Transcriber’s Notes

The symbol ‘‡’ indicates the description in square brackets has been added to an illustration. This may be needed if there is no caption, the caption does not describe the image adequately, or to present any significant text embedded in the image.

Corrected text is marked with a dotted underline. A list of corrections can be found at the end of this eBook.

[Other notes] may be found at the end of this eBook.

© London News Agency

ON THE “PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT

20 HRS. 40 MIN.
OUR FLIGHT IN THE FRIENDSHIP

THE AMERICAN GIRL, FIRST ACROSS THE
ATLANTIC BY AIR, TELLS HER STORY

BY

AMELIA EARHART

WITH 61 ILLUSTRATIONS

G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS
NEW YORK—LONDON
The Knickerbocker Press
1928

20 HRS. 40 MIN.

Copyright, 1928
by
G.P. Putnam’s Sons

This is a copy of the first edition

‡[G. P. Putnam’s Sons]

‡[The
Knickerbocker
Press
New York]

Made in the United States of America

To
DOROTHY BINNEY PUTNAM
UNDER WHOSE ROOFTREE THIS
BOOK WAS WRITTEN

FOREWORD

IN re-reading the manuscript of this book I find I didn’t allow myself to be born. May I apologize for this unconventional oversight as well as for other more serious ones—and some not so serious?

I myself am disappointed not to have been able to write a “work”—(you know, Dickens’ Works, Thackeray’s Works), but my dignity wouldn’t stand the strain. I can only hope, therefore, that some of the fun of flying the Atlantic has sifted into my pages and that some of the charm and romance of old ships may be seen to cling similarly to the ships of the air.

A. E.

INTRODUCTION
By Marion Perkins

Miss Perkins is Head Worker at Denison House, Boston’s second oldest settlement, with which Amelia Earhart has been identified for two years.

A TALL, slender, boyish-looking young woman walked into my office in the early fall of 1926. She wanted a job and a part-time one would do, for she was giving courses in English under the university extension. Most of her classes were in factories in Lynn and other industrial towns near Boston. She had had no real experience in social work but she wanted to try it, and before I knew it I had engaged her for half-time work at Denison House. She had poise and charm. I liked her quiet sense of humor, the frank direct look in her grey eyes.

It was some time before any of us at Denison House knew that Amelia Earhart had flown. After driving with her in the “Yellow Peril,” her own Kissel roadster, I knew that she was an expert driver, handling her car with ease, yes more than that, with an artistic touch. She has always seemed to me an unusual mixture of the artist and the practical person.

Her first year at Denison House she had general direction of the evening school for foreign-born men and women. She did little teaching herself, but did follow-up work in the homes, so necessary to the success of such an undertaking. In her report of her year’s work after we had planned her next year’s program, which did not include the evening school, she wrote: “I shall try to keep my contact with the women who have come to class; Mrs. S. and her drunken husband, Mrs. F.’s struggle to get her husband here, Mrs. Z.’s to get her papers in the face of odds, all are problems that are hard to relinquish after a year’s friendship.”

In the spring of 1927, Denison House was giving a country carnival for the benefit of the house. For such a good cause, Amelia consented to fly over Boston and drop publicity dodgers. She first said that she would do this if her name could be kept out of the papers! We had to use some persuasion to keep her from flying incognito. The first day of the carnival, the Boston police up and down Boylston and Tremont Streets were perhaps too amazed to try to arrest a man and woman, apparently Italian peasants just landed, who drove back and forth in a queer yellow car, stopping now and then to grind a tune on a battered hand-organ and to distribute handbills.

The organ grinder was Amelia Earhart.

Youth, keeping a heart, a soul and a body that are wide open to all the rich opportunities of life—that is part of Amelia’s creed. How many times I have heard her say that, to her, one of the biggest jobs of the social worker in a settlement is just that—to give boys and girls the experiences that will keep them young and that will develop a zest for life. Last fall, she came to Denison House as a resident and as a full-time staff worker. She has directed the work of girls from five to fourteen years and has had general charge of the pre-kindergarten. Jokingly we have sometimes called Amelia the “official secretary,” for she is the secretary of the staff, of the Board of Directors (to which she was elected this year) and to the House Committee of the board. She has an unusual flair, in a meeting, for the gist of the thought and expresses herself in writing with accuracy and originality. Last year and this, Amelia has been a member of an inter-settlement committee working on child-study records.

She herself made studies of children that show her keen insight into child life. Here are sentences taken from her record of a seven-year-old boy. “Ferris is fond of making experiments of various kinds. How far can the pencil be moved before it falls? How high can the chairs be piled before spilling? He conceived the idea on a cold day of ‘warming’ his little sister’s beads on his father’s stove. That the beads were hot enough to burn the child when she put them on was not part of the experiment.”

“Where is Miss Earhart now?” “Is she still flying?” “Gee, I hope she beats that other woman.” These and hundreds of other questions greeted us on Tyler Street. “Is she coming back soon?” “I couldn’t sleep last night thinking about her flying.”

The day she told me of the trans-Atlantic project, and swore me to secrecy, she said, “And I’ll be back for summer school. I have weighed the values and I want to stay in social work.” Her simplicity, her honesty, her complete lack of any quality that makes for sensationalism—this is Amelia Earhart. A few days after the flight project was under way, a dinner guest at Denison House, who was learning to fly at the East Boston Airport, told of the big Fokker monoplane that Byrd was “to fly to the Antarctic”; just a quiet twinkle across the room to me from Amelia’s eyes, and afterwards an infectious chuckle as we enjoyed the incident together.

One day last year, after a discussion of L. P. Jacks’ lectures on The Challenge of Life, she handed me some verses. Here they are, more appropriate at this time than any words I can write:

Courage is the price that Life exacts for granting peace,

The soul that knows it not, knows no release

From little things:

Knows not the livid loneliness of fear,

Nor mountain heights where bitter joy can hear

The sound of wings.

How can Life grant us boon of living, compensate

For dull grey ugliness and pregnant hate

Unless we dare

The soul’s dominion? Each time we make a choice, we pay

With courage to behold resistless day,

And count it fair.

CONTENTS

ILLUSTRATIONS

20 HRS. 40 MIN.

20 HRS. 40 MIN.

CHAPTER I
TORONTO DAYS

THERE are two kinds of stones, as everyone knows, one of which rolls. Because I selected a father who was a railroad man it has been my fortune to roll.

Of course rolling has left its mark on me. What happened to my education is typical. Until the eighth grade I stayed the school year with my grandmother in Atchison, Kansas, and attended a college preparatory school. With the exception of two grades skipped, one spent trying a public school and one conducted at home under a governess-friend, my course was fairly regular—not including time out for travelling. However, it took six high-schools to see me through the customary four year course. Would it be surprising, considering this record, if I should come out with a right round “ain’t” or “he done it” now and then?

Despite such risks there are advantages in a changing environment. Meeting new people and new situations becomes an interesting adventure, and one learns to value fresh experiences as much as old associations.

When the war broke out for the United States I was at Ogontz School, near Philadelphia. My sister was at St. Margaret’s College in Toronto and I went to visit her there for the Christmas holidays.

In every life there are places at which the individual, looking back, can see he was forced to choose one of several paths. These turning points may be marked by a trivial circumstance or by one of great joy or sorrow.

In 1918 Canada had been in the war four weary years—years the United States will never appreciate. Four men on crutches, walking together on King Street in Toronto that winter, was a sight which changed the course of existence for me. The realization that war wasn’t knitting sweaters and selling Liberty Bonds, nor dancing with handsome uniforms was suddenly evident. Returning to school was impossible, if there was war work that I could do.

I started training under the Canadian Red Cross and as soon as possible completed the first-aid work necessary to qualify as a V.A.D. or nurse’s aide. Those four men on crutches!

My first assignment was to Spadina Military Hospital, a rather small institution occupying an old college building converted for war use. Day began at seven and ended at seven, with two hours off in the afternoon. There were many beds to be made and trays and “nurishment” to be carried, and backs to be rubbed—some lovely ones!

Most of the men had been through a physical and emotional crisis. Many were not sick enough to be in bed and not well enough to find real occupation. Even when jobs were offered many lacked the mental stamina to take them—or make good at them, if taken. Spiritually they were tired out. Generally speaking they were a far harder group to care for than the really sick. For with the latter the improvements noted by the patient from day to day are cheerful mile posts, while these poor lads had lost even that means of happiness.

The first day I was in the hospital there was a fire. It was not serious enough for attendants to do anything but slam windows shut and stand by to carry out patients. Nearly everyone enjoyed the excitement except a few of the autumnal nurses and the poor fellows in the shell-shock ward. They suffered greatly for a few days from the effects of the unexpected disturbance which was to most of the other men a welcome break in their colorless existence.

Of course one of the jobs of a V.A.D. was to be a merry sunshine, not difficult for me whose I.Q. is low enough to insure natural cheerfulness. Despite our best efforts time often dragged. I wonder if we might not have accomplished more if we had all been good-looking and especially, perhaps, if we’d all worn brilliant colors instead of our grey and white uniforms. It’s a pet theory of mine that color in a drab world can go a long way in stimulating morale. There’s a suggestion, here, perhaps, for the management of the next war.

The monotony of the hospital prevailed with its food also. Even after ten years I am unable to look a jelly-roll in the eye. They were the diurnal diet in the officers’ mess, just as rice puddings prevailed in the wards. I have a depressing memory of passing out little rice puddings in endless procession from the diet kitchen to the patients. Sometimes they came back untouched but bearing crosses and the inscription R.I.P. However, those who rated rice pudding were entitled to ice cream—if they could get it. We K.P.’s often did the getting for the patients most in need of cheer. Our funds were immorally collected, the winnings of matching pennies in the kitchen.

The war was the greatest shock that some lives have had to survive. It so completely changed the direction of my own footsteps that the details of those days remain indelible in my memory, trivial as they appear when recorded.

Days of routine slipped by quickly enough into months of nursing. I hope what we did was helpful. Somebody had to do it. There is so much that must be done in a civilized barbarism like war.

‡[Amelia M. Earhart]
‡[UNDERWOOD & UNDERWOOD STUDIOS N.Y.]

© International Newsreel

WILMER STULTZ

War followed one everywhere. Even entertainments weren’t always merely fun. Often they meant having tea with a group of women who were carrying their war work into their homes. I remember, for instance, hours spent with a power sewing machine making pajamas.

The aviation I touched, too, while approached as an entertainment was of course steeped with war. Sometimes I was invited to a flying field, Armour Heights, on the edge of the city. I think there were many planes there; I know there were many young pilots being trained—some very young. (As a matter of fact I wasn’t exactly grey with age—twenty, then.)

But the planes were mature. They were full-sized birds that slid on the hard-packed snow and rose into the air with an extra roar that echoed from the evergreens that banked the edge of the field. They were a part of war, just as much as the drives, the bandages and the soldiers. I remember well that when the snow blown back by the propellers stung my face I felt a first urge to fly. I tried to get permission to go up, but the rules forbade; not even a general’s wife could do so—apparently the only thing she couldn’t do. I did the next best thing and came to know some of the men fortunate enough to fly. Among them were Canadians, Scotch, Irish and even Americans who could not pass our rigorous tests but were accepted in Canada at that time.

They were terribly young, those air men—young and eager. Aviation was the romantic branch of the service and inevitably attracted the romanticists. The dark side did not impress the enlisted men or me. To us there was humor in the big padded helmets, despite their purpose, which was to prevent scalp wounds in the crashes that were frequent in those days. The boys smeared their faces with grease, to prevent freezing, and that seemed funny, too. The training planes were often under-powered, but no matter how well that was understood, the pilots joked about possible unpleasantness.

I have even forgotten the names of the men I knew then. But the memory of the planes remains clearly, and the sense of the inevitability of flying. It always seemed to me one of the few worth-while things that emerged from the misery of war.

I lived through the Armistice. Toronto was forty riots rolled into one that memorable day. Whistles awakened us. They blew continuously. Electric cars were stalled in the streets which were deep with trash. Insane old ladies crawled on top and hooked men’s hats with their umbrellas. Fresh lads grabbed girls and powdered their faces with flour. Bands marched without knowing where they were going. There were speeches that were not heard and food that went untasted. Flags appeared everywhere, with confetti and streamers.

Those months in Toronto roused my interest in flying, although I did not realize it at the time. Perhaps it was the glamour of the environment, the times, or my youth. Aviation had come close to me.

© Paramount News

SLIM GORDON

© International Newsreel

MRS. GUEST RETURNING TO NEW YORK IS MET BY COMMANDER BYRD FROM WHOM SHE PURCHASED THE “FRIENDSHIP”

CHAPTER II
EARLY AVIATION

AT the end of my brief hospital career I became a patient myself. It was a case of too much nursing, perhaps with too long hours, in the pneumonia ward. I picked up an infection and there followed several minor operations and a rather long period of convalescence.

At Toronto I had been put into the dispensary because I knew a little chemistry and because it appeared I was one of the few people who wouldn’t drink the medical supply of whiskey. My brief experiences aroused my interest in medicine, and after the armistice I went to New York with the idea that I might become a physician. At Columbia I took up a very heavy course which included pre-medical work. Scholastically I think I could have qualified, but after a year of study I convinced myself that some of my abilities did not measure up to the requirements which I felt a physician should have.

My mother and father wanted me to come to Los Angeles. Regretfully I left New York and moved west.

Southern California is a country of out-door sports. I was fond of automobiles, tennis, horseback riding, and almost anything else that is active and carried on in the open. It was a short step from such interests to aviation and just then, as now, Southern California was particularly active in air matters.

I remember the first air meet I attended. It was near Long Beach, at Daugherty Field, the ocean side of the broad Los Angeles valley. The sky was blue and flying conditions were perfect, as I remember. As this was the summer of 1920 commercial flying was in its infancy. Even to go to see planes then was considered really sporting by the populace. There were mechanical imperfections of many kinds, but progress is made always through experimentation.

Certainly a great many of the people gathered that day had never before seen an aeroplane. The planes mostly were old war material, Jennys and Canucks. The Army and Navy were represented with the planes available at that time—Standards, D. H.’s, Douglasses, Martins, etc. None of the ships stand out distinctly in my mind as types. I imagine there were some bombing planes and pursuit jobs, but they all seemed to my untrained eye more or less routine two-seaters. Of course at that time I knew somewhat less than I do now.

However, one thing I did know that day. I wanted to fly. I was there with my father, who, I fear, wasn’t having a very good time. As the dust blew in his eyes, and his collar wilted, I think his enthusiasm for aviation, such as it was, waned. He was slightly non-plussed, therefore, when I said:

“Dad, you know, I think I’d like to fly.”

Heretofore we had been milling about behind the ropes which lined the field. At my suggestion we invited ourselves into the arena and looked about. I saw a man tagged “official” and asked my father to talk with him about instruction. I felt suddenly shy about making inquiries myself, lest the idea of a woman’s being interested in trying to fly be too hilarious a thought for the official.

My father was game; he even went so far as to make an appointment for me to have a trial hop at what was then Rogers Airport. I am sure he thought one ride would be enough for me, and he might as well act to cure me promptly.

Next day was characteristically fair and we arrived early on the field. There was no crowd, but several planes stood ready to go.

A pilot came forward and shook hands.

“A good day to go up,” he said, pleasantly.

My father raised an inexperienced eye to the sky and agreed. Agreeing verbally is as far as he went, or has ever gone, for he has not yet found a day good enough for a first flight.

The pilot nodded to another flyer. “He’ll go up with us.”

“Why?” I asked.

The pair exchanged grins. Then I understood. I was a girl—a “nervous lady.” I might jump out. There had to be somebody on hand to grab my ankle as I went over. It was no use to explain I had seen aeroplanes before and wasn’t excitable. I was not to be permitted to go alone in the front cockpit.

The familiar “contact” was spoken and the motor came to life. I suppose there must be emotion with all new experiences, but I can’t remember any but a feeling of interest on this occasion. The noise of the motor seemed very loud—I think it seems so to most people on their first flight.

The plane rose quickly over some nearby oil derricks which are part of the flora in Southern California. I was surprised to be able to see the sea after a few moments of climbing. At 2,000 feet the pilot idled the motor and called out the altitude for me. The sensation of speed is of course absent, and I had no idea of the duration of the hop. When descent was made I know the field looked totally unfamiliar. I could not have picked it out from among the hundreds of little squares into which populated areas are divided. One of the senses which must be developed in flying is an acuteness in recognizing characteristics of the terrain, a sense seldom possessed by a novice.

Lessons in flying cost twice as much in 1920 as they do now. Five hundred dollars was the price for ten or twelve hours instruction, and that was just half what had been charged a few years before.

When I came down I was ready to sign up at any price to have a try at the air myself. Two things deterred me at that moment. One was the tuition fee to be wrung from my father, and the other the determination to look up a woman flyer who, I had heard, had just come to another field. I felt I should be less self-conscious taking lessons with her, than with the men who overwhelmed me with their capabilities. Neta Snook, the first woman to be graduated from the Curtiss School of Aviation, had a Canuck—an easier plane to fly than a Jenny, whose Canadian sister it was. Neta was good enough to take payments for time in the air, when I could make them, so in a few days I began hopping about on credit with her. I had failed to convince my father of the necessity of my flying, so my economic status itself remained a bit in the air.

I had opportunity to get a fair amount of information about details of flying despite my erratic finances. In Northampton, where I had stayed a while after the war, I had taken a course in automobile repair with a group of girls from Smith College. To me the motor was as interesting as flying itself, and I welcomed a chance to help in the frequent pulling down and putting together which it required.

MY FIRST TRAINING SHIP, 1920

A. E., 1928

New students were instructed in planes with dual controls; the rudder and stick in the front cockpit are connected with those in the rear so that any false move the student makes can be corrected by the instructor. Every move is duplicated and can be felt by both flyers. One lands, takes off, turns, all with an experienced companion in command. When passengers are carried these controls are removed for safety’s sake with little trouble. If there is telephone connection, communication and explanation are much easier than by any methods of signs or shouting. This telephone equipment, by the way, seems to be more usual in England than here.

I am glad I didn’t start flying in the days of the “grass cutters,” which exemplified an earlier method of flying instruction. One of the amusing sights of the war training period was that of the novices hopping about the countryside in these penguin planes. They could fly only a few feet from the ground and had to be forced off to do that. The theory had been that such activity offered maximum practice in taking off and landing. In addition it was a sort of Roman holiday for the instructors—they had nothing much to do but, so to speak, wind up their play-things and start them off. And nothing very serious could happen one way or the other.

It was really necessary for a woman to wear breeks and leather coats in these old days of aviation. The fields were dirty and planes hard to enter. People dressed the part in a semi-military khaki outfit, and in order to be as inconspicuous as possible I fell into the same styles. A leather coat I had then, I wore across the Atlantic, eight years later.

Neta sold her plane and I bought one and changed instructors after a few hours’ work. John Montijo, an ex-army instructor, took charge of me and soloed me after some strenuous times together. I refused to fly alone until I knew some stunting. It seemed foolhardy to try to go up alone without the ability to recognize and recover quickly from any position the plane might assume, a reaction only possible with practice. In short, to become thoroughly at home in the air, stunting is as necessary as, and comparable to, the ability to drive an automobile in traffic. I was then introduced to aerobatics and felt not a bit afraid when sent “upstairs” alone for the first time.

Usually a student takes off nonchalantly enough but doesn’t dare land until his gas supply fails. Any field is familiar with the sight of beginners circling about overhead, staying up solely because they can’t bear to come down. The thought of landing without their instructors to help them, if need be, becomes torture, which is only terminated by the force of gravity.

In soloing—as in other activities—it is far easier to start something than it is to finish it. Almost every beginner hops off with a whoop of joy, though he is likely to end his flight with something akin to D. T.’s.

I reversed the process. In taking off for the first time alone, one of the shock absorbers broke, causing the left wing to sag just as I was leaving the ground. I didn’t know just what had happened, but I did know something was wrong and wondered what I had done. The mental agony of starting the plane had just been gone through and I was suddenly faced with the agony of stopping it. It was all in a matter of seconds, of course, and somehow I contrived to do the proper thing. My brief “penguin” flight came to a prompt conclusion without further mishap.

When the damage had been repaired, I took courage to try again, this time climbing about 5,000 feet, playing around a little, and returning to make a thoroughly rotten landing. At once I had my picture taken by a gentleman from Iowa who happened to be touring California and wanted a few rare sights for the album back home.

© Keystone Views

SOUTHAMPTON—MRS. GUEST, GORDON, A. E., STULTZ, MRS. FOSTER WELCH

AFTER MY FIRST “SOLO,” 1921

CHAPTER III
MY OWN PLANE

IN the war some students were soloed with as little as four hours’ training. That meant they were considered competent to go up in their planes alone after this amount of instruction. Obviously these were exceptional students. In civilian flying, ten or twelve hours, I imagine, would be about the minimum training. But these hours usually mean simply routine instruction in straight flying, comparable to the novice driving his automobile along the level uncrowded country highway. For the automobilist beginner the problem comes when he first meets traffic, and a big truck, say, suddenly cuts in ahead of him. Can he handle the emergency, or will he crash? And what will the beginner do when his car, or the other fellow’s, skids on the wet pavement for the first time? The answer is that good driving results from experience and the requisite of having met many varied situations.

And so with planes. Straight flying is, of course, the necessary basis; but it is the ability to meet crises, large and small, which counts. And the only way to train for that is, as I have said, to have actual instruction in stunting and in meeting emergencies. To gain experience after the beginner has soloed, and while he is at home in a plane he knows intimately and upon a field familiar to him, he should play around in the air for four or five hours alone, practising landings, take-offs, turns and all the rest of it where he is perfectly safe and can come down easily any time.

Then he should have three or four more hours’ instruction in emergency situations. This feature is too often overlooked. As I visualize it, the beginner should go up with an instructor with dual controls again and should get himself into—and out of—one scrape after another, including forced landings. After he has done so repeatedly, he will have confidence and a real feeling of what must be done, and done instantly, under any given set of circumstances. More of this sort of follow-through training and there would probably be fewer of the accidents which too often are beginners’ bad luck.

I had rolled up the tremendous total of two and one-half hours’ instruction when I decided that life was incomplete unless I owned my own plane. Those were the days of rather heavy, under-powered ships which lifted themselves from the ground with a lumbering effort. The small sport planes were just beginning to appear, most of them in experimental stages. The field where I flew was owned by W. G. Kinner of the Kinner Aeroplane and Motor Corporation, who was then developing one of the first sport planes made.

I watched that plane at work in those days when I was cutting my aviation eye teeth. Little by little I became able to distinguish the different makes of planes, and the finer points of their performance. I realized that the small plane took off more quickly, climbed more steeply, was faster and easier to handle than its bigger brothers with their greater horse power and wing spread.

After two and one-half hours I really felt myself a competent judge of planes! A few hundred solo hours since then have modified greatly that initial self-confidence! The fact that wise pilots with a thousand hours or so warned me against this little fellow, influenced me not. I wanted that sport plane that hopped off like a sandpiper and actually seemed to like it. And I set about buying it. My pilot friends came to me quietly. “Look out for the motor,” they said.

Power was the thing, they assured me, and the paltry 60 horse power of the little Lawrence air-cooled motor simply didn’t measure up to commonsense requirements. It is interesting to realize that the plane in which Lady Heath made her famous solo flight from Croydon to South Africa and back, the lovely little Avian which I bought from her, actually has little more horse power than this first love of mine.

MY CABBAGE PATCH LANDING, CALIFORNIA, 1921

“I WAS FOND OF AUTOMOBILES, HORSEBACK RIDING, AND ALMOST ANYTHING ELSE THAT IS ACTIVE AND CARRIED ON IN THE OPEN”

The small air-cooled motor I speak of was the first in this country. The man who had built it was not well known then. He was one of a number of able experimenters who were working out their own private ideas, often in the face of all sorts of sacrifices. The name of the builder of this original air-cooled engine is Charles L. Lawrence, famous today as the creator of the Wright Whirlwind which carried Lindbergh, Byrd, Chamberlin, Maitland and others on their famous flights, and with which our own Friendship was equipped.

The idea of an air-cooled engine appealed to me. The elimination of the water cooling system meant simplification and a notable decrease in weight. Thanks largely to the lightness of the engine and resulting light plane, it was possible for me to pick it up by the tail and move it around the field easily, whereas with the Canucks and the others it took at least a man, or a dolly, and great effort. I was won by the motor, despite some weaknesses, and I have never regretted that first enthusiasm. So I said “no” to my pessimistic pilots, and “yes” to Mr. Kinner.

The price was $2000. After talking it over with my father he agreed that I needed the plane and that I should have it, and promised to help out in paying for it. But I am afraid my salesmanship was faulty for he did not stay “sold.” I signed the sales contract and plunked down all my available capital to seal the bargain before I knew of his indecision. Consequently, there wasn’t any backing out even if I had wanted to—which I emphatically did not.

To pay for that plane I got the first job I ever had, the telephone company taking me on as unskilled labor. I was associated with the office boys at the back of the office, an association which I was told was one of the worst in the organization. We did things to the mail, opened it, sorted it, distributed it. I also filed letters and then tried to find them again. I liked the job and the boys, who were very funny and not the criminals they were pictured.

Perhaps this move on my part doesn’t seem very convincing, for obviously my salary as playmate of office boys would have to run on for a long time before it would wipe out the balance of the $2000. But it did help my credit immensely! I think it made my flying companions believe I was in earnest.

It also affected mother to the extent that she finally wiped out my indebtedness, on condition I resign and stay home a little. By the way, she has remained sold, and it was her regret she wasn’t with me on the trans-Atlantic flight, if I would go.

There was a partnership of interest, and of near poverty, between many of us in those days. Aviation demanded much from its devotees—and there was plenty of opportunity for sacrifice. Many of the pioneers sank their teeth into aviation’s problems at the very beginning—or was it the other way about?—and simply wouldn’t let go.

So I owned my own plane. Immediately I found that my whole feeling toward flying had changed. An added confidence and satisfaction came. If I crashed, it was my own responsibility and it was my own property that was being injured. It is the same sort of feeling that obtains, I think, in driving. There is a freedom in ownership which is not possible with a borrowed car.

Of course I had shouldered a new responsibility. I had an expensive, inanimate object on my hands. I wanted it to look all right on the outside and be all right on the inside. Few words are more expressive than “care and upkeep.” Fortunately in their obligations I was remarkably lucky. The plane was an experiment for Kinner, a model for production. Obviously he wanted to have demonstrated exactly what it could do. When I was around, I was informally a sort of demonstrator—we agreed that he could use it for demonstration in return for free hangar space, and I was given much mechanical help, and other assistance in addition to hangar space. It was this situation, I suppose, which really made it possible for a “telephone girl” to carry on. At any rate, to me the important fact is, that I secured many free hours in the air and much kindly help.

Demonstrating has other advantages; it means an effort to sell someone something. And selling involves debating the virtues of the thing to be sold, the prospective purchaser usually being on the silent end of the debate. So I found myself studying the virtues of my plane, and in so doing, those of others.

The first thing most people want to do when they get a new car is to take someone out driving in it; a desire which seems to apply equally to a plane. Somehow I have always felt a little differently. It isn’t that I am not proud of my possession, but that I always have a suspicion that my pride may run away with my prudence. If it be car or plane, my inclination is to be absolutely sure of myself before I whisk anybody else’s body around in it. Consequently my air passengers were few.

As a matter of fact, I have never asked any men to take a ride. I think I have always feared that some sense of gallantry would make them accept, even though they did not trust me. So my male passengers have always had to do the asking.

There were plenty of potential joy riders around the fields in those days. Many of them had drifted into aviation after the war—or rather had not drifted out. They wanted to be near planes, and accepted any opportunity to take a ride no matter who the pilot or what the machine. From this gang have graduated many of the men who are today the real working human backbone of the industry.

From them were recruited the gypsy flyers who barnstormed their way around the country and whose activities actually figured largely in the development of American aviation. It was they who kept alive public interest. Mostly they flew wrecks, old war crates tied together with baling wire. Anything that would get off the ground—most of the time—was good enough for them. Many of them, of course, paid a heavy price for their devotion.

I didn’t like public flying. It didn’t coincide with my ideas of what I wished to do with my plane. It was hard enough to keep out of the papers anyway in those days if one flew. The slightest mishap was called a crash and disasters were played up lugubriously.

For me flying was a sport and not a circus—I used to sneak away to a secluded field and practise, with no one to bother. I appeared in public only on special occasions. For instance once I was invited to take part in a meet held by the Aero Club of Southern California at Pasadena. It was purely a public demonstration, a sort of circus, yet it was for a purpose—to raise money for the Club and to arouse local interest in flying.

I was asked to do a little stunting, the usual thing on occasions of this kind. The little plane looked well in the air, so I accepted. The minute I flew up to the field I began to feel like a clown, although happily there were two of us female freaks to divide the honors and the odium.

“LADIES’ DAY”
Sykes in the New York Evening Post

BRYNJULF STRANDENAES PAINTS A PORTRAIT

There was plenty of chatter about two “aviatrixes,” but the chatterers never knew that they came near having something actually to talk about. For, as I reached the field, after flying from my own hangar, a spark plug blew out. Luckily I was over the field just then as otherwise I might have made my landing in a treetop. One cylinder dead in eight is not so serious a matter as one in three. I had only three and wished for eight just then.

It happened that my own engine was on the repair bench and the boys at the field, determined to get me to the meet, had worked all night switching the motor from the Goodyear pony blimp over to my plane. In the blimp the motor had been run at a low speed and as a result when I turned it up to my requirements one of the spark plugs could not stand the strain. After a new extra long plug was inserted I started out again.

It was a beautiful day with splashes of clouds which sailed up over the mountains from the desert westward. They made a perfect background for the audience below and a perfect playground for anyone in the sky. Speaking seriously, the most effective stunting, from an artistic point of view, should be staged against just such a sky. Alternate white and blue with irregular outline brings out the full grace of the maneuvering plane.

A good deal of air racing was going on then all over the country. But my feeling toward it was similar to my feeling toward any other public flying. It was not for me. I wasn’t good enough. I remember one funny offer. A group of people, wanted to stage a race and seemed to think that I was timid about entering. So they suggested that I let their own pilot fly most of the race, then come down and let me get aboard, out of sight of the audience, and finish up as the “lady flyer” who had piloted the plane to victory.

Another proposal I remember.

“How would you like to make some easy money?” I was asked.

“How?”

“Bringing some stuff across the border.”

Stuff—liquor, aliens or dope?

“Liquor?” I guessed.

My philanthropic friend shrugged his shoulders. “A woman can get by where a man can’t. No one would ever suspect you. There’s not a thing to be afraid of. You could do it easy.”

It was a pretty compliment, but I declined.

One day I went up with my plane to establish its ceiling—that is, to see how high it would go.

There is a point in altitude beyond which, of course, a given plane cannot climb, just as with automobiles, there is a limit to the grade that can be negotiated and a speed that can be attained. In flying, an added factor is entailed, in the rarification of atmosphere with height, which affects plane, motor and personnel.

To make the record official I asked the representative of the Aero Club of Southern California to seal my barograph. This instrument records altitude in ink on a revolving drum. When sealed it is impossible for the flyer to alter it.

It was a good day and I climbed easily for about 13,000 feet. Thereafter I began to have trouble. My spark control lever became disconnected and I could not regulate the spark in my engine. As a result a terrific vibration and knocking started. I thought the engine would jump out of its frame. There wasn’t anything to do but come down, although I was still climbing fifty feet a minute.

As soon as the official read my barograph there was great rejoicing, for apparently I had established a woman’s altitude record. The news got in the papers. One clipping read:

Miss Amelia Earhart, local aviatrix, established a new altitude record for women yesterday under the auspices of the Aero Club of Southern California.

Flying her own Kinner Airster, containing a 60-foot power motor, she ascended more than 14,000 feet.

Her sealed barograph registered little vibration until about 12,000 feet, where Miss Earhart said something went wrong with the motor. At the time she was climbing easily, about 50 feet a minute, which would have continued perhaps for several thousand feet more if the engine difficulty had not arisen.

Although my figure of 14,000 feet was not extraordinary, the performance of my engine was interesting. With the little Lawrence power plant of less than 60 h.p. I had gone up much farther than some of the higher powered planes which should have been more efficient.

A little while later I made another attempt. The weather was pretty good at the start. At 10,000 feet I ran into clouds. At 11,000 feet sleet, and at about 12,000 feet dense fog. This was an entirely new experience, and very disquieting. For the first time in my life, I had that strange feeling experienced by the flyer in fog.

Under such circumstances it is impossible to tell what the plane is doing. It may be upside down or turning giant circles. Without instruments the pilot simply does not know his position in space—there are no outside landmarks with which to check. Of course, if one is really upside down for any length of time one’s feet drop back from the rudder and the safety belt tightens; or if in a skid a side blast of wind gives a belated warning, etc.

It was extraordinarily confusing and, realizing I could not go farther, I kicked the ship into a tail spin and came down to 3000 feet where I emerged from the fog and landed.

I remembered one of the old-timers came up and looked at my barograph record. His eyes fixed on a vertical line just before the record ended. “What does that mean,” he asked. “Did you go to sleep along in there?”

I told him about getting out of the fog by way of a tail spin.

He certainly wasn’t impressed favorably. “Suppose the fog had lasted all the way to the ground?” he asked.

I bring this experience up because of its important bearing both on the training of pilots and on flying in general; especially schedule flying. It is immensely important for a pilot to learn to fly by instruments, as distinct from flying “by horizon.” The night flyer or the avigator in fog must depend upon his instruments to keep his course, equilibrium and altitude. It did not require the flight of the Friendship through long hours of fog and cloud to teach me the profound necessity of this.

CHAPTER IV
EAST TO BOSTON

CRASHES were frequent enough in these earlier days. I had one myself, during my instruction period. Owing to carelessness in not refuelling, the motor cut out on the take-off, when the plane was about 40 or 50 feet in the air. Neta Snook was with me, but she couldn’t help depositing us in a cabbage patch nearby. The propeller and landing gear suffered and I bit my tongue.

© P. & A. Photos

FLYERS ALL EIELSON, WILKINS, BYRD, CHAMBERLIN, BALCHEN, STULTZ, EARHART, GORDON

BOSTON, JUNE 9

The crash was an interesting experience. In such a crisis the passage of time is very slow. I remember it seemed minutes while we were approaching the inevitable cabbages, although of course it was only a few seconds. I had leisure to reach over and turn off the switch before we hit.

More than once I have nosed over. Whenever a plane is compelled to stop suddenly there is danger of so doing. I have come down in a muddy field where the wheels stuck. On one occasion I landed in a mattress of dried weeds five or six feet high which stopped me so suddenly that the plane went over on its back with enough force to break my safety belt and throw me out. These are the flat tires of flying and are only as incidental. But real trouble did come to my plane eventually.

I had decided to leave Los Angeles and to sell it, much as I disliked the parting. A young man who had done some flying during the war liked the little sandpiper and eventually purchased it.

After the new owner took possession the first thing he did was to ask a friend to go up with him. At a few hundred feet he began some figure eights, banking vertically and working between a gas station and telegraph pole. All on the field stood rooted to the spot. They knew what chances he was taking. As I remember it, Kinner sent for an ambulance. Suddenly, on one vertical bank the plane slipped. That was the end of it. Both men were killed. It was a sickening sort of thing because it was so unnecessary.

I lingered on in California, another sunkist victim of inertia—or was it the siren song of the realtors? I bought a new plane. Or rather I collected it, because I found I could not buy it all together. At this time there were few who believed that an air cooled motor for planes would become practical. Human nature normally condemns anything new. The complaint of many pilots was that a multiple cylinder radial motor would be too clumsy to sit on the nose of a plane and would cause too much “head resistance.” So why bother with one or two cylinder motors which developed little power comparatively? Kinner had a dream. He built one of his own. It had been bought by the man who financed one of the first planes built, in the west, by Donald Douglas, designer of the Round the World Cruisers. Mr. Davis and Mr. Douglas at the time were planning a trans-continental non-stop hop, using a big Liberty engine. But the P.2 flown by Macready and Kelly to San Diego, in the first coast to coast flight, got across first. I bought the Kinner engine from Davis, who was not ready to use it just then. It was the first engine that Kinner turned out.

Of course it was full of “bugs”—no degree of mechanical perfection is ever attained without successive stages of development. Each improvement is a result of many practical working tests. Human intelligence seems to grasp ideas in steps and must work through complicated details to efficient simplicity. The first automobiles had whip holders on the dash, remember. The planes and motors which we see today are the results of evolution. There was a preliminary design of the now famous Wright Whirlwind motor as early as 1917 and it, in turn, had grown from models of air-cooled radials begun by Mr. Lawrence in 1914.

The greatest pleasure I found in my experience with Kinner’s motor was that of perhaps having a small part in its development. Its many little ailments had to be diagnosed and cured later. It smoked and spattered oil. Adjustment of a proper propeller was difficult. One of its eccentricities was an excessive vibration which tickled the soles of the feet when they rested on the rudder bar, putting a new meaning into joy ride. Such was the hilarious beginning of one of a group of motors which are being developed in the United States.

The idea of returning to the east, and doing it by air, had been simmering in my mind. Maps and data were all pretty well prepared. Then the old infection, incurred in the Toronto Hospital work, returned, and I was forced to abandon the hop, to the satisfaction of my parents.

My health was so precarious that, disappointed in my intention to fly, I exchanged my plane for a car and drove across the continent. Mother went with me to remind me I was too ill to fly, and together we covered more than 7000 miles before we reached Boston.

I enjoyed three days in Boston before entering Massachusetts General Hospital for a short stay. After convalescing a while I set off for New York, to re-enter Columbia. The next summer was spent at Harvard and the following autumn I began to look about for a job. My sister was teaching, so I indulged in it too. Teaching and settlement work filled the following years—filled them very full, for both occupations require much of one’s life. All these other activities allowed little or no time for aviation.

Inevitably certain contacts had persisted from the California days so it was no surprise to hear from Mr. Kinner. He asked me whether I knew anyone in Boston who would take the agency for his planes and motors. I dropped in on the Chamber of Commerce for information. It was evident from the facts gathered from Bernard Wiesman, secretary of the committee on aviation, that the town could struggle along for a while without the additional luxury of a new plane. The air-mail industry seemed to be as strong a dose of aviation as Boston could stand at the time, and Sumner Sewall was having to hold her nose while he spooned that in.

I joined the Boston chapter of the National Aeronautic Association as a reawakening of my active interest in aviation. Ultimately I was made Vice-President (perhaps to get rid of me) serving under Mr. Sewall. Subsequently his activities took him to New York and when I returned from the trans-Atlantic flight I found myself the first woman President of a body of the N. A. A.

Several months later Mr. Kinner wrote again and said he himself had found an agent, who would communicate with me. The hand of Allah had thrown Harold T. Dennison, a young architect of Quincy, in Mr. Kinner’s way in California. Mr. Dennison came home determined to build an airport. He owned enough land for an emergency field on the marshes from which Beachey flew to Boston Light in 1910 to win $10,000.

I gathered a few dollars together and became one of five incorporators of a commercial aeronautical concern. Today Dennison Aircraft Corporation is working to create a commercial airport adjoining the naval air base at Squantum.

There is so much to be done in aviation and so much fun to be got from it, that I had become increasingly involved before the flight of the Friendship. I was busy, too, with Miss Ruth Nichols of Rye in trying to work out some means of gathering more women into the fold. The National Playground Association had asked me to be on their Boston committee and judge in the model airplane tournament they were sponsoring in September, 1928. The tournament combined my two greatest interests, aviation and social work, in an unusual way, and I was very glad to serve. Unfortunately the social worker became submerged in the aerial joy-rider and the latter has been too much occupied since her return to be of any use whatsoever.

© Wide World Photos

AT BOSTON WITH HER MOTHER AND MAJOR WOOLLEY, WHOSE FLYING COAT MISS EARHART WORE ACROSS THE ATLANTIC

© International Photos

“THE YELLOW PERIL” AND HER DRIVER BACK IN BOSTON, BEFORE DENISON HOUSE

CHAPTER V
PREPARATIONS

WHEN it was all over I read in the papers that I had been planning a trans-Atlantic flight for a year. I read much else that was equally imaginative. In fact, the press introduced me to an entirely new person. It appeared that I was a demi-orphan; my father, I learned, had been dead four years—I saved that clipping for him. One day I read that I was wealthy, the next that the sole purpose of my flight was to lift the mortgage from the old homestead—which there isn’t any—I mean homestead.

The truth about the chance to fly was as amusing as the journalistic scenarios. The opportunity came as casually as an invitation to a matinee, and it came by telephone. As a matter of fact, the three of us who made the Atlantic crossing together all were similarly collected by telephone.

Commander Byrd telephoned Stultz, suggesting the possibility. Stultz then communicated, by telephone again, with those organizing the flight. Tentative arrangements were made as regarded himself. They asked him to choose his flying mechanic. On April 7, via long distance telephone, he reached Slim Gordon, then at Monroe, La., with the “Voice of the Sky” Corporation. “Meet me at the Cadillac Hotel in Detroit on the 9th, if you want to fly the Atlantic.” “Sure,” said Gordon.

So next morning Slim serviced his ship; told the boys he wasn’t taking off with them that day and left to keep his appointment.

It was settled in no time at all—certainly within the limits of the conventional three minute telephone conversation.

As for me, I was working as usual around Denison House. The neighborhood was just piling in for games and classes and I was as busy as could be. I remember when called to the phone I replied I couldn’t answer unless the message was more important than entertaining many little Chinese and Syrian children. The word came assuring me it was.

I excused myself and went to listen to a man’s voice ask me whether I was interested in doing something aeronautic which might be hazardous. At first I thought the conversation was a joke, and told the gentleman so. At least twice before I had been approached by bootleggers who promised rich reward and no danger—“absolutely no danger to you, Leddy.”

The frank admission of risk piqued my curiosity and I enquired how and why I had been called.

I demanded references and got them. They were good references, too. After checking up, I made an appointment for late the same day.

“Should you like to fly the Atlantic?”

Such was the greeting when I met Hilton H. Railey who had done the telephoning.

He told me, without mentioning specific names, that Commander Byrd’s tri-motored Fokker had been purchased and was destined for trans-Atlantic flight. He asked me if I would make the flight if opportunity offered. Then he told me that a woman owned the plane, and had intended flying it herself. Circumstances had just arisen which made it impossible for her to go but there was a chance that another woman might be selected in her place; and Mr. Railey had been asked by George Palmer Putnam, New York publisher, to help find such a person.

Then followed the first period of waiting. I did not know whether or not I was going. I didn’t know whether the flight really would come off. I didn’t know whether I should be selected if it did. And in the meanwhile I was asked to clear the decks so I could get off if the opportunity actually arose.

At Denison House we were just working out our summer plans, with me in charge of the summer school. If I actually was to leave, Marion Perkins, our head worker, must get someone for my place. So the chaos of uncertainties spread in ripples out from me as a center.

I think what troubled me most just then was the difficulty of my relations, under the circumstances, with all these people whose plans were so much dependent upon my own. Yet I was pledged to secrecy and could not say a word to them. And of course, it is rather disconcerting to carry on a job at a desk, or with settlement children, with the probability of a trans-Atlantic flight pending.

In ten days or so I was asked to go to New York. There I met David T. Layman, Jr., who, with Mr. John S. Phipps, talked things over with me. I realized, of course, that I was being weighed. It should have been slightly embarrassing, for if I were found wanting on too many counts I should be deprived of a trip. On the other hand, if I were just too fascinating the gallant gentlemen might be loath to drown me. Anyone can see the meeting was a crisis.

I learned that the Fokker had been bought from Commander Byrd by the Honorable Mrs. Frederick Guest, of London, whose husband had been in the Air Ministry of Lloyd George and is prominently associated with aviation in Great Britain. Mrs. Guest, formerly Miss Amy Phipps of Pittsburgh, financed the expedition from first to last, and it was due entirely to her generosity and sportsmanship that opportunity to go was given me.

The transfer of ownership of the plane from Commander Byrd to Mrs. Guest had been kept secret. It had been her desire to hop off for the Atlantic crossing without attracting any advance attention. When subsequently, for personal reasons, Mrs. Guest herself abandoned the flight she was still eager to have the plans consummated, if possible, with an American woman on board.

A few days later I was told the flight actually would be made and that I could go—if I wished. Under the circumstances there was only one answer. I couldn’t say no. For here was fate holding out the best in the way of flying ability in the person of Wilmer Stultz, pilot, aided by Lou Gordon as flight mechanic; and a beautiful ship admirably equipped for the test before it.

When I first saw Friendship she was jacked-up in the shadows of a hangar at East Boston. Mechanics and welders worked nearby on the struts for the pontoons that were shortly to replace the wheels. The ship’s golden wings, with their spread of seventy two feet, were strong and exquisitely fashioned. The red orange of the fuselage, though blending with the gold, was chosen not for artistry but for practical use. If we had come down orange could have been seen further than any other color.

The plane just then was being equipped, presumably for its use on Byrd’s forthcoming Antarctic trip. Stultz and Gordon were supposed to be in Byrd’s employ, and Commander Robert Elmer, U.S.N. retired, was directing technical activities.

© Wide World Photos

WELCOMED BY THE SOUTHAMPTON CROWD

AT MEDFORD, MASSACHUSETTS

Our purpose was to keep the plans secret. Once the world knew, we should be submerged in a deluge of curiosity making it impossible to continue the preparations in orderly fashion. Then, too, it would do no good to aviation to invite discussion of a project which some accident might delay. Actually the pontoon equipment on this type of plane was experimental, and no one definitely could tell in advance whether or not it would prove practicable. Another objection was the possibility of instigating a “race,” which no one wanted. Mrs. Guest proposed that the Friendship, as she afterwards named the plane, should cross the Atlantic irrespective of the action of others. By our example we did not want to risk hurrying ill-prepared aspirants into the field with possible tragic results.

Only twice did I actually see the Friendship during all this time. I was pretty well known at the landing fields and obviously it might provoke comment if I seemed too interested in the plane. For this reason I had no chance to take part in any of the test flying. Actually the first time I was off the water in the Friendship was the Sunday morning when we finally got under way.

The preparation of a large plane for a long flight is a complex task. It is one that cannot—or at least should not—be rushed. Especially is that fact true where, as in the case of the Friendship, the equipment was of a somewhat experimental nature.

Throughout the operations Commander Byrd kept in close touch with what was being done, with Stultz and Gordon, and with Commander Elmer, who was overseeing the technical detail. Necessary instruments were installed and gradually tried out; while varying load tests, countless take-offs from the bay, and brief flights around Boston were made. The radio was tested and the inevitable last minute changes and adjustments arranged.

With the radio, we were particularly fortunate because Stultz is a skilful operator. It is unusual to find a man who is a great pilot, an instrument flyer, navigator, and a really good radio operator all in one.

Finally the ship itself was ready to go, and our problems focussed on the weather. At this stage weather is an important factor in all plans of trans-oceanic flying.

Supplementing the meagre reports available from ships to the Weather Bureau, the Friendship’s backers arranged a service of their own. Special digests of the British reports were cabled to New York each morning, and meteorological data were radioed in from the ships at sea. All this information, supplementing that already at hand, was then coordinated and plotted out in the New York office of the United States Weather Bureau. There we came to feel that no flight could have a better friend than Dr. James H. Kimball, whose interest and unfailing helpfulness were indispensable.

The weather service for a flight such as ours must be largely planned and entirely underwritten by the backers of the flight itself. And, like so much else, it is an expensive undertaking.

Nearly three weeks dragged by in Boston. Sometimes Mr. and Mrs. Layman were there, hoping for an immediate take-off, sometimes Mrs. Putnam. Commander Elmer and Mr. Putnam were on hand constantly. Mrs. Guest’s sons, Winston and Raymond, followed the preparations as closely as they dared without risking disclosure of the ownership.

It was during this period that I had the pleasure of seeing something of Commander and Mrs. Byrd, at their Brimmer Street home, just then bursting with the preparations for his Antarctic expedition—a place of tents and furs, specially devised instruments, concentrated foodstuffs, and all the rest of the paraphernalia which makes the practical, and sometimes the picturesque, background of a great expedition. There I met “Scotty” Allan, famous Alaskan dog driver, who was advising Byrd as to canine preparations.

The weather remained persistently unfavorable. When it was right in Boston, the mid-Atlantic was forbidding. I have a memory of long grey days which had a way of dampening our spirits against our best efforts to be cheerful. We tried to be casual by keeping occupied. On fair days my battered Kissel roadster, dubbed “Yellow Peril,” was a means for sightseeing. On rainy days the top leaked too much for comfort, so we walked. We tried restaurants of all nationalities for variety and went, I think, to all the theatres.

One of the last plays we saw, I remember, was “The Good Hope,” with the charming Eva LeGallienne. The story is a tragedy; all the hopeful characters drown while the most tragic one survives to carry out a cold lamb chop in the last act. A recurring line is “The fish are dearly paid for,” and our crew adopted that as a heraldic motto, emblazoned under a goldfish rampant. I had the opportunity of thanking Miss LeGallienne for her cheering sendoff when I met her on returning to New York. She helped Charles Winninger auction off one of the flags we carried on the flight, at a theatrical performance for the benefit of the Olympic team which was about to sail for Europe on the ship which had brought us back, the President Roosevelt. Anyway, that evening she got us on the stage before 17,280,891 people, so we have two grievances against her.

As I look back on the flight I think two questions have been asked me most frequently. First: Was I afraid? Secondly: What did I wear?

I’m sorry to be a disappointment in answering the first query. It would sound more exciting if I only could admit having been shockingly frightened. But I honestly wasn’t. Of course I realized there was a measure of danger. Obviously I faced the possibility of not returning when first I considered going. Once faced and settled there really wasn’t any good reason to refer to it again. After all, even when driving one admits tacitly there is danger, but one doesn’t dwell on the result of losing the front wheels or having the rear end fall out on a mountain.

Perhaps the second question may be thought feminine, but I have had as many men as women appear interested.

Remember the early stages of automobiling? In those days an “auto” ride was a rare experience, made rarer by the clothes one wore. A linen duster, gauntlets and a veil were the requisites of touring in 1907.

Fashions in air clothing are emerging from the same sort of chrysalis stage. For routine short flights I wear every-day clothes—what one would use for street wear or sports. But obviously the Friendship flight was different. Compare it, perhaps, to a strenuous camping trip. One couldn’t tell what might happen. Serviceability was the prime requirement. I had to wear breeks because of the jump from the pontoon to the door and also because of the necessity of slipping on and off the flying suit which is worn outside one’s other clothing.

In Boston I remember a solicitous friend wished to give me a bag for extra clothing.

“There isn’t going to be any,” I explained.

That appeared to concern him somewhat—certainly much more than it did me. There seems to be a feeling that a woman preparing to drop in on England, so to speak, ought to have something of a wardrobe.

However, I chose to take with me only what I had on. The men on the Friendship took no “extras.” Pounds—even ounces—can count desperately. Obviously I should not load up with unessentials if they didn’t.

I’m told it’s interesting to know exactly what the outfit included. Just my old flying clothes, comfortably, if not elegantly, battered and worn. High laced boots, brown broadcloth breeks, white silk blouse with a red necktie (rather antiquated!) and a companionably ancient leather coat, rather long, with plenty of pockets and a snug buttoning collar. A homely brown sweater accompanied it. A light leather flying helmet and goggles completed the picture, such as it was. A single elegance was a brown and white silk scarf.

READY TO GO

A PICTURE OF THE “FRIENDSHIP” OVER BOSTON, AUTOGRAPHED BEFORE THE FLIGHT STARTED

When it was cold I wore—as did the men—a heavy fur-lined flying suit which covers one completely from head to toe, shoes and all. Mine was lent to me by my friend Major Charles H. Woolley of Boston, who, by the way, had no idea when he lent it what it was to be used for. He suspected, I think, that I intended to do some high flying.

Toilet articles began with a toothbrush and ended with a comb. The only extras were some fresh handkerchiefs and a tube of cold cream. My “vanity case” was a small army knapsack.

Equipment was simple, too. Mr. Layman let me take his camera and Mrs. Layman her wrist watch. Field glasses, with plenty of use in the Arctic behind them, were lent me by G. P. P., and I was given a compact log book.

Besides toothbrushes—generic term—and food, our “baggage” was a book and a packet of messages which some of those associated with the enterprise asked to have carried across to friends on the other side.

The book—perhaps the only one to have crossed the Atlantic by air route—is Skyward, written by Commander Richard Evelyn Byrd. He sent it to Mrs. Guest. Commander Byrd, of course, had owned the Friendship and has outstandingly sponsored the wisdom of utilizing tri-motored ships equipped with pontoons, for long-distance over-water flying. So it was appropriate that his book should be taken to the woman who bought his plane and made the trans-Atlantic flight possible.

This copy of his book which I delivered bears the following inscription: “I am sending you this copy of my first book by the first girl to cross the Atlantic Ocean by air—the very brave Miss Earhart. But for circumstances I well know that it would have been you who would have crossed first. I send you my heartiest congratulations and good wishes. I admire your determination and courage.”

CHAPTER VI
OFF FOR NEWFOUNDLAND

TWICE, when the weather eastward seemed right, we tried to take off. And twice we failed because of too much fog or too little wind.

Three thirty!

Another day. Another start. Would it flatten out into failure like its predecessors?

Out of the hotel we trooped in the greyness of before-dawn. Another breakfast at an all-night eating place—Stultz and his wife, Gordon, his fiancee, Mrs. Layman, Lou and Mrs. Gower, Commander and Mrs. Elmer, George Palmer Putnam, “Jake” Coolidge, and a few others. An hour earlier the sandwiches had been made, the patient big thermos bottle again filled with coffee for the boys, the little one with cocoa for me.

We drove through deserted streets to T Wharf and at once boarded the tugboat Sadie Ross. The plane, as before, lay moored off the Jeffrey Yacht Club in East Boston. Stultz, Gordon, Gower, and I climbed in. We said no “good-byes”—too many of them already, and too little going!

Slim uncovered the motors. Bill tinkered a bit with his radio and in the cockpit. Slim dropped down from the fuselage to the starboard pontoon, hopped over to the other, and cranked the port motor. Soon all three were turning over and Friendship taxied down the harbor, with the tug, carrying our friends, trailing us.

And then, suddenly, the adventure began—the dream became actuality.

We were off!

But let me tell the story here as I wrote it that very morning, in the little notebook that went with me across the Atlantic. Here is that record, exactly as it was set down (often none too legibly!) in my log book, penciled as we in the Friendship flew northeastward, with Boston behind and Newfoundland ahead:

* * * *

Log Book:

7 o’clock, June 3. Slim has the controls and Bill is tuning in. He has been getting our position. I squat on the floor next the m.p. [motion picture] camera with my feet on a dunnage bag. There is one man’s shoe in the passageway between the gas tanks. It looks odd, but no one cares about its out-of-placeness.

We are flying at about 2,000 feet. There is a light haze and the ocean is smooth, with little color. From a height it looks quiet, almost like ice with flecks in it.

Boston is lost to view and has been for minutes. I tried to get a picture of the tugboats and harbor as we left, but just before starting the spring lock of the cabin door broke off, and I had to hold the door shut until Slim could get back to repair it. It was at first anchored to a gasoline can, but I saw the can being slowly pulled out, so anchored myself to it instead.

* * * *

So, a few minutes after the take-off we nearly lost two of our crew. That would have been a jolly beginning! Actually Slim came within inches of falling out when the door suddenly slid open. And when I dived for that gasoline can, edging towards the opening door, I, too, had a narrow escape. However, a string tied through the leather thong in the door itself and fastened to a brace inside the cabin held it shut fairly securely.

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Log Book:

The take-off was an eventful period. The wind was fair and the water slightly ruffled. When we started from the tug the sun was just coming over the rim of the harbor. A few dawn clouds hung about in the pink glow. The camera men and small group who came to see the departure were in a happy mood. For the third time they had assembled. Twice before the weather had prevented a getaway. The rehearsals had made all familiar with the process of arising at 3:30 and boarding a tug at 4:30 for a “fishing trip.” Twice the thermos bottles had been filled and dumped and twice sandwiches had been replaced. This morning the whole thing was an old act. There were not so many present, as I had told the four friends of mine who knew of the flight, not to come. I didn’t fancy another farewell and return a short while later. However, when we got out into the harbor, a small launch came chugging up and in it were my banished friends.

We were taxiing along toward open water and wind. A few craft were stirring, but Sunday morning does not bring out the usual activity. Before, in trying to get off we passed many small fishing dories and even had to avoid the New York boat which was just coming in.