Aviator, born in Atchison, Kansas, USA. During World War 1 she worked as a nurses' aide in Toronto, Canada. She then attended several schools, including two spells at Columbia University, held odd jobs in California, and became a settlement house worker in Boston (1926). She had first flown in Los Angeles (1920) and within a year made a solo flight. In 1928 she participated in a transatlantic flight with Wilmer Stultz and Louis Gordon, becoming the first woman to fly the Atlantic. In 1932, flying solo, she set a transatlantic record of 14 hours, 56 minutes, and the following year she flew two more record-setting transatlantic flights. In 1937, by now a public favourite, she embarked on an equatorial world trip but ceased communications on 2 July shortly after leaving New Guinea with her navigator Frederick Noonan. Several extensive searches revealed nothing. Her husband, George Putnam, posthumously published her autobiography, Last Flight (1938).
Amelia Mary Earhart (July 24, 1897 – missing as of July 2, 1937), daughter of Edwin and Amy Earhart, was an American aviator and noted early female pilot who mysteriously disappeared over the Pacific Ocean during a circumnavigational flight in 1937.
Early life
A "tomboy" as a girl
Earhart was born in her grandfather's home in Atchison, Kansas. Amy Earhart took Amelia and Muriel to Chicago where they lived with friends.
Graduating from high school and enrolling in college
Amelia graduated from Hyde Park High School in 1915, then went to Canada where she visited her sister at school.
By 1919, Earhart had enrolled at Columbia University to study pre-med but quit a year later to be with her parents who had gotten together again in California.
First flying lesson and pilot's license
After that ride, she immediately became determined to learn to fly. Earhart had her first flying lessons at Kinner Field near Long Beach. On May 15, 1923, Earhart was the sixteenth woman to be issued a pilot's license by the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale (FAI).
Aviation career and marriage
Joins the National Aeronautic Association
High-altitude flyers made little money. Earhart sold "Canary" and bought a yellow Kissel roadster which she named "the Yellow Peril."
Earhart also became a member of the National Aeronautic Association's Boston chapter, through which she invested a small sum of money into airport construction and the sale of Kinner airplanes in the Boston area.
After Charles Lindbergh's solo flight across the Atlantic in 1927, Amy Guest, a wealthy American living in London, England expressed interest in being the first woman to fly (or be flown) across the Atlantic Ocean. While at work one afternoon in April 1928, Earhart got a phone call from a man who asked her, "Would you like to fly the Atlantic?"
She did not pilot the plane during the flight and when interviewed after landing, admitted "Stultz did all the flying- had to.
Earhart enters competitive flying
Earhart made her first attempt at competitive flying in 1929 during the first Santa Monica-to-Cleveland Cleveland Women's Air Derby (later nicknamed the "Powder Puff Derby" by Will Rogers), placing third.
In the aftermath of her Atlantic flight, Putnam undertook to heavily promote Earhart in a campaign that included publishing a book she authored, lecture tours and using pictures of her in mass market endorsements for products including luggage, cigarettes (she didn't smoke), pajamas, and women's sportswear.
Marriage to George Putnam
The extensive time the pair spent together led to intimacy, and, although for a while, she was engaged to Samuel Chapman, an attorney from Boston, after substantial hesitation on her part, Amelia and George Putnam were married on February 7, 1931. Earhart referred to the marriage as a "partnership" with "dual control," and appears to have asked for an open marriage.
According to Earhart's biographer, Susan Butler, the great love of the aviator's life was the pioneering Army Air Corps pilot Gene Vidal, who became director of the bureau of air commerce under Franklin D.
Transatlantic world record flight
On the morning of May 20, 1932, aged 34, Earhart took off from Saint John, New Brunswick with the latest (dated) copy of a local newspaper.
As the first woman to fly solo non-stop across the Atlantic she received the Distinguished Flying Cross from Congress, the Cross of Knight of the Legion of Honor from the French Government and the Gold Medal of the National Geographic Society from President Herbert Hoover.
Solo flights
On January 11, 1935, Earhart became the first person to fly solo from Honolulu, Hawaii to Oakland, California.
World flight, 1937
Planning to circumnavigate the globe
Earhart joined the faculty of Purdue University in 1935 as counselor on careers for women, exploring new fields for young women to enter after graduation.
Although the Electra was publicized as a "flying laboratory," little useful science was planned and the flight seems to have been arranged around Earhart's intention to circumnavigate the earth along with providing raw material and public attention for her next book. The original plans were for Noonan to navigate from Hawaii to Howland Island, a particularily difficult portion of the flight, and Manning would continue with Earhart to Australia, then she would proceed on her own for the remainder of the flight.
The first attempt for a world flight
On St Patrick's Day, 1937, they flew the first leg, Oakland, California to Honolulu, Hawaii. In addition to Earhart and Noonan, Captain Harry Manning and Paul Mantz were on board. Noonan was to act as the primary navigator while Mantz was Earhart's technical advisor for the record breaking flight. The flight resumed three days later from Luke Field with Earhart, Noonan and Manning onboard, but a tire blew on takeoff and Earhart ground-looped the plane. Some witnesses at Luke Field did say they saw a tire blow and Earhart thought the Electra's tire blew and/or the right landing gear had collapsed.
The second attempt for a world flight
While the Electra was being repaired, Earhart and Putnam secured additional funds and made plans for a second world flight. Only after arriving in Miami did Earhart publicly announce her plans for a second world flight attempt. Fred Noonan was Earhart's only crew member for the second flight. Paul Mantz had left the crew in part because of his lack of confidence in Earhart's piloting skills after the Luke Field accident. Earhart and Noonan departed Miami on 1 June and after numerous stops in South America, Africa, the Indian subcontinent and Southeast Asia, they arrived at Lae, New Guinea on June 29.
The departure from Lae
On July 2, 1937, at midnight GMT Earhart and Noonan took off from Lae. The U.S. Coast Guard cutter Itasca was on station at Howland, assigned to communicate with Earhart's Lockheed Electra 10E and guide her to the island once she arrived in the vicinity.
The final approach to Howland Island
Through a series of misunderstandings or errors (the details of which are still controversial), the final approach to Howland using radio navigation was never accomplished. Another source of confusion was that the USCG cutter Itasca and Earhart were timing their planned communication schedule using different time systems that were out phase by one half hour. Earhart was basing her schedule on Greenwich Civil Time (GCT) and the Itasca was using a Naval time zone designation system in use at that time. This had the effect that Earhart's on-the-hour mark was on-the-half hour by the Itasca clock.
Yet another complicating factor seems to be, based on photo evidence from Lae, that the Electra's wire antenna mounted underneath the fuselage was gone, further compromising Earhart's communication abilities on some frequencies. During the time surrounding Earhart's and Noonan's anticipated arrival at Howland island Itasca did receive some strong, relatively clear voice transmissions from Earhart but she apparently was not able to hear transmissions from the Itasca. The clear transmissions received aboard the Itasca seemed to indicate that Earhart and Noonan believed they had reached Howland's charted position, which was incorrect by about five nautical miles (9 km).
Contact was lost
After several hours of frustrating attempts at two-way communications, contact was lost. Her last successful voice transmission that morning did give a line of position (157 - 337 deg) presumably through Howland Island and presumably on which Earhart and Noonan were flying after failing to locate Howland. If they were actual transmissions from the plane it meant Earhart and Noonan were on land (at least partially) because the Electra's right engine would have had to be running in order to run the generator to charge the power hungry radio's battery.
Investigating Earhart's disappearance
Two week search in the Howland Island area
About one to two hours after the failure of Earhart's Howland Island arrival, the Itasca began an ultimately unsuccessful search north and west of Howland island based on some initial assumptions and supposed transmission from the plane. Once the Navy took over search responsibilities, and based on bearings of several supposed Earhart radio transmissions (as well as her last known transmission giving a line of position), some of the search efforts were eventually directed to a group of small islands - the Phoenix Islands - south of Howland Island.
All of the official search efforts lasted about two weeks but Earhart, Noonan or the Electra 10E were never found. The United States government spent $4 million looking for Earhart.
Majority view of researchers
Many researchers believe the plane ran out of fuel and Earhart and Noonan ditched at sea. However, one group (TIGHAR — The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery) suggests they may have flown for two-and-a-half hours along a standard line of position, which Earhart specified in her last transmission received at Howland, to Gardner Island (now Nikumaroro, Kiribati) in the Phoenix group, landed there and ultimately perished. TIGHAR's executive director, Ric Gillespie, authored a book in 2006 "Finding Amelia" that describes TIGHAR's findings regarding Earhart's world flight attempts.
Myths and conjectures
Involvement of the Japanese
During the decades since her disappearance, many unverified stories and urban legends have circulated (and often been published) about what might have happened to Earhart and Noonan. Some have claimed Earhart was captured in the South Pacific Mandate area by the Japanese and interned for a number of years before either subsequently perishing or being executed. This story originated when a man, then 15, claimed he had been toying with his radio and a woman came upon the speaker, claiming to be Amelia Earhart.
Purported photographs of Earhart during her captivity have been identified as having been taken before her final flight. A World War II era movie called Flight for Freedom, starring Rosalind Russell and Fred MacMurray is often cited as the most likely source of a popular myth that Earhart was spying on the Japanese in the Pacific at the request of the Franklin Roosevelt administration.
Some researchers have noted the possibility that for wartime propaganda purposes, the U.S. government may have tacitly encouraged (or was indifferent to) false rumors that Earhart had been captured by the Japanese.
Another rumor was that Earhart had been forced to make propaganda radio broadcasts as one of the many women known as Tokyo Rose (according to several biographies of Earhart, George Putnam investigated this rumor personally, but after listening to recordings of numerous Tokyo Roses, was unable to recognize her voice among them).
Japanese Saipan prison theory
In another account, natives of Saipan in the Northern Mariana Islands claim that Earhart and Noonan were captured and executed when their plane crashed in the archipelago while it was under Japanese occupation. it included information from over 200 Saipanese islanders who claimed to see Earhart on the island. Connie Chung did an interview with an elderly Saipanese woman ("Eye to Eye", airdate January 1999) who claimed to witness Earhart's execution at the hands of Japanese soldiers.
After the Second World War, a number of veterans came forward with tales of seeing her plane on Saipan. Devine, in a postal Army unit wrote a book "Eyewitness: The Amelia Earhart Incident" based on his eyewitness recollections which includes a letter from the daughter of a Japanese Chief of Police Suzuki who claimed her father was responsible for Earhart's execution. Former U.S. Marine Robert Wallack was also interviewed by Chung, and he claims that he and some other soldiers opened a safe and found Earhart's briefcase. Green, (who later became a General and the head of the Marine Corps), recalled that he decoded a message from the Headquarters of the Pacific Fleet ("CinqPaq") under the supervision of Admiral Chester Nimitz, on June 9, 1944, stating that the U.S. Military "had found Amelia Earhart's airplane at Aslito AirField." After guarding the plane, he decoded a message that said "We are going to destroy Amelia Earhart's airplane."
"Planned disappearance" and paranormal explanations
Others have suggested Earhart later managed to return to America where she changed her name and lived out her life quietly, while still others blame her disappearance on Unidentified Flying Objects (the aforementioned Star Trek episode was based upon the UFO myth).
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Amelia Earhart |
Records
First woman to fly the Atlantic First woman to fly the Atlantic alone First person to fly the Atlantic alone twice First woman to fly an autogiro First person to cross the U.S. in an autogiro First woman to receive the Distinguished Flying Cross First woman to fly non-stop across the U.S. First woman to fly from Hawaii to the continental United StatesLegacy
Amelia Earhart was a widely-known international celebrity during her lifetime. Earhart is generally regarded as a feminist icon who blazed a trail of achievement for generations of women who came after her. A corona on Venus, has been named "Earhart" in her honour by the IAU.Books by Earhart
Amelia Earhart was an accomplished and articulate writer who served as aviation editor for Cosmopolitan magazine from 1928 to 1930. Compiled by Putnam himself, historians have cast doubt upon how much of the book was actually Earhart's original work and how much had been embellished by Putnam.
Fiction by other authors
Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.The romantic, tragic and mysterious story of Amelia Earhart has spurred the imaginations of many writers. For example:
The 1943 Rosalind Russell film Flight for Freedom was a fictionalized treatment of Earhart's life, with a heavy dose of Hollywood World War II propaganda. A 1976 television bio project titled Amelia Earhart included flying by Hollywood stunt pilot Frank Tallman whose late partner in Tallmantz Aviation, Paul Mantz, had tutored Earhart in the 1930s. The Star Trek: Voyager episode, "The 37s," (1995) suggests that Earhart and Noonan were kidnapped by aliens in 1937 and taken to the Delta Quadrant, where they were found by Captain Kathryn Janeway but chose to remain on the far side of the galaxy instead of returning to Earth; like other Earhart-related fiction, a romance between Earhart and Noonan is implied. (The Star Trek franchise in general also established that one of Starfleet's main space stations in the 24th century is named after Earhart.) I Was Amelia Earhart (1996) is a faux autobiography by Jane Mendelsohn in which "Earhart" tells the story of what happened to her in 1937, complete with heavy doses of romance with her navigator. Flying Blind (1999) by Max Allan Collins is a detective novel in which the intrepid Nathan Heller is hired to be a bodyguard for Amelia Earhart. In Christopher Moore's 2003 novel, Fluke, Earhart survived her wreck and appears as the mother of one of the characters. "Lost" fans have theorized that they are, in fact, Earhart and Noonan. Spoilers end here.
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