ABOUT FACTS NET

People

Amelia Earhart with New York City Mayor Jimmy Walker
Picture Source: Library of Congress

For those of you too young to know, the greatest female pilot in this country, and maybe the world, was Amelia Earhart. Her story is one of bravery against adversity and tragedy. A wave of women were inspired to become pilots by the young Amelia.

Amelia was born on July 24, 1897 in Atchison, Kansas where they have a celebration and parade in her honor every year. This year you can catch the festival from July 22-24, 2004. The house she was born in was actually her grandparents' home. Amelia's father was a lawyer in Kansas City. She was born to privilege along with her sister Muriel who was also known as Pidge. Amelia was sometimes called Millie. He grandparents provided the means for a good life. He father's law practice failed and he was forced to take an executive job with the Rock Island Line Railroad in Des Moines, Iowa. Because of this he moved with his wife to Iowa for three years before being able to send for the girls. Her father began to drink and the family split up in 1914 after he was fired from his job.

In 1919 Amelia enrolled as a pre-med student at Columbia University but decided she wanted to join her family in California and left in 1920. When in California she went to an ariel meet and her fate was sealed. The next day she got into an old bi wing plane and was flown around for ten minutes. Immediately after this she began flying lessons, and her instructor was a woman named Anita "Neta" Snook from Kinner Field near Long Beach, California.

Amelia Earhart was the first woman passenger ever to fly across the ocean and four years later she outdid this feat when she became the first woman to pilot a plane across the ocean. Amelia had gotten a call in 1928 which had invited her to fly as the first woman passenger across the ocean. She really wasn't too happy about this as she felt she was just extra weight. She said "The idea of just going as 'extra weight' did not appeal to me at all." She relented, however, and went anyway. The plane landed at Burry Port, South Wales and was almost out of fuel. The plane was named Friendship and the pilots were Wilmer "Bill" Stultz and Louis "Slim" Gordon. The trip across the Atlantic took over 20 hours.

After her Atlantic trip, Amelia became the pride of the media. Many parties were thrown in her honor, and New York City even threw her a ticker tape parade down broadway. Even the president, who was at the time, Calvin Coolidge, called her with congratulations. She bore a strange resemblance to Charles Lindburg and because of this she was called 'Lady Lindy'.

Amelia Earhart continued to break records. She also became a great speaker and writer and was a champion for women. She believed that women could accomplish anything if they put their minds to it. She was particularly advocating women's aviation. She wrote a book about her flight across the Atlantic Ocean which was called 20 Hrs., 40 Min.

It was 1937 when Amelia decided to fly around the world. She departed on May 21st, 1937. With her was her navigator, Fred Noonan. During her flight she flew non stop from the Red Sea to India, which made her the first to have done this. She was still going strong on June 29, 1937 when she reached New Guinea. She had covered 22,000 miles. She had 7,000 miles left to cover. When the Herald Tribune received Amelia;s last report of her trip with photos, she looked sick. Amelia took off on July 2, 1937 and headed into history never to be heard of again. Her last transmission was "KHAQQ calling Itasca. We must be on you but cannot see you...gas is running low...". A search was ordered by President Roosevelt that had 9 ships and 66 aircraft but nothing was found.

The FBI never investigated her disappearance. These records generally consist of correspondence from individuals speculating about her fate. In 1990, the International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery submitted a navigator's bookcase to the FBI Laboratory for examination. This item was suspected of having been part of Ms. Earhart's lost aircraft. Various technical analyses were conducted and nothing was found which would disqualify the artifact as having come from the Earhart aircraft. (This paragraph was copied from the FBI Page). The following FBI files require a PDF reader. If you don't have one, you can download it HERE for free.

FBI Files released under the Freedom of Information Act