Famous Female Pilot Amelia Earhart: 80 Years Ago Today

Earhart Attempts to Fly Around the World

Amelia Earhart and her Lockheed Electra

July 2, 1937, famed female aviator Amelia Earhart and her navigator, Frederick Noonan were reported missing while attempting to circumnavigate the globe in their Lockheed Electra 10-E aircraft just 22 days before her 40th birthday. Earhart was born July 24, 1897 in Atchison Kansas. She learned to fly at the age of 24 and later became famous as being the first female aviator to cross the continental United States and the Atlantic solo among many other aviation milestones.

The pair had already successfully flown 22,000 miles when they left Lea, New Guinea on the most dangerous leg of their global journey. The last 7000 miles would be flown almost entirely over the Pacific Ocean. Several U.S. ships were deployed to assist Earhart and Noonan in navigation on this crucial leg of their famous flight. The next scheduled stop was the tiny U.S. owned Howland Island. The U.S. Coast Guard cutter Itasca made sporadic contact with the duo who were obviously lost. Earhart radioed “one-half hour of fuel and no landfall..” After several frustrating hours of trying to maintain radio communication and navigational assistance by both Earhart and the Itasca, radio contact was lost and it is presumed that Earhart made an attempt at a water landing in the ocean. An intensive search of the surrounding area by the U.S. Navy and U.S. Coast Guard found no trace of the Lockheed Electra or its crew. Many attempts throughout the years have been made to locate the final resting place of Earhart. It is presumed the most famous female aviator of all time perished at sea.

Follow me for more interesting and originally written articles! Thank you for your support!
Captain Chris

A legend!!! Nice piece of history!!!

I follow news on Amelia pretty closely. It's so interesting to me. There's a new documentary coming on the History channel this coming Sunday July 9th at 9pm EST. This documentary will present compelling evidence and explore the theory that Amelia and Noonan crash landed new Saipan and survived. I'm looking forward to it!

Cool! I watch the History channel (and channels like it) all the time! Thank you for the heads up and the comment! I already have my DVR set :-)

You're very welcome! Me too...that's pretty much the only stuff I watch. =) Enjoy!

Very much looking forward to the documentary. I did not realize that they had that much help from below with navigation. I read an interesting excerpt about female pilots of the day with my students and the challenges with navigation that often occurred, even during land-based races over the continental United States. I live on an island in Southeast Alaska currently (actually moving to Japan in a month) and we frequently have to take float planes and bush planes to "get out of town." Some are "instrument rated," but most are small 4 seater planes that are not allowed to fly if there is any threat of weather or the fog is too low. That being said, there are still plenty of crashes that occur throughout the state due to challenging terrain and navigation.

I am a pilot as well, so I understand exactly what you're talking about. Thanks for the comment!

Enjoyed your post. These little slices of history are very interesting.

Thank you...and thanks for reading! I plan on writing more like this related to space and aviation on a regular basis. I worked at NASA for almost a decade, so it's right up my alley :-)

Just followed you. I'm looking forward to your articles. It must have been pretty exciting working at NASA. I still remember getting up at 3am to watch the Apollo landings with my brother. But that may have been before your time there.

Not too far before my time! I was 4 months old when man first walked on the moon. My mom tells me I watched intensely :-) Thanks for following! I'll try to not let you down :-)

Followed...good short piece...