Struttin' Her Stuff

CXCI

Amelia Earhart took possession of her Lockheed Electra Model 10E Special on July 24, 1936, her thirty-ninth birthday.

Amelia, clearly enjoying her new toy

The airplane had cost a pretty penny. Even with the discount offered by Lockheed, the Electra had rung up a bill of about $75,000.00, about half of which was provided by Purdue University, and half by donations. A critical gap had been filled by subscribing one thousand philatelists to First Day Covers to be franked at every stopping point Amelia reached. 

This rare and valuable First Day Cover was never franked but had been signed by Amelia before the flight. Clearly, it was left behind, but whether by accident or on purpose, is not known

George had argued, to industry-wide derision, that Lockheed should have charged only cost for the plane. His argument, that the plane was part of Purdue’s “research division” may have given rise to the idea, first broached by Amelia to the Press on delivery day, that the specially-modified Electra was a “flying laboratory.”

With uncharacteristic modesty, George never took credit for the name. He always told anyone who asked that Amelia had come up with the term spontaneously and on her own in that first press conference. Whether true or not, it smacked of being one of George’s better promotional inventions.

Amelia was talking to an aviation- and science-crazy adventure-driven American public that couldn’t get enough of Batman’s high-tech Bat Cave, Doc Savage’s supersecret Hidalgo Trading Company, Superman’s Fortress of Solitude, The Phantom’s Skull Cave, and the alien world Mongo of Flash Gordon fame.*

In fact, there wasn’t anything particularly flying laboratory-like about the “Flying Laboratory,” except its advanced electronics. But the name stuck.** The idea of a globe-trotting flying laboratory captained by a woman was so good that the comics writers bit through their lower lips in frustration that they hadn’t thought of it first. That it was real made it better (and even George missed an opportunity when he never thought to license an adventure series based on Amelia’s exploits).

In photos it is self-evident. Amelia loved the plane. Although it had first come to her painted in Purdue’s Black and Old Gold livery within days she had the paint stripped off to save weight, and the gleaming silver airplane is the one that has come down to us in memory.

The cockpit of the Electra was cramped, especially when two pilots were aboard. With the additional fuel tanks installed it was easier for Amelia to exit the cockpit through the roof hatch that had been added above her seat.

Amelia looking aft over the fuel tanks. Note the radio equipment on the right

Each one of the added gasoline tanks had its own independent piping, reducing to zero the chance of a catastrophic total failure of the fuel system. The plane was fueled with military-grade 100 octane fuel, designed to provide more power to the thirsty engines.

George and Amelia had access to the then-classified fuel mixture because they had access to the President and First Lady. In George’s case, the relationship stretched back years. A boyhood admirer of Theodore Roosevelt (and ultimately his publisher and friend), George had consciously patterned his life on that of the 26^th President. When he met FDR in school, George turned on the charm despite the fact that most of their peers thought Franklin an insufferable prig (a charge the older FDR admitted to with a rueful laugh). Their shared admiration of T.R., plus George’s kindness cemented the friendship. When George met Amelia he presciently introduced her to the Roosevelts, who were then the Governor and First Lady of New York. When FDR and ER moved from the Governor’s Mansion in Albany to the Executive Mansion in Washington, the Putnams had a standing invitation as houseguests. George, though he was a lifelong Republican and thought the New Deal a prodigious waste of money, admitted that the “chilly” White House of Herbert Hoover had turned into a “rollicking” place. He also had no compunctions about name-dropping the President of the United States.***

Eleanor admired Amelia and was appreciative of her Social Work background. Amelia soon became a regular part of the First Lady’s Val-Kill Circle in Hyde Park.****

Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt with Amelia Earhart and pilots Jim Mollison and Amy Johnson. Note how FDR is bracing himself to stand

George’s shameless resort to the name Roosevelt may have angered many people, from lowly file clerks to senior Generals, but it didn’t bother the Roosevelts themselves. Especially after telling the President and First Lady about the planned Worldflight, the Roosevelts made sure that the full resources of the United States were (quietly) put at Amelia’s disposal. Landing rights in foreign nations that ordinarily took months to arrange cleared in a matter of days. Bottlenecks were cleared by a simple handwritten scrawl: By personal request --- Roosevelt. Amelia and her team were given access to the highly-secret reports collected during covert overflights of the Japanese-held Pacific islands, including weather, ocean current, and other data collected by the China Clippers.

 

Everything about the Worldflight was marked Confidential and treated as classified, apparently at Amelia’s request, who did not want publicity before the liftoff. There may have been more to it; given all this sensitive data, was Amelia expected to repay the favor by surveilling the Japanese? It’s one theory as to what her ultimate fate may have been.

Colonists on Howland Island

That Amelia Earhart was walking in the corridors of power could not be doubted. Her influence in the matter of Howland Island is a case in point:

An Electra Model 10E in Panagra livery

 

While plotting her flight path over the South Pacific, she realized that she would need to make a rest and refueling stop at lonely Itascatown on Howland Island. She was troubled, therefore, to discover that neither Howland, nor nearby Baker Island, had a landing strip. The two guano islands had been “discovered” by Juan Trippe as he surveyed his office globe for possible Pan American landing sites. Arranging for the islands to be brought under formal U.S. control, Trippe pressed for the installation of emergency landing facilities.

Amelia, being whimsical with the futuristic-looking RDF antenna before its installation atop the cockpit

The islands were colonized; but the landing facilities were not installed. Amelia soon discovered that although the money had been budgeted and the resources allocated to build, the director of the Works Progress Administration (WPA) had, sensibly, bumped the two islands to the very end of the priority list. The Clippers did not pass near there, there were no plans to open a route through there, and the planned flying boat facilities would probably rot from disuse in the tropics, a classic example of government waste.  

The Howland Island Beacon as Amelia should have seen it

Amelia needed Howland Island. In a chatty note to the President she explained her dilemma. Within days, work crews were dispatched to build day beacons and runways for the Electra --- not of any use to the China Clippers. Amelia Earhart had unintentionally cocked a snook at Juan Trippe. And it wouldn’t be the last time.   

*All the superheroes mentioned first appeared between 1933 and 1936.

** The idea of a “Flying Laboratory” did not vanish from the popular imagination. In 1954, the Tom Swift adventure books inaugurated a new series headlined with Tom Swift Jr. and His Flying Lab a giant, jet-powered craft with vertical takeoff and landing capabilities. In 1964, Jonny Quest featured a “stratospheric suborbital aircraft” that was part laboratory and part transport, the Dragonfly. 

*** Amelia was a devout New Deal Democrat who worked mightily to convince George and her family to vote for Roosevelt. George may have, finally, during wartime.

**** The author Gore Vidal, whose father Gene was an aviation adviser to FDR, saw everyone involved on a regular basis, and put it succinctly: Even as a youngster he knew “Eleanor was in love with Amelia.” Whether those affections were ever returned remains thus far an unanswerable question that is worthy only of another "Who cares?".