One of the most fascinating aspects of researching and writing Finding Amelia – The True Story of the Earhart Electra is how Amelia’s world flight evolved from the way it was first envisioned. As described by George Putnam in a letter to Purdue University President Edward Elliott in March 1936, Amelia’s plan was for “another world flight.”
In 1936, circumnavigation of the globe by air was nothing new. The U.S. Army had been the first in 1924. The Graf Zeppelin was next in 1929. Wiley Post had done it twice, with Harold Gatty in 1930 and again solo in 1933. By September 1936 it would be possible for anyone to make the entire journey around the world as a commercial airline passenger. Nonetheless, Putnam wrote that a world flight by Amelia would be of great value. “Those concerned with the development of aviation are convinced that such a world flight is of prime importance in stimulating greater interest in pure and applied research in aeronautics.” Who those people were was not mentioned.
Amelia’s world flight was to take place in late 1936 or early in 1937. She would begin with a send-off in Washington, DC after which she would fly to Purdue for the official beginning to the world flight. Her route would be from Lafayette, Indiana to San Francisco; to Honolulu; to Tokyo, Japan; to Hong Kong, China; to Rangoon, Burma; to Karachi, India; to Cairo, Egypt; to Dakar, French West Africa; to Natal, Brazil; to Havana, Cuba; to New York; and back to Purdue.
(Click on the map to open a larger version in a new page.)
The proposed route was, to say the least, ambitious. Envisioned as a solo flight like her other long-distance records, three of the legs, if flown nonstop, would involve flights of about thirty hours duration. Putnam wrote that Amelia would accomplish the circumnavigation as quickly as possible but “the emphasis will be on conservatism. Comparative safety and the acquisition of important data will not be sacrificed for speed.” There would be no records to be “held up in comparison” because no east to west flight or similar route had ever been attempted.
The trip would include “the unprecedented exploit of bridging the 3,900 miles of Pacific between Honolulu and Japan.” Putnam saw the flight’s importance to aviation “in its utilization of a twin-engine plane and the latest in all branches of scientific aeronautical equipment.” All previous circumnavigations had been in single-engine aircraft but the advantages of multi-engine, all-metal aircraft in long-distance flying was not in question. Two of the top three finishers in the 1934 MacRobertson Trophy Air Race from England to Australia, had been twin-engined American airliners, a Douglas DC-2 and a Boeing 247. In 1935 Pan American Airways had begun scheduled passenger service across the Pacific in four-engined Sikorsky S-42B flying boats.
Putnam was correct, however, that the most important aspect of the world flight would be Amelia’s star-power. “Above all, its public interest lies in the record and personality of its pilot.”
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