The Queen Of The Skies

Let us go back about 110 years ago when a young girl asked why not. While at an air show in the early days of aviation a girl asked why she couldn’t be one of those daring young aviators in the sky above her?

Keeping in mind her love of the adventure she saw in the freedom of flight, she knew on her first flight that this was where she belonged in the sky, flying her own aircraft. She would go on to fly in and pilot numerous aircraft in her lifetime.

Not only was she the first female to be a passenger to fly across the Atlantic Ocean, she was also the first female pilot to fly across the Atlantic Ocean.

She was a member of the National Woman’s Party and an early supporter of the Equal Rights Amendment. Who knows what might have happened if things had had a different outcome?

She became one of the most notable females in American and world history when she and Fred Noonan attempted a clandestine flight around the globe. The fight had a number of drawbacks that every pilot today would take for granted. Even the compass they had to rely on was not like the compass that navigators today use. Fred Noonan was one of the best navigators she could have chosen, you see he was one of the team that helped to navigate the flight paths that Pan Am Clippers used to reach the Orient. This was still the time that dead reckoning was the only form of navigation there was. There was no GPS, no radio navigation signal, and what there was, was not in any way as helpful as they are today.

It was July 2, 1937, on the leg from Lae, New Guinea to Howland Island, desperately trying to reach the safety of Howland Island. It is a widely held belief that they ran out of fuel and crashed into the Pacific Ocean never to be heard from again.

There have been many searches for the Pilot and her navigator, starting with the largest search and rescue mission for a Civilian aircraft ever launched by F.D.R. There were many more private missions launched in the years following their disappearance. Even with today’s modern technology, still no substantiated, beyond the shadow of a doubt, evidence of them has ever been found. She was declared dead in absentia on Jan. 5, 1939.

Not only was she a pioneer in aviation, she was and is to this day an inspiration for girls and boys to reach for the skies. Who was she: Amelia Earhart, American born of part German descent. She has become what is known as a Legend. (24 July 1897 – 2 July 1937).