Amelia Earhart vs. the Atlantic Ocean

The aviator waves to the crowd after arriving in Londonderry, Ireland.

(Bettmann/Corbis)

“I just don’t think about crackups,” Amelia Earhart said in the spring of 1932. Yesterday marked the seventy-fifth anniversary of the day she took off from Harbour Grace, Newfoundland, hoping to become the first woman to fly alone across the Atlantic. In the five years since Charles Lindbergh’s first flight, 20 pilots, including 3 women, had died trying to cross the Atlantic. Nonetheless at 7:12 p.m., the 34-year-old Earhart, who said she had a “horror of growing old,” soared into the air and headed east into a darkening sky.

She was already famous. Following the eruption of hero worship that had accompanied Lindbergh’s feat, those who controlled what the historian Frederick Lewis Allen called “the machinery of ballyhoo” vied to feed the public appetite for aviation exploits. One of those promoters was George P. Putnam, whose company, G. P. Putnam’s Sons, had published Lucky Lindy’s book. Putnam envisioned a Lady Lindy as the next big thing. He chose Earhart. She fit the bill exactly.

To begin with, she was a genuine aviator, hooked since her first flight in 1920, when she was 23. “As soon as we left the ground,” she wrote, “I knew I myself had to fly.” She had earned money to buy a plane by driving a gravel truck. She was a wholesome young woman, as modest and unassuming as Lindbergh himself. She even looked like the slender ex–airmail pilot. She wore her hair bobbed and artfully disarranged and flashed a shy but infectious smile.

In the spring of 1928, Earhart signed on to be a passenger on a flight across the ocean, along with a pilot, Wilmer Stultz, and copilot, Lou Gordon. Her feat created a sensation, though she admitted that she had done none of the flying. “I was just baggage,” she said of the 20-hour trip to the Welsh coast. Still, as the first woman to cross the Atlantic by air, she became an instant celebrity.

By 1931 she had written her own book and trudged through endless, exhausting lecture tours. She worked for one of the earliest passenger airlines, Transcontinental Air Transport, promoting the advantages of commercial air travel. Passengers, three-quarters of whom suffered air sickness in the fume-filled cabins, needed encouragement to embrace the new form of transportation.

She had married George Putnam, albeit while insisting that she keep her own name and maintain her career. An ardent feminist, she had long kept scrapbooks of clippings that heralded accomplishments by women. She campaigned vigorously for a constitutional amendment guaranteeing women equal rights.

The months she spent on the lecture circuit cut into her time in the air, and some questioned her ability as a pilot. Other women had chalked up equally impressive aviation achievements, but they lacked the promotional momentum of the flier The New York Times insisted on calling Mrs. Putnam.

Now she was getting her chance to prove her ability as an aviator. The challenges came quickly. Fog set in, and when she climbed to avoid it, the plane’s wings began to ice up. She ran into a severe storm a few hours after embarking. She descended until she could see waves below her, but at that level her instruments didn’t work. Her altimeter malfunctioned, and she could no longer gauge her speed or plot her course. Early in the flight, a crack in the manifold sent flames blazing from the engine’s exhaust and began to shake the whole plane. Her cabin stank of fuel; gasoline dripped down the back of her neck.

Hopelessly off course, she had no hope of reaching Paris, her intended destination, and she was lucky to spot the coast of Ireland just after dawn. She followed a railroad line inland and landed on a farm field outside the city of Londonderry.

The public reaction to her feat was overwhelming. She toured Europe and hobnobbed with royalty, accumulating awards and adulation everywhere she went. More important for her personally, she had established her credentials as a pilot. She was no longer Lady Lindy but an aviator in her own right.

She returned home to a blizzard of ticker tape in New York. She had modestly suggested that officials cancel the parade and use the money to provide relief for the unemployed, but Americans pummeled by the Depression wanted heroes as well as handouts.

She continued to promote aviation and to set flying records. She was a founder of the Ninety-Nines, an organization of women pilots that continues today. She used her fame to advance the cause of women’s rights, noting in a magazine article that she had flown the Atlantic to prove that “women can do most things men can do.”

Her life became a “routine,” as she called it: “I make a record and then I lecture on it. That’s where the money comes from. Until it’s time to make another record.” She understood that if the records didn’t keep coming, an aviator’s popularity would dwindle.

She decided that her last feat would be to circumnavigate the globe at the equator, a major and expensive project that would boost her once more into the limelight. She took off from Oakland in March 1937 flying west. After mechanical problems and a botched takeoff in Hawaii, she was forced to postpone the attempt.

On May 21 of that year she climbed into the sky again, flying east this time. Accompanied by a navigator, Fred Noonan, she flew her twin-engine Electra to South America and then across to Africa. With stops along the way, she managed to reach New Guinea by the end of the month.

She took off for the last time on July 2, headed for Howland Island in the Pacific. Partly because of radio trouble, she was unable to spot the two-mile long sliver of sand in the wide sea. Those waiting heard her final transmissions but could not contact her. Her plane disappeared.

“When I go,” she had stated, “I’d like best to go in my plane. Quickly.” She vanished just before her fortieth birthday.

—Jack Kelly writes often for American Heritage magazine and is the author of Gunpowder: Alchemy, Bombards, and Pyrotechnics—A History of the Explosive That Changed the World (Basic Books).