Daughter of the sky

by Jr. Paul L. Briand

Early one Saturday morning AE rolled out of bed. She was wearing a leather flying jacket over her pajamas. For the last several nights she had been sleeping in it to give it a worn look. She didn’t want the curious to know that she was a novice at flying. She ate her breakfast quickly; she wanted to be out of the house before seven o’clock.

The ride out to the airport took more than an hour to the end of the carline, then she had to walk another three miles along the dusty highway to the field. Amelia wore her riding breeches, her high leather boots, and her leather jacket; tucked under her arm was her leather helmet and goggles. Although she had not soloed yet, she felt like a flier. And to complete the woman-flier portrait, she had been secretly snipping away at her hair.

Instructor Neta Snook and student Amelia Earhart must have looked strange to the casual onlooker. What were these two women doing, dressing like men and climbing into an airplane?

Neither woman cared. Why couldn’t a woman enjoy the pleasures and run the risks of flight? Snooky did not trouble herself about how she looked: she was comfortable in a pair of mechanic’s dirty coveralls. Tall and slender, Amelia, with her hair pushed under her helmet, looked like a handsome boy. She was not concerned about her appearance; she was being practical: the field was dusty and the plane was difficult to climb into. The jodhpurs and jacket, like the gym suits she wore as a little girl, made good sense.

Amelia was glad that Neta Snook was her first instructor. With a woman to teach her she felt less self-conscious about taking lessons; any of the men fliers, who overwhelmed her with their abilities, would have scared her away, at least in the first difficult stages of learning how to fly. Her self-confidence was still shaky and insecure.

AE learned slowly but well. At first Neta showed her how to read the instruments, how to start and rev up the engine, how to check the magnetoes, follow through on stick, rudders, and throttle as she took the Canuck off, climbed, made gentle turns to the left and right, and came in for a landing.

After a few weeks Amelia had learned how to fly a quadrangular course. This had been difficult at first in the light plane. She had to fly around a fenced-off field by keeping the right wing, at a steady altitude of 1,000 feet, exactly in line with the fence. She would angle in to the line, move swiftly downwind, turn steeply into the wind and crab along the cross-wind leg, then level out and move slowly upwind. The fourth leg was the hardest, for it meant a shallow turn with the wind to stay on course. The maneuver around the field demanded coordination of up and down and left and right. But Amelia could see the point of the exercise: if she could successfully work stick, rudder, and throttle in getting around the field, she would have learned the basic requirements for a landing pattern.

Then Neta taught her stalls and spins. These had to be mastered soon if she hoped someday to solo. Again Amelia followed through on the controls. AE sat in the rear cockpit and studied Neta’s every move with stick, throttle, and rudder. Neta reduced throttle, pulled up the nose until the wing stalled; the plane plunged down, then she jammed the stick forward and added throttle to pull out of the dive. This was a simple stall, and Amelia soon commanded the necessary skill to recover the plane.

A spin was more involved; again Neta proved that the Curtiss Flying School had taught her well. As before she pulled the plane back into a stall, but now she kicked the right rudder hard, snapping the wing over. The plane spun to the right, and Amelia, getting dizzier from each tightening whirl, tried to concentrate on Neta’s recovery. Neta applied opposite rudder to the direction of the spin, straightening the wings; then she thrust the stick forward, adding power, and slowly came back on the stick to bring the nose back onto the horizon. Amelia thought the maneuver too complicated to master, but after several attempts with Snooky patiently guiding her through each step, she finally learned. Her reactions became quick, sure, and accurate.

Having learned how to take off and land, and how to recover from stalls and spins, Amelia began to radiate with the new sense of power which these basic skills and accomplishments had given her. She was eager to get on with her lessons, but there was never enough money to pay for them. Much of her instruction from Neta had been on credit, and her job with the telephone company scarcely paid enough to meet all costs. It became immediately clear to her that she needed a better-paying job. She found one a few days later in a most unlikely occupation for a girl—driving a truck for a sand and gravel company.