Amelia now announced to GP that she planned to fly around the world at the equator. It was something no man had done, not even Lindbergh.
Like the matador of many victories who pits his ability against the bull by getting closer and closer to the horns and making more and more difficult passes, or the mountain climber who has proven himself the victor over the tallest peaks and has yet to climb Everest, so Amelia, who had triumphed over the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, and the North American continent, now would set out to conquer the one remaining adversary to her skill and courage—the world.
PART THREE
THE LAST FLIGHT
1. Crack-up in Hawaii
Ironically, Amelia Earhart’s flight around the world was her last long flight. “I have a feeling,” she had said to Carl Allen of the New York Herald Tribune, “that there is just one more good flight left in my system, and I hope this is it. Anyway, when I have finished this job, I mean to give up major long-distance flights.”
Her plan was to girdle the earth at the equator on an east-to-west flight. The time of departure was set for March, 1937.
For Amelia, the flight was the greatest challenge of her life. No one had done what she planned to do. There had been other flights around the world, but none had been attempted at the equator. Wiley Post, AE’s good friend, had flown around the world twice in his Vega, the Winnie May, once in 1931 with Harold Gatty, then again by himself in 1933.
In 1935 Wiley Post tried again, this time with Will Rogers as his passenger. The plane, a half-breed of Lockheed Orion and Sirius with floats attached, was dangerously nose heavy. “You’ll be in trouble,” the engineers told him at Lockheed, where they refused to put on the floats, “if there’s just a slight power loss on take-off.” Post was stubborn and insistent. He found another company to attach the pontoons. At Point Barrow, Alaska, in August, the engine stuttered on take-off. The plane nosed in and crashed, and two of the most famous men of their time were killed.
Wiley Post’s flights had been made well north of the equator, at a distance only two thirds the length of the equator.
There had also been some remarkable distance flights by others. In 1933 the Lindberghs made a 29,000-mile air-route survey of Europe, Africa, and South America. Laura Ingalls in 1934 had flown solo from New York to South America and return, a distance of 16,897 miles. Also in 1934 the Pacific was flown in a first west-east flight, from Australia to California, by Sir Charles Kingsford-Smith and Captain P. G. Taylor.