Chapter III: Part THREE: The Last Flight

1. _Crack-up in Hawaii_ 141

2. _New Route, New Preparations_ 154

3. _Miami to Africa_ 160

4. _Africa to India_ 171

5. _India to Australia_ 180

6. _New Guinea to Howland Island_ 190

7. _The Disappearance and the Search_ 200

8. _The Fog of Rumors_ 208

9. _The Light of Fact: A Mystery Solved?_ 211

_Record Flights_ 219

_Awards and Decorations_ 221

_Bibliography_ 223

_A Note About Sources_ 227

_Acknowledgments_ 229

_Illustrations_

_following page 46_

Amelia Earhart

AE’s parents

AE, the fledgling flier

AE’s birthplace

AE after her first solo in an autogiro

Learning to fly

AE and Lady Heath’s Avro Avian

AE at Southampton

AE signs her autograph

AE after her transatlantic solo

AE and the Lindberghs

Famous fliers

AE, GP, and the King and Queen of Belgium

AE and President Hoover

The Lockheed Electra

Before taking off for Honolulu, 1937

Fragment of wood possibly associated with AE’s last flight

Josephine Blanco Akiyama

AE and Fred Noonan on the last flight

_Author’s Note_

There are many women who wish they were men; few men who wish they were women. Amelia Earhart did not want to be a man--she was the essence of femininity; but she did want to do many of the things men can do--and a few of the things men cannot do. For her, the greatest challenge in the world of men was the ability to fly, and this ability in AE (as she liked to be called) was the flowering of an attitude that took root early in her childhood. Having learned to fly, she was not content, however, simply to be able to fly; she wanted to be “the first to do,” to set new records, to prove that women could try things as men have tried.

Amelia Earhart was one of America’s great heroines; her life was in many ways unique. She was one of a kind, and the fabric of her life was woven of strands that are rarely produced: she had an insatiable curiosity about everything in life--ideas, books, people, places, mechanical things; she loved all kinds of sports and games, especially those “only for boys”; she fidgeted with an implacable unrest to experiment, to try new things; she teemed with a zest for living, paradoxically entwined with a gnawing and pervasive longing to be alone; and, finally, she brooded with a fatalism toward death, which she met with a tremendous will to live.

Of such strands was the fabric made that produced the public figure acclaimed throughout the world; the woman who succeeded in such incredible achievements as flying solo across the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, and then resented the publicity which they brought; the girl who simply wanted to do because she wanted to demonstrate the equality of her sex with that of the opposite in all fields of constructive endeavor. But what she wanted to do could not be done simply, and in that complexity lies the mystery of a human soul and the fascination of a woman who dared the dominion of that soul.

My research into the life of Amelia Earhart led me into a study of many lives and of the period in which they were lived; it has also led me thousands of miles across these United States and occasioned from me hundreds of letters of inquiry. I pored over books, magazines, and newspapers, and from them gained the basic story of the woman flier’s life; but it was the people I interviewed and wrote to, who answered my many and persistent questions and provided me with their private letters, pictures, and other memorabilia, who in the last analysis made the writing of this biography an enjoyable undertaking.

My purpose in choosing the narrative-dramatic-expository technique of the modern biographer in telling my story was a simple one: while I used many of the resources of the objective scholar in gathering and marshaling my materials and in establishing their accuracy, I tried to show the novelist’s interest in background influences, in hidden motives, in the complex nature of character. In short, I wanted to translate an intriguing woman out of aviation terms into human terms.

PAUL L. BRIAND, JR.
Captain, USAF

_United States Air Force Academy Colorado_

When time has smoothed out somewhat the rough sorrows
of the present, there will be another book--the full
story of Amelia Earhart’s life. That’s a project for
a tomorrow of retrospect.

--GEORGE PALMER PUTNAM, 1937

_Introduction[B] by
Colonel Hilton H. Railey,
United States Army (retired)_

On the pivot of my casual conversation with George Palmer Putnam turned the career of Amelia Earhart, her transformation from social worker at a Boston settlement house to a world figure in aviation.

If it had not been for that conversation with Mr. Putnam the chances are that Amelia Earhart would still have become a constructive factor in the industry to which she was so devoted; and that she would be alive today.

In the spring of 1928 I dropped in to see Putnam in New York. He told me that Commander Byrd had recently sold his trimotored Fokker to “a wealthy woman who plans to fly the Atlantic.” He did not know her name or anything more about it, except that he believed floats were being fitted to the plane at the East Boston airport.

“It’d be amusing to manage a stunt like that, wouldn’t it?” he remarked. “Find out all you can. Locate the ship. Pump the pilots.”

In Boston I cornered Wilmer (Bill) Stultz, the pilot, and Lou Gordon, his copilot and mechanic. Stultz admitted he was getting ready for a transatlantic flight, but maintained that he knew only his backer’s attorney, David T. Layman.

In New York, some days later, I got in touch with him and learned that Mrs. Frederick E. Guest of London and New York, whose husband had been Secretary of State for Air in Lloyd George’s cabinet, was the mysterious sponsor who had planned to be the first of her sex to fly the Atlantic. Her family, said Mr. Layman, was much concerned. Soon it was agreed that if I could find the “right sort of girl” to take her place Mrs. Guest would yield.

When I returned to Boston I telephoned Rear Admiral Reginald K. Belknap, retired.

“I know a young social worker who flies,” he said. “I’m not sure how many hours she’s had, but I do know that she’s deeply interested in aviation and a thoroughly fine person. Call Denison House and ask for Amelia Earhart.”

Guardedly, when Miss Earhart came on the wire, I inquired whether she would like to participate in an important but hazardous flight. I had to come out with it because she had declined an interview until I stated the nature of my business. That afternoon, accompanied by Miss Marion Perkins, head worker at Denison House, she appeared at my office.

At sight convinced that she was qualified as a person, if not as a pilot, I asked forthwith:

“How would you like to be the first woman to fly the Atlantic?”

She asked for details, whatever I was at liberty to tell her. Miss Earhart had owned several planes and had flown more than five hundred hours. She said the role of passenger did not appeal to her much, and hoped that, weather conditions permitting, she could take her turn at the controls. At that time, however, she was unable to fly with the aid of instruments alone, and her experience with trimotored ships had been inconsequential.

In the light of subsequent events, in the tragic shadow of the last, I quote a letter addressed to me by Miss Earhart on May 2, 1928:

It is very kind of you to keep me informed, as far as you are able,
concerning developments of the contemplated flight. As you may
imagine, my suspense is great indeed.

Please, however, do not think that I hold you responsible, in any
way, for my own uncertainty. I realize that you are now, and have
been from the first, only the medium of communication between me
and the person, or persons, who are financing the enterprise. For
your own satisfaction may I add, here, that you have done nothing
more than present the facts of the case to me. I appreciate your
forbearance in not trying to “sell” the idea, and should like you
to know that I assume all responsibility for any risks involved.

Some weeks after Mrs. Guest had retired in Miss Earhart’s favor, my wife, in daily touch with our secret preparations, broached the subject and, woman to woman, urged her to back out if she felt the slightest degree uneasy. Her reply was characteristic:

“No, this is the way I look at it: my family’s insured, there’s only myself to think about. And when a great adventure’s offered you--you don’t refuse it, that’s all.”

At Mrs. Guest’s request, Mr. Putnam agreed to act as the “backer” of the flight. It was at Miss Earhart’s request, primarily, that I agreed to see her through the rumpus in Europe. About the middle of May I set out for London. Mrs. Guest had preceded us.

Stultz and Gordon, the press believed, were Byrd’s men, grooming the giant Fokker, named the _Friendship_ by Mrs. Guest, for the trip to the South Pole.

Toward noon on June 17 the _Friendship_ cracked the ill luck which had glued her pontoons to the bay at Trepassey, Newfoundland, for more than two weeks. News of the take-off was flashed to the world.

Early the next morning we heard that the _Friendship_ had circled the S.S. _America_, a few hundred miles out, to get her bearings; silence through the night had meant only that her radio was out of commission. After some hours I received direct word from Gordon that they had come down safely at Burry Port, Wales. I telegraphed them to remain aboard ship until I arrived by flying boat from Southampton.

That afternoon, landing near the _Friendship_, I caught a glimpse of Miss Earhart seated in the doorway of the fuselage.

“Hello!” she said.

After a flight of twenty hours and forty minutes they were all dog tired, but there was something else in Miss Earhart’s expression--disappointment.

“What’s the matter?” I asked. “Aren’t you excited?”

“Excited? No. It was a grand experience, but all I did was lie on my tummy and take pictures of the clouds. We didn’t see much of the ocean. Bill did all the flying--had to. I was just baggage, like a sack of potatoes.”

“What of it? You’re still the first woman to fly the Atlantic and, what’s more, the first woman pilot.”

“Oh, well, maybe someday I’ll try it alone.”

The next morning we boarded the _Friendship_ and flew to Southampton, where, for the first time, Miss Earhart met Mrs. Guest, to whom she owed the position which, thereafter strengthened by her own steady hands, she was to turn to such brilliant account.

As Miss Earhart’s escort, I felt increasing pride in her natural manner, warmed, as it was, by humor and grace. Whether confronted by dozens of cameramen demanding over and over, “A great big smile, please!” or asked to wave to crowds (a gesture she used sparingly); whether laying a wreath at the Cenotaph or before a statue of Edith Cavell; whether sipping tea with the Prime Minister and Lady Astor at the House of Commons or talking with Winston Churchill, she remained herself, serious, forthright, with no bunk in her make-up.

Even in those days I sensed that for all her lack of ostentation she would yet write drama in the skies; her simplicity would capture people everywhere, her strength of character would hold her on her course; in calm pursuit of an end not personal she would achieve greatness. Above all, she had a quality of imaginative daring that was to wing her like an arrow.

Aboard the mayor’s boat, _Macom_, during Miss Earhart’s welcome in the harbor at New York, Commander Byrd told me that he needed help in the financing of his projected expedition to the Antarctic and urged me to join him as soon as I could cut loose from the _Friendship_’s show. After a day or two I did.

In the years that followed, with pride and sure knowledge of Amelia Earhart’s motivations, but with a tinge of fear as to the outcome, I watched her gain distinction in aviation.

Genuinely as a tribute to her sex rather than for her own glorification, she accepted the honors that accrued; for the participation of women in aviation, which at all times she strove to encourage and pace, was the obsession which lured her to her death.

After she had flown the Atlantic as the first woman passenger, it was inevitable that she should attempt to fly it alone. Having done so, having established, seriatim, transcontinental records of one kind and another, there remained the Pacific.

Long before she mentioned it, I knew that next, and perhaps fatally, must come her globe-circling adventure. Why--when even to her it must have seemed a stunt without constructive benefit to the aeronautical industry--did she attempt that hazardous expedition?

She had to. She was caught up in the hero racket that compelled her to strive for increasingly dramatic records, bigger and braver feats that automatically insured the publicity necessary to the maintenance of her position as the foremost woman pilot in the world. She was a victim of an era of “hot” aeronautics that began with Colonel Lindbergh and Admiral Byrd and that shot “scientific” expeditions across continents, oceans, and polar regions by dint of individual exhibition.

[B] Reprinted by permission of Colonel Hilton H. Railey and the
North American Newspaper Alliance.