Thread by @marinamaral2

Amelia Earhart was declared dead #OnThisDay in 1939.

She was the first female aviator to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean.

(The photo is from The Colour of Time tinyurl.com/y9ddsvzj)

Earhart was the daughter of Samuel "Edwin" Stanton Earhart and Amelia "Amy". She was born in Atchison, Kansas, in the home of her maternal grandfather, Alfred Gideon Otis, who was a former federal judge, the president of the Atchison Savings Bank.

According to family custom, Earhart was named after her two grandmothers, Amelia Josephine Harres and Mary Wells Patton. From an early age, Amelia was the ringleader while her sister Grace Muriel Earhart (1899–1998), two years her junior, acted as the dutiful follower.

In 1904, with the help of her uncle, Amelia cobbled together a home-made ramp fashioned after a roller coaster she had seen on a trip to St. Louis and secured the ramp to the roof of the family toolshed.

Earhart's well-documented first flight ended dramatically. She emerged from the broken wooden box that had served as a sled with a bruised lip, torn dress and a "sensation of exhilaration".

She exclaimed, "Oh, Pidge, it's just like flying!"

At the age of 10, Earhart saw her first aircraft at the Iowa State Fair in Des Moines. Her father tried to interest her and her sister in taking a flight. One look at the rickety "flivver" was enough for Earhart, who promptly asked if they could go back to the merry-go-round.

While the family's finances seemingly improved with the acquisition of a new house in 1909 and even the hiring of two servants, it soon became apparent that Edwin was an alcoholic.

Five years later in 1914, he was forced to retire. At about this time, Earhart's grandmother Amelia Otis died suddenly, leaving a substantial estate that placed her daughter's share in a trust, fearing that Edwin's drinking would drain the funds.

The Otis house was auctioned along with all of its contents. Earhart was heartbroken and later described it as the end of her childhood.

Earhart graduated from Chicago's Hyde Park High School in 1916. Throughout her troubled childhood, she had continued to aspire to a future career; keeping a scrapbook of newspaper clippings about successful women in predominantly male-oriented fields.

During Christmas in 1917, Earhart visited her sister in Toronto. World War I had been raging and she saw the returning wounded soldiers. After receiving training as a nurse's aide from the Red Cross, she began work with the Voluntary Aid Detachment at Spadina Military Hospital.

At about that time, Earhart and a young woman friend visited an air fair held in conjunction with the Canadian National Exhibition in Toronto. One of the highlights of the day was a flying exhibition put on by a World War I ace.

The pilot overhead spotted Earhart and her friend, who were watching from an isolated clearing, and dived at them. "I am sure he said to himself, 'Watch me make them scamper,'" she said. Earhart stood her ground as the aircraft came close.

"I did not understand it at the time," she said, "but I believe that little red airplane said something to me as it swished by."

In Long Beach, on December 28, 1920, Earhart and her father visited an airfield where Frank Hawks gave her a ride that would forever change Earhart's life.

"By the time I had got two or three hundred feet [60–90 m] off the ground," she said, "I knew I had to fly."

After that 10-minute flight (which cost her father $10), she immediately determined to learn to fly.

Working at a variety of jobs including photographer, truck driver, and stenographer at the local telephone company, she managed to save $1,000 for flying lessons.

She had her first lesson on January 3, 1921, at Kinner Field near Long Beach. Her teacher was Anita "Neta" Snook (photo), a pioneer female aviator who used a surplus Curtiss JN-4 "Canuck" for training.

Earhart arrived with her father and a singular request: "I want to fly. Will you teach me?"

In order to reach the airfield, Earhart had to take a bus to the end of the line, then walk four miles (6 km).

Earhart's commitment to flying required her to accept the rudimentary conditions that accompanied early aviation training.

She chose a leather jacket, but aware that other aviators would be judging her, she slept in it for three nights to give the jacket a "worn" look.

To complete her image transformation, she also cropped her hair short in the style of other female flyers.

Six months later, Earhart purchased a secondhand bright yellow Kinner Airster biplane she nicknamed "The Canary".

On October 22, 1922, she flew the Airster to an altitude of 14,000 feet (4,300 m), setting a world record for female pilots.

On May 15, 1923, Earhart became the 16th woman in the United States to be issued a pilot's license (#6017) by the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale.

Throughout the early 1920s, following a disastrous investment in a failed gypsum mine, Earhart's inheritance from her grandmother, which was now administered by her mother, steadily diminished until it was exhausted.

Consequently, with no immediate prospects for recouping her investment in flying, Earhart sold the "Canary" as well as a second Kinner and bought a yellow Kissel "Speedster" two-passenger automobile, which she named the "Yellow Peril".

After trying her hand at a number of unusual ventures that included setting up a photography company, Earhart set out in a new direction.

Following her parents' divorce in 1924, she drove her mother on a transcontinental trip from California to Boston, Massachusetts.

She returned to Columbia University for several months but was forced to abandon her studies and any further plans for enrolling at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, because her mother (photo) could no longer afford the tuition fees and associated costs.

Soon after, she found employment first as a teacher, then as a social worker in 1925 at Denison House. She maintained her interest in aviation, becoming a member of the American Aeronautical Society's Boston chapter and was eventually elected its vice president.

Earhart flew the first official flight out of Dennison Airport in 1927. She also wrote local newspaper columns promoting flying and as her local celebrity grew, she laid out the plans for an organization devoted to female flyers.

After Charles Lindbergh's solo flight across the Atlantic in 1927, Amy Guest expressed interest in being the first woman to fly across the Atlantic Ocean. After deciding that the trip was too perilous for her to undertake, she offered to sponsor the project...

... suggesting that they find "another girl with the right image".

While at work one afternoon in April 1928, Earhart got a phone call from Capt. Hilton H. Railey, who asked her, "Would you like to fly the Atlantic?"

The project coordinators interviewed Earhart and asked her to accompany pilot Wilmer Stultz and copilot/mechanic Louis Gordon on the flight, nominally as a passenger, but with the added duty of keeping the flight log.

The team departed from Trepassey Harbor, Newfoundland, in a Fokker F.VIIb/3m on June 17, 1928, landing at Pwll near Burry Port, South Wales, exactly 20 hours and 40 minutes later.

Amelia did not pilot the aircraft.

When interviewed after landing, she said, "Stultz did all the flying. I was just baggage, like a sack of potatoes... maybe someday I'll try it alone."

Although she had gained fame for her transatlantic flight, she endeavored to set an "untarnished" record of her own.

Shortly after her return, piloting Avian 7083, she set off on her first long solo flight that occurred just as her name was coming into the national spotlight. By making the trip in 1928, Earhart became the first woman to fly solo across the North American continent and back.

On the morning of May 20, 1932, 34-year-old Earhart set off from Harbour Grace, Newfoundland, with a copy of the Telegraph-Journal, intended to confirm the date of the flight. She intended to fly to Paris in her single engine Lockheed Vega 5B to emulate Lindbergh's solo flight.

After a flight lasting 14 hours during which she contended with strong northerly winds, icy conditions and mechanical problems, she landed in a pasture at Culmore, north of Derry, Northern Ireland.

When a farm hand asked, "Have you flown far?" Earhart replied, "From America".

Early in 1936, Earhart started planning a round-the-world flight. Although others had flown around the world, her flight would be the longest at 29,000 miles (47,000 km) because it followed a roughly equatorial route.

With financing from Purdue University, in July 1936, a Lockheed Electra 10E was built at Lockheed Aircraft Company to her specifications, which included extensive modifications to the fuselage to incorporate many additional fuel tanks.

Although the Electra was publicized as a "flying laboratory", little useful science was planned and the flight was arranged around Earhart's intention to circumnavigate the globe along with gathering raw material and public attention for her next book.

Earhart chose Captain Harry Manning as her navigator. Manning was not only a navigator, but he was also a skilled radio operator who knew Morse code.

Fred Noonan was subsequently chosen as a second navigator.

The original plans were for Noonan to navigate from Hawaii to Howland Island, a particularly difficult portion of the flight; then Manning would continue with Earhart to Australia and she would proceed on her own for the remainder of the project.

On March 17, 1937, Earhart and her crew flew the first leg from Oakland, California to Honolulu, Hawaii. Due to lubrication and galling problems with the propeller hubs' variable pitch mechanisms, the aircraft needed servicing in Hawaii.

The flight resumed three days later. During the takeoff run, there was an uncontrolled ground-loop, the forward landing gear collapsed, both propellers hit the ground, the plane skidded on its belly, and a portion of the runway was damaged.

Earhart thought either the Electra's right tire had blown and/or the right landing gear had collapsed. Some sources cited pilot error.

With the aircraft severely damaged, the flight was called off and the aircraft was shipped by sea to the Lockheed Burbank facility for repairs.

While the Electra was being repaired Earhart and Putnam prepared for a second attempt, this time flying west to east. On this second flight, Fred Noonan was Earhart's only crew member.

The pair departed Miami on June 1 and after numerous stops in South America, Africa, the Indian subcontinent and Southeast Asia, arrived at Lae, New Guinea, on June 29, 1937.

At this stage about 22,000 miles (35,000 km) of the journey had been completed. The remaining 7,000 miles (11,000 km) would be over the Pacific.

On July 2, 1937, midnight GMT, Earhart and Noonan took off from Lae Airfield in the heavily loaded Electra. Their intended destination was Howland Island, a flat sliver of land 6,500 ft (2,000 m) long and 1,600 ft (500 m) wide, 10 ft (3 m) high and 2,556 miles (4,113 km) away.

The aircraft departed Lae with about 1100 gallons of gasoline.

Around 3 pm Lae time, Earhart reported her altitude as 10000 feet but that they would reduce altitude due to thick clouds. Around 5 pm, Earhart reported her altitude as 7000 feet and speed as 150 knots.

During Earhart and Noonan's approach to Howland Island, the USCGC Itasca received strong and clear voice transmissions from Earhart identifying as KHAQQ but she apparently was unable to hear voice transmissions from the ship.

Signals from the ship would also be used for direction finding, implying that the aircraft's direction finder was also not functional. The first calls, routine reports stating the weather as cloudy and overcast, were received at 2:45 and just before 5 am on July 2.

At 6:14 am another call was received stating the aircraft was within 200 miles (320 km), and requested that the ship use its direction finder to provide a bearing for the aircraft.

Earhart began whistling into the microphone to provide a continual signal for them to home in on.

It was at this point that the radio operators on the Itasca realized that their RDF system could not tune in the aircraft's 3105 kHz frequency; radioman Leo Bellarts later commented that he "was sitting there sweating blood because I couldn't do a darn thing about it."

Earhart's 7:58 am transmission said she couldn't hear the Itasca and asked them to send voice signals so she could try to take a radio bearing. This transmission was reported by the Itasca as the loudest possible signal, indicating Earhart and Noonan were in the immediate area.

They couldn't send voice at the frequency she asked for, so Morse code signals were sent instead. Earhart acknowledged receiving these but said she was unable to determine their direction.

In her last known transmission at 8:43 am Earhart broadcast "We are on the line 157 337. We will repeat this message. We will repeat this on 6210 kilocycles. Wait."

However, a few moments later she was back on the same frequency (3105 kHz) with a transmission that was logged as a "questionable": "We are running on line north and south."

Earhart's transmissions seemed to indicate she and Noonan believed they had reached Howland's charted position, which was incorrect by about five nautical miles. The Itasca used her oil-fired boilers to generate smoke for a period of time but the fliers apparently did not see it.

Whether any post-loss radio signals were received from Earhart and Noonan remains unclear. If transmissions were received from the Electra, most if not all were weak and hopelessly garbled.

Beginning approximately one hour after Earhart's last recorded message, the USCGC Itasca undertook an ultimately unsuccessful search north and west of Howland Island based on initial assumptions about transmissions from the aircraft.

The United States Navy soon joined the search and over a period of about three days sent available resources to the search area in the vicinity of Howland Island.

Four days after Earhart's last verified radio transmission, on July 6, 1937, the captain of the battleship Colorado received orders from the Commandant, Fourteenth Naval District to take over all naval and coast guard units to coordinate search efforts.

The official search efforts lasted until July 19, 1937. At $4 million, the air and sea search by the Navy and Coast Guard was the most costly and intensive in U.S. history up to that time but search and rescue techniques during the era were rudimentary...

.... and some of the search was based on erroneous assumptions and flawed information. Official reporting of the search effort was influenced by individuals wary about how their roles in looking for an American hero might be reported by the press.

Despite an unprecedented search by the United States Navy and Coast Guard, no physical evidence of Earhart, Noonan or the Electra 10E was found.

Immediately after the end of the official search, Putnam, Amelia's husband, financed a private search by local authorities of nearby Pacific islands and waters, but no trace of the Electra or its occupants was found.

Back in the USA, he acted to become the trustee of Earhart's estate so that he could pay for the searches. In probate court in Los Angeles, he requested to have the "declared death in absentia" 7-year waiting period waived so that he could manage Earhart's finances.

As a result, Amelia Earhart was declared legally dead on January 5, 1939.

Earhart's accomplishments in aviation inspired a generation of female aviators, including the more than 1,000 women pilots of the WASP who ferried military aircraft, towed gliders, flew target practice aircraft, and served as transport pilots during World War II.

Disappeared: July 2, 1937 (aged 39) - Pacific Ocean, en route to Howland Island from Lae, Papua New Guinea

Declared dead in absentia: January 5, 1939 (aged 41).

*Done*

Earhart's letter to George Putnam, her husband (then fiancé), is the best thing you'll read today.

(She only said yes on the 7th proposal).