During all this time, Earhart and Putnam were also secretly planning her next big flight: a solo flight across the Atlantic Ocean. Such a flight would make her the second person and first woman to successfully accomplish that. On May 20, 1932, five years to the day after Lindbergh, she took off from Harbour Grace, Newfoundland, headed for Paris. But strong north winds, icy conditions, and mechanical problems plagued the flight and forced her to land in a pasture near Londonderry, Ireland. As word of her flight spread, the media surrounded her, both overseas and in the United States. President Herbert Hoover presented Earhart with a gold medal from the National Geographic Society. Congress awarded her the Distinguished Flying Cross—the first ever given to a woman. At the ceremony, Vice President Charles Curtis praised her, saying she displayed “heroic courage and skill as a navigator at the risk of her life.” To Earhart, the flight proved that men and women were equal in “jobs requiring intelligence, coordination, speed, coolness and willpower,” a belief she’d held since she was a young girl growing up in Kansas.
Amelia Earhart continued to break aviation records. Between 1930 and 1935, she broke seven women’s speed and distance aviation records. In January of 1935, she became the first person to fly alone from Hawaii to California. That April, she became the first person to fly from Los Angeles to Mexico City. Less than three weeks later, she became the first person to fly nonstop between Mexico City and Newark.
In 1937, as she neared her fortieth birthday, she wanted a monumental, and final, challenge: to be the first woman to fly around the world. “I have a feeling that there is just about one more good flight left in my system,” she said, “and I hope this trip is it.” That March, she flew the first leg from Oakland, California to Honolulu, Hawaii, where it was determined the plane needed servicing. During takeoff, witnesses claimed that a tire blew. Earhart thought that either a tire blew or the landing gear collapsed. Others cited pilot error. Whatever happened, however, the plane was severely damaged.
But Earhart was not deterred from her goal. Determined to make the flight, she had the twin-engine Lockheed Electra rebuilt. On June 1, Amelia Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan, departed from Miami and began the 29,000-mile journey. After numerous stops in South America, Africa, India, and Southeast Asia, they arrived at Lae, New Guinea, on June 29, 1937. At this stage, about 22,000 miles of the journey had been completed. The remaining 7,000 miles would all be over the Pacific. Frequently inaccurate maps had made navigation difficult for Noonan, and their next hop—to Howland Island—was by far the most challenging. A flat sliver of land 6,500 feet long and 1,600 feet wide, Howland Island is located 2,556 miles from Lae in the mid-Pacific. “Howland is such a small spot in the Pacific that every aid to locating it must be available,” Earhart said. Unessential items were removed from the plane to make room for additional fuel. The US Coast Guard cutter Itasca was stationed just offshore of Howland Island, assigned to communicate by radio with Earhart and guide them to the island once they arrived in the vicinity. Two other US ships, ordered to burn every light on board, were positioned along the flight route as markers.
At midnight on July 2, 1937, Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan took off from Lae. Despite favorable weather reports, they flew into overcast skies and intermittent rain showers. This made celestial navigation difficult. As dawn neared, Earhart called the Itasca and reported that the weather was cloudy. The Itasca sent her a steady stream of transmissions but she could not hear them. Her radio transmissions had been irregular through most of the flight, and now became faint and interrupted with static. At 7:42 AM, the Itasca picked up the message: “We must be on you, but we cannot see you. Fuel is running low. Been unable to reach you by radio. We are flying at 1,000 feet.” The ship tried to reply, but the plane seemed not to hear. At 8:45, Earhart reported, “We are running north and south.” Nothing further was heard from Earhart. Earhart’s transmissions seemed to indicate she and Noonan believed they had reached Howland’s charted position. The Itasca used her oil-fired boilers to generate smoke for a period of time but the clouds in the area around Howland Island might have prevented the fliers from seeing it. The dark shadows of the clouds on the ocean surface may have been almost indistinguishable from the island’s subdued and very flat profile. Attempts were also made to reach them by Morse code, but that, too, failed.
The most extensive air-and-sea search in naval history to date began immediately. But after spending four million dollars and scouring 250,000 square miles of ocean, the United States government reluctantly called off the operation on July 19. George Putnam financed a private search that also proved unsuccessful. But the question of what happened to Amelia Earhart remains unanswered.
In 1938, a lighthouse was constructed on Howland Island in Amelia Earhart’s memory. Amelia Earhart has become synonymous with aviation and with women’s achievements. Across the United States there are streets, schools, and airports named after her. In a letter she wrote to her husband before a dangerous flight, she said: “Please know I am quite aware of the hazards. I want to do it because I want to do it. Women must try to do things as men have tried. When they fail, their failure must be but a challenge to others.”
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