Amelia Earhart developed a keen interest in aviation at a young age and began flying in her early twenties. She became a pioneer by setting and breaking aviation records and attempting to make a flight around the world. Alongside her many accomplishments, she was also a career counselor, lecturer, aviation editor, and photographer. Earhart disappeared over the Pacific Ocean while attempting to become the first female pilot to circumnavigate the globe. With less than 10,000 miles left in her 1937 around-the-world quest, she and her navigator Fred Noonan lost radio contact and were never located despite extensive air and sea searches. Their disappearance has remained one of the biggest mysteries in history with little evidence proving what actually happened to them.
An adventurous person by nature who was used to traveling from place to place, Earhart became fascinated with flight while living in California. She took her first ride in a plane in December of 1920 with veteran World War I aviator Frank Hawks. From that moment, she knew she had found her passion and began working as a telephone company clerk and photographer to save up for flying lessons. She took her first lesson on January 3, 1921 with instructor Anita “Neta” Snook in a Curtiss Jenny plane. In just one year, Earhart managed to save up enough money to buy her first plane, a yellow Kinner Airster biplane that she called “The Canary.” She used the aircraft to take her first solo flight and later set the women’s record for climbing up to 14,000 feet.
Seven years after Earhart took her first flying lesson she received a call from Hilton H. Riley asking if she’d be interested in becoming the first woman to fly across the Atlantic Ocean. She accepted without hesitation. Although she would become the first woman to traverse the ocean in an airplane, she wasn’t flying the plane, but accompanied pilots Wilmer Stultz and Lou Gordon aboard a Fokker F- VII Tri-Motor aircraft named Friendship. It departed Trepassey Harbor, Newfoundland on June 17, 1928 and the crew landed 20 hours and 40 minutes later at Burry Port in Wales. She and the two pilots were feted with a ticker-tape parade in New York City on their return to the United States and President Calvin Coolidge held a White House reception in their honor.
Several months after returning, Earhart published a book titled 20 Hours 40 Minutes that documented her journey. She also lectured about the trip and accepted an offer to become the aviation editor for Cosmopolitan Magazine. She participated in the First Women’s Air Derby, placing third in August 1929. To bring other women aviators together, Earhart later helped to establish the Ninety-Nines, an international organization now providing networking, mentoring, and flight scholarship opportunities for recreational and professional female pilots. She became the group’s first president in 1931. By this time, she had broken several women’s speed and altitude records. She was determined to do even more as she made plans to make her own solo trip across the Atlantic. Earhart became the first woman to successfully fly across that ocean on a solo trip in May of 1932. That remarkable feat earned her a Bronze National Geographic Society Medal. She also received the Distinguished Flying Cross Award from the US Congress and later recounted her journey in another book titled The Fun of It, published in 1933.
On top of this long list of accomplishments, Earhart became the first woman to make a non-stop coast-to-coast solo flight in August 1932. She decided on another overseas adventure across the Atlantic on July 7, 1933. This solo transatlantic trip took only 17 hours and seven minutes, breaking the record she previously set on her fist solo transatlantic flight. She also became the first to fly solo across the Pacific on January 11, 1935 when she flew from Oakland, California to Honolulu, Hawaii.Though some called it a publicity stunt for Earhart and her Hawaiian sugar plantation promoters, it was a dangerous 2,408-mile flight that had already claimed the lives of ten previous aviators. Her nearly 19-hour flight across the Pacific in a Lockheed 5C Vega included the first two-way radio aboard a civilian aircraft and took her 600 more miles over water than Charles Lindbergh's famous transatlantic trip in 1927.
In the midst of her record-breaking achievements, Earhart made history yet again, but for an entirely different flight. She and then First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt met and became close friends in 1932. They shared a strong sense of individualism and formed a bond which famously culminated in an escapade which occurred during a White House dinner on April 20, 1933. The pair left the party all dressed in formal dinner attire and traveled to a nearby airfield for a quick and spontaneous flight to Baltimore and back. The story is a testament to their spirit of adventure and to the bond of friendship between two of the Twentieth Century’s most extraordinary women.
During the evening, Earhart grew impatient with the formalities and suggested to the First Lady that they take a short flight to Baltimore and back. To Roosevelt, it sounded like the perfect adventure to pass the time before dessert. The two headstrong friends then went to Hoover Field and boarded one of Eastern Air Transport’s twin-engine Curtiss Condor planes. By protocol, two company pilots were supposed to operate the aircraft, but for much of the flight, Earhart took the captain’s chair and Roosevelt sat next to her as copilot, all the while wearing a white silk gown and white kid gloves. The journey was a short one and when the plane returned, the Secret Service quickly shuttled everyone aboard back to the White House for dessert. "I'd love to do it myself. I make no bones about it," Roosevelt later told The Baltimore Sun. "It does mark an epoch, doesn't it, when a girl in an evening dress and slippers can pilot a plane at night.”
The aviator later set her sights on becoming the first woman to fly around the world in 1937. That's when her luck ran out. I'll tell you all about it in a future post.
Until next time...safe travels.
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