Amelia Earhart (1897 - 1939) was an American aviator, author and advocate for women in flight, and the first woman to fly solo and non-stop across the Atlantic Ocean. [1] She set a series of distance and altitude records, helped found an organisation of women pilots, and wrote best-selling accounts of her flights. [2] She disappeared over the central Pacific in July 1937 while attempting a circumnavigation of the globe, and was declared legally dead in 1939.
Early life
Amelia Mary Earhart was born on 24 July 1897 in Atchison, Kansas. [1] Her childhood was unsettled by her father's alcoholism and the family's frequent moves, and she attended high school in Chicago. During the First World War she worked as a nurse's aide with the Voluntary Aid Detachment in Toronto, where she watched Royal Flying Corps pilots train, and she later studied briefly at Columbia University.
In 1920 she took a ten-minute flight at an air show in California and resolved to learn to fly. She trained under the aviator Neta Snook, bought a small biplane she called The Canary, and in 1922 set a women's altitude record of about 14,000 feet. [2]
Atlantic flights and fame
In 1928 Earhart was invited to join a transatlantic flight as a passenger aboard the Friendship, becoming the first woman to cross the Atlantic by air. The publicity made her a national figure, and her account, 20 Hrs., 40 Min., appeared the same year. The project was organised by the publisher George P. Putnam, whom she married in 1931. [1]
Dissatisfied with having been carried rather than having flown, she made a solo crossing in May 1932, flying a Lockheed Vega from Newfoundland to a field near Culmore in Northern Ireland in under fifteen hours despite bad weather and mechanical problems. [3] She was the first woman, and the second person after Charles Lindbergh, to fly the Atlantic alone. Congress awarded her the Distinguished Flying Cross, and she also received the Harmon Trophy and the Gold Medal of the Society of Woman Geographers, and was made a Knight of the Legion of Honour by France.
Records and advocacy
Earhart went on to set further records, including the first solo flight from Hawaii to California in 1935 and solo flights from Los Angeles to Mexico City and from Mexico City to Newark. [2] She was a founder and the first president of the Ninety-Nines, an international organisation of licensed women pilots, and lectured and wrote widely in support of careers in aviation for women. She also held a position advising on careers for women at Purdue University, which helped fund her later aircraft.
Final flight
In 1937 Earhart set out to fly around the world close to the equator in a Lockheed Electra 10E, accompanied by the navigator Fred Noonan. After a first attempt ended in a ground accident in Hawaii, they departed eastward from Miami in June and completed most of the route. [1]
On 2 July 1937 they took off from Lae, New Guinea, for Howland Island, a small target in the central Pacific. Radio contact with the United States Coast Guard cutter Itasca was intermittent and the aircraft never arrived. An extensive search found no trace, and Earhart was declared dead in absentia on 5 January 1939. [3] The cause of the loss has never been established, and the case has generated continuing research and speculation.
Legacy
Earhart remains among the most widely recognised figures in aviation history, both for her flying records and for her public argument that women should have equal access to technical and professional careers. [2] She has been inducted into the National Aviation Hall of Fame and the National Women's Hall of Fame, and her writings remain in print. [1]
