1.Crack-up in Hawaii
Ironically,Amelia Earhart’s flight around the world was her last long flight. “I have a feeling,” she had said to Carl Allen of the New YorkHerald Tribune, “that there is just one more good flight left in my system, and I hope this is it. Anyway, when I have finished this job, I mean to give up major long-distance flights.”
Her plan was to girdle the earth at the equator on an east-to-west flight. The time of departure was set for March, 1937.
For Amelia, the flight was the greatest challenge of her life. No one 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, theWinnie 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 navigationand 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 ownflying 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. “Itishard 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 navigatorhad 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, spareparts. 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 theFriendshipdays, on whose ship, thePresident 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 asnear 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 YorkHerald 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, butonly 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 inNew 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 steamshipFlorida, 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 Manningat 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 3:00P.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 4:37P.M.
The flight to Honolulu proceeded without incident. At 5:40A.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 concretein 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.”
AE showed him the telegram she had just received from GP. “So long as you and the boys are O.K.” it said, “the rest doesn’t matter. After all, it’s just one of those things. Whether you want to call it a day or keep going later is equally jake with me.”
The reporters now pressed her for a statement. “Nothing has happened,” she announced, “to change my attitude toward the original project. I feel better than ever about the ship, and I am more eager than ever to fly again.”
Amelia turned and walked to the window of the operations building. She looked up. High above the center of the field a black bird swung through the air in lazy widening circles.