Amelia and Fred repacked the plane, discarding every scrap that was not absolutely needed. AE kept the bare essentials needed for travel; and Fred, a small tin case which he had picked up in Africa and which, Amelia was careful to note, “still rattles, so it cannot be packed very full.”
Restless and disappointed with the day’s delay, pilot and navigator did more sight-seeing on the island, but with half a heart. They could not wait to be off and homeward bound.
At ten o’clock the next morning—the second of July on Lae but the first on Howland—the Electra roared down the 3,000 feet of runway. In the cockpit Amelia watched the tachometer and the air-speed indicator: the rpm dial moved forward, and the air-speed needle crossed the red quadrant into the green, then across the green into the white. The plane broke cleanly into the air 150 feet short of the edge of the cliff that dropped to the sea. Amelia pulled up the gear and climbed to 8,000 feet, the cruising altitude.
She spread across her knees the sectional map prepared by Clarence S. Williams. As usual, all the information was there. She noted the course directions: a magnetic compass heading of 73°, later to change to 72°, then to 71°.
If the Wasp engines would continue to purr, and if the navigation could be correct, or not too far wrong, she would make it. She would be happy when it was over. After 22,000 miles, thirty stops, nineteen countries, five continents, and three crossings of the equator, and looking after 100 dials, gauges, and gadgets, and bucking wind, rain, thunderstorms, and monsoons, she had become tired from strain and weary from the work, not the pleasure, of flying.
The head winds were strong. A few hours out from New Britain and the Solomon Islands, directly on course, Amelia radioed her position to Lae. It was 5:20 P.M. Friday. They were, she said, at 4.33 South Latitude and 159.6 East Longitude, 795 miles out from New Guinea, and proceeding on course. Now, she hoped, if she could home in on the Itasca in the morning, getting home by way of Hawaii would be an easy matter.
On the Itasca preparations had been made and carried out with Swiss-watch precision. Commander Thompson had set up his watches—two men on the ship and one on the shore—and waited. The prearranged radio frequencies were checked, the higher short wave and the lower long wave. The limits of the Electra’s direction finder—the loop antenna—were listed as 200 to 1,500 and 2,400 to 4,800 kilocycles.
Giving her call signals, KHAQQ, Amelia would report in on radio at quarter past and quarter to each hour, as was her custom when possible during the entire world flight. Her frequencies for transmitting were 6,210 kilocycles by day and 3,105 kilocycles by night. For telegraphic code by key, Fred would use 500 kilocycles, the standard frequency used by ships at sea.
On the hour and the half-hour the Itasca would broadcast weather reports and forecasts, and homing signals, on 3,105 kilocycles by voice and 7,500 kilocycles by key.
At 6:30 P.M., Howland time, the first of July, the San Francisco division of the Coast Guard notified the Itasca that the Electra was airborne. To make doubly sure that the ship’s radios were operating correctly, the Itasca tested signal strength with San Francisco, then tried to contact the Electra. It was too early to establish communication with the plane.