Throughout her life, Amelia supported other women and encouraged them to follow their dreams, whether they wanted to fly or do something else. As aviation editor at Cosmopolitan magazine, she recommended to readers that they learn to fly. To mothers, she advised, “Let your daughters fly.”
In 1935, Amelia became a visiting consultant at Purdue University, speaking on women’s career opportunities. Purdue, supportive of her flying, created the Amelia Earhart Fund for Aeronautical Research and purchased a twin-engine Lockheed 10-E Electra, which would become a “flying laboratory.” This plane, which she took on her world trip, was equipped with the latest in aviation technology, including two 500-horsepower engines and communication equipment.
The search for Amelia and her navigator lasted 17 days, covering 250,000 square miles (650,000 square kilometers) at a cost of $4 million. No trace of them or the Lockheed Electra could be found. The government assumed the two were lost at sea.
People had theories about what had happened to Amelia and Fred, of course: They were spies and had completed their mission. They were living on an island. They had adopted new names and moved to another country. They had been captured and killed by the Japanese, who would later bomb Pearl Harbor and lead the United States into World War II.
More than 75 years later, no one is certain of Amelia’s fate. Most experts now believe that her receiving antenna broke upon takeoff from New Guinea, which would explain why she couldn’t hear transmissions from the US Navy and Coast Guard. Her disappearance remains one of the greatest unsolved mysteries of the 20th century.
Will the Amelia Earhart Mystery Finally Be Solved?
Since Amelia’s disappearance in the Pacific, many people have speculated about what her last minutes, hours, and days were like. One group investigating more than 75 years later is the International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery (TIGHAR). Its members believe that Amelia and her navigator were forced to find another location to land because of their low fuel supply. The theory, based on digital analysis of the radio signals, is that they landed on the coral reef of Gardner Island, now known as Nikumaroro Island. This is approximately 300 miles (480 kilometers) southeast of Howland Island. Ocean tides would have eventually swept the Lockheed Electra into the ocean, promptly sinking it.
On the 75th anniversary of Amelia’s disappearance, the TIGHAR’s Niku VII expedition left from Hawaii to search for the Lockheed Electra in the waters around Nikumaroro Island with high-tech equipment. The researchers at TIGHAR hoped to finally locate Amelia Earhart’s airplane and perhaps answer some questions about her disappearance. After a 26-day expedition with sonar detection and high-definition, TIGHAR came up empty-handed. The mystery of Ameila Earhart’s fate continues.
“If I should bop off, it’ll be doing the thing that I’ve always most wanted to do,” she told her friend and fellow pilot Louise Thaden before her epic journey.
LEARN MORE
Amelia Earhart Birthplace Museum, www.ameliaearhartmuseum.org
Amelia Earhart Official Site, www.ameliaearhart.com
“The Earhart Project” on the International Group for Historical Aircraft Recovery website, http://tighar.org
The Fun of It: Random Records of My Own Flying and of Women in Aviation by Amelia Earhart (Kessinger Publishing, 2010)
Last Flight by Amelia Earhart (Random House, reprinted 1999)
Letters from Amelia: An Intimate Portrait of Amelia Earhart by Amelia Earhart and Jean L. Backus (Beacon Press, 1982)
20 Hrs., 40 Min.: Our Flight in the Friendship by Amelia Earhart (National Geographic, reprinted 2003)
LOUISE THADEN
Women’s Air Derby Winner
IN THE 1930S, THE BENDIX Transcontinental Air Race from Cleveland to Los Angeles (which, for two years, started in New York) was considered the top prize for any pilot, male or female. The problem was that the annual race didn’t allow women to race. The death of a female pilot in the 1933 Frank Phillips Trophy Race disturbed aviation’s establishment, which insisted on banning women from competition. But the increasing numbers of determined women aviators made this ban difficult to keep.
Then, in the fifth year of the Bendix, the ban was lifted, and Amelia Earhart took fifth place. The following year, 1936, Amelia was joined in the quest by Laura Ingalls and Louise Thaden, with Blanche Noyes as copilot. The planes took off from New York on September 4, 1936. Louise and Blanche flew a Beechcraft C17R Staggerwing biplane, a new plane from Beechcraft that was built more aerodynamically, with the lower wing staggered in front of the upper wing.
Louise and Blanche discovered almost immediately that their radio was out. They had no idea what position they were in as they flew across country. But Louise was soon forced to forget about the lack of communication: after they reached Albuquerque, strong headwinds and turbulence bounced their plane around and demanded all their attention.
When Louise and Blanche landed in Los Angeles, exhausted, they assumed they were in last place. Louise didn’t even want to land; she wanted to keep flying. Then they goofed by coming across the finish line from the wrong direction. They had trouble seeing because of the afternoon sun and poor visibility due to a nearby forest fire. With everything that had gone wrong, they just wanted to hide, but their bright blue plane refused to fade into the background in front of the crowd of 15,000.
People had said that Louise and Blanche had about as much chance of winning as a “draft horse [had] of winning the Kentucky Derby.” But, on the ground in Los Angeles, the director of the National Air Races approached the women and told them, “I’m afraid you’ve won the Bendix race.” With no radio contact, they hadn’t realized that they weren’t last, let alone first.
Their win, at 14 hours and 55 minutes, meant Louise and Blanche received $7,000—$4,500 for placing first and a bonus of $2,500 for being the first women to finish. Laura Ingalls came in second place 45 minutes later.
It wasn’t the first race Louise had won. In 1929, she flew a Travel Air B-4000 from Santa Monica, California, to Cleveland, Ohio, to win the first Women’s Air Derby, better known as the Powder Puff Derby. Louise, the youngest of the contestants at age 23, beat favorites Amelia Earhart and Pancho Barnes with a time of 20 hours, 2 minutes, and 2 seconds and an average speed of just less than 136 miles per hour.
Blanche Noyes
A former actress, Blanche Noyes switched to flying when her husband, an airmail pilot, introduced her to it. He bought Blanche her first plane and taught her to fly. When she soloed on February 15, 1929, she found something she loved more than acting. Five months later, she had her license. A month after that, she flew in the National Women’s Air Derby.
Blanche flew as a demonstration pilot and for corporations in the first half of the 1930s, but she switched gears when her husband died in a crash in 1935. One of the five women chosen by Phoebe Omlie for the Air Marking Program, Blanche devoted much of her time to air safety and was the only woman allowed to fly government aircraft for a while. She received the Commerce Department’s Gold Medal for her work.
Winning the first Women’s Air Derby didn’t come easily either. Louise experienced periods in her aircraft during which she was dizzy and her vision clouded. Soon after landing in Fort Worth, she fainted. It was determined that there was a problem with the exhaust system—Louise had been breathing in carbon monoxide. Mechanics installed a pipe that would bring clean air into the plane, and Louise had to finish the race with her nose to the pipe.
Louise McPhetridge was born in Bentonville, Arkansas, on November 12, 1905, to Edna and Roy McPhetridge. Louise grew up on a farm, and her father, a traveling salesman, taught her to hunt, fish, and fix a car. She developed an interest in flying early on. When Louise was five years old, she begged for five dollars to buy a ride from a barnstormer. That amount allowed her only five minutes of flying time, but it was enough.
After graduating from high school, Louise attended the University of Arkansas. She didn’t know what she wanted to do. She started as a jou
rnalism major, later changing to physical education. Instead of returning for a fourth year of college, Louise moved to Wichita, Kansas, to work as a sales clerk for a coal company. Her employer was on the board of Travel Air. Louise spent as much time as she could at the airfield, until Walter Beech, the owner of Travel Air, offered her a sales job in Oakland, California. The best part of her new job was that flying lessons were part of the benefits package.
The year 1928 was a busy one for Louise. She earned her pilot’s license, signed by Orville Wright, in May. Two months later, she married Herbert von Thaden, a US Army pilot and aeronautical engineer. By the end of the year, she set one of many records: a women’s altitude record, which she clinched at 20,260 feet (6,179 meters). Within four months, she also held women’s endurance and speed records and was the only woman to hold all three records at the same time.
After her 1929 Women’s Air Derby win, Louise, Amelia Earhart, and Ruth Nichols established the Ninety-Nines. Louise served as treasurer and vice president in the group’s early years.
Working as the public relations director of Pittsburgh Aviation Industries, Louise took every opportunity to publicize aviation and even wrote articles about it. She became director of the Women’s Division of the Penn School of Aeronautics—the first flight school to have a women’s division—in 1930.
But her aviation records, such as a refueling endurance record, drew the most attention. Louise flew over Long Island, New York, from August 14 to 22, 1932, with Frances Marsalis to establish a 196-hour refueling endurance record. Fellow aviator Viola Gentry organized food and supplies. Live radio broadcasts from their Curtiss Thrush biplane generated publicity. They went 74 hours longer than the previous endurance record, which had been set by Bobbi Trout and Edna May Cooper. Their long ride wasn’t a comfortable one. They had stripped out the extra seat, so they brought an air mattress for naps—but it was punctured during the second day.
In 1934, Louise’s friend, fellow pilot Phoebe Omlie, convinced Louise to work with her on the Air Marking Program. Phoebe had convinced the government that using paint or bricks on the roofs of tall buildings or hillsides to identify airports and towns would help pilots navigate from the air. The Bureau of Air Commerce put Phoebe in charge. Louise enjoyed the work. Phoebe appointed her to be in charge of the western part of the United States. At least 13,000 markers were created throughout the country.
Soon after Louise’s Bendix win, she received the Harmon Trophy for outstanding aviation. A year later, she took a break from flying to spend time with her family, including her two young children, Bill and Pat. During this time, she also wrote a book about her adventures, High, Wide, and Frightened.
During World War II, Louise joined the Civil Air Patrol, soon rising to the rank of lieutenant colonel and working with her old friend Ruth Nichols on Relief Wings.
Louise last raced with her daughter in the 1950 International Women’s Air Race from Montreal, Canada, to West Palm Beach, Florida, for a fifth-place finish. A year later, her hometown of Bentonville renamed its airport Louise M. Thaden Field.
LEARN MORE
High, Wide, and Frightened by Louise Thaden and Patty Wagstaff (University of Arkansas Press, reprinted 2004)
“Louise McPhetridge Thaden (1905–1979)” on Encyclopedia of Arkansas History and Culture website, http://encyclopediaofarkansas.net/encyclopedia/entry-detail.aspx?search=1&entryID=30
“Louise Thaden” on National Aviation Hall of Fame website, www.nationalaviation.org/thaden-louise/
BOBBI TROUT
From Service Station to Airfield
TWELVE-YEAR-OLD EVELYN “BOBBI” TROUT was outside one day when she heard a loud noise. Looking up, she saw an airplane, the first she had ever seen. She kept it in her sight as long as she could. When the airplane was gone, she grinned and said, “I’m going to fly airplanes when I grow up.”
Born in Greenup, Illinois, on January 7, 1906, Evelyn Trout preferred fixing things to cooking and sewing. When she was 14, she and her parents moved to Los Angeles. Mrs. Trout did her best to get her daughter to dress like girls did in the 1920s, but she threw up her hands in defeat when Bobbi came home one day with a very short hairstyle called a bob. Bobbi had seen it on movie star Irene Castle. That’s when Evelyn became “Bobbi.”
Bobbi went to school and thought about becoming an architect. She enjoyed competing in sports; she was best at swimming. At home, money was often tight, particularly when her father was in charge of it. He was known to have schemes that didn’t work. He also disappeared from time to time. Bobbi must have inherited her mother’s sense of business, because the two owned and operated a successful gas station, the Radio Service Station. Her mother took care of the money, while Bobbi served the customers. Music and comedy shows played over the radio speakers. Customers would listen while Bobbi filled up their cars with gasoline and washed their windows.
When Bobbi started talking about airplanes, her eyes lit up. One of the customers, W. E. “Tommy” Thomas, just happened to have a Curtiss Jenny airplane. He offered 16-year-old Bobbi a ride. That first flight was everything she had hoped it would be.
Bobbi began saving her money for flying lessons. When she had saved $2,500, she approached Burdett Fuller, who ran an aviation school. On the first day of 1928, Bobbi Trout began learning to fly. It wasn’t all fun. One day, she worked with a young flight instructor on forced landings. He insisted that she make a three-quarter turn and land. She told him the elevation was too low. He disagreed and decided he would show this opinionated girl what a male pilot could do. He crashed the Jenny. It was her first and last lesson with this pilot.
Four months later, Bobbi soloed; she got her license two weeks after that. Bobbi’s mother then bought her an International K-6, a four-place biplane. Bobbi became the fifth woman in America to obtain a transport license, which she did in 1930, two years after becoming a licensed pilot.
Bobbi knew she had to have a sponsor if she wanted to make a living from flying. Sunset Oil Company said it would provide her with free fuel and oil if she would allow its painted logo on her airplane. (Sunset Oil would be the first of many sponsors; Bobbi even flew Mickey Mouse around for Walt Disney.)
One day, a man approached her after she landed the Jenny. His name was R. O. Bone. He said, “I need someone to demonstrate my new airplane. Are you interested? I’ll give you $35 a week.”
“When do I start?” Bobbi asked.
The plane was the Golden Eagle, an experimental airplane with a LeBlond 60-horsepower engine designed by Mark Campbell. Bobbi won her first race in it. On January 2, 1929, she took it up before dawn. She returned 12 hours and 11 minutes later, making her first night landing. Even more important, she had set a women’s solo endurance record.
Then, later that month, Elinor Smith broke Bobbi’s record. So Bobbi went up again just over a month after that; she lasted five hours longer than Smith and reclaimed the record. When she landed, she got a surprise: cameras and movie stars were waiting for her, including one of the most popular men in America, Will Rogers.
Airplanes were getting more powerful, and Bobbi’s was just too small and light. By the summer of 1929, she moved up to a 90-horsepower Golden Eagle Chief. When she broke 15,200 feet (4,636 meters), she added an altitude record to her other achievements.
She had been talking to other pilots, such as Louise Thaden and Elinor Smith, about a woman’s refueling endurance flight. But before that could happen, it was time for the first Women’s Air Derby, a transcontinental race in which she would fly Bone’s newest plane: the 90-horsepower Golden Eagle Chief, a high-wing monoplane.
On August 18, 1929, Bobbi joined 19 other licensed female pilots at Clover Field in Santa Monica, California. She drew the fifth start. As the flag went down, she made an effortless takeoff. On the second day, her engine stopped while she was in flight. When making an emergency landing six miles from the Yuma Airport, she flipped over. Damage to the plane took three days to repair. However, even after waiting for repai
rs, she managed to catch up with many of the pilots near Kansas City. She hadn’t been the only one with problems.
Her plane suffered more engine problems, but this time she made her own repairs. She figured she was out of the race, but she pushed on and eventually finished. Bobbi Trout never quit.
After the derby, Bobbi focused on the women’s refueling endurance flight with Elinor Smith. Promoter Jack Sherrill had arranged for them to use a Sunbeam biplane. They flipped a coin to determine who would fly first. Elinor won.
They took off on November 25, 1929. The two pilots planned to alternate flying and sleeping in four-hour shifts. Bobbi could rest, but only after she performed necessary jobs. And refueling wasn’t the only task: Engine oil needed to be changed daily, and the rocker arms needed to be greased. Fuel had to be pumped from the cabin tank to the fuel tank, an exhausting job that took a lot of arm strength. Supplies and fuel came courtesy of a rope, which was lowered from another airplane. Provisions were lowered in a bag. The other plane then lowered a pipe for fueling. Bobbi would catch the bag and rope. The nozzle was then be secured to a port in the cabin fuel tanks. From there, 180 gallons (680 liters) of fuel were hand-pumped from the bigger tanks to the plane’s smaller tank.
All went well on the first attempt until the planes drifted apart, jerking the gas line out and soaking Bobbi with gasoline. She also swallowed some of it. Elinor quickly landed, and Bobbi was rushed to the hospital.
Women Aviators Page 5
