Amelia Earhart

Amelia Earhart was the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean. She disappeared mysteriously in 1937 during an attempted flight around the world.

Earhart was born in 1897 in Kansas , where she lived with her sister and grandparents until the age of twelve. Her father was a lawyer for a railroad company, and his job required that he travel. This resulted in Earhart and her family living in various cities throughout her teens.

Like many women during World War I (1914–18), Earhart volunteered to work as a nurse's aide at a military hospital. After the war, she took a medical course.

Earhart eventually returned to her family in Los Angeles, California . While there, she attended an air show and paid $10 to ride on a plane. She fell in love with the feeling of flying and signed up immediately for lessons. To fund her lessons, Earhart drove a sand and gravel truck. She hired Neta Snook (1896–1991), the first woman to graduate from the Curtiss School of Aviation, as her teacher. After just two and a half hours of instruction, Earhart decided to buy herself a plane. With a loan from her mother and a job sorting mail, Earhart was able to buy a small plane for $2,000.

Takes to the skies

Earhart began setting flying records almost as soon as she took flight. Her first feat was to reach an altitude of 14,000 feet (4,267 meters). She did not own her plane for long; she sold it in 1924 to help pay for a yellow

roadster she bought to drive her mother to the East Coast after her parents divorced. The young man she sold her plane to crashed it upon takeoff and was killed. Earhart did not replace that plane for years, but spent her time working as a social worker. Her salary barely allowed her to make ends meet, let alone save for a luxury such as an airplane.

In 1928, Earhart received an invitation from a committee led by publisher and publicist George Palmer Putnam (1887–1950) in New York City. She was invited to be the first woman to travel, as a passenger, on a plane across the Atlantic. The first attempt failed when fog set in, but the second attempt was a success. The flight took twenty hours and forty minutes, and Earhart and her male pilot landed in Wales.

Despite the fact that she had only been a passenger on the flight, Earhart gained international attention as the first woman to fly across the Atlantic. Back home in America, she was instantly considered a spokesperson for women aviators. With Putnam as her manager, she toured the country giving lectures and writing a magazine column on aviation. She soon had her own line of traveling clothes and luggage. America came to cherish Earhart as much for her adventurous spirit as for her flying skills.

Transatlantic flight

Putnam and Earhart married in 1931. As Earhart's celebrity grew, she found herself taking first lady Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962) for a flight over Washington, D.C. , and driving her around the White House grounds in a race car.

Earhart made a solo flight across the Atlantic Ocean in 1932. It began at Harbor Grace, Newfoundland, on a spring evening. A few hours into the trip, Earhart ran into a violent electrical storm. Ice collected on the wings, and the plane went into a tailspin, falling 3,000 feet (914 meters) before regaining stability. The pilot's relief was short-lived, as the engine caught fire. After fourteen hours and fifty-six minutes in the air, she landed in northern Ireland rather than continue on to Paris, France, as originally planned. Her flight won her fame throughout Europe, and when she returned to New York, she was greeted with a parade.

Last flight

Earhart made one final flight plan, although she did not know it would be her last. Her goal was to fly around the world at or near the equator, something no one had ever attempted. She was presented with a twin-engine Lockheed Electra airplane on her thirty-ninth birthday, a gift from Purdue University. Early on March 17, 1937, Earhart took off from San Francisco, California, for Hawaii , where her flight would begin. She set another record by reaching Hawaii in just under sixteen hours. As she took off from Hawaii, her plane crashed. The Electra required $50,000 and five weeks to be repaired.

The delay caused Earhart to reverse the planned course for her flight. She would take advantage of changed weather patterns and air currents by flying west to east. She replaced her original navigator with Fred Noonan (1893–1937), whom she had met through mutual friends in the aviation community. The duo left Miami, Florida , on June 1, 1937, and headed for Brazil. From there, they flew across the Atlantic to Africa and across the Red Sea to Arabia, Pakistan, India, and Burma. One month later, they reached New Guinea.

The next leg of the flight was the most dangerous. They had to land on Howland Island, which is only 2-miles (3.2-kilometers) long in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Earhart and Noonan never made it to Howland Island, and neither their bodies nor the plane itself were ever found. One theory is that they missed the island, ran out of gas, and crashed into the ocean. Another theory is that part of Earhart's mission was to spy on the Japanese-held islands in the Pacific. When the Japanese learned of her mission, they shot down the plane, and took her captive. A biography of Earhart claims there is evidence to support this theory.

The last words heard over the radio from the Electra were: “Fuel is running low. Been unable to reach you by radio. We are flying at 1,000 feet. We are running north and south.” The last part of that message suggests that Earhart and Noonan were searching for Howland Island.

In 1960, a Japanese woman named Josephine Akiyama made public a story she claimed to be true. She said she had been living on the small Pacific island of Saipan in 1937, when she had seen two American flyers—a man and a woman—there. She said the Japanese were holding them captive. CBS broadcaster Fred Goerner took the story seriously and traveled to Saipan to investigate. There, he found other residents who told the same story, although some claim the captives had been executed.

No one knows for certain what happened to Earhart or Noonan.