Daughter of the sky

by Jr. Paul L. Briand

By this time Amy Earhart realized that her daughter was serious about flying, and she decided to help. On the condition that Amelia would spend more time at home, Mrs. Earhart let her have some of the money she had been saving over the years. Amelia readily agreed to the terms.

To her sorrow, however, when she returned to the field a few weeks later to tell Neta Snook the good news, AE learned that Neta, herself desperate for funds, had sold her plane. Disappointed but not discouraged, Amelia turned to a man to help her through enough lessons so that she could solo. Fortunately, her choice of a new instructor was a good one. He was John Montijo, a former Army instructor with hundreds of hours of experience in the air. And what was more, he was patient and unexcitable before the most trying stupidities of his students. He was demanding, but very knowing and skillful in his ability to teach others.

Amelia learned quickly from him. And she insisted that he teach her acrobatics before he allowed her to go up alone. She wanted to have complete mastery of the Kinner Airster biplane. She knew that if she could stunt the plane, she would then have the necessary confidence to recover the plane from whatever attitude it might assume.

Under Montijo’s guidance, her reactions to the most unusual conditions of flight became as trigger fast as they were in the more normal spins and stalls. She practiced for hours doing slips and split-S’s, loops and rolls, lazy-eights and Immelmanns.

Amelia had gained such a sure degree of skill from her new instructor that when her time to solo finally came she had lost all nervousness and fear. She reversed the usual procedure for the first flight alone. Most fledglings she had watched took off with a joyful sweep and circled the field; then—suddenly ground shy—they kept circling until the tanks ran dry and they had to summon the courage to land. The necessary judgment for a good landing is one of the first tests of a good pilot, and AE hoped that hers would be as smooth as John’s always were.

On the day of her solo Amelia walked out to her plane with the graceful ease of newly won self-assurance. Her patent-leather jacket gleamed in the sun; her high leather flying boots, carefully laced over the tight-fitting breeches, kicked up the dust as she walked; her white shirt, jauntily opened at the neck, revealed the inevitable feminine touch. She stepped onto the lower wing of the plane and swung into the front cockpit. She buckled her helmet and set her goggles over her eyes. A mechanic spun the wooden propeller and the biplane headed out to the runway for the take-off. As the plane rolled down the barren strip, gaining speed for the take-off, Amelia felt the right wing sag just before the plane should have lifted into the air. Instinctively, AE chopped the throttle, pulled back the spark-control lever, and settled the plane onto the ground. Getting out to see what had gone wrong, Amelia noticed that one of the shock absorbers had collapsed.

After the damage had been repaired, Amelia, taking courage anew, tried again. She inched the throttle forward, and when the plane had more than enough flying speed, she eased back on the stick, waiting an anxious moment for the plane to break from the ground. The shock absorber held, and the Airster sprang from the end of the runway. Gently, almost caressingly, Amelia coordinated throttle and stick, aileron and rudder, in her climbing turns out of take-off. Suddenly, as she leveled the wings and straightened the nose, she realized an overwhelming fact: she was alone, gloriously alone. She was in complete command of the surging power from the engine and it was just at her fingertips to obey her will and no other.

Her nerve ends had multiplied, for now the power of the engine was her power and had become part of her own body, and the wings and fuselage and empennage were extensions of her own limbs. She climbed and dived and turned, pranking the air in the thrill and exhilaration of new-found love. The awareness of soaring flight now struck her consciousness as if for the first time. She was now the master of her life, her destiny, and perhaps her death. The realization brought a bitter joy and a livid loneliness, but beyond them lay a new kind of freedom and a blessed peace.

Buoyant and elated, she swung the plane into the landing pattern. Feeling too confident, she neglected to lose enough flying speed in her final approach to the runway, and when she tried to touch the plane down, it kept bouncing off the ground and back into the air. Finally, realizing that she had not cut the power, she pulled the throttle all the way back and held the stick hard against her middle. The engine sputtered, the wing stalled, and the plane thumped to the ground.

When she had taxied the plane to the parking area, some of the other pilots came running over to her. “Congratulations!” they shouted. “How did it feel?” they asked. “Were you scared?”