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Amelia Earhart, 1897-1937: First Woman to Fly Alone Across the Atlantic |
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One of America's first female pilots was lost at sea 70 years
ago while attempting to fly around the world, five years after her historic
flight.Transcript of radio broadcast: |
VOICE
ONE:
This is
Mary Tillotson.
VOICE
TWO:
And
this is Steve Ember with the VOA Special English program EXPLORATIONS.
Today, we tell about Amelia Earhart. She was one of America’s first
female pilots.
(MUSIC)
VOICE
ONE:
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Amelia
Earhart was born in eighteen ninety-seven in the middle
western state of Kansas. She was not a child of her times.
Most American girls at the beginning of the twentieth century were taught to sit quietly and speak softly. They were not
permitted to play ball or climb trees. Those activities were considered
fun for boys. They were considered wrong for girls.
Amelia
and her younger sister Muriel were lucky. Their parents believed all
children needed physical activity to grow healthy and strong. So Amelia
and Muriel were very active girls. They rode horses. They played
baseball and basketball. They went fishing with their father. Other
parents would not let their daughters play with Amelia and Muriel.
VOICE
TWO:
The
Earharts lived in a number of places in America’s Middle West when the girls
were growing up. The family was living in Chicago, Illinois when Amelia
completed high school in nineteen sixteen.
Amelia
then prepared to enter a university. During a holiday, she visited her
sister in Toronto, Canada. World War One had
begun by then. And Amelia was shocked by the number of wounded soldiers
sent home from the fighting in France. She decided she would be more
useful as a nurse than as a student. So she joined the Red Cross.
VOICE
ONE:
Amelia
Earhart first became interested in flying while living in Toronto. She
talked with many pilots who were treated at the soldiers’ hospital. She
also spent time watching planes at a nearby military airfield. Flying
seemed exciting. But the machinery – the plane itself – was exciting,
too.
After
World War One ended, Amelia spent a year recovering from the disease
pneumonia. She read poetry and went on long walks. She learned to
play the banjo. And she went to school to learn about engines.
When
she was healthy again, she entered Columbia University in New York City.
She studied medicine. After a year she went to California to visit her
parents. During that trip, she took her first ride in an airplane.
And when the plane landed, Amelia Earhart had a
new goal in life. She would learn to fly.
(MUSIC)
VOICE
TWO:
One of
the world’s first female pilots, Neta Snook, taught Amelia to fly. It did
not take long for Amelia to make her first flight by herself. She
received her official pilot’s license in nineteen twenty. Then she wanted
a plane of her own. She earned most of the money to buy it by working for
a telephone company. Her first plane had two sets of wings, a bi-plane.
On June
seventeenth, nineteen twenty-eight, the plane left the eastern province of Newfoundland,
Canada. The pilot and engine expert were men. The passenger was
Amelia Earhart. The plane landed in Wales twenty hours and forty minutes
later. For the first time, a woman had crossed the Atlantic Ocean by air.
VOICE
ONE:
Amelia
did not feel very important, because she had not flown the plane. Yet the
public did not care. People on both sides of the Atlantic were excited by
the tall brave girl with short hair and gray eyes. They organized parties
and parades in her honor. Suddenly, she was famous.
Amelia
Earhart had become the first lady of the air. She wrote a book about the
flight. She made speeches about flying. And she continued to fly by
herself across the United States and back.
VOICE
TWO:
Flying
was a new and exciting activity in the early nineteen twenties. Pilots
tested and demonstrated their skills in air shows. Amelia soon began
taking part in these shows. She crashed one time in a field of cabbage plants.
The accident did not stop her from flying. But she said it did decrease
her desire to eat cabbages.
Flying
was fun, but costly. Amelia could not continue. She sold her
bi-plane, bought a car and left California. She moved across the country
to the city of Boston, Massachusetts. She taught English to immigrants
and then became a social worker.
VOICE
ONE:
In the
last years of the nineteen twenties, hundreds of record flights were
made. A few were made by women. But no woman had flown across the
Atlantic Ocean.
A
wealthy American woman, Amy Guest, bought a plane to do this. However,
her family opposed the idea. So she looked for another woman to take her
place. Friends proposed Amelia Earhart.
VOICE
TWO:
American
publisher George Putnam had helped organize the Atlantic Ocean flight that made
Amelia famous. Afterwards, he continued to support her flying
activities. In nineteen thirty-one, George and Amelia were married.
He helped provide financial support for her record flights.
On May
twentieth, nineteen thirty-two, Amelia took off from Newfoundland. She
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headed east in a small red and gold plane.
Amelia had problems with ice on the wings, fog from the ocean and instruments
that failed. At one point, her plane dropped suddenly nine hundred
meters. She regained control. And after fifteen hours she landed in
Ireland.
She had
become the first woman to fly across the Atlantic Ocean alone.
(MUSIC)
VOICE
ONE:
In the
next few years, Amelia Earhart set more records and received more honors.
She was the first to fly from Hawaii to California, alone. She was the
first to fly from Mexico City to New York City, without stopping.
Amelia
hoped her flights would prove that flying was safe for everyone. She
hoped women would have jobs at every level of the industry when flying became a
common form of transportation.
VOICE TWO:
In
nineteen thirty-five, the president of Purdue University in Indiana asked
Amelia to do some work there. He wanted her to be an adviser on aircraft
design and navigation. He also wanted her to be a special adviser to
female students.
Purdue
University provided Amelia with a new all-metal, two-engine plane. It had
so many instruments she called it the “Flying Laboratory.” It was the
best airplane in the world at that time.
Amelia
decided to use this plane to fly around the world. She wanted to go around
the equator. It was a distance of forty-three thousand kilometers.
No one had attempted to fly that way before.
VOICE
ONE:
Amelia’s
trip was planned carefully. The goal was not to set a speed record.
The goal was to gather information. Crew members would study the effects
of height and temperature on themselves and the plane. They would gather
small amounts of air from the upper atmosphere. And they would examine
the condition of airfields throughout the world.
Amelia
knew the trip would be dangerous. A few days before she left, she gave a
small American flag to her friend Jacqueline Cochran, another female
pilot. Amelia had carried the flag on all her major flights.
Jacqueline did not want to take it until Amelia returned from her flight around
the world. “No,” Amelia told her, “you had better take it now.”
(MUSIC)
VOICE
TWO:
Amelia
and three male crew members were to make the flight. However, a minor
accident and weather conditions forced a change in plans. So on June
first, nineteen thirty-seven, a silver Lockheed Electra plane left Miami,
Florida. It carried pilot Amelia Earhart and just one male crew member,
navigator Fred Noonan.
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Amelia Earhart getting out of her airplane in South
America |
Amelia
and Fred headed south toward the equator. They stopped in Puerto Rico,
Surinam and Brazil. They crossed the Atlantic Ocean to Africa, where they
stopped in Senegal, Chad, Sudan and Ethiopia. Then they continued on to
India, Burma, Thailand, Singapore, Indonesia and Australia.
VOICE
ONE:
When
they reached New Guinea, they were about to begin the most difficult part of
the trip. They would fly four thousand kilometers to tiny Howland Island
in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.
Three
hours after leaving New Guinea, Amelia sent back a radio message. She
said she was on a direct path to Howland Island. Later, Amelia’s radio
signals were received by a United States Coast Guard ship near the
island. The messages began to warn of trouble. Fuel was getting
low. They could not find Howland Island. They could not see any
land at all.
VOICE
TWO:
The
radio signals got weaker and weaker. A message on the morning of July
second was incomplete. Then there was silence.
American
Navy ships and planes searched the area for fifteen days. They found nothing.
Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan were officially declared “lost at sea.”
(MUSIC)
VOICE
ONE:
This
Special English Program was written by Marilyn Rice Christiano. It was
produced by Paul Thompson. This is Mary Tillotson.
VOICE
TWO:
And
this is Steve Ember. Join us again next week for another EXPLORATIONS
program on the Voice of America.