Amelia Earhart was an American aviator and author who became one of the most admired pilots, especially after being the first woman to cross the Atlantic flying alone. It broke several records within aviation and is considered to have opened the doors to women who wanted to become professional aviators. In 1937 he was trying to go around the world aboard a plane and disappeared without a trace..
No accident clues were ever found, it is only known that Earhart was somewhere in the Pacific Ocean. The mystery surrounding his death has been the subject of many conspiracy theories.
Earhart became interested in aviation when he was very young and began taking flight lessons at the age of 24. She was the 16th woman to receive a pilot's license in the United States in 1922.
She also supported the passage of the Equal Rights Amendment and was a member of the National Women's Party. She demonstrated her liberal view of marriage when she chose to continue using her last name instead of her husband's after her wedding to George P. Putnam..
Article index
Amelia Mary Earhart was born on July 24, 1897 in Atchinson, Kansas, United States. She was the daughter of Samuel Stanton Earhart, a lawyer, and his wife Amelia Otis. Amelia Earhart's maternal family was one of the most important in her hometown.
He had a sister two years younger named Grace Muriel. The Earharts' mother did not want to provide them with a conventional upbringing in which they would be taught to be ideal future homemakers.
Amelia Earhart liked to spend time "exploring" within her neighborhood. The activities she carried out with her sister ranged from climbing trees to hunting rats, something rare among girls of her time..
In 1907 the Earhart family moved to Iowa because of Amelia's father's work issues. The girls stayed with their grandparents until 1909, until then they had received education at home, but when they arrived in Iowa they were enrolled in a public school.
Amelia Earhart's grandmother passed away in 1911 and left her mother a significant inheritance, but within a fund to prevent everything received from being spent immediately. Three years later Samuel Earhart's alcoholism caused him to lose his job and they moved to Minnesota..
In 1915 Amelia Earhart was enrolled in Saint Paul Central High School for secondary education. That same year, the girl's father was fired from his new job, so her mother decided to take the girls to live in Chicago..
Amelia Earhart decided to locate a high school that had a good science education program, which led her to choose Hyde Park High School, from which she graduated from high school in 1916..
He briefly studied at the Ogontz School in Pennsylvania, but dropped out. At that time Amelia's sister lived in Toronto, Canada, and she decided to visit her.
During World War I, Earhart became interested in helping soldiers returning wounded from the battlefield, so she began training with the Red Cross to be a nursing assistant..
She began working as a volunteer at the Spadina Military Hospital and was in charge of preparing food for some patients, as well as supplying medicines. In 1918, cases of the pandemic known as the "Spanish flu" began to appear in Toronto..
Earhart caught influenza (Spanish flu) due to his constant contact with patients at the health center where he worked. Symptoms include pneumonia and maxillary sinusitis.
At that time there were no antibiotic treatments, so she had to undergo surgery to try to decongest her sinuses. Recovery was slow and she spent almost a year resting.
Later, Amelia Earhart enrolled at Columbia University in New York and took medical studies courses, but the following year she dropped out to be with her parents in California..
Although Earhart had been to airshows before, it was in 1920 that aviation became one of his passions. She attended an airfield with her father and on that occasion she boarded a plane piloted by Frank Hawks for the first time..
Although the experience was brief, since the flight lasted 10 minutes, Amelia Earhart realized that she was called to become an aviator. He took various jobs and raised a thousand dollars to pay for flying lessons.
He began his training under the guidance of aviator Anita Snook at Kinner Field, California, during January 1921. Earhart got used to the hard work of an airfield and months after beginning his training he bought his first plane a Kinner Airset biplane..
Earhart's rise as a female aviation star began on October 22, 1922, when she reached a height of 4,300 m in her biplane, setting a record for female pilots..
Amelia Earhart obtained her pilot license in May 1923, the number assigned to her was 6017 and it was endorsed by the International Aeronautical Federation. She was the 16th woman within the United States to receive an aviation permit..
Amelia Earhart's mother, who managed the family inheritance, made bad investments with the funds and they were quickly depleted during the 1920s. The young pilot had to sell the two planes she owned at the time and bought a Kissel Speedster.
The sinus problems that Earhart had suffered from since she was infected with the Spanish flu resurfaced in 1924 and she was operated once more. That same year her parents divorced and she returned to her studies at Columbia University.
Months later she switched to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and began working as a teacher. In 1925 Earhart found employment as a social worker and moved to Medford, Massachusetts..
Amelia Earhart joined the American Aeronautical Society of Boston, where she collaborated with the operations of Dennison Airport and starred in the first official flight that departed from there in 1927. She promoted aviation among the city's media and began to be seen as a celebrity local.
The first to cross the Atlantic Ocean in a plane was Charles Lindbergh in 1927, which aroused the interest of the whole world and especially of female aviators. Amy Guest was the promoter for a woman to be on board a transatlantic flight.
In April 1928, Earhart was invited to be the first woman to be aboard a plane across the Atlantic and she accepted. The flight was carried out in a Fokker F.VIIb / 3m on June 17, 1928, the pilot was Wilmer Stultz and the co-pilot Luis Gordon, Earhart was a passenger.
According to Earhart herself, she had no merits in that flight, since she did not operate the plane. However, the issue prompted her to become one of the faces of international female aviation in the media..
The media dubbed Amelia Earhart "queen of the air" and compared her to Lindbergh. Much of the publicity she received was the result of the efforts of George Palmer Putnam, who was one of the coordinators of the transatlantic flight and wanted the pilot to publish a book.
Earhart dedicated himself to lecturing throughout the United States, became the image of various brands and began to prepare his book, which was published in 1928 under the title of 20 Hrs, 40 Mins.
Thanks to his media popularity, Earhart regained an economic position that allowed him to dedicate himself to aviation. In 1929 she began promoting commercial flights during the early days of airlines, especially from her position as deputy editor of Cosmopolitan.
She also went on to serve as vice president of National Airways, which later became Northeast Airlines based in Boston, Massachusetts. She also began competing with other pilots in the Women's Air Derby (1929)..
In the late twenties of the twentieth century, Amelia Earhart also began meeting with a group of female pilots who decided to take the name of The Ninety-Nine (The Ninety-Nines). They tried to support and promote the female community within aviation.
Amelia Earhart had been engaged to a Boston engineer named Samuel Chapman, but in 1928 she decided to break the promise of marriage. She formed a bond with her publisher, George P. Putnam, with whom she spent a lot of time when she was working on her book..
Putnam was divorced and proposed to Earhart several times until she agreed. The wedding took place in early February 1931.
Amelia Earhart considered herself an independent woman and valued her freedom, which is why she made it clear to Putnam before the wedding that she did not want to be locked in a cage, no matter how beautiful..
The couple managed to view their union in a much more egalitarian way than was common at the time. Earhart decided to keep his last name after marriage, something that was not customary in the United States..
That same year, Earhart broke the altitude record for a pilot aboard an autogyro by reaching 5,613 m..
From the moment Amelia Earhart had first crossed the Atlantic Ocean as a passenger in 1928 she made it clear that the credit was not hers. However, it was decided to prove that women were capable of achieving the same achievements as their male counterparts..
So on May 20, 1932, Earhart left Harbor Grace, Newfoundland for Paris, France. The pilot was aboard a Lockheed Vega 5B with a turbine and made the trip alone, as Charles Lindbergh had done long ago.
Earhart's flight lasted a total of 14 hours 56 minutes and landed in Culmore, Northern Ireland. The aviator faced adverse weather conditions and some mechanical failures that forced her to change her itinerary bound for continental lands..
In fact, Earhart's landing occurred in a grassland and was seen by two locals who asked her if she had flown from afar and she replied: "From America.".
Her fame was already great at that time, but it increased as she became the first woman to fly an airplane alone across the Atlantic Ocean..
Earhart earned a Medal of Honor from the National Geographic Society. She also received the Legion of Honor awarded by France and was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross of the United States Congress..
In early 1935 Amelia Earhart became the first person to fly solo from Hawaii to California. He also traveled from Los Angeles to Mexico City that same year and from that town he left for New Jersey..
The aviator also continued her passion for competition and participated in the Bendix Trophy Race (1935). At that time his new goal began: to go around the entire world as close to the equator as possible..
Earhart and her husband decided to move to California and bought a home in the San Fernando Valley. Putnam began working at Paramount Pictures and, while they remodeled their new home, they continued to live rented in the Universal Pictures residential complexes..
From 1936 the pilot began to plan her world trip. Earhart planned to travel approximately 47,000 km in a custom built Lockheed Electra 10E to the mechanical specifications required by his project..
He made an attempt in March 1937 in which several people traveled together with Earhart, but due to technical problems they canceled it.
Amelia Earhart left Miami on June 1, 1937 with a crewman named Fred Noonan. They made some stops in South America, Africa and Asia, until they arrived in New Guinea on the 29th of the same month..
Up to that moment, it traveled almost 35,000 of the 47,000 km that were on its flight itinerary. On July 2, he continued his journey from Lae Aerodrome at midnight.
To help with its location, two US Navy ships positioned themselves on the route that the Earhart flight was to take. Communications had serious problems almost from the start of the flight, in addition there were other problems with navigation.
When Earhart and Noolan reached their scheduled destination, the vicinity of Howland Island, they were unable to establish contact with the ship. Itasca, which should provide him with the necessary coordinates to orient himself.
On July 2, 1937, Earhart transmitted a last communication in which he announced that they were low on fuel and apparently about 100 miles from Howland Island..
Locate and rescue operations began as soon as the Itasca he knew that Earhart had lost total contact. Nine ships and 66 aircraft were used to search for Earhart and Noolan, but the search was canceled on July 18, 1937..
Although George Putnam continued to try to find Earhart privately, with a team hired by him, they did not bear fruit either and operations were stopped in October of that year..
Amelia Earhart was officially declared dead on January 5, 1939 by the Supreme Court of Los Angeles, California, United States. The circumstances of the disappearance of the pilot and her partner were never clarified.
Despite this, a series of urban myths were created around Earhart: one of them is that the plane hit the water and sank, another that they could land on a nearby island, but that because they were not found they could not survive.
It was even speculated that Earhart and his partner could have been captured and killed by the Japanese or that the aviator returned to the United States incognito and changed her identity..
Yet No Comments