from the seat and
crawled back to the navigation room to see if he could get a fix. The
haze was too thick. He studied his other instruments, then made an
estimate. He jotted on a card:
3:36 change to 36°
Estimate 79 miles to
Dakar from 3:36 P.M.
then sent it up ahead to Amelia. She read it, shook her head, then
added at the bottom in pencil:
What put us north?
Amelia disregarded the advice of her navigator. Although Fred’s
directions indicated a turn to the right, she turned left: it seemed
better to her.
Forty-five minutes later she found herself over St. Louis. She was
north instead of south, and 163 miles off course to Dakar! She decided
to let down and make a landing. It was too late to turn around and go
back.
To hit a continent, such a refusal to follow directions was of no grave
consequence; to hit an island, however, it could prove fatal.
The flight across the South Atlantic, Amelia was careful to note,
took thirteen hours and twelve minutes. That was one hour and sixteen
minutes less than it had taken for the solo hop across the North
Atlantic.
4. _Africa to India_
Far from the customary skies was Africa and its smells. To Amelia’s
sensitive nostrils the aromas of South America had been the lush and
pleasant ones of fruit, fish, meat; in Dakar, as in St. Louis, the odor
was the strong one of people.
The big bare feet of the natives she found extraordinary. She walked
through the teeming streets, her eyes focused to the riot of color, her
ears tuned to the comic opera of sound. Splashes of bright yellow, red,
and green marked the native garments. The women wore Mother Hubbards
and slung their babies on their backs or held them at their breasts.
Amelia went over to one of the market stalls and bought a large bag of
freshly roasted peanuts, her only West African export.
At Dakar, the Electra was scrubbed and washed, oiled and greased; the
engines were given a forty-hour check, and a faulty fuel-flow meter was
repaired.
The flight so far had been over the charted Pan American route to Natal
and the Air France course to Dakar. Ahead, however, inland across
Africa, lay regions rarely, if ever, flown over. Exactly what course
they would fly, pilot and navigator were undecided. But they would
have to leave soon, for tornadoes to the south and sandstorms to the
north had been predicted. They would have to find a way somewhere in
between.
The schedule for crossing Africa was a strenuous one. It meant flying
the distance of 4,350 miles in at least four separate legs--a daily
flight, in comparison, from New York to St. Louis. Where neither pilot
nor aircraft was replaced, or replaceable, and this fact coupled with
the thousands of miles that lay behind and ahead for the same pilot and
plane, the flight became an ordeal of endurance and courage.
Amelia carefully studied the situation: the navigation aids were only
two--contact and celestial. She could fly contact by following her
map and identifying landmarks with the corresponding symbols on the
sectional; but the African maps were pitifully inadequate, even when
supplemented with pilot reports at each stop on the way. There were no
radio beams to home in on, nor were there any lights at the landing
fields they planned to stop at for refueling. For Fred, although he
could, if it were clear, make position fixes from the sun and the
stars, navigating over Africa was more difficult than finding his way
over any ocean.
“Our flights over the desert,” Fred wrote to his bride of one month,
“were more difficult than over water. That was because the maps of the
country are very inaccurate and consequently extremely misleading. In
fact, at points no dependence at all could be placed on them. Also
recognizable landmarks are few and far between, one part of the desert
being as much like another as two peas in a pod. However, we were
lucky in always reaching our objectives. In all the distance I don’t
think we wandered off the course for half an hour, although there were
times when I wouldn’t have bet a nickel on the accuracy of our assumed
position.”
Despite the difficulties Amelia blithely set out. They would push
through somehow: there were, after all, countless places for an
emergency landing if anything went wrong or if they lost their way.
On the morning of June 10 they took off just before six o’clock. The
course was due east over the Senegal and Niger to the Sudan. Some 1,140
miles, seventeen hours, and fifty minutes later they sighted the upper
reaches of the Niger River and landed at Gao. There the ubiquitous
gasoline drums marked “Amelia Earhart” awaited them like squat silent
sentinels. The months of planning in spotting the fuel were reaping
their rewards. George, to Amelia’s soaring satisfaction, had done his
job well. The rest was up to her.
The next leg was 1,000 miles long. The following morning, again before
dawn, they left Gao for Fort-Lamy, flying over the Niger River for 170
miles then crossing endless stretches of barren desert land to Zinder.
Then below lay spread out the broad valley of the Yobe River with its
long brown tendrils and sprawling swamps. Now in the shifting pattern
of land and water, for as far as her eyes could see, Amelia watched
Lake Chad come into full view. She ran her eye over the shining surface
but was unable to find any shore lines. Islands in the great lake had
in outline the shapes of fantastic creatures out of storyland, with
large fat paws and broad flattened heads.
As a little girl in Atchison, Amelia would climb into the old buggy in
the barn with her sister Muriel and her cousins, the Challisses, and
lead expeditions to imaginary lands. The map of Africa had been her
favorite. Names such as Timbuktu, Senegal, Khartoum had stirred her
dreams.
For Amelia in the cockpit of her own plane, the world of her childhood
imagination was coming to life. Yet she missed seeing Timbuktu. If she
had known about it beforehand, she could have visited the fabled town,
for it lay but 400 miles up the Niger River from Gao. But the pressure
of having to meet her schedule prevented the side trip. Someday, Amelia
kept telling herself, she would return and make a leisurely trip, when
she had time really to see and do.
Cranes, maribou storks, blue herons abounded about Lake Chad, as did
many other birds she could not identify. She watched the shadow of
the Electra, like a strange black flying fish, glide over the surface
of the water. Once across the shore and over jungle, she looked for
the elephants and crocodiles which had meant Africa to her ever since
she had been a little girl in bloomers, but she could see none. Yet
through the haze that now began to rise from the hot land like steam
from a kettle she caught now and again the sight of a hippopotamus. The
cockpit became hot and stuffy, and Amelia opened the windshield for a
breath of outside air.
According to the pattern of early take-offs and landings for the
African hops, it was just before noon when they approached Fort-Lamy
for a stopover. The sun was high; its rays direct and glaring. As she
came in on a long glide for the touchdown, Amelia held the throttles
more forward than was usual: she needed a faster landing speed to
compensate for the thin, hot air with its weak lifting power on the
wings. Thick beads of sweat bubbled, broke, and ran down her face and
neck. Her eyes smarted from the sting of the salt and she tried to
blink the drops of sweat away. Her hands were wet and slippery on the
wheel and throttles, and quickly she brought back one hand then the
other to rub it dry against the leg of her trousers.
The Electra rolled swiftly over the ground. Gently Amelia touched the
brakes until her plane came to a stop. Hoping for cooler air, she
slid back the cockpit hatch. The inside of the plane was like an oven
turned up to broil, but the hot outside air only added more heat to
it. Quickly she taxied the plane and parked it. The bright metal wings
sizzled in the sun; AE climbed out of the cockpit, skipped on tiptoe
over the hot metal, and jumped to the ground. Fred swung open the door
of the fuselage and climbed out. Pilot and navigator looked at each
other: they were soaking wet, each separately chafing at the neck and
waist from collar and belt. Amelia removed the kerchief from about her
neck and wiped her face dry. She looked at the Electra: it sagged at
one wing. The oleo strut of the left landing gear had just collapsed.
The landing gear was not repaired until 1:30 P.M. the next day.
Because the heat was well over 100° AE and Fred decided to make that
day’s hop a short one. They flew to El Fasher, only a few hours away.
Fortunately, there was a strong tail wind, but Amelia felt as if she
were riding a bucking bronco. The heat from the hot, dry sands below
rose in strong convection currents that buffeted and pitched the
Electra like a ship in a rolling sea. Fred felt as if he were back to
his days of sailing ships. They were both happy to get to El Fasher,
but not for long. When they crawled out of the plane, men with guns
were waiting for them--disinfecting guns. As a health measure, pilot,
navigator, and plane had to be thoroughly sprayed. Amelia and Fred
submitted and squirmed.
One day at El Fasher was enough. Although the next day was Sunday, it
was not a day for rest or prayer. The thirteenth of June, like any
other day on the schedule, was marked for a flight, this one into the
Anglo-Egyptian Sudan to Khartoum.
The land flown over was for Amelia the bleakest and most desolate in
all of Africa. There were no rivers, no native villages, not even one
identifying contour line on the map. As far as Amelia could stretch her
hand over the course line there was blank space beneath.
Unable to fly by contact, she locked in the auto pilot and studied the
romantic-sounding names on the map. Qala-en Hahl, Umm Shinayshin, Abu
Seid, Idd el Bashir, Fazi, Marabia Abu Fas: as she pronounced them,
each in turn rolled from her lips and tongue in twisted vowels and
consonants. What wonderful sticklers they would make for crossword
puzzles!
As they approached Khartoum, Amelia was struck by the orderly way in
which the city was laid out. She learned later that Kitchener had used
the Union Jack for the blueprint. The city was situated on the banks of
the Nile, 1,350 miles south of Cairo and several hundred miles west of
the Red Sea. They remained in Khartoum for only two hours, time enough
to refuel but not time enough for any sight-seeing.
From Khartoum they set out for Massaua, in Italy’s Eritrea. From
above AE noticed an occasional grouping of colorfully striped tents;
they marked stopping places along the endless camel trails across the
desert. The blowing wind wrinkled and scalloped the waste of land.
Two hundred miles out the Electra bisected the Atbara River. Across
the river sandy plains gently rose to foothills, the foothills to lush
green mountains. As it approached the foothills, the plane hit bumpy,
contrary air currents. The flow of air coursing down the slopes of
the mountains tangled with the strong convection currents rising from
the ground. Amelia fought to hold her plane steady, but it pitched
and tossed. She added throttle and climbed to 10,000 feet, but the
buffeting continued. To the left and about 3,000 feet below her wing
she caught sight of Asmara, the capital of Eritrea; to the right, a
range of peaks that towered to 14,000 feet. She weaved in and out and
across to the other side. The eastern slopes came suddenly; sharp and
abrupt, they angled quickly down into a broad, flat, sweeping valley.
For the next 30 miles the land continued flat all the way to the Red
Sea.
As she had found the Blue Nile and the White Nile to be neither blue
nor white, but green, so now Amelia discovered the Red Sea not to be
red, but blue. She was gradually seeing the world, or at least its
rivers, in its true colors. She lowered flaps and landing gear and
began her letdown.
Standing at the end of a bay formed by two coral islands and the
mainland was Massaua. Late-afternoon shadows lengthened over the port.
Mounds of salt about the town, like sand dunes she had seen at Cape
Cod, glittered in the slanting rays of the sun. Two small clipper
ships, some freighters, and countless other smaller craft rode the tide
in the harbor.
After she had landed, Amelia soon discovered why Massaua was one of
the world’s great exporters of salt. The blistering sun, causing
temperatures often in excess of 120°, could evaporate hundreds of
gallons of salt water in pans set out along the shore and leave thick
layers of salt.
Amelia had forgotten to eat, as she had done so often before during
these daily flights. She was starved for food; she felt “as hollow as a
bamboo horse,” she said to one of the Italian officers who had greeted
her when she arrived. The officer did not know how to translate the
remark for his bewildered colleagues, but he understood her meaning,
laughed, and nodded. Food had been prepared for them.
To prepare for the long flight across Arabia--it was a distance equal
to the one she had flown over the South Atlantic--Amelia now flew the
Electra 335 miles south and east down the coast of Eritrea to Assab,
where the runways were longer and where a large number of gasoline
drums had been stored for her.
The next morning, and well before daybreak from across the Red Sea in
Arabia, they left Assab. It was June 15. Their destination, Karachi,
India, lay 1,920 miles away. The flight would have to be non-stop, as
the Arabian authorities had forbidden the Electra to land in their
country; in fact, they had even refused the right to fly over their
country. And, Amelia reflected, from what little she saw of it, their
country was as forbidding as their refusals.
One hour and fifteen minutes after take-off they had passed over the
southern entry to the Red Sea and had reached the English possession
of Aden. From Aden, Amelia snaked a course along the southern Arabian
coast. Flying at an altitude of 8,000 feet, she could see the blue of
the Arabian Sea and the abomination of desolation which was the shore.
Beyond the coastal mountains stretched the bare and endless sands of
the desert. Of all places to make an emergency landing, Amelia thought,
this was the worst. She reached into the cubbyhole to the right and
behind her, and pulled out her Arabian credentials. “To Whom It May
Concern” they began. Amelia hoped they would never have to concern
anyone, because among other things the credentials begged for clemency
for the fliers in the event they went down. AE wondered what would
happen if she and Fred encountered the wrong nomadic tribe.
Amelia glanced at her instruments, then her eye stopped at the fuel
gauges. The left engine seemed to be using too much gasoline. She
reached for the mixture-control lever to lean out the fuel. The lever
would not move; it was jammed. AE quickly analyzed the possibilities of
a forced landing: neither the Arabian Sea nor desert was inviting, nor
did she want to try to make it back to Assab; they would have to try to
push through to Karachi. She eased back on both throttles.
Ahead was the Gulf of Oman, and across the gulf, Gwadar. At Gwadar she
looked at the chronometer; it was five o’clock. Karachi was only two
hours away. She hoped that by flying at a lower rpm she might make it.
The fuel supply lasted. When they reached Karachi, the chronometer for
elapsed time since take-off had clicked off thirteen hours and ten
minutes. It had been one of their longest flights. Weary, AE walked
away from the plane.
“There’s a phone call for you,” someone said to her.
“Oh, yes,” Amelia answered flatly. Probably some newspaperman, she
thought.
“It’s from New York. Mr. Putnam is on the wire.”
AE rushed inside to the telephone and picked up the receiver.
“How do you feel?” GP asked from 8,000 miles away.