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Amelia Earhart was born on 24 July 1897 in Atchison, Kansas. Her flying
career began in Los Angeles in 1921 when, at age 24, she took flying lessons
from Neta Snook and bought her first airplane-- a Kinner Airstar. Due to
family problems, she sold her airplane in 1924 and moved back East, where
she took employment as a social worker. Four years later, she returned to
aviation bought an Avro Avian airplane and became the first woman to make a
solo-return transcontinental flight. From then on, she continued to set and
break her own speed and distance records, in competitive events, as well as
personal stunts promoted by her husband George Palmer Putnam.
Earhart's name became a household word in 1932 when she became the first
woman--and second person--to fly solo across the Atlantic, on the fifth
anniversary of Charles Lindbergh's feat, flying a Lockheed Vega from Harbor
Grace, Newfoundland to Londonderry, Ireland. That year, she received the
Distinguished Flying Cross from the 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 Hoover.
In January 1935 Earhart became the first person to fly solo across the
Pacific Ocean from Honolulu to Oakland, California. Later that year she
soloed from Los Angeles to Mexico City and back to Newark, N.J. In July 1936
she took delivery of a Lockheed 10E "Electra," financed by Purdue
University, and started planning her round-the-world flight.
Earhart's flight would not be the first to circle the globe, but it
would be the longest--29,000 miles, following an equatorial route. On March
17, 1937 she flew the first leg, from Oakland, California to Honolulu,
Hawaii. As the flight resumed three days later, a tire blew on takeoff and
Earhart ground-looped the plane. Severely damaged, the aircraft had to be
shipped back to California for repairs, and the flight was called off. The
second attempt would begin at Miami, this time to fly from West to East;
Fred Noonan, a former Pan Am pilot, would be Earhart's navigator and sole
companion in flight for the entire trip. They departed Miami on June 1, and
after numerous stops in South America, Africa, the Subcontinent and
Southeast Asia, they arrived at Lae, New Guinea on June 29. About 22,000
miles of the journey had been completed. The remaining 7,000 miles would all
be over the Pacific Ocean.
On July 2, 1937 at 0000 GMT, Earhart and Noonan took off from Lae. Their
intended destination was Howland Island, a tiny piece of land a few miles
long, 20 feet high, and 2, 556 miles away. Their last positive position
report and sighting were over the Nukumanu Islands, about 800 miles into the
flight. The U.S. Coast Guard cutter USCGC Itasca was on station near
Howland, assigned on short notice to communicate with Earhart's plane and
guide her to the island once she arrived in the vicinity.
But it soon became evident that Earhart and Noonan had little practical
knowledge of the use of radio navigation. The frequencies Earhart was using
were not well suited to direction finding (in fact, she had left behind the
lower-frequency reception and transmission equipment which might have
enabled Itasca to locate her), and the reception quality of her
transmissions was poor. After six hours of frustrating attempts at two-way
communications, contact was lost.
A coordinated search by the Navy and Coast Guard was organized and no
physical evidence of the flyers or their plane was ever found. Earhart and
Noonan's fate has been the subject of many rumors and allegations which were
never substantiated. Modern analysis indicates that after passing the
Nukumanu Islands, Earhart began to vector off course, unwittingly heading
for a point about 100 miles NNW of Howland. A few hours before their
estimated arrival time Noonan calculated a "sun line," but without a
successful, radio-frequency range calculation, a precise "fix" on the
plane's location could not be established. Researchers generally believe
that the plane ran out of fuel and that Earhart and Noonan perished at sea.
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