Women Aviators (8 page)
Authors: Karen Bush Gibson
Amelia wasn't the best pilot of her generation, but she was one of the most courageous. As the first woman and second person in the world to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean, Amelia became even more famous. More important to her, she proved that a woman could pilot an airplane just as well as a man.
Months later, Amelia was setting distance and speed records in transcontinental flights. She also made a second, much better trip across the Atlantic and became the first person to cross the Atlantic twice. After conquering the Atlantic, she turned her sights on the Pacific, becoming the first person to fly solo from Hawaii to California, which she did on January 11-12, 1935. The trip was almost 400 miles (640 kilometers) farther than the flight across the Atlantic.
Twenty-seven years would go by before another woman would accomplish what Amelia tried: a flight around the world. That woman was Geraldine Mock, nicknamed “the Flying Housewife” by the media. More commonly known as Jerrie, she flew a single-engine Cessna 180 called the
Spirit of Columbus
on her historic flight.
Married to a pilot, Jerrie took flight lessons at the age of 37 and enjoyed flying with her husband. She took off on her trip on March 19, 1964, with only 750 flight hours logged. She faced hazardous weather and problems with the brakes and radio. Jerrie even accidently landed on a secret military base in Egypt. She completed her journey of 23,103 miles (37,173 kilometers) in 29 days, 11 hours, and 59 minutes. Jerrie went on to set many speed records over the next five years.
Throughout her life, Amelia supported other women and encouraged them to follow their dreams, whether they wanted to fly or do something else. As aviation editor at
Cosmopolitan
magazine, she recommended to readers that they learn to fly. To mothers, she advised, “Let your daughters fly.”
In 1935, Amelia became a visiting consultant at Purdue University, speaking on women's career opportunities. Purdue, supportive of her flying, created the Amelia Earhart Fund for Aeronautical Research and purchased a twin-engine Lockheed 10-E Electra, which would become a “flying laboratory.” This plane, which she took on her world trip, was equipped with the latest in aviation technology, including two 500-horsepower engines and communication equipment.
The search for Amelia and her navigator lasted 17 days, covering 250,000 square miles (650,000 square kilometers) at a cost of $4 million. No trace of them or the Lockheed Electra could be found. The government assumed the two were lost at sea.
People had theories about what had happened to Amelia and Fred, of course: They were spies and had completed their mission. They were living on an island. They had adopted new names and moved to another country. They had been captured and killed by the Japanese, who would later bomb Pearl Harbor and lead the United States into World War II.
More than 75 years later, no one is certain of Amelia's fate. Most experts now believe that her receiving antenna broke upon takeoff from New Guinea, which would explain why she couldn't hear transmissions from the US Navy and Coast Guard. Her disappearance remains one of the greatest unsolved mysteries of the 20th century.
Since Amelia's disappearance in the Pacific, many people have speculated about what her last minutes, hours, and days were like. One group investigating more than 75 years later is the International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery (TIGHAR). Its members believe that Amelia and her navigator were forced to find another location to land because of their low fuel supply. The theory, based on digital analysis of the radio signals, is that they landed on the coral reef of Gardner Island, now known as Nikumaroro Island. This is approximately 300 miles (480 kilometers) southeast of Howland Island. Ocean tides would have eventually swept the Lockheed Electra into the ocean, promptly sinking it.
On the 75th anniversary of Amelia's disappearance, the TIGHAR's Niku VII expedition left from Hawaii to search for the Lockheed Electra in the waters around Nikumaroro Island with high-tech equipment. The researchers at TIGHAR hoped to finally locate Amelia Earhart's airplane and perhaps answer some questions about her disappearance. After a 26-day expedition with sonar detection and high-definition, TIGHAR came up empty-handed. The mystery of Ameila Earhart's fate continues.
“If I should bop off, it'll be doing the thing that I've always most wanted to do,” she told her friend and fellow pilot Louise Thaden before her epic journey.
Amelia Earhart Birthplace Museum,
www.ameliaearhartmuseum.org
Amelia Earhart Official Site,
www.ameliaearhart.com
“The Earhart Project” on the International Group for Historical Aircraft Recovery website,
http://tighar.org
The Fun of It: Random Records of My Own Flying and of Women in Aviation
by Amelia Earhart (Kessinger Publishing, 2010)
Last Flight
by Amelia Earhart (Random House, reprinted 1999)
Letters from Amelia: An Intimate Portrait of Amelia Earhart
by Amelia Earhart and Jean L. Backus (Beacon Press, 1982)
20 Hrs., 40 Min.: Our Flight in the Friendship
by Amelia Earhart (National Geographic, reprinted 2003)
Women's Air Derby Winner
I
N THE 1930S, THE
B
ENDIX
Transcontinental Air Race from Cleveland to Los Angeles (which, for two years, started in New York) was considered the top prize for any pilot, male or female. The problem was that the annual race didn't allow women to race. The death of a female pilot in the 1933 Frank Phillips Trophy Race disturbed aviation's establishment, which insisted on banning women from competition. But the increasing numbers of determined women aviators made this ban difficult to keep.
Then, in the fifth year of the Bendix, the ban was lifted, and Amelia Earhart took fifth place. The following year, 1936, Amelia was joined in the quest by Laura Ingalls and Louise Thaden, with Blanche Noyes as copilot. The planes took off from New York on September 4, 1936. Louise and Blanche flew a Beechcraft
C17R Staggerwing biplane, a new plane from Beechcraft that was built more aerodynamically, with the lower wing staggered in front of the upper wing.
Louise and Blanche discovered almost immediately that their radio was out. They had no idea what position they were in as they flew across country. But Louise was soon forced to forget about the lack of communication: after they reached Albuquerque, strong headwinds and turbulence bounced their plane around and demanded all their attention.
When Louise and Blanche landed in Los Angeles, exhausted, they assumed they were in last place. Louise didn't even want to land; she wanted to keep flying. Then they goofed by coming across the finish line from the wrong direction. They had trouble seeing because of the afternoon sun and poor visibility due to a nearby forest fire. With everything that had gone wrong, they just wanted to hide, but their bright blue plane refused to fade into the background in front of the crowd of 15,000.
People had said that Louise and Blanche had about as much chance of winning as a “draft horse [had] of winning the Kentucky Derby.” But, on the ground in Los Angeles, the director of the National Air Races approached the women and told them, “I'm afraid you've won the Bendix race.” With no radio contact, they hadn't realized that they weren't last, let alone first.
Their win, at 14 hours and 55 minutes, meant Louise and Blanche received $7,000â$4,500 for placing first and a bonus of $2,500 for being the first women to finish. Laura Ingalls came in second place 45 minutes later.
It wasn't the first race Louise had won. In 1929, she flew a Travel Air B-4000 from Santa Monica, California, to Cleveland, Ohio, to win the first Women's Air Derby, better known as the Powder Puff Derby. Louise, the youngest of the contestants at age 23, beat favorites Amelia Earhart and Pancho Barnes with a time of 20 hours, 2 minutes, and 2 seconds and an average speed of just less than 136 miles per hour.
A former actress, Blanche Noyes switched to flying when her husband, an airmail pilot, introduced her to it. He bought Blanche her first plane and taught her to fly. When she soloed on February 15, 1929, she found something she loved more than acting. Five months later, she had her license. A month after that, she flew in the National Women's Air Derby.
Blanche flew as a demonstration pilot and for corporations in the first half of the 1930s, but she switched gears when her husband died in a crash in 1935. One of the five women chosen by Phoebe Omlie for the Air Marking Program, Blanche devoted much of her time to air safety and was the only woman allowed to fly government aircraft for a while. She received the Commerce Department's Gold Medal for her work.
Winning the first Women's Air Derby didn't come easily either. Louise experienced periods in her aircraft during which she was dizzy and her vision clouded. Soon after landing in Fort Worth, she fainted. It was determined that there was a problem with the exhaust systemâLouise had been breathing in carbon monoxide. Mechanics installed a pipe that would bring clean air into the plane, and Louise had to finish the race with her nose to the pipe.
