Not everyone knows about Amelia Earhart, unlike the United States and Western Europe, where she has remained one of the most popular historical figures for several decades. If we draw analogies, then it may well be called "Chkalov in a skirt." However, for her contemporaries, Amelia Earhart was a size similar to Gagarin.
Free parenting child
Amelia Earhart was born on July 24, 1897 in Atchison, Kansas, to Edwin and Amy Earhart. Her father was a successful lawyer, her mother was also related to jurisprudence - she was the daughter of a local judge.
Amelia's parents for their time were very progressive people, so both the future pilot herself and her younger sister had a wide choice of interests and entertainment.
Amelia was drawn to men's fun - she rode well, shot, swam, played tennis, adored adventure literature. The girl was not only accepted into their games by the boys - she became their ringleader.
With all this, Amelia studied well.
The holiday of childhood came to an end when my father started drinking. His career went downhill, and the family plunged into poverty.
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Amelia saw the first plane as a child, but she did not like it. In 1917, the girl visited the hospital where wounded soldiers from the fronts of the First World War lay. After this visit, Amelia took a nursing course, considering a career in medicine. Everything changed in 1920, when, by that time already a student, Amelia Earhart got to the exhibition of aircraft in California, where out of curiosity she went on a demonstration flight as a passenger.
New sensations shocked Amelia - she wanted to experience them not as a passenger, but as a pilot. In January 1921, she began taking aerobatics lessons from one of the world's first female pilots, Anita Snook.
First record
This is where Amelia Earhart's adventurous disposition manifested itself. The instructor repeatedly had to take control in order to prevent the attempts of the novice pilot to fly under the power lines. Why not Chkalov with his famous flight under the bridge?
Aerobatics training in the early 1920s was extremely expensive, because Amelia had to spin like a squirrel in a wheel - she worked as a photographer, cameraman, teacher, secretary, telephone operator, truck driver, and even performed in the music hall.
In the summer of 1921, she purchased her first aircraft, the Kinnear Airster biplane, much to the annoyance of Anita Snook. An experienced pilot believed that her student was taking risks recklessly, because the Kinnear was an extremely unreliable machine.
Amelia had her own opinion - in October 1922, on this plane, she climbed to an altitude of 4300 m, which was a world record for women. Piloting skills Earhart honed in "air rodeos" - then very popular imitations of air battles, which took place at various US airfields for the entertainment of the public.
In 1923, Amelia Earhart became the 16th woman in the world to receive a pilot's license from the International Aeronautical Federation. True, the plane had to be sold soon after that due to lack of money. The girl and her mother moved to Boston, where she worked as an English teacher in an orphanage.
"Sack of potatoes" over the Atlantic
Amelia worked as a teacher, and in her free time she improved her flying skills at a nearby airfield. The breakthrough in her career was indirectly provided by the pilot Charles Lindbergh, who made the first successful flight over the Atlantic Ocean to Europe in 1927. In the wake of feminism, women needed their own heroine.
Such wanted to become a millionaire Amy Guest. In collaboration with the New York publisher George Palmer Putnam, they organized the flight: they purchased a Fokker F-VII aircraft, invited pilot Wilmer Stultz and flight mechanic Lou Gordon.
When everything was almost ready, Amy Guest's relatives were outraged - they were categorically against her participation in the flight. Then the lady began to look for a replacement: "an American woman who knows how to fly an airplane and had a good appearance and pleasant manners."
Aviation experts suggested to the enthusiastic millionaire the name Amelia Earhart, which was already well known among the pilots.
June 17, 1928 "Fokker" with a crew of three took off from Newfoundland and less than 21 hours later successfully splashed down off the coast of England. Newspapers enthusiastically wrote about the "first woman to fly transatlantic", but Amelia herself was unhappy. Due to the harsh weather conditions and lack of experience in flying multi-engine aircraft, men drove the Fokker.
“They just drove me like a sack of potatoes,” the pilot told reporters.
Dangerous achievements
However, very quickly Amelia calmed down. This flight brought her fame, popularity, money, and most importantly - the opportunity to continue doing what she loved.
In 1929, she formed the first international organization of women pilots "99" (named after the number of its early members) and began to participate in air races and in setting various records.
In November 1929, she broke the world speed record by accelerating the Lockheed Vega to 197 mph.
Not long before that, there was an episode that speaks a lot about Amelia Earhart as a person. She confidently led the first women's air race California - Ohio, but at the start of the final stage, she saw how the engine of her main rival, Ruth Nichols, caught fire while taxiing to take off. Amelia turned off the engine, rushed to Nichols's plane, pulled her out of the burning car and gave first aid. This act threw Eckhart into third place in the race, but she never regretted it. In 1931, the pilot mastered an autogyro - an aircraft that is a cross between an airplane and a helicopter; she climbed it to a record height, and then flew first across America on it.
In May 1932, Amelia Earhart did what she had dreamed of for a long time - she flew across the Atlantic alone. After Lindbergh, no one succeeded - several of the most experienced pilots perished in the ocean while trying to repeat his record. Amelia herself was on the verge of death - the flight took place in the most difficult conditions, due to the failure of a number of instruments in a storm with a thunderstorm, her plane fell into a tailspin over the ocean. The pilot had neither communication nor support - she could only rely on herself. By some miracle, she managed to level the car over the waves. She reached Northern Ireland, where she successfully landed.
It was an incredible triumph that eclipsed previous successes. Amelia Earhart became a national heroine of the United States. But she continued to fly and break records - in January 1935, she flew solo over the Pacific Ocean from Hawaii to Oakland, California. So many pilots died on this route that flights on it were prohibited. An exception was made for Amelia Earhart, and she did it.
Marriage
In February 1931, Amelia Earhart married George Putnam - the same one who helped Amy Guest organize a flight over the Atlantic. After that, Putnam worked with Amelia, helping her to implement more and more new projects, while simultaneously dealing with the PR of the pilot.
Some were convinced that the marriage between the "air Amazon" and a successful businessman was based solely on calculation, but this was not the case. In 2002, the personal correspondence between Putnam and Earhart was published, which leaves no doubt - they really loved each other.
Since 1934, the couple have lived in California, which has the best weather conditions for flying all year round. In 1936, the famous aviator, girlfriend of the wife of the President of the United States, Eleanor Roosevelt, one of the most influential women in the country, began to collaborate with Purdue University in Indiana, doing aeronautical research.
At the same time, Earhart headed her own flight school.
Amelia was approaching 40 years old, and she was going to change her life. She told reporters that the age of "race for records" in aviation is coming to an end and reliability issues are coming to the fore, where the main will be not aerobatics, but design engineers. She was going to do scientific research and devote time to the family - the pilot wanted to finally have a child, for which she had not had time before.
But before changing her lifestyle, Amelia Earhart was going to set her most outstanding record, flying around the globe.
Fatal flight
The pilot never looked for easy ways, so the route was laid as long as possible, as close to the equator as possible.
The first start of the twin-engined monoplane "Lockheed-Electra" L-10E with a crew of Amelia Earhart, as well as navigators Harry Manning and Frederick Noonan took place on March 17, 1937. The first stage was successful, but at the start from Hawaii, the landing gear failed and the plane had an accident. The crippled monoplane was filled with fuel, but miraculously did not explode.
Superstitious people might consider this a sign from above, but Amelia would not be herself if she did not try again.
After the overhaul of the aircraft in the United States, Earhart began a second attempt on May 20, 1937, now with one navigator, Frederick Noonan.
By July 2, Earhart and Noonan had successfully completed 4/5 of the entire route. However, the most difficult flight was ahead. On July 2, the pilot's plane took off from the coast of New Guinea and, after 18 hours of flight over the Pacific Ocean, was supposed to land on Howland Island.
This island is a piece of land 2.5 km long and 800 m wide, protruding only three meters above sea level. Finding it in the middle of the ocean with the navigation aids of the 1930s is a daunting task.
A runway was specially built for Amelia Earhart on Howland, where representatives of the US authorities and reporters were waiting for her. Communication with the aircraft was maintained by a guard ship, which served as a radio beacon.
By the estimated time, the pilot reported that she was in a given area, but she could not see the island or the ship. Judging by the level of the last radio message received from the plane, the Lockheed Electra was somewhere very close, but never appeared.
When communications were cut and the plane was about to run out of fuel, the US Navy launched the largest search operation in its history. However, a survey of 220,000 square miles of ocean, numerous small islands and atolls yielded no results.
On January 5, 1939, Amelia Earhart and Frederic Noonan were officially declared dead, although there is still no exact information about their fate. According to one version, the plane that spent fuel simply crashed into the ocean, according to another, Earhart landed the plane on one of the small islands, but during landing, the crew lost contact and was seriously injured, which led to their death. There is a third assumption - Amelia Earhart and Frederic Noonan, having made an emergency landing, were captured by the Japanese, who were building their military bases on the islands located in this part of the Pacific Ocean. The pilots allegedly spent several years in captivity and were executed at the end of the war.
There are many versions, but none of them has yet been proven with absolute precision. Therefore, the mystery of Amelia Earhart's last flight remains unsolved.
Alexey Lazarev