East to the Dawn (67 page)

George did his best to throw them off: on November 22, accosted by a reporter, he baldly stated that Amelia was on a lecture tour of California and was “not contemplating any long flight.” In fact, of course, all the final decisions and fitting out were just about completed, as was the flight plan, which called for flying from Honolulu to California, since it was commonly accepted wisdom that it is easier to hit a continent than an island.

Ten days later, in California, Amelia had her picture taken with the Australian Charles Ulm who had been the navigator for Kingsford-Smith on the 1928 flight. Ulm was about to take off from Oakland bound for Honolulu with two in crew on the first leg of a flight to Australia. On December 3 Ulm did take off from Oakland—he disappeared to the west and was never seen again. The coast guard cutter
Itasca
was sent out to search and rescue the fliers, it spent weeks combing the most promising areas but found not a piece of his plane. That brought the total number of fliers killed flying that stretch of water to ten.

It became impossible to hide from reporters the fact that not just Amelia, George, Paul Mantz, and his wife Myrtle were sailing to Hawaii on the
Lurline,
but the plane and a mechanic as well. By December 18 George was admitting it. She “may” fly back, he grudgingly conceded.

Reporters met them in Honolulu, asking whether Amelia would fly to California. She answered coolly, “I thought I would do some flying over the Hawaiian Islands.” But then, as leis were placed around her neck, she was asked, “If you fly to the California coast will Mantz fly with you?”

That broke through her reserve. “If I fly to the coast I will not take a
cat
along,” she snapped back. They had her—they knew it was just a question of when.

Their headquarters was the home of Fleischman Yeast heir Chris Holmes, a friend of Paul Mantz's who lived on the beach at Waikiki in Honolulu. The absent owner had instructed his manager to put the facilities of the house and the culinary arts of his Chinese staff at the disposal of Amelia's entourage. Meanwhile, the U.S. Army was making sure everything was in readiness for her at Wheeler field. The facilities at Wheeler, in fact, had been put at her disposal; army mechanics, engineers, and guards tended to her plane from the end of December to January 11, when she took off, giving all possible support to Paul Mantz and mechanic Ernie
Tissot as they worked over the plane. Army personnel mowed a pathway on the unpaved field and placed white flags along its edge. As she was readying to depart on the flight, Major Everett Clark, commandant at Wheeler, “attested to the mechanical excellence of [the] plane.” In addition, Major Halstead Dorey, commander of the Hawaiian Division, accompanied by the acting commander of the Hawaiian Department, arrived and inspected it. The U.S. military wanted to make sure nothing bad happened to the heavily loaded plane. No other fliers were accorded such special treatment.

Not everyone, however, thought the flight was a good idea; the Ulm disaster had cast a pall on derring-do.
The Honolulu Star-Bulletin
thought the enterprise foolhardy. “There is nothing intelligent about flying solo from Hawaii to the mainland in a single-engined land plane, which is very poor equipment for a long across-water flight,” they wrote, claiming that her radio could only carry three hundred miles. To disprove it, Mantz took the plane up to an altitude of twelve thousand feet over Honolulu and established two-way voice communication with Kingman, Arizona.

There was also some question as to whether Amelia should have funded the flight with $10,000 from Hawaiian business interests—put up to promote good will and closer ties between Hawaii and the United States. The Hawaiian businessmen who were putting up the money were suddenly accused of trying to buy favorable tariffs for Hawaiian sugar. The last thing they expected (or needed) was adverse publicity. They had hoped the tie-in with Amelia would promote legislation that would bring Hawaii closer to the United States—something that was of the utmost importance to Hawaii, since it was not yet a state. Now, their influence was being called into question, on top of which, if something happened to Amelia, they would be blamed. They tried to renege. Four days before the flight, dressed in leather jacket and jodhpurs, Amelia drove in from Wheeler field to the posh Royal Hawaiian Hotel on Waikiki, marched into the dining room where the men were meeting, and blasted them: “Gentlemen, there is an aroma of cowardice in this air. You know as well as I do that the rumor is trash, but if you can be intimidated, it might as well be true. Whether you live in fear or defend your integrity is your decision. I have made mine. I intend to fly to California within this next week, with or without your support.”

They decided to stand by her. It was the first time that Amelia had ever been subjected to public criticism, and she took it hard. She later said that she felt “physical strain” during the flight that was “more difficult than
fatigue”—the only admission on record that outside opinion affected her. Once again, she left behind “popping off” letters, as she had before the Friendship flight—this time two perfectly proper and straightforward ones, everything spelled correctly, for as she knew, if she did “pop off,” they would go into the public domain.

Amelia's plane was still the Vega once owned by Elinor, now painted Fokker red with gold trim edged with black, so that NR 965Y looked very much like the Vega that had preceded it. Various other changes had been made. The engine was the 500-horsepower engine that had taken Amelia across the Atlantic in 1932, which she had removed from the Vega before it was donated to the Franklin Institute. The metal fuel lines were now encased in rubber to prevent leaks. The newest Hamilton “constant speed” controllable-pitch propeller, enabling a pilot to maintain constant engine revolutions irrespective of altitude, had been installed; and the wheel pants had been removed to reduce weight. Because of the radio a trailing wire antenna jutted out of the bottom center of the fuselage, and there was an antenna mast on each wingtip, as well as a centerline antenna ending at a short mast halfway back to the tail. Fuel tanks instead of passenger seats took up the interior of the fuselage, which, together with tanks installed on the wings, gave a total capacity of 520 gallons. Amelia sat on the left side of the cockpit, on a cushion; to her right was the radio, “a large black box, with the dials on top so I could reach them easily.” The radio and the generator that powered it weighed eighty pounds; the 50-watt radio, made by Western Electric, covered a range of 210 to 500 kilocycles. In the cockpit were also backup hand-pump handles with which Amelia could manually switch from one tank to another in case the automatic system failed. (It didn't.) There were also backup instruments; three clocks—one set at 12:00 so that she could see elapsed time—three compasses, and two altimeters.

Considering the added weight of the 520 gallons of gasoline she was carrying and the wetness of the field, she made a superb takeoff. The Vega tore down the muddy runway tail high and streaked into the air. George was relieved, but so weary when the takeoff was over that he remarked to no one in particular that he “would rather have a baby than go through this again.” The remark was overheard, misinterpreted (that he wanted Amelia home having babies), and given widespread media attention, much to his discomfiture.

Amelia took off at four thirty P.M. so that the flight would start and end in daylight. She was in the air 18 hours, 16 minutes—a huge stretch of time. Exactly one hour into the flight, she radioed, “Everything okay,”
and during the course of the flight sent out twenty-four similar messages, at a quarter to and a quarter past the hour. She never gave her position or course, evidently not wanting to give an approximation and not being able to chart it and fly at the same time. Her chart, actually, was some two and a half feet long and eight inches wide. It was marked off into sections, each section representing one hour's flying. At the end of each section were the compass headings she was meant to follow for the next hour.

Everyone was pulling for her: all ships traveling between Honolulu and the mainland that night were ablaze and kept on their searchlights, and she had a chart showing their course and probable position. When one saw her, it was prepared to radio her position to the world at large.

She tuned in to station KGU, the Honolulu commercial broadcasting station, and was rewarded with a complaint from her husband, waiting at the radio station (addressing her, as he usually did, by her initials): “A.E., the noise of your motor interferes with your broadcast. Will you please try to speak a little louder so we can hear you.” She said that hearing him “was really one of the high points of the flight.” It was another first—the first time there was two-way radio contact on a civilian flight.

“It was a night of stars,” she wrote, “of tropic loveliness. Stars hung outside my cockpit window near enough to touch.” During the flight she sipped hot chocolate, tomato juice, and water.

After the sun came up, fog rolled in, and after staring through fog for three hours, she said in one of her radio messages, “I am getting tired of this fog.” (The message was received as “I am getting tired,” which so alarmed listeners that a nurse and physician were dispatched to the airport, which would later annoy Amelia immensely.) After the morning fog dissipated, looking down at the water, she saw the Dollar Liner President
Pierce
—San Francisco bound, she knew, from Honolulu. She circled, lined herself up with the wake of the vessel, and noting that her course and the ship's course were the same, knew she was on target. A radio check with San Francisco giving the location of the ship as three hundred miles from San Franciso told her exactly how much farther she had to go. She came in low over the coast, flew straight in over San Francisco Bay, and landed.

Her eyes were bloodshot, which she attributed to a faulty ventilator (the code was to never admit you were tired), and when a policeman tried to shoo away reporters who were clamoring that they were on deadline and had to talk to her immediately, she was steady enough to stop him: “But officer,” she said, “deadlines are important.” And she went on answering questions—tired but still functioning. One reporter asked her if she was now ready to give up long-distance flying. “Not while there's life in the old horse left,” she replied. Her time, compared with Kingsford-Smith's,
was very slow, a personal disappointment, but no one cared. It was the first solo by man or woman, over that part of the Pacific.

The world went wild again. Even the staid old New York Times threw away its reserve and reached for Keats to sing her praises, exulting, “She now holds the fair planet in her hands.” A crowd estimated at between 10,000 and 14,000 waited for her at the Oakland airport. (Said Amelia later, “I thought there might be some kind of meet going on when I first saw it.”)

She flew briefly to Los Angeles, and when she returned to Oakland for the huge celebratory dinner being given in her honor, the navy sent up eleven planes to escort her down. President Roosevelt, the secretary of war, and the secretary of the navy sent greetings; Amelia was given a bracelet of California gold nuggets. Everyone of importance in the city was there, including former president Herbert Hoover. The Nation, acting a bit prim, grudgingly allowed as how $10,000 was not much for risking one's life to cross an ocean for the first time, that all she had agreed to do “against the shining background of that magnificent achievement, [was] parrot a puny phrase to the effect that Hawaii was part of the United States” (hard to argue with).

Eleanor Roosevelt was one of those absolutely dazzled by Amelia's latest exploit. She extended Amelia a carte blanche invitation to the White House. (“When you come to Washington will you and your husband if he is with you stay with us? Let us know as much ahead as you can.”) In the face of such honor, Amelia made a special detour to Washington on January 31 to breakfast with Eleanor and have a private audience with the president.

There was a moment just then, when Eleanor's career was sputtering and Amelia's career was so brilliant, that the president's wife, like every other American woman, looked to Amelia as a role model; she couldn't get enough of her. Indeed, a week after Amelia left for New England (she was addressing the joint legislatures of Vermont and Maine—at each state house she wound up with a stirring plea to build more airports), Eleanor was writing with more fervor than manners called for that Amelia was a perfect guest except in one respect: “you need not always feel that you have to be out for every meal. We all feel we did not see enough of you.” When Eleanor could catch her, she asked her for advice on furthering her own career, which at that point was not going as well as she thought it should. Woman's Home Companion had just dealt her the stunning blow of discontinuing her monthly column, a staple of the magazine since FDR became president. Her weekly newspaper column had not yet reached its later prominence. She was in search of a new, professional, effective agent.
Amelia, good wife and good friend, offered up George, who had just been separated from his job as head of the editorial board at Paramount Pictures in the wake of the firing of Emanuel Cohen, his boss and sponsor at the movie studio. “Would you like GP to try to find a substitute for the woman's magazine work you have been doing? He is in constant contact with writers and editors and other people.... I know he would be only too glad to stir up something interesting,” she wrote Eleanor. (To her mother she wrote, “GP has left Paramount and is in a state trying to decide what alley to run down.”) George, being inventive, entrepreneurial, and full of energy as well as at loose ends, took just a few days to come up with the idea of a weekly joint broadcast by Amelia and Eleanor—radio conversations “touching on matters of basic interest to American women today.” Irrepressible huckster that he was, he loved the challenge and offered himself up to be her agent and arrange it. Eleanor shot this down. (“I am not particularly anxious to get tied up for the whole summer, besides the fact that I have an agent who has more or less made my radio contacts.”)