HER EARLY YEARS
Amelia Mary Earhart, daughter of Samuel "Edwin" Stanton Earhart (1868-1930) was born on July 24, 1897, in Atchison, Kansas. She was named, according to family custom, after her two grandmothers (Amelia Josephine Harres and Mary Wells Patton). Amelia Earhart's parents encouraged her from a young age to participate in activities usually left to boys, such as football,baseball, and fishing. Their encouragement, watching numerous air shows in Los Angeles, and paying a pilot a dollar for a 10-minute airplane ride all contributed to her decision to become a pilot and join this predominantly male field. When 10-year-old Amelia Mary Earhart saw her first plane at a state fair, she was not impressed. "It was a thing of rusty wire and wood and looked not at all interesting," she said. It wasn't until Earhart attended a stunt-flying exhibition, almost a decade later, that she became seriously interested in aviation. A pilot spotted Earhart and her friend, who were watching from an isolated clearing, and dove at them. "I am sure he said to himself, 'Watch me make them scamper,'" she said. Earhart, who felt a mixture of fear and pleasure, stood her ground. As the plane swooped by, something inside her awakened. "I did not understand it at the time," she said, "but I believe that little red airplane said something to me as it swished by." As a nurses' aid in Toronto in 1918, Amelia Earhart became fascinated by flight while watching aerial exhibitions. On December 28, 1920, pilot Frank Hawks gave her a ride that would forever change her life. "By the time I had got two or three hundred feet off the ground," she said, "I knew I had to fly."
FLIGHT LESSONS
After that ten-minute flight, she immediately became determined to learn to fly. She drove a truck and worked at the local telephone company to earn $1000 for lessons. Earhart had her first flying lessons, beginning on 3 January 1921, at Kinner Field near Long Beach but to reach the airfield Amelia took a bus to the end of the line, then walked four miles. Her teacher was Anita "Neta" Snook, a pioneer female aviator who used a surplus Curtiss JN-4 "Canuck" for training, and took flying lessons with her at Kinner Field near Long Beach, California. Amelia arrived with her father and a singular request, "I want to fly. Will you teach me?"[31]
In July, Amelia purchased a plane and named it "The Canary." In October, 1922, Amelia began breaking world records and set a women's highest altitude record at 14,000 feet, which was broken by Ruth Nichols a few weeks later.
On 15 May 1923, Earhart became the 16th woman to be issued a pilot's license by the Federation Aeronautique Internationale (FAI).
In 1928, when Amelia Earhart was working in a settlement house in Boston, she was approached by the organizers of a transatlantic flight. The woman originally scheduled to be part of the team could not go, so would Amelia take her place? "How could I refuse such a shining adventure!" As the first woman to fly the Atlantic, she won the public's affection. The press dubbed her "Lady Lindy," a female Charles Lindberg.
FIRST TRANSATLANTIC FLIGHT
In 1932, one year after her flight as a passenger across the Atlantic, she made a transatlantic flight alone from Harbour Grace, Newfoundland to Ireland. It was a hazardous flight due to the fact that her altimeter wasn't working. She didn't know her altitude; how high she was above the ocean, but she arrived safely and was awarded many honors in Europe. She took off from Newfoundland, Canada, at 7:12 p.m. on May 20, in her Lockheed Vega. Her flight was filled with dangers, from rapidly changing weather to a broken altimeter so she could not tell how high she was flying, to gasoline leaking into the cockpit. At one point her plane dropped almost 3,000 feet (914 meters) and went into a spin (which she managed to pull out of) and flames were shooting out of the exhaust manifold. She brought her plane down on the coast of Ireland after a harrowing trip lasting 15 hours and 18 minutes The flight was the second solo flight across the Atlantic and the longest nonstop flight by a woman--2,026 miles (3,261 kilometers)--as well as the first flight across the Atlantic by a woman. President Herbert Hoover awarded her the National Geographic Society Medal on June 21, 1932, for her achievement, and the U.S. Congress awarded her the Distinguished Flying Cross, the first woman to receive such an honor. Earhart's accomplishment meant a great deal to the entire world, but especially to women, for it demonstrated that women could set their own course in aviation and other fields.
Her next major achievement was to set the women's nonstop transcontinental speed record. On August 24-25, 1932, she flew from Los Angeles, California, to Newark, New Jersey, in a record 19 hours, 5 minutes, flying a Lockheed Vega, also becoming the first woman to fly solo coast-to-coast. The next July she set a new transcontinental speed record, making the same flight in a record 17 hours, 7 minutes.
FIRST FEMEALE SOLO FLIGHT OVER THE PACIFIC
In January 1935, Earhart became the first woman to make a solo long-distance flight over the Pacific Ocean, flying from Honolulu, Hawaii, to San Francisco, California. This complicated flight in her second Lockheed Vega occurred in adverse weather conditions and demonstrated Earhart's courage as well as her stubbornness. She followed that flight with two more first solo flights--one on April 19-20 from Los Angles, California, to Mexico City, in 13 hours, 23 minutes and the second on May 8, 1935, from Mexico City to Newark, New Jersey, in 14 hours, 19 minutes.
AROUND THE WORLD!
She would not be the first to fly around the world. Famed pilot Wiley Post had done that, in 1933. But Amelia wanted to become the first woman to pilot a plane around the world. She and Putnam planned the expedition, taking care of all the many details. They were ready to go in 1937, with experienced airman and sailor Fred Noonan as navigator. (This was to be an around-the-world flight, not necessarily a solo flight.)
They took off from Oakland on March 17, 1937, and flew to Honolulu. Three days later, they took off from Honolulu, but one of the plane's tires blew out, forcing the flight to be grounded. In the process, the plane was damaged. The journey had to be postponed.
A few months later, they tried again, beginning this time from Miami, on June 1. This time, they met with success. This was not to be a nonstop flight. Earhart and Noonan planned to stop many times, for refueling; but their goal was to circle the globe. They stopped in South America, Africa, and India, before arriving in New Guinea on June 29. They had flown most of the way, 22,000 miles. Only 7,000 miles remained. However, those 7,000 miles would all be over the vast Pacific Ocean, which had few places to land if something went wrong.
They took off on July 7, intending to land on Howland Island, some 2,500 miles away. It was a tiny island, but it was plenty big enough to accommodate an airplane landing. They never made it. She had the plane refueled at Lae, and she and Noonan departed on July 2 for Howland Island; a tiny island in the Pacific with an area of slightly more than one-half a square mile. The Interior Department had constructed three runways for her landing. If she missed the island, she would not have enough fuel to get to Hawaii, which was 1600 miles to the east.
In some of the last transmissions they received from her, she said she was running low on fuel. Finally transmissions ceased altogether. A Naval message indicated she probably passed northwest of the island and missed it due to the glare of the rising sun. The winds were also stronger than expected and may have altered their course.
The last report anyone received from the plane was over the Nukumanu islands, about 800 miles from New Guinea. A U.S. Coast Guard ship was stationed at Howland Island, ready to guide Earhart to the island. But Earhart and Noonan never appeared.
The events surrounding their disappearance remain controversial to this day. What is known for sure is that sporadic radio communications were received from the plane about the time that it should have been close to Howland Island. What is not known at all is what happened to the plane or its occupants after that. Earhart and Noonan were never head from of again, and their plane was never found.
The U.S. Government spent $4 million searching for the plane. At that time, that was an extraordinary amount of money. U.S. Navy and Coast Guard ships searched the area thoroughly but no trace of the missing plane or its occupants was ever found. A search was started, but no sign of the plane was ever found. After sixteen days the Navy called off the search. Future searches using the most cutting-edge technology have failed to turn up any clues, either.
EXPLAINING THE MYSTERY
Over the years since the mysterious disappearance of Amelia Earhart in July of 1937, dozens of theories have emerged to explain what happened to Amelia Earhart when she missed Howland Island. The theory that Amelia simply ran out of fuel and crashed into the ocean is the least substanciated. A popular theory is that Amelia crashed on an atoll in the Marshall Islands and was picked up by the Japanese Navy. Others suggest that Amelia crashed on a small island to the south of Howland Island.
As early as 1944, stories began to surface by residents of the Marshall Islands about an American woman flier who had come down on a reef near Jaluit Island and was picked up by a Japanese ship. In 1960 a woman named Josephine Akiyama came forward with a story she said took place while she was living on Saipan (a small Pacific island). In 1937 Akiyama had seen two American flyers there, a man and a woman, who were being held by the Japanese. Saipan seems an unlikely candidate as an emergency landing site for the Electra, though, unless Noonan was very, very lost.
Amelia Earhart's initials were discovered in a prison cell on the walls of the Japanese Jail, at Garapan, Saipan, and were given to Tom Devine by William Grandt of Chicago who claims to have the original photo. The letters are not Japanese. Gradt said the photo was taken in 1944, and that he received it from Jose Deloen Aspiros, now deceased, when he visited Saipan in the late 1970s. The handwriting on the wall was first photographed in 1944 and was not translated until a woman from Colorado gave an interpretation of its mystic message. The initials "AE" are boldly clear. The arrow was interpreted as being one of the signs of the planet Mars. The "4" represents the planet Jupiter. The six horizontal lines are the six lines of "I Ching" from the ancient Chinese Book of Oracles. Within the six lines of I-Ching is the date "72" or July 2nd the date Earhart disappeared.
Fred Goerner, a CBS broadcaster, took the story seriously and traveled to Siapan, which was at that time under U.S. administration. He found a number of residents who remembered the flyers, though there seemed to be no official record of them. Some reports indicated that the flyers had been executed by the Japanese, something the government of Japan denied. Goerner hired divers to search the bottom of the Siapan harbor and they retrieved what looked like aircraft wreckage. The most interesting piece was what appeared to be an aircraft starter motor and generator. However ,careful analysis by the manufacturer proved it was not the one on board the Electra when it left Oakland.
More stories about Saipan emerged including a report from a man stationed on Saipan in 1945. He said he'd been shown graves on Saipan that reportedly belonged to the two mysterious flyers. Another expedition to Siapan recovered the remains of the bodies, but later examination ruled out that they were Earhart or Noonan.
Goerner heard other reports that Earhart's plane may have gone down in the Marshall Islands. The Marshall Islands are much closer to Howland than Saipan. U.S. Naval personnel stationed in the area during World War II reported hearing stories from the Islanders that were very similar to those told on Saipan: Two flyers, a man and a woman, crash landed and were taken captive by the Japanese. No proof emerged from these accounts either, though Goerner finally reached the conclusion that Earhart probably crashed in the Marshall Islands and was later held captive on Saipan.
In 1966, CBS Correspondent Fred Goerner wrote a book claiming Earhart and Noonan were captured and executed when their airplane crashed in the Saipan archipelago while it was under Japanese occupation.[94] Thomas E. Devine (who served in a postal Army unit) wrote Eyewitness: The Amelia Earhart Incident which includes a letter from the daughter of a Japanese police official who claimed her father was responsible for Earhart's execution. Former U.S. Marine Robert Wallack claimed he and other soldiers opened a safe on Saipan and found Earhart's briefcase. Former US Marine Earskin J. Nabers claimed that while serving as a wireless operator on Saipan in 1944, he decoded a message from naval officials which said Earhart's plane had been found at Aslito AirField that he was later ordered to guard the plane and witnessed its destruction.[95] In addition, in 1990, the NBC-TV series Unsolved Mysteries featured an interview with a Saipanese woman who claimed to have witnessed Earhart and Noonan's execution by Japanese soldiers. There has never been any corroboration for any of these claims.
A story about Amelia appeared in the American Weekly on September 10, 1944 after the island of Saipan was taken by the U.S. Marines. The article told how marines had found a photograph album with photos of Amelia.
Tapania Taiki, who lived on the island in the 1950s as a little girl, says she remembers an airplane wing on the reef near the village, and the elders told the kids to stay away from it because it had something to do with the ghosts of a man and a woman. Emily Sikuli, who lives in Fiji, left Nikumaroro in 1941, but says her father showed her airplane wreckage on the same part of the reef, and that human bones were found in the area.
Tom & Alana Campbell 5214 South 2nd Avenue Everett, Washington 98203-4113 Telephone (425) 252-2981
