According to Ninety-Nines historians, Josephine Wood and her sister Francis took flying lessons in Santa Monica, California. After Josephine earned her private pilot certificate, she received a letter from famous aviatrix Amelia Earhart asking her to join an organization that was forming to promote and encourage women pilots. 

At the time, 117 women in the U.S. held private pilot certificates—and Earhart reached out to all of them. After 99 women responded favorably by the cutoff date, the group had its name: The Ninety-Nines.

In 1930 when Wood was interviewed by a newspaper reporter, she declared that flying was not her hobby—it was going to be her profession. She continued to fly, then just after she earned her commercial certificate, the Great Depression hit. Wood hung up her wings to take care of her mother and sister. She eventually married Frederic Wallingford and settled in Texas.

According to Bill Wallingford’s recollections, his mother rarely talked about flying but considered the letter from Earhart to be one of her most prized possessions. She was a member of the Houston Ninety-Nines chapter until her death in 2004.

Wallingford died in 2023, and as he had no heirs, he decided to leave his money to organizations he considered the most meaningful. The Ninety-Nines topped the list.

The Ninety-Nines are happy to honor both mother and son with the bequest, said Kristin Smith, a researcher with the organization.

“While this is not the first bequest that we have had, it certainly is the largest and most unexpected….to the Ninety-Nines,” Smith said.

According to Smith, the funds will be used to increase education outreach and leadership programs that support The Ninety-Nines chapters and sections around the world. In addition, some of the windfall will be used to address some building maintenance at the organization headquarters and the Museum of Women Pilots in Oklahoma City.

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Although the disappearance was 87 years ago, it remains of interest to many. On July 19 and 20, it will be the topic of two separate events presented by the Amelia Earhart Hangar Museum in Atchison, Kansas.

The discussions are set to take place the same weekend as the town’s Amelia Earhart Festival, which is held the third weekend in July to honor the aviatrix’s birthday, according to museum spokesperson Vanessa Bonavia. Although both talks are sponsored by the museum, they will be held off museum property to allow for a capacity crowd.

• READ MORE: Earhart Museum Nominated for Top Award

The first talk, Adventure Amelia: A Conversation with Explorers in the Search for Amelia Earhart, will be a panel discussion on July 19 from 11 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. CST at the Fox Theatre Atchison, 612 Commercial Street. The presentation is free, but registration is required. 

The panelists include Deep Sea Vision founder Tony Romeo, who got the world’s attention in January after publishing underwater images taken in the South Pacific that he alleges may be Earhart’s aircraft. He will be joined by his brother Lloyd Romeo, who served as project manager during the expedition.

Also scheduled to participate on the panel is Gary LaPook, a celestial navigation expert with The Stratus Project, a U.K.-based organization that has been searching for Earhart. Liz Smith, a Date Line Theory expert, ocean exploration, and science documentary producer, is also participating. The panel discussion will be moderated by Dorothy Cochrane, curator of the aeronautics department at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum. 

• READ MORE: Museum Celebrates the Life of Amelia Earhart

Panelists are expected to discuss where they believe the famous Electra is now, the reasons for its disappearance, and the evidence that supports their claims.

“As the curator for general aviation that includes the history of women in aviation, I have presented in various conferences and forums solo or with others,” Cochrane said. “Of course, I’ve done many media interviews and articles. At the museum I am responsible for Earhart’s transatlantic Lockheed Vega and related material that will soon be displayed again in the museum’s Barron Hilton Pioneers of Flight Gallery.”

According to Cochrane, a common question asked is “why Howland Island?” followed by “why was Earhart making the flight?” 

“While not perfectly planned, it was not a stunt,” Cochrane said. “It is exactly what Earhart did for a living—setting records and then writing and lecturing. Women pilots had very few money-making opportunities since they were not allowed to fly in the military or in commercial airlines, and the private sector had little serious interest in them (except Beech Aircraft, that’s another story with Louise Thaden). So, Earhart built her own career. She truly loved flying and touring and supporting other women pilots.”

• READ MORE: Amelia Earhart’s Legacy Enshrined at New Kansas Museum

Deep Dive With Deep Sea Vision

On July 20, the Romeo brothers will talk about their process for searching the more than 5,200 square miles of ocean near Howland Island looking for the final resting place of the Electra.

The expedition spent 90 days on-site searching for the famous airplane that disappeared while trying to find Howland Island, which was a fuel stop as part of Earhart’s attempt to fly around the world. The Deep Sea Vision expedition relied on underwater drones. One of them captured a sonar image that to some people resembles an airplane.

“Both the Romeo brothers are pilots, so they will be bringing the pilot perspective into it,” Bonavia said.

• READ MORE: Ocean Exploration Company Thinks It Found Earhart’s Airplane

The pair will share highlights from their search for the Lockheed Electra 10-E and the company’s plans to launch its confirmation expedition with a high-powered camera to look for more evidence, such as the aircraft’s “NR16020” registration number. The conversation will be moderated by Amelia Rose Earhart, a pilot, author, and artist who in 2014 honored her namesake by completing a global circumnavigation flight.

The Deep Dive with Deep Sea Vision will take place at 9 a.m. CDT at the O’Malley-McAllister Auditorium at Benedictine College in Atchison. 

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The story follows the 20 women who took part in the “Powder Puff Derby,” which was humorist Will Rogers’ facetious name for the California-to-Ohio air race that was the first time females were allowed to compete. The participants included aviation notables such as Louise Thaden, Florence “Pancho” Barnes, Amelia Earhart, and Bobbi Trout. The women fought the elements, deliberate sabotage, and chauvinism to pursue aviation.

• READ MORE: The Legendary Life of Pancho Barnes, Aviatrix

According to Kara White, producer/director at Hemlock Films, the script focuses on Thaden, who was newly married and just 23 at the time of the race but already an accomplished pilot.

The racecourse from Santa Monica, California, to Cleveland and took nine days to complete, and one racer died of carbon monoxide poisoning en route. At the time, women pilots were still a bit of a novelty, although 1929 would be the year the Ninety-Nines, the international organization of women pilots, was established. The name reflects the number of certificated women pilots at the time who  joined the fledgling group. 

This is not the first time Hemlock Films has decided to tell this story. In 2014, it produced a documentary on the Women’s Air Derby called, Beyond the Powder: The Legacy of the First Women’s Cross-Country Air Race.

• READ MORE: Ocean Exploration Company Thinks It Found Earhart’s Airplane

White said she was inspired to create a feature-length movie after reading aviatrix and author Gene Nora Jessen’s book Sky Girls: The True Story of the First Women’s Cross-Country Air Race.

“It was an incredible story, the book was a page turner and I thought, ‘How is this not a film?'” White said. “A story from history as a narrative is so much stronger than a documentary. The story resonates more as a narrative for most people.”

Part of the research was done at the Cleveland Public Library, where White asked librarians for newspaper clippings about the race.

“They brought me a folder with two photographs in it,” said White, who then did some sleuthing on her own and found more information. “The folders they brought me got bigger and bigger!”

Soon after, she said the script began to take shape. written in the same vein as A League Of Their Own, the 1992 biopic and later streaming TV series about women’s professional baseball in the 1940s.

White said the film company is currently in the throes of fundraising since it will take at least $10 million to complete the project, and that money needs to be in hand before it  begins. 

In addition, Hemlock Films is reaching out to actors who might be interested in playing a role in the movie and also trying to find period-correct aircraft that could be used for filming. Movie magic can be incorporated to create period-correct cockpits and the illusion of flying, White said, similar to the way it was done in this year’s Apple TV+ series Masters of the Air.

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On January 26, Deep Sea Vision (DSV), based in South Carolina, announced that it had captured a sonar image in the Pacific Ocean that “appears to be Earhart’s Lockheed 10-E Electra.”

The DSV team used radio messages received by the Coast Guard cutter Itasca to narrow the search area. The Itasca was on station at Howland Island to assist Earhart with refueling. In preparation of Earhart’s arrival, a runway had been carved into the coral, and barrels of fuel awaited the famous aviatrix.

Howland Island is an uninhabited, cucumber-shaped coral landmass located roughly halfway between Australia and Hawaii. The island measures less than 1 square mile and is part of the Phoenix Island chain.

The DSV expedition was led by Tony Romeo, a pilot and former U.S. Air Force intelligence officer. According to The Wall Street Journal, Romeo sold his real estate company in 2022 to start the ocean exploration business. In September 2023 the 16-person crew launched on the expedition from Tarawa, Kiribati, a port near Howland Island in the central Pacific.

The search continued until December, with the DSV group surveying more than 5,200 square miles of ocean floor using a sophisticated underwater drone. One of the images captured appears to show something that has the same dimensions as Earhart’s aircraft.

The image, swamping the media, shows a fuzzy gold object on a dark background and looks a little like an giant anchor, with a vertical line longer than the horizontal, slightly swept back lines that may be the wings, or an airplane as viewed from above if its nose was pointed to the bottom of the image.

Through multiple channels, Romeo has expressed cautious optimism that this is Earhart’s airplane, but skeptics want more proof—such as the registration number, NR1620.

• READ MORE: Amelia Earhart’s Legacy Enshrined in New Museum

FLYING reached out to DSV but had not received a reply by press time.

At the time of their disappearance, Earhart and Noonan had covered more than 75 percent of the around-the-world distance. The leg between New Guinea and Howland Island was a navigational challenge. Noonan was relying on celestial navigation, which requires noting the position of stars and the sun at a particular time on a particular date. It has been suggested that as the aircraft had crossed the International Date Line, the data Noonan was using was slightly off, putting the aircraft off course.

At 7:42 a.m.on July 2, 1937, Earhart transmitted, “We must be on you but cannot see you… but gas is running low.” The aircraft had been flying for more than 17 hours.

At 7:58 Earhart asked the Itasca to send signals so that she could take a bearing using the Electra’s radio direction finder, and the radio operators aboard the cutter complied, but they could not get a fix on the airplane. There were no more transmissions.

• READ MORE: Technicalities: Amelia Earhart’s Final Flight

This is not the first time someone has thought they found Earhart’s aircraft, and aviation historians are paying attention. No one wants to get their hopes up, but you have to keep an open mind.

“The image is intriguing, offering a variety of possibilities,” said Dorothy Cochrane, curator of the aeronautics department at the Smithsonian Institute’s National Air and Space Museum. “It’s a sonar image of something on the bottom of the Pacific Ocean that should be further investigated. I believe DSV will do so.”

Cochrane noted that it is a positive sign that the image was captured within 100 miles of Howland Island since, based on the strength of the radio transmissions that day, the Coast Guard determined that Earhart was probably nearby but could not hear its replies. In an effort to help them find the island, the cutter poured smoke from its stack. Unfortunately, the atmospheric conditions were such that the smoke did not rise very far but rather settled onto the water, resulting in a haze.

Ironically, at the last stop in New Guinea, Earhart made the decision to leave a trailing wire antenna behind to save weight. The antenna, designed to boost radio reception and measuring approximately 25 feet in length, was deployed behind the airplane on a winch.

The Big Search

When it was determined Earhart’s aircraft was missing, the U.S. Navy launched a massive aerial search that lasted several weeks. The aircraft carrier USS Lexington was deployed to the area. According to a 1937 issue of Time magazine, the week after Earhart’s disappearance, 60 of the carrier’s 62 airplanes searched at a cost of $250,000 a day. The actual number was later reduced to 42. Some historians note that had Earhart not been close personal friends with first lady Eleanor Roosevelt, the search might have been called off much sooner.

No wreckage was found—with not even an oil slick spotted.

In 1939 George Putnam, Earhart’s husband, had her legally declared dead.

The Theories

Over the years, there have been many theories about what happened to Earhart and Noonan. The most common theory is that the aircraft ran out of fuel and Earhart ditched in the ocean, or they crashed on a coral atoll and succumbed to thirst and hunger. The most outlandish theories are that they were abducted by aliens, captured by the Japanese and executed for allegedly being spies, or were held in a prison camp during the war then quietly brought back to the U.S. to live under new identities.

Over the decades, the Earhart family has heard the theories, and like many, are skeptical, waiting for positive proof. They aren’t the only ones.

• READ MORE: History Channel’s Amelia Earhart Story Quickly Unravels

“I consider this one of the great mysteries of the 20th century, extending now into the 21st,” said Cochrane. “Not only would the resolution solve the mystery, but it would also allow Earhart to be remembered for her pioneering aviation career and overall commitment to aviation and to women.”

What Do You Think Happened?

According to Mindi Love Pendergraft, Executive Director of the Amelia Earhart Hangar Museum in Atchison, Kansas, museum guests have been asking about Earhart’s disappearance since the story broke about DSV’s discovery.

“It  has been a natural segue into our exhibit about her disappearance and the numerous theories that have been proposed. We do ask our visitors to vote on which theory they believe to be most probable and as of today, 42 percent selected the option that the plane crashed and sank.”

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Since this is a people’s choice award, the public is invited to vote.

“I think the editors recognized we are the first and only museum dedicated to the aviation legacy of Amelia Earhart, one of the world’s most admired women,” said Pendergraft. “It may also be that the museum offers a rare blend of state-of-the-art STEM interactives with history storytelling that uniquely takes visitors on a journey through Amelia’s trailblazing life.”

Pendergraft, a native of Kansas, grew up hearing stories about the famous aviatrix. She was with the museum on opening day.

“I was drawn by how the museum tells Amelia’s story in a way that brings her to life beyond the allure of Amelia the ‘icon’ to present a person who boldly faced real challenges and struggles in the pursuit of her dreams—and used her success to inspire others,” she said. “I’m also impressed by how the museum engages visitors, particularly young people, with hands-on STEM concepts as they journey through Amelia’s life. The museum is responding to an urgent need to help young people consider careers in aviation, aerospace, and other STEM-related career paths of the future.

The centerpiece of the facility is the world’s last remaining Lockheed Electra 10-E, named Muriel after Earhart’s younger sister. The airplane is identical to the aircraft Earhart used on her final flight in her attempt to fly around the world. Earhart’s aircraft disappeared over the Pacific on July 2, 1937. She was attempting to reach Howland Island to meet up with the Coast Guard cutter Itasca. There was sporadic radio contact, with Earhart indicating she was lost and running low on fuel, then radio silence.

The U.S. Navy spent weeks searching for Earhart and her navigator, Frederick Noonan, but no trace was found. To this day, the search was the largest effort of its kind by the Navy with the exception of the search for the wreckage of the space shuttle Challenger in 1986.

• READ MORE: New Earhart Museum to Open this Spring

Beyond the Aviatrix

Earhart was more than a pilot—she was a trendsetter and role model for women, advocating for them to pursue higher education and careers. She had a keen interest in the sciences and used her celebrity status to advocate for social causes. She was close friends with first lady Eleanor Roosevelt, even persuading her to skip out on a state dinner—despite the fact they were dressed in formal gowns—to go flying.

“Many of her accomplishments were underrated,” said Pendergraft. “I’m a native Kansan who grew up knowing about Amelia, but until I joined the Museum I had no real idea of her many accomplishments and influences beyond the headlines – many of which are underestimated, like working as a mechanic, nurse, and student advisor at Purdue to encourage other women.”

Pendergraft said the museum started gaining attention before it even opened. In January, Smithsonian Magazine named the museum as one of the Top 10 Most Anticipated Openings in 2023, and in the fall the museum was profiled by the Midwest Travel Journalists Association with its annual GEMmy Award as one of the “gems of travel” as it “offers an exceptional experience to travelers.”

A few weeks ago, museum officials were notified by the editors of USA Today’s 10Best readers’ choice awards that they were one of 16 museums in the country to be nominated.

“We didn’t know about the contest and were beyond thrilled to be nominated,” Pendergraft said. “We’ve since learned that 10Best nominees are submitted by a panel of travel experts and then the 10Best editors narrow the field to select the final set of nominees for the public to vote on.”

Voting is done online and readers can cast a ballot once per category, per day, until the cutoff of noon on December 25.

“If we reach the No. 1 spot, the museum will be featured in USA Today and recommended across USA Today’s travel and tourism platforms as a top destination in the U.S.,” Pendergraft said. “This special honor will not only shine a bright spotlight on the Amelia Earhart Hangar Museum, but it will also heighten public interest in exploring the many stellar museums and tourism attractions across the Midwest.”

Other museums in the running include the Punk Rock Museum in Las Vegas; Museum of Broadway in New York; Gettysburg Beyond Battle Museum in Pennsylvania; the Buffalo AKG Art Museum in New York; and  Cheech Marin Center for Chicano Art & Culture in Riverside, California.

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The museum has been in development for several years, designed in partnership with Dimensional Innovations, a Kansas-based experience design firm. 

The museum, located at Amelia Earhart Memorial Airport (K59) is being made possible through the support of Boeing, Bombardier, FedEx, Garmin, and Lockheed Martin. According to museum officials, the facility is designed to function as a blending of history and STEM education—with flight technology in the center.

“It’s a tremendous honor to have the support of aviation leaders like Boeing and Bombardier who continue Amelia’s enduring legacy of innovation and share our vision to inspire future generations in the pursuit of flight,” said Karen Seaberg, founder and president of the Atchison Amelia Earhart Foundation.

Grand Opening Celebration

The grand opening ceremony with a ribbon cutting is slated for Friday at noon CST in front of the museum. 

“The museum doors officially open immediately following the ceremony at 12:30 pm CST,” said Vanessa Bonavia, museum spokesperson, adding that they have invited some special guests, including members of Earhart’s extended family.

“We are expecting special guests, including Bram Kleppner, Amelia’s great-great nephew, and his young daughter, Amelia’s great-great niece,” Bonavia said. “We’ve received several RSVPs from members of The Ninety-Nines and Women in Aviation. Amelia Rose Earhart, the young pilot who circumnavigated the globe to honor Amelia’s legacy, will be attending. The colors will be presented by the Kansas Air National Guard. Kansas Senators Jerry Moran and Roger Marshall will also share remarks, along with Atchison Mayor Lisa Moody.”

The festivities will continue through the weekend. On April 15, pilots from Kansas State University Salina Aerospace and Technology Flight Team will invite the public to tour its new Cirrus SR20 and Cessna 172 aircraft, and on April 16, the “RC Fly Jam” featuring radio-controlled planes will be on the museum grounds and tarmac.

Inside the Museum

The Museum is the home of the world’s last remaining Lockheed Electra 10-E, named

Muriel after Earhart’s younger sister, Grace Muriel Earhart Morrissey. Muriel is identical to the plane Earhart flew on her final flight around the world. 

In addition to the aircraft, there are 14 interactive exhibit areas that allow visitors to trace Earhart’s life from growing up in Atchison, to her growing fame as an aviatrix.

Visitors will be able to enter a full-scale replica of Muriel’s cockpit to experience what it was like to be inside the aircraft described as Earhart’s “flying laboratory.”

There is a digitized version of Earhart’s mechanic logbook for review, and through the magic of augmented reality, visitors can try on Earhart’s various careers such as mechanic, nurse, pilot, and even a fashion designer.

Museum officials note each exhibit has been carefully outfitted to meet National Curriculum Standards, Kansas Curriculum Content Standards, and Missouri Standards of Learning. Professionally developed Teacher Guides to support field trips are also available.

There is a heavy aviation component that allows visitors to explore celestial navigation and learn about radio waves and the atmosphere, use 3D holograms to explore technological advances in aviation, pilot a virtual reality flight in a Lockheed Vega 5B across the Atlantic, retracing Earthart’s 1932 flight and finally, speculate and vote on theories about what happened to Earhart on her attempt to fly around the world.

History and STEM

Earhart has always been associated with aviation, setting multiple records as a pilot, including being the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean. Many people are surprised to learn that she also had a background in the sciences. According to multiple biographies, she was particularly interested in chemistry, medicine, and mechanics. This makes it a natural fit for aerospace businesses to support the facility.

“Amelia’s courage and spirit of adventure will inspire the next generation of aviators, explorers, and innovators to continue breaking new boundaries in aerospace,” said Cheri Carter, vice president of Boeing Global Engagement.

Tonya Sudduth, head of U.S. strategy at Bombardier, added, “We are thrilled to support the new Amelia Earhart Hangar Museum and believe it will have a great impact on the community through its innovative and educational exhibits—inspiring young people to explore the many exciting possibilities and future career paths available in aviation and aerospace.” 

In addition to the aerospace industry, a number of local and national philanthropic organizations are providing support for the museum, including the Donn Lux Family, the Guy Bromley Trust, the Patterson Family Foundation, the Regnier Family Foundation, the Fly With Amelia Foundation, the Stauffer Jambrosic Foundation, the Sunderland Foundation and the William T. Kemper Foundation, and local employers Amberwell Health, Benedictine College, MGP Ingredients and others.

Following the grand opening, the Amelia Earhart Hangar Museum will apply to become an Affiliate of the Smithsonian Institution. 

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And for almost as long as she’s been a household name, the celebration of her legacy has originated in the small northeastern Kansas town of Atchison, Earhart’s birthplace. Presently, the town of 10,000 boasts the Amelia Earhart Birthplace Museum (owned and operated by The Ninety-Nines International Organization of Women Pilots, of whom Earhart was a founding member and first president), and the annually-held Amelia Earhart Festival, in addition to a widely accepted naming tradition around town to the famed pilot. But a new homage to the widely known aviator in her hometown is set to officially debut in 2023. 

Allison Balderrama, director of the Amelia Earhart Hangar Museum, explains how the exhibition site first came about and its purpose. “Our museum was first conceptualized in 2016 and the centerpiece of the museum is Muriel, a 1935 Lockheed Electra 10-E. We acquired that plane in 2016. So, when that plane came into the museum’s possession, when we purchased it, that was sort of the beginning of our whole story. Ever since then, we have been working to build up a museum around the airplane.” 

One of 14 ever built, the centerpiece aircraft is special in that regard alone. But Balderrama notes that the aircraft’s importance isn’t limited to this distinction. “Our Lockheed Electra is the last remaining plane that is identical to Amelia’s Lockheed 10-E, the plane that she disappeared with on her around the world flight. Our organization was aware that this plane existed and was the last one, so when it went out for sale, we were very interested in purchasing it.” 

While certainly one of the more eye-catching aspects of the museum’s planned footprint, the aircraft isn’t the only facet expected to draw visitors in and teach them about aviation.

Balderrama explains, “The museum was conceptualized as a hybrid history and science museum. So, all of the exhibits we worked on with Dimensional Innovations, who is our design and build firm, are really focused on both Amelia’s history and interactive STEM components. We have a lot of interactive things that teach you about airplanes and how airplanes work, as well as the science behind things that Amelia Earhart did and things like that. I think that every person that comes to the museum will learn something new.”

• READ MORE: Wendover Airfield Museum a Treasure Trove of History

Inside the Museum

An in-depth walk through, or rather “fly through,” of the museum’s anticipated layout can be seen here. 

Some planned exhibits, which were professionally designed to be highly engaging for all ages, set to surround the static “flight-worthy” twin include:

• Careers in Aviation 
  • Amelia’s quote, “The most effective way to do it, is to do it,”- is prominently displayed in this exhibit and is an inspirational tip to visitors.
• Skybreakers: The History of Flight 
• Aircraft and Feminine Feats 

Aside from being an all-encompassing look at Earhart’s life and legacy, perhaps what is most unique about the museum is the fact that it’s a true fly-in and fly-out space. The site is accommodating to those wanting a quick peek during a fuel stop, as well as those looking to go out of their way to learn more about aviation history.

• READ MORE: Amelia Earhart’s Final Flight

“We are in a really unique position where our museum is located in the same building as the airport terminal here in Atchison. It’s the Amelia Earhart Airport (K59), as well. And that’s just a cool opportunity for pilots to fly in, not only to see this unique aircraft but also to experience the museum. When we have pilots fly in, even now before the museum is open, they talk about how they will fly to another airport just to grab a hamburger or to grab an ice cream. So having this huge museum and being able to come and see it by flying will be really special for them.” 

Angie Cairo, K59’s operations manager, further elaborates on how the museum co-occupies some space at the airport, in addition to having its own hangar footprint. “The foundation felt that since we had taken possession of her sister plane that the perfect home for it was the airport. So, they approached the City of Atchison with the plan for the shared building. We share space as far as the conference room, bathrooms and kitchen. We work together on different projects that promote the airport and the museum and share all of the [terminal] building for those events.”

Even with construction of the museum’s exhibits ongoing for quite a while, Cairo additionally notes that the future popularity for the site quickly became apparent. 

“The museum is already attracting visitors. We coordinate together so that they are open during the airport’s annual events. There are so many Amelia Earhart fans throughout the world and this museum with its interactive displays and the duplicated voice of Amelia, are a must-see I believe. Plus, Muriel gives a true perspective of the plane Amelia was flying.”

Balderrama adds that while the museum is currently in its construction phase, with exhibits being installed, its completion is expected soon. A grand opening for the Amelia Earhart Museum is set for 2023. 

The post Museum Celebrates the Life of Amelia Earhart appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

My article drew a testy reply from Ric Gillespie, who has probably devoted more time to this subject than anyone else on Earth. His basic complaint was that my comments about the fate of Earhart and Noonan were half-baked and firmly based on my far-reaching ignorance of the topic. This I conceded. There followed a cordial exchange of emails and a copy of his book Finding Amelia, as well as several issues of Tighar Tracks, the journal of the aviation-archaeology group of which Gillespie is the head.

Finding Amelia is a densely documented, finely detailed and well-written book. First published in 2006, it does not include accounts of subsequent investigations that have bolstered Gillespie’s theory that the Electra ended up more or less intact on a reef on Nikumaroro, formerly Gardner Island, an atoll 350 nm south-southeast of Howland. A few shreds of physical evidence support this claim, together with a number of radio messages heard by ham-radio operators in various parts of the world during the days following the disappearance.

Personally, I remain skeptical—not because of what was found but because of what was not. The absence of substantial wreckage, including two big Pratt & Whitney radials, while not conclusive, suggests to me that the Electra wasn’t ever there. 

But Gillespie disagrees, and he knows much more about this than I do.

Amelia Earhart herself does not emerge unscathed from Gillespie’s narrative. Initially borne on the wave of enthusiasm for aviation (particularly for long ocean crossings) that was engendered by Lindbergh’s 1927 solo flight from New York to Paris, Earhart parlayed her charm, connections and physical similarity to Lindbergh—youthful, gangly and tousled—into an international celebrity that required constant stoking with new publicity. Lots of people wanted—or felt obliged—to help her, but she did not help herself. The single most important cause of her failure to locate Howland Island seems to have been her faulty understanding of the characteristics of her own radio equipment and that of the Coast Guard ship that had been stationed there to assist her. She did not know which frequencies to use for direction-finding. The knowledge was available, but she seems not to have made a serious effort to master it.

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In the interest of full disclosure, my own flight planning has at times been pretty slapdash. But I didn’t disappear, so nobody noticed.

Earhart represented the tail end of a distance-flying craze that lasted a decade. Many who had participated in it shared her fate, including a number of women who hoped to stake out some feminist territory in the generally masculine realm of aviation. For every flight that succeeded, two or three failed. Failure meant disappearance; the ocean kept its secrets close.

One young woman who preceded Earhart to a watery grave was a Flint, Michigan, schoolteacher named Mildred Doran. The 22-year-old Doran was enthusiastic about flying and persuaded the owner of a local oil company to sponsor an entry in a California-to-Hawaii air race that had been announced by James Dole, the Hawaiian pineapple magnate, shortly after Lindbergh’s flight. Not a pilot herself, she would ride along as a passenger. As with Earhart, the link between a great challenge and the money needed to confront it was supplied by somebody’s desire for publicity: The Lincoln Oil Co. of Flint would get a lot of print from the attractive and articulate “flying schoolmarm,” and the air race itself would boost public awareness of Dole’s pineapples. 

The date of the race was set for August 12.

Somewhat awkwardly for Dole, on June 28 two Army pilots, Lester Maitland and Albert Hegenberger, took off from Oakland, California, in a Fokker trimotor and arrived in Honolulu 26 hours later. Two weeks after that, Ernie Smith and Emory Bronte—the latter evidently the son of a Wuthering Heights fan—made the flight in a single-engine Travel Air, which ran out of fuel but alighted safely, if ignominiously, in a clump of trees on Molokai, Hawaii. The virgin route from California to Hawaii was beginning to look rather experienced.

You would think those two successful flights, added to the failure of Lindbergh himself to enter the race, might have taken the wind out of Dole’s sails, but no—the die was cast. If anything, the 2,400-mile flight now seemed less hazardous than before.

Of the motley swarm of 15 airplanes and crews that entered the race, some were quite plausible: the Lockheed Vega prototype, a Spirit of St. Louis look-alike called Dallas Spirit, and the Phillips Petroleum-sponsored Travel Air 5000, Woolaroc. Most entrants were high-wing monoplanes in the style of Spirit of St. Louis, but the Lincoln Oil entrant, a Buhl Airsedan christened Miss Doran, was a sesquiplane (a biplane whose lower wing is much smaller than the upper). There was one twin-engine triplane that ended up in San Francisco Bay, the crew wading safely to shore; three other contestants were not so lucky, dying when their airplanes crashed on the way to Oakland. 

The race was delayed for several days when the newly formed Aeronautics Division of the Department of Commerce—later to become the FAA—imposed a number of rules and requirements on machines and participants the majority could not meet. Frank Phillips, the Dallas Spirit sponsor, inveighed against government meddlesomeness, as befitted his role as a self-made Texas oilman, but at least one of the requirements seems sensible enough: An airplane had to carry enough fuel to reach Hawaii, with a reserve.

Huge crowds came out to witness the departures. The first airplane to take off, a Travel Air, soon turned back with engine trouble. The next two crashed while trying to get airborne, but their crews were unhurt. Next, the beautifully streamlined yellow Vega Golden Eagle got off without trouble, followed by Miss Doran,which promptly returned with a sputtering engine.Three big monoplanes then went off, the last of which, Dallas Spirit, soon came back with fabric damaged by a badly secured access panel. Miss Doran, its engine problem fixed, was last to leave. Both the pilots and the crowd urged Mildred Doran to stay behind, but she climbed into the back seat of the Buhl. She was ashen-faced and tearful, some said, but determined to carry on.

The next day, Woolaroc touched down at Honolulu before a huge crowd. Two hours later, Aloha, which had taken off just before Woolaroc but navigated less precisely, arrived to the vast relief of the pilot’s frantic wife. 

In vain, the crowd searched the sky for the other two contestants, Golden Eagle and Miss Doran. They never came. Two days later, Dallas Spirit,with two aboard, took off to search for survivors. As the airplane zigzagged westward, it sent out a series of jaunty Morse code messages, and then, “… — …” in a final SOS. 

Nine men and the young, brave and tenacious Mildred Doran were lost in the Dole Transpacific Derby.

As to the pineapples it caused to be sold, their number is not recorded.  

Editor’s Note: This article appeared in the December 2021 issue of FLYING.

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Three-quarters of the globe behind them, Amelia Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan, now had only the Pacific Ocean left to cross. They took off midmorning from Lae, Papua New Guinea, on July 1, 1937, bound for Howland Island, an 8,200-foot-long, paramecium-shaped speck halfway to Honolulu. A runway had been carved out on the uninhabited island for their use. Fuel awaited them, and the US Coast Guard cutter Itasca stood by with radio-direction-finding equipment. Earhart would navigate by pilotage and dead reckoning until nightfall; they would then rely on Noonan’s celestial navigation until the sun rose an hour before their anticipated arrival. Thereafter, Earhart would dead-reckon again.

They reached the vicinity of Howland Island and then disappeared.

The belief that they still had several hours’ worth of fuel as they approached Howland Island—and that their Lockheed Electra could therefore have ended up anywhere within a wide radius that included a number of other islands—spawned a thousand fanciful alternatives to the obvious, and prosaic, explanation for their disappearance: They failed to find microscopic Howland, ran out of fuel, were swallowed by the Pacific.

In the course of weeding out old papers, I came upon a 1999 study of some technical aspects of that fatal flight. Its thesis was that the fuel duration of 24 hours commonly attributed to the Electra was incorrect for several reasons, and that the real figure was probably between 20 and 21 hours. This meant that when the Itasca last heard from Earhart, 20 hours and 13 minutes after takeoff, her fuel was, as she herself reported, running low, and the Electra could not have reached any land other than Howland or the nearby—and even smaller—Baker Island.

The authors, a professor and a graduate student from Caltech, note that to begin with, the high daytime temperature at tropical Lae would have made the fuel less dense. Fuel is stored by volume but consumed by mass, and so the flight duration provided by the fuel—1,100 gallons—would have been half an hour less than expected. Furthermore, the calculated range of the airplane did not take into account the effect of altitude on specific fuel consumption.

In principle, this should not have mattered; the Electra would have still had sufficient fuel for the 2,600-mile trip and then some. But nature failed to cooperate. A 26 mph headwind blew over the entire route, increasing the effective distance to nearly 3,100 miles.

(I am using statute miles instead of nautical because legendary Lockheed designer Kelly Johnson, who will enter the story shortly, did—and also because I think nautical miles are silly.)

If the National Transportation Safety Board had been around to report on the mishap, it would have faulted the pilot’s preflight and en route decision-making. With two 600 hp radial engines, the Electra was capable of around 3 miles per gallon in still air. Making deductions for taxi, takeoff and climb, it would have had a reasonable fuel reserve had the air been still. But clearly a 3,100-mile trip was a more dubious proposition, especially since pinpoint navigation could not be expected.

At any weight, there is a speed, controlled in part by the characteristics of the airplane and in part by those of the engine and propeller, at which the airplane gets the most air miles per gallon. This is the best-range speed. As a general principle, the higher an airplane’s wing loading, the higher its best-range speed will be. As the airplane burns off fuel, the best-range speed gets lower.

In March, Kelly Johnson had provided Earhart with a table of speeds and altitudes to fly for the best range. Specific range—what we term “miles per gallon”—is not terribly sensitive to small differences in speed, and so Johnson gave Earhart a single speed to fly: 150 mph. It seems to be a matter of historical uncertainty whether he meant a true or an indicated airspeed. Aerodynamically speaking, the best-range speed is an indicated speed. But best-range indicated airspeeds, during the last part of the trip when the airplane was light, would have been closer to 130, and so it’s pretty certain Johnson meant true.

Read More from Peter Garrison: Technicalities

Perhaps in order to keep things simple for Earhart, who was known to be dismissive of technical complications and probably had her own ideas about how to fly the Electra, Johnson further specified that she should fly at 4,000 feet for the first three hours, step-climbing 2,000 feet at three-hour intervals thereafter until arriving at 10,000 feet, where she would remain for the duration of the flight. Increasing altitude would have had the effect of causing her indicated airspeed to diminish gradually without saddling her with a confusing list of ever-changing speeds to fly.

Johnson’s guidance included corrections for headwinds and tailwinds. Against a headwind, Earhart knew that the best-range speed increases by about a quarter of the headwind component; flying faster consumes more fuel but also reduces the time spent exposed to the head wind. The 26 mph headwind would have required adding 6 or 7 mph to Johnson’s 150 mph target speed. Earhart actually increased her speed by slightly more; at one point, she reported that her true airspeed was 140 knots, or approximately 161 mph.

The Caltech authors analyzed Earhart’s flight under several sets of assumptions. The largest uncertainty is introduced by the lack of precise information about the engines’ specific fuel consumption. On the basis of the best available information about the airplane and its engines, and of Earhart’s radioed reports during the course of the flight, they concluded that she would have run out of fuel after 20 hours and 38 minutes in the air. Varying the specific fuel consumption by plus or minus 5 percent adds or subtracts an hour.

Earhart reported “over Itasca” 19 hours, 12 minutes after takeoff. This position was an estimate, however, based on Noonan’s celestial navigation, which may have been hampered by the Electra’s lack of an astrodome to permit good star sights. At some point, Earhart reported that she had descended to 1,000 feet, I assume because of clouds. I think she probably also slowed to the speed for best endurance, around 120 mph, while searching for the island.

There were difficulties with the radios. Voice communications were hard to understand, Earhart did not know Morse code, and she may not have adequately understood some of the subtleties of her prototype Bendix ADF. She was unable to get a bearing on the cutter, and the cutter could not get a bearing on her. At 1,000 feet, visual range would have been limited by the horizon, and the island, no part of which rises more than 20 feet above sea level, would have been hard to spot from more than a few miles off.

For any airplane, an ideal range can be calculated by the Breguet range equation, which takes as inputs aerodynamic and propulsive efficiencies and the fraction of the airplane’s initial takeoff weight that is fuel, and yields the greatest distance the airplane can possibly fly. Would-be long-distance flyers take great solace from this famous equation because the efficiencies they select for the calculation are invariably optimistic.

What is striking about Breguet range, however, is how sensitive it is to small variations in specific fuel consumption and propulsive efficiency. That sensitivity translates, in actual practice, into a need to build large margins for error into planning for flights of anything near an airplane’s theoretical maximum range, as well as to assess unexpected conditions, such as headwinds, with great caution. The combination of headwinds, the fuel capacity of the airplane, the limited navigational precision and the tiny size of the target made Earhart’s flight risky. Radio, in effect, should have made the tiny island much larger, but when the radio direction finders did not work, everything came down to luck. Luck had served the intrepid Earhart pretty well in the past, but on that fateful day, like her fuel, it ran out.

This story appeared in the October 2020 issue of Flying Magazine

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