Ruth Nichols, AE’s friendly neighbor and fellow flier from Rye, was on the way for the transatlantic hop in June, 1931, but as she came in for a landing in Saint John’s, New Brunswick, her overloaded plane cracked up, nearly killing her. Although she was still encased in a body cast from the crash, Ruth Nichols was ready in 1932 to try again. But, just as she was ready to go, she heard that Amelia had made it.
The two women fliers were the friendliest of rivals, and they were always neck and neck to be the first woman-to-do in aviation. In 1930, for example, AE had set the speed record at 181.157 mph; in 1931, Miss Nichols set a new one at 210.685 mph. They had raced together in the first Powder Puff Derby, until Ruth crashed in Columbus. Each wanted to be the first woman to fly around the world: AE failed; Ruth succeeded.
For Amelia the flight alone across the Atlantic came four years after the Friendship venture. She had gained experience in all kinds of flying, in all kinds of weather. She had flown coast to coast across the United States four times: twice in Lady Heath’s Avian and twice in the autogiro. With her Vega she had made numerous flights; one of them the Women’s Air Derby in which she placed third in the race from California to Ohio.
AE purchased another Vega; although secondhand, it was in excellent flying condition, and as added insurance she had a new Wright Whirlwind engine installed. After nine crack-ups and emergency landings, most of them because of engine failure, she felt that the new motor was a wise investment.
One morning in the winter of 1931, the Putnams sat at breakfast in their Rye home. Amelia lowered the morning paper and looked out the dining-room window. The light was clear, hard, and bright. The oak trees out beyond the patio were stark and bare. The air seemed crisp and clean, as if snow might begin to swirl at any moment.
Amelia brushed her stiff locks with a quick sweep of the hand and turned to her husband. “Would you mind,” she asked slowly, “if I flew the Atlantic?”
GP was elated with the idea, finally expressed, for he knew the project had been growing within her, like a child, for a long time. He could see, as he looked into his wife’s steady gray-blue eyes, that she had arrived at that point of self-confidence where only agreement with her was possible.
“Of course I don’t mind,” he said quickly. “I think it’s an excellent idea.”
Plans began to take definite shape. To avoid any possibility of advance notoriety, Amelia chartered her Vega to an old friend, Bernt Balchen, the famous Arctic explorer and an intrepid flier. He had agreed to act as her technical adviser. It was well known that Balchen and Lincoln Ellsworth were planning an Antarctic expedition; everyone could now infer that AE’s plane was going to be used by the explorers.
As with the earlier Friendship flight, when everybody thought the Fokker seaplane was being made ready for Byrd, thus giving Stultz and Gordon the necessary freedom for test-hopping the aircraft, so now Amelia had hour after hour and day after day for checking out the new Whirlwind motor, for blind flying entirely by instruments, for preparing for the variable weather over the North Atlantic.