9.Solo Across the Atlantic
Five years to the day after Lindbergh’s famous flight inThe Spirit of St. Louis, Amelia Earhart flew solo across the Atlantic Ocean. Like Lindbergh, Amelia had competitors who had tried the solo flight before her; but, like his, the luck of “Lady Lindy” held out.
Ruth Nichols, AE’s friendly neighbor and fellow flier from Rye, was on the way for the transatlantic hop in June, 1931, but as she came in for a landing in Saint John’s, New Brunswick, her overloaded plane cracked up, nearly killing her. Although she was still encased in a body cast from the crash, Ruth Nichols was ready in 1932 to try again. But, just as she was ready to go, she heard that Amelia had made it.
The two women fliers were the friendliest of rivals, and they were always neck and neck to be the first woman-to-do in aviation. In 1930, for example, AE had set the speed record at 181.157 mph; in 1931, Miss Nichols set a new one at 210.685 mph. They had raced together in the first Powder Puff Derby, until Ruth crashed in Columbus. Each wanted to be the first woman to fly around the world: AE failed; Ruth succeeded.
For Amelia the flight alone across the Atlantic came four years after theFriendshipventure. She had gained experience in all kinds of flying, in all kinds of weather. She had flown coast to coast across the United States four times: twice in Lady Heath’s Avian and twice in the autogiro. With her Vega she had made numerous flights; one of them the Women’s Air Derby in which she placed third in the race from California to Ohio.
AE purchased another Vega; although secondhand, it was in excellent flying condition, and as added insurance she had a new Wright Whirlwind engine installed. After nine crack-upsand emergency landings, most of them because of engine failure, she felt that the new motor was a wise investment.
One morning in the winter of 1931, the Putnams sat at breakfast in their Rye home. Amelia lowered the morning paper and looked out the dining-room window. The light was clear, hard, and bright. The oak trees out beyond the patio were stark and bare. The air seemed crisp and clean, as if snow might begin to swirl at any moment.
Amelia brushed her stiff locks with a quick sweep of the hand and turned to her husband. “Would youmind,” she asked slowly, “if I flew the Atlantic?”
GP was elated with the idea, finally expressed, for he knew the project had been growing within her, like a child, for a long time. He could see, as he looked into his wife’s steady gray-blue eyes, that she had arrived at that point of self-confidence where only agreement with her was possible.
“Of course I don’t mind,” he said quickly. “I think it’s an excellent idea.”
Plans began to take definite shape. To avoid any possibility of advance notoriety, Amelia chartered her Vega to an old friend, Bernt Balchen, the famous Arctic explorer and an intrepid flier. He had agreed to act as her technical adviser. It was well known that Balchen and Lincoln Ellsworth were planning an Antarctic expedition; everyone could now infer that AE’s plane was going to be used by the explorers.
As with the earlierFriendshipflight, when everybody thought the Fokker seaplane was being made ready for Byrd, thus giving Stultz and Gordon the necessary freedom for test-hopping the aircraft, so now Amelia had hour after hour and day after day for checking out the new Whirlwind motor, for blind flying entirely by instruments, for preparing for the variable weather over the North Atlantic.
On a Sunday in April of 1932 the Putnams had asked Bernt Balchen to drive over to Rye for lunch. After a leisurely meal, AE led the way down over the stone steps outside to her garden.She walked to the crocuses, blooming in bright dabs of yellow, purple, and white, and felt their grasslike leaves. Overhead she noted the elms and oaks beginning to leaf. Bernt and GP had stopped at the croquet rack. Amelia joined them. They started to play.
At the middle wicket on the turn for home AE dropped the long handle of her mallet and walked toward the men. “Bernt,” she said suddenly, “I wanted to tell you....” Her voice trailed inconclusively.
Bernt and George laid down their mallets. They followed Amelia to a nearby rock and sat down. AE looked down at Bernt. “I want to fly the Atlantic, now, by myself,” she said to him. “Am I ready to do it?” she asked. “Is the ship ready? Will you help me?”
Balchen, a Norwegian of few words, fixed his clear blue eyes on a wire hoop of the croquet game. His voice still had the trace of a Norseman’s accent. “Yes,” he said slowly. “You can do it. The ship, when we are through with it, will be O.K. And, yes, I will help.”
Her questions answered, Amelia returned to the game with renewed vigor and clouted her opponents’ croquet balls into the bushes.
Toward dusk Bernt returned home. AE, suddenly hungry, went into the kitchen. She started to make cocoa. Lucy Challiss, her cousin from Atchison, who had been staying at the house for a few days, came in with George.
“Can you keep a secret?” Amelia said, grinning, to her cousin.
“Of course,” Lucy answered.
AE went to the table and started slicing a loaf of bread. She reached out a forefinger, picked up a bread crumb, and placed it on the tip of her tongue. “I’m going to fly the Atlantic again,” she said. “Alone.”
Incredulous, Lucy stared at Amelia. The cocoa on the stove came to a quick boil, bubbled, and spilled over the pan ontothe floor. GP sprang for a mop, Lucy for a dishcloth. Laughing, AE reached into the cupboard for more cocoa.
It was the first time that Amelia had taken into her confidence someone not directly connected with her flight. Lucy Challiss did not betray her trust.
Unlike the first flight across the Atlantic in theFriendshipplane, which had three engines, pontoons, and three crewmen, the Vega with its one engine and fixed wheels would have to go the whole distance with one pilot. For the next month, therefore, AE sharpened her reactions in the conditions demanded in blind flying. For hours at a time she practiced flying by her instruments alone: setting a course to some distant city, then by following the dial of the gyrocompass and keeping the Vega straight and level by flying the needle and ball of the turn and bank indicator, she would compute the time and distance from the chronometer, and finally look out from the cockpit to see if she had made her estimated time of arrival at her destination. She would then turn around and go through the same procedure all the way back to New Jersey.
If possible, she wanted to be ready for the Atlantic take-off on the same day as Lindbergh, five years earlier, had left New York. She had never forgotten the time in Boston when she read about Lindy’s historic flight and how she had hoped even then before theFriendshipventure that she might, somehow, be the first woman to attempt the same flight.
While she waited at Rye or Teterboro, she often phoned the office of Doc Kimball at the Weather Bureau office in New York and asked for a prognosis. The weather conditions that had been forecast for the North Atlantic were not too encouraging, but she had decided that if there was the slightest chance to be on her way she would take it.
On the morning of Friday, May 20, AE climbed into her car and started for New Jersey. She was on her way to see Bernt Balchen at Teterboro airport. Ground fog, heavy and wet, bubbled on the windshield of the car; she turned on the wipers.It did not seem to her now that she would get off this gray day. When she turned onto the George Washington Bridge she could barely make out the tops of the towers. The Hudson River below was clouded in mist.
Just before noon at the airport she was summoned to the telephone by Eddie Gorski, her mechanic. It was GP, calling from the office of Doc Kimball at the Weather Bureau. “It looks like the break we’ve been waiting for,” he said. “Doc Kimball says this afternoon is fine to get to Newfoundland—Saint John’s, anyway.”
Amelia asked for particulars about the weather. A “low,” she learned, which had threatened the first leg of the flight, had dissipated to the southeast; and a “high,” which promised good weather, was moving in beyond Newfoundland.
“O.K.!” she said. “We’ll start.”
In ten minutes she made final arrangements with Bernt Balchen and Eddie Gorski. They had agreed to fly with her as far as Newfoundland, to make sure everything was all right before the Atlantic take-off. Amelia looked at her watch. There was no time for lunch.
Always a fast driver, AE now drove quickly back to Westchester. Take-off had been set for 3:00P.M.She had to pick up her clothes and maps, and then meet GP at the New York end of the George Washington Bridge. Two o’clock, he had said. She swung into the driveway. She had driven the last twenty-five miles in fifteen minutes.
She rushed upstairs to her room. In five minutes she had changed into jodhpurs, plaid sports shirt, and windbreaker. She tied a bright blue scarf about her neck, then stuffed toilet articles into a small bag. She stopped at the window that looked out on her garden. The dogwood trees were in full flower, white and pink in the sun. She turned, picked up her leather flying suit and the folder of maps, and fled out of the room and down the stairs.
At 2:55P.M.AE and GP reached Teterboro. Bernt and Eddiewere waiting by the plane. Eddie and Amelia climbed through the door into the waist. Bernt crawled up on the wing and descended through the hatch into the cockpit. Balchen had convinced AE that he should fly the first leg so that she could conserve her strength for the long solo.
The red high-wing monoplane with gold stripes along the fuselage lifted off the runway at 3:15P.M.Amelia looked out the small window in the door. On the ground below, standing on the edge of the pavement, was George Putnam, waving. She waved back. For a change, a man would wait, anxiously, for his woman to come home.
The Vega cruised over the coast of New England to Cape Cod. Behind the big fuel tank in the cabin Amelia was sleeping, stretched out on the floor of the fuselage, her leather flying suit under her head. Three hours and thirty minutes later Bernt Balchen brought the plane into Saint John, New Brunswick.
Early the next morning they flew to Harbor Grace, Newfoundland. Amelia found detailed weather reports from GP waiting for her when she arrived. While Bernt and Eddie made a final check of the aircraft, she pored over the predictions. The weather outlook was not too good but held the promise of something better. She decided to leave that evening. That settled, she found a cot, lay down, and took a nap.
At dinnertime she was awakened. There were more telegrams from GP. Her decision to leave that night, she learned, had been a good one. The weather seemed to be clearing on her route. Amelia put on her heavy flying suit, picked up her maps, and went out to the field.
Bernt had already warmed up the engine. Awkward in her clumsy gear, Amelia plodded out to the plane. She reached a hand out to Bernt, then to Eddie. They helped her up the side of the fuselage onto the wing. She let herself down through the hatchway into the cockpit. She grinned through the side window and waved.
“Okeh,” said Bernt with characteristic brevity. “So long. Good luck.”
Amelia took command of the plane. She looked over the instrument panel, her “dashboard,” and checked the engine gauges. Four new instruments had been installed in the plane to help her find her way: a drift indicator, an aperiodic and a magnetic compass, and a directional gyro. She taxied to the end of the only runway. The wind was from the northeast, nearly perfect for take-off.
At 7:13P.M.the Vega broke from the ground and rose into the air. It was May 20, 1932. Amelia headed out to sea, to fly the Atlantic Ocean for “the fun of it.” A few hours later it would be anything but fun.
Amelia eased back on the stick and climbed to 12,000 feet. She leveled off. She looked out the narrow windshield to the right. The sun, beginning to set in the west, sprayed out in a multicolored fan of gold, yellow, orange, and red. This was beauty, and adventure: the excitement and romance of flight. She looked quickly across the instruments, then out the other side of the windshield. The moon, like a disc of butter in whipped potatoes, sat on the top of a bank of clouds.
The nose of the plane felt a little heavy against the stick. She reached down and rolled in a little trim. She then held the wings straight and level, and trimmed the rudder against the torque of the propeller. The turn-and-bank indicator responded promptly: needle and ball aligned in the center of the instrument. The steady rhythm of the motor was like another heart; and the wings and fuselage were like extensions of her arms and body and legs. She was one with her plane.