I am guessing a "Very Pistol" was a flare gun? I have never heard that before.
I found an interesting reference to a pistol here.
"In one letter to Chief Bellarts, Balfour stated that Amelia handed her facility book plus a lot of papers along with her pistol and ammunition to him prior to her takeoff for Howland Island."
Could flares have been referred to as "ammunition"?
Earhart carried a Model 1903 .32 cal Colt Automatic Pocket Pistol with her for self-defense which is the one she gave to Balfour along with ammunition for it. She did not give away her "Very Pistol" which is a flare gun.
Balfour also wrote the same thing to Holbrook as I posted before:
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From Lovell's book:
"...Her obsession with weight may have been taken to extreme length,
for according to Harry Balfour, radio operator at Lae, survival
equipment was also taken off. Balfour claimed that "she unloaded all her
surplus equipment on me including her [Very] pistol and ammunition,
books, letters and facility books"".
I don't know who placed the "Very" inside the brackets but, according to Balfour, the "pistol" that Earhart gave him was an "automatic pistol," apparently carried for personal protection, not an emergency signaling "Very Pistol." I don't know who was the person who made this change to Balfour's words and if it was done out of ignorance or if it was due to "political correctness." I am still curious who changed "automatic pistol" to "[Very] pistol", was it Ms. Lovell or her source? She footnotes this information as coming from Francis X. Holbrook, NA&SM Library, Amelia Earhart General File: F0171300. The fact "Very" was put in brackets shows that it was deliberately changed, but why and by whom? The letter from Balfour containing this quote was sent to Holbrook. Almost every book about Earhart repeats this as the basis for claiming that Earhart did not have a very pistol with her but it does not support that claim.
See:https://tighar.org/smf/index.php/topic,555.msg8280.html#msg8280
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