Category Flying and Gliding

What happened on that final flight? Following are the theories—ranging from most probable to highly unlikely—behind the disappearance of Amelia Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan. Which one do you believe—or could there be still another explanation?

• Earhart and Noonan ran out of gas and ideas. After nearly 20 hours of flying, Earhart simply couldn’t find Howland Island, which would have been a speck of land in a trackless ocean. She was forced to ditch the plane into the sea, and was killed or drowned in the crash or managed to scramble into a life raft before dying of exposure.

• Earhart and Noonan were in no condition to continue flying. There’s no doubt that Earhart was exhausted after she and Noonan had flown 22,000 miles around the globe to reach Lae. At every stop they had been hounded by reporters, fascinated gawkers, and clumsy customs procedures. On top of all

that, Earhart might have been pregnant at the time; another theory goes that she may have been suffering from premature menopause. On top of those mutually exclusive possibilities is that Noonan may have been drinking again, and may have been in no condition to navigate a plane to a pinpoint target in a vast ocean.

• Earhart was on a spy mission. President Franklin D. Roosevelt badly wanted to know what the Japanese were up to in the South Pacific as the Land of the Rising Sun became increasingly hostile to American ally China. The theory goes that he recruited Earhart to photograph Japanese ship movements, perhaps causing her to stray off course and get lost. Conspiracists say the unbelievably long “search mission” provided cover for more military spying.

• Earhart became a propaganda tool. Captured by the Japanese during a surveillance mission, Earhart was brought to the Japanese mainland and forced to broadcast to American forces during World War II under the name “Tokyo Rose.”

• Earhart died of disease. Forced down on the island of Saipan, then controlled by the Japanese, Earhart died of dysentery and Noonan was beheaded. A different slant on that theory goes that Earhart survived the crash and the Japanese authorities, married a native, and lived happily in anonymity.

• Earhart’s navigator missed Howland Island and drifted to Nikumaroro Island, 425 miles southeast. There, after ditching on a reef, the ill-fated pair succumbed to thirst and tropical heat.

• The Roosevelt administration hid Earhart and Noonan on Britain’s Hull Island. A lost-at-sea story was concocted to cover a spy mission. Both aviators died in hiding.

• She lived out her life in Saipan. One disappearance theory holds that Earhart and Noonan purposely flew into Japanese-controlled territory around the islands of Micronesia in an attempt to spy on Japanese activity around Truk Island. The Japanese captured them and held them captive on Saipan, where both later died.

• She lived out her life in New Jersey. This theory is one of the most outlandish, as Earhart was a very well-known celebrity who would be recognized instantly wherever she went.

The world flight was heavily reported but mostly uneventful until Earhart arrived in Lae, Papua New Guinea. Pictures show an exhausted Amelia; Noonan might have slid back into the bottle. Whatever the facts, and they are maddeningly sketchy, Earhart and Noonan took off from Lae for a flight into a historical void. After more than 20 hours of flying toward a refueling stop on tiny Howland Island, Earhart and Noonan turned from celebrities into a decades-longcaM. se celebre. Amid spotty radio reception and a navigation-obscuring overcast, Earhart and Noonan disappeared without a trace. A search began that was so large and so drawn out as to take on a life of its own in the minds of Earhart mystery buffs. Many accused President Roosevelt and some of his advisors of using the search as a fig leaf for spying on the Japanese on behalf of China, a U. S. ally.

One great challenge remained for all flyers, men and women: Hying around the world at its greatest distance—the equator. In 1937, backed, and some say prodded, by her publicity-savvy publisher husband George Putnam, Earhart took off on a journey westward from Oakland, California. Putnam was already prepared to cash in on his wife’s flight. His plans included a lucrative lecture circuit after her return, book and magazine deals, and hundreds of “First Day Covers” on board her flight to be sold to avid stamp collectors later. But this attempt ended in a crash when Amelia botched a takeoff from Honolulu on the second leg of the journey. The flight began again later that year, this time heading eastward from Miami.

On board for her world-circling flight was navigator Fred Noonan. Noonan was a former sailor and one-time navigation instructor for Pan American Airways, an airline that flew long international routes every day, including some of the very same hops that Earhart would fly. Few could outnavigate Fred Noonan, but few could outdrink him, either. His reputation as a drunk nearly cost him the job as Amelia’s navigator and has been invoked frequently in the conjecture over what led to their disappearance.

Amelia Earhart was born on July 24, 1897, in Atchison, Kansas, which still regards her roots there as one of its greatest points of pride. She grew up in solid middle – class surroundings and had her mind set on a career in medicine. Like flying, practicing medicine was regarded as a man’s domain, but Earhart seemed willing, if not eager, to press on into arenas that were hostile to women. Her career goals were sidetracked in 1921 when she learned to fly from an eccentric woman pilot named Anita Snook, and then bought her first plane with money from her father.

Within a year, she had set a record by reaching 14,000 feet during a flight, and was already planning to capitalize on the publicity that woman flyers of her day could attract. In 1928, she became the first woman to fly the Atlantic. Her promoters dubbed her the “commander” of the flight despite the fact that the plane was actually piloted and navigated by two men. Amelia was no more than a passenger.

Amelia, her pride pricked by her passive role in the 1928 flight, crossed the Atlantic again in 1932, this time solo. Especially after the second Atlantic crossing, Earhart didn’t discourage comparisons between herself and the laconic Lindbergh. In fact, her short-bobbed hair and her boyish aviator’s garb made the comparisons to Lindbergh even more apt.

At about the same time that Lindbergh was emerging as a media favorite, another figure was beginning to appear on the aviation scene. Amelia Earhart, a tough – minded former nurse with a nose for newsreel cameras and an instinct for publicity, was drawing the attention of flyers and celebrity-hounds alike. With a combination of

scripted events and legitimate Hying moxie, Amelia Earhart emerged as a media darling with a reputation for daring flying.

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Lindbergh’s tame was accompa­nied by tragedy. On March I, 1932, his infant ton Charles Jr. was kidnapped from the New Jersey home where Charles lived with hit wife, Anne Morrow Lindbergh. The baby’s body was found a short time later, and police in 1934 charged a Cerman-born carpenter with the eiimt. The suspect, 8runo Richard Hauptmann, was exe­cuted in 1936.

In fact, Amelia was only a modestly skilled pilot. Though such a statement is akin to blasphemy to her fans, pilots of her day and since have acknowledged that, for all her courage and never-say-no enthusiasm, “Millie” Earhart was often over her head in the cockpit. Time and again she crashed airplanes or used faulty in-flight judgment, and just as often a forgiving, hero-making press painted the proto-feminist as “Lady Lindbergh” anyway due in no small part to her striking physical resemblance to Charles Lindbergh.

But outside the cockpit, Earhart was a true hero for reasons that went beyond the long-distance or highaltitude records she set. She was an outspoken advocate for women, social causes, and aviation. It’s not too far a stretch to say that, along with Lindbergh (whom she knew well), Earhart helped propel the airline industry to a level of acceptance—even romance—it might have otherwise taken years longer to achieve.

After a number of other pilots had died or been injured in unsuccessful attempts to win the prize, Lindbergh was finally ready to try his own luck. On May 20, 1927, after a cross-country shakedown flight from San Diego to New York with one stop in St. Louis, Lindbergh was ready to make his bid for a page in the history books. Too nervous to sleep for the previous 24 hours, he embarked upon his 3,600-mile, 33%hour battle with fatigue, rough air, dangerous ice accumulations on his wings, and the nearly impossible task of accurately navigating with nothing but a compass, a clock, snippets of a map, and a gut sense of how the wind was blowing. Still, when he crossed the Irish coast 27 hours into the flight, he was only three miles off his intended course!

At about 10 P. M. Paris time, more than 33 hours after he left Long Island’s Roosevelt Field, Lindbergh circled the Eiffel Tower and headed toward Le Bourget airport and history. Radio broadcasts had been tracking the aviator’s record-setting flight, and his progress was followed across the British Isles and rural France. By the time he circled for a landing at Le Bourget, some 200,000 wildly cheering Parisians had gathered, presaging what was to become Lindbergh’s legacy—worldwide fame that he would never shed, no matter how profound his personal tragedies nor how offensive his views.

After his landing in Paris, “Slim” Lindbergh was ferried back to the United States in oceanliner luxury. He received medals and honors from a laundry list of nations, and then set about popularizing the budding airline industry.

After his record – setting flight, Lindbergh traveled the world lecturing on the future of flying, which belonged to passenger airlines. He was hired as a consultant to both TWA—which immediately christened itself “The Lindbergh Line”—and Pan American Airways to scout out airline flight routes. But his greatest contribution was in the publicity he brought to civil aviation and the airlines.

Eventually, Lindbergh decided to come down off the wing and learn to fly. Still, the “Lone Eagle,” as Lindbergh was later dubbed, began flying more like a “Lone Dodo,” and nearly crashed his first plane. He had been able to pay for only eight hours of training with an instructor on board, and he had not yet “soloed” by flying alone for the first time. After eight hours in the air, Lindbergh ran out of money and couldn’t afford any more lessons. What’s more, his flight instructor was starting to have second thoughts about whether flying was such a safe way to make a living!

But that didn’t ground Lindbergh. With the remaining few dollars from his air circus earnings, he bought one of thousands of World War I surplus planes, fondly known as Jennys. Still many hours short of earning his pilot’s license, Lindbergh slapped down $500 for a Jenny, and promptly prepared for his first solo flight, whether he was ready or not.

On his first attempt, Lindbergh’s airplane rolled across a field and struggled a few feet into the air. Lindbergh thought better of the takeoff and touched down again in what was partly a landing and partly a crash. But his plane wasn’t damaged, and Lindbergh swung it around for another attempt. That was when a kindhearted pilot who had watched the first takeoff offered Lindbergh a few tips, and with the words of that anonymous pilot ringing in his ears, Lindbergh took off into one of the most celebrated flying careers in history.

The “Flying Fool”

Lindbergh worked for a time as an air mail pilot, one of the most dangerous jobs anyone could have then. But for adventurous “Slim” Lindbergh, even the dangers of air mail flying weren’t enough to satisfy his restlessness. During mail flights, his thoughts began to wander to new challenges, including the $25,000 Orteig prize that restaurateur Raymond Orteig had put up as a bounty for the first person to fly between New York and Paris. When Orteig offered the cash in 1919,

he put a five-year deadline on the challenge. By 1924, no pilot had succeeded. Orteig gave pilots another five years to win the prize.

In 1926, Lindbergh paid Ryan Airlines Corporation to build him a plane capable of crossing the Atlantic. They created The Spirit of St. Louis, which was so stripped down that it was little more than a flying gas tank. Lindbergh decided that the safest place to position all that gas was close to the engine in front, so the tank was rigged directly in front of Lindbergh’s lightweight wicker seat, meaning he could only see forward by swerving the plane and looking out the side windows.

For most of us, even those of us born long after he achieved his greatest fame, Charles Lindbergh still is among history’s most celebrated and revered personalities. But Lindbergh’s impact on flying goes far beyond his most famous exploit—the 1927 flight that won him the Orteig prize and world fame. He was a pioneering air mail pilot, a crusader for political causes, and the man perhaps most responsible for helping to create an industry that has grown into one of the largest in the world: passenger airlines.

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Lucky Lindy

Charles Augustus Lindbergh was born into a Minnesota family that already had its share of public acclaim. His father, Charles A. Lindbergh Sr., was a longtime U. S. congressman, and his mother, born Evangeline Land Lodge, was a popular schoolteacher in his hometown of Little Falls.

Lindy attended the University of Wisconsin with an eye toward becoming an engineer. He was a poor student who didn’t have much interest in books, preferring instead to get his hands dirty. He even tried his hand at farming. By the time Lindbergh was in his sophomore year, it had become perfectly clear to him and to his professors that he wasn’t cut out to be an academic. To the relief of the university administrators, Lindbergh dropped out and began his flying career.

In order to scrape up the money he needed to buy his first airplane, Lindbergh signed with a traveling troupe of daredevil pilots-called “barnstormers’—as a parachute jumper and wing walker. The job required Lindbergh to leap out of airplanes wearing primitive parachutes, which at the time had a disturbing tendency not to open. Even when they did open, the wearer could still fall fast enough to break a leg on landing.

Lindbergh the Daredevil.

Lindbergh began his flying career billed as “Daredevil Lindbergh.” He became an expert parachutist who thrilled crowds with death-defying stunts. What’s more, as a wing walker, Lindbergh climbed out of the cockpit while the plane was in the air, and clambered around on the wings. He sometimes hung from the lower wing with nothing between him and the ground but a firm grip. To make the job even more dangerous, wing walkers usually refused to wear a parachute because of its bulk and weight. The fact that Lindbergh simply survived his barnstorming stint was enough to justify the nickname “Lucky Lindy!”

In 1927, the cheering crowds in New York and across the nation were celebrating more than Charles Lindbergh’s history-making solo trans-Atlantic flight. They were celebrating the conquest of a fearsome natural obstacle. And while they cheered the hurdling of an ocean, they were carrying the scenario to a separate conclusion: If a man could cross a vast ocean in a matter of hours, why not turn westward and leap across a familiar continent?

T en years after Lindbergh’s flight, when Amelia Earhart dared to circle the earth, millions of Americans again sat with their ears close to their radios, caught up in the excitement of the new era. While we sat listening, still another thought dawned in the national consciousness: Flying is open to everyone. Even the news of Amelia Earhart’s mysterious disappearance didn’t dampen America’s newfound enthusiasm for flying.

So Lindbergh and Earhart have a place in history not only for their record – setting endurance flights, but for helping to turn America into a nation of flyers.

Though the jet age has left the P-51 far behind, it has not been long since the Mustang was actually part of a country’s flying inventory. As recently as the 1980s, the tiny island nation of Dominica, wedged between the French protectorates of Martinique and Guadeloupe, flew Mustangs to protect its volcanic forests from invasion.

The Mustang has an even more prominent showcase in the Reno Air Races. The P-51 has become the airplane of choice for this fastest of motor sports events.

Every September, the fastest propeller-driven airplanes in the world gather at Reno/ Stead Airport in Reno, Nevada, to push their planes to speeds well over 500 miles per hour. Modified versions of P-51s and other World War II vintage airplanes with names like Rare Bear, Strega, and Huntress are flown by some of the best and most courageous pilots in the world. And it takes a heaping helping of fearlessness to fly around tight pylon turns at speeds over 400 miles per hour—with your wingtip just a few feet from the plane beside you, no less!

But when the excitement is over, regardless of who wins the race trophy, what pilots and nonpilots alike take away from the Reno Air Races is respect for the great airplanes of World War II, and reverence for the bravery of the daring pilots who flew them in defense of America.