E is for Amelia Earhart - Pioneer Women in Aviation: A-Z Challenge

Amelia Mary Earhart 1897-1937

Ask anyone today to name the most famous female pilot they know and they will likely say Amelia Earhart. Most at least have heard of this famous female pilot who disappeared over the Pacific Ocean attempting to fly around the world. Her disappearance in 1937 is an unsolved mystery that boggles the mind. Hundreds have written about her, if not hundreds of thousands, and the theories abound as to what happened. 

Was she a U.S. spy sent to monitor the Japanese based in the South Pacific at the time? Did the Japanese shoot down her plane, capturing Earhart and her co-pilot? Were they executed in Saipan? Did Amelia escape and return to New Jersey and assume another identity? Or, did she and Noonan simply run out of fuel trying to reach Howland Island? Researchers continue to seek answers to this baffling mystery.  

How did she become interested in aviation, a dream that took her life? Earhart's early years tell the story.

Born in Atchison, Kansas in the home of her maternal grandfather, Alfred Gideon Otis, Amelia was a child of privilege. Alfred Otis was a former judge, bank president and a renown citizen locally. Grandmother Otis had misgivings about Amelia's "modern" mother Amy, who gave Amelia and her sister unconventional freedoms playing outdoors. But Amy didn't want them just to be "nice little girls." She let them wear bloomers and romp around like tom boys, climbing trees and collecting moths, worms and katydids. They even kept a toad. The arrangement worked in the beginning, instilling a great love of adventure in Amelia. Later she recalled the ramp she and an uncle had built off of the old toolshed as a roller coaster. "Oh, Pidge, it's just like flying!" Amelia told her sister.

Amelia and her sister were home schooled till the age of twelve, when they enrolled in public school. Beyond that Amelia and her sister had a somewhat troubled upbringing. Jobs forced her parents to move but the marriage suffered and money was tight. In spite of all, Amelia finished high school in 1916 and briefly went to a junior college. Becoming a nurses aid in 1917 she worked for a time for the Red Cross during World War I, but in the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic, she developed pneumonia and sinus complications. A true setback, her recovery lasted nearly a year.

In 1919, Amelia was ready for a change. She began a course at New York's Columbia University in medical studies, but learning that her parents were back together and had moved to California, she quit the following year. It was in Long Beach that Frank Hawks (a soon to be famous air racer) gave Amelia her first airplane ride. "By the time I had got two or three hundred feet [60–90 m] off the ground," Amelia later said, "I knew I had to fly." There was no turning back. Working several jobs, she saved $1,000 and started flying lessons in 1921 with female pioneer aviator Neta Snook. Amelia purchased a bright yellow biplane, a Kinner Airster, six months later and called the plane "The Canary." Flying the Airster to an altitude of 14,000 feet, Amelia set a world record even before her official pilot's license had arrived. 

Amelia, 1928

In 1924 her parents divorced and Amelia was forced to sell "The Canary" to help with finances. That plus a much needed sinus surgery, it was several months before she could start school again, a decision that had recently been made. Finishing college, she worked as a teacher and later as a social worker in 1925 in Medford, Massachusetts. Despite the setback, her interest in aviation never wavered. She joined the American Aeronautical Society's Boston chapter and wrote a newspaper column promoting flying. She also flew one of the planes at Dennison Airport in 1927 (the first for this airport).

In 1928, her flying dream took a strange turn. She got a phone call at work one day from a Captain Railey. "Would you like to fly the Atlantic?" he asked. I'm imagining Amelia must have choked on the words, "Excuse me. What did you just say?" Charles Lindbergh had just completed his solo flight across the Atlantic in 1927. Publisher and publicist George P. Putnam was looking for a woman to do the same flight. The project already had a sponsor. Interviews were conducted, in which Amelia was told she would fly with co-pilot Wilbur Stulz (as a passenger). 

Untrained on the instruments, Stulz had to pilot the plane, but Amelia got all the credit as first woman to fly across the Atlantic in 1928. A New York ticker-tape parade, lecture tours, endorsements for products like luggage and sportswear, newspaper and magazine articles, and more resulted. Suddenly, Amelia Earhart was a name everyone knew and loved. Amelia next became an associate editor at Cosmopolitan magazine, but used her position to promote women's aviation. She also married George Putnam in 1928.

With husband George Putnam, 1931

More records for women followed:
--1928, first to fly solo across the North American continent and back
--1931, flying a Pitcairn PCA-2 autogyro, set a world altitude record of 18,415 feet
--1932, first solo flight across the Atlantic, landing in Ireland. A farm hand asked, "Have you flown far?" Amelia said, "From America."
--1935, first person to solo from Honolulu, HA to Oakland, CA
--1930 and 1935, seven speed and distance records
Promotion of flying for women:
--1929, a force behind commercial air travel to develop passenger lines.
--1930, became an official of the National Aeronautic Association
--Joined The Ninety-Nines, an organization of female pilots offering moral support and advancing the cause of women in aviation
 

Here are some of her honors received:
--Distinguished flying Cross from Congress (U.S.)
--Cross of Knight of the Legion of Honor (France)
--Gold Medal of the National Geographic Society (from President Hoover)

Lockheed Electra 10E, 1937

Below is more on the mysterious disappearance of Amelia Earhart's plane with co-pilot Fred Noonan. She and Fred had traveled 22,000 miles around the equator when the plane lost radio contact and vanished. They only had 7,000 miles left to go over the Pacific. So much has been written on the subject, you could spend hours studying the theories. Click on the links and videos and let me know what you think. Earhart's legacy is phenomenal enough had she not disappeared, but I hope we learn what happened soon.  She was a bright star in the midst of the Great Depression and the public adored her. 

T-H-E  M-Y-S-T-E-R-Y

Interviews of Eyewitnesses who either saw or heard about

Amelia and Fred in Saipan and surrounding area.

 Amelia, 2009: Hilary Swank as Earhart, with Richard Gere

Interesting links on what happened to Amelia:

https://earharttruth.wordpress.com/
(This promotes a book released in 2012 by a naval journalist supporting theories of a capture by
the Japanese; and withheld information by the U.S. government)

http://legacy.wkyc.com/story/news/local/cleveland/2015/07/21/amelia-earhart---parker-hannifin/30164275/
(A local Cleveland broadcast dated July 2015 about the latest findings in the Marshall Islands by a team of researchers; evidence is growing)

Sources:
http://www.americaslibrary.gov/aa/earhart/aa_earhart_learns_2.html https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amelia_Earhart#cite_note-48

Sharon M. Himsl

Writer/Author. Blogging since 2011. 
Published with Evernight Teen: 
~~The Shells of Mersing