“Fairly soon. But only when I’m ready—and the ship.”
It was not long afterward that the Putnams moved to the West Coast, not so much to be closer to the Pacific Ocean, but so that AE could be near the center of the aviation industry in California.
By December plane and pilot were ready. Paul Mantz, Amelia’s good friend and a crack pilot, acted as her technical adviser. He was her Bernt Balchen on the West Coast. On December 22 AE and her husband and Paul Mantz and his wife left Los Angeles aboard the S. S. Lurline of the Matson Line, bound for Honolulu. Lashed to the aft tennis deck of the ship was a new Lockheed Vega. The old one had been sold to the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia for more than eight thousand dollars. The new plane, like the old, was painted a vivid red for quick recognition in the event it should go down on a flight.
When the ship docked five days later, Amelia, as soon as she descended the gangway, was surrounded by newsmen. “Would she be the first woman to fly from Hawaii to the mainland?” they asked.
Amelia bent her head to accept the lei placed about her neck by a pretty native girl. Never one to divulge her plans to the press, AE replied affably yet distantly: “I thought I would do some flying over the Hawaiian Islands.”
Not satisfied with that answer, a reporter pressed his point. “If you fly to the California coast,” he asked, “will Mantz fly with you?”
Amelia grinned, then broke into a rare, broad gap-toothed smile. “If I fly to the coast,” she replied, “I will not take a cat along.”
For two weeks she waited in Honolulu for the right weather conditions and for the sign from Paul Mantz that the plane and engine were in top condition for the Pacific crossing. The Vega had been taken to the Navy’s Wheeler Field.
Amelia made one public appearance, at the University of Hawaii, where she spoke on “Flying for Fun.” Before the speech, word of the flight had leaked out, and there had been criticism of her from the press; a newspaper had said that her radio equipment was inadequate for the long flight to California.
The night of January 2 Amelia stood at the podium in Farrington Hall, telling students and faculty about her fun in flying. In the audience sat GP, listening attentively. His wife, he thought, had responded beautifully to his coaching: she had become a first-rate public speaker. A young man came down the aisle and handed George a note. GP unfolded it and read: Paul Mantz, at the moment flying above the islands at 12,000 feet in AE’s plane, had reached radio stations up and down the mainland, and inland as far as Arizona. The Vega’s radios could send and receive, GP concluded, not the mere 300 miles leveled at Amelia in the criticism from the press, but 3,000 miles. GP sent the note up to his wife.