"A Very Orange Kite"

CXCVIII

Despite its reputation as a “Flying Laboratory” Amelia Earhart’s Electra Special was essentially the stock version of the ten-passenger Electra airliner with some functional modifications. 

Earhart’s radio equipment, shown before its installation. Note the RDF loop in the upper right-hand of the photo. In these days of wireless communications this array seems impossibly clunky

Additional fuel tanks replaced the seating in the passenger area. For some inexplicable reason, the fuel tanks sat just behind the cockpit area and formed a barrier between the pilot and the navigator. If it became necessary to reach the cramped cockpit in flight Fred Noonan would be forced to make a difficult clamber over the tanks with their projecting pipes and valves.

Noonan had two navigation stations aft of the tanks, one port and one starboard. Most of the passenger cabin windows had been removed, leaving only one window just above each nav station, outfitted with special non-refractive glass for making observations.   

The standard cockpit of the Electra was small --- only 21 cubic feet --- and that was assumed to be enough for two adult males at the time. However, Earhart had had additional non-standard radio equipment and instrumentation installed that ate up some of this space.

A standard Model 10 cockpit with dual controls

Kelly Johnson had designed the Electra as a medium-distance airliner, the competitor to the DC-2. The airplane wasn’t configured for the kind of long-distance endurance flying that Earhart intended. And it certainly wasn’t designed for a solo pilot to undertake that type of flying. The smallness of the flight deck would, in and of itself, cause pilot fatigue, and with no one to spell her at the controls, Amelia would be forced to stay alert and awake and aware for as much as 20 hours at a time --- difficult even for an average person on an average day, never mind a transoceanic pilot sitting in a fuel-laden sardine can with droning engines blotting out all other sounds.

For the Electra’s cabin was uninsulated (to save weight) and unpressurized (cabin pressurization was on the drawing boards at Hughes Aircraft and not yet a reality, but most pilots of the time feared the idea anyway, thinking a pressurized plane could just pop like a water balloon). This meant that Amelia would be subjected to the endless and exhausting high-decibel roaring of the Electra’s two Wasp engines without surcease. She was, therefore, essentially alone in flight. She and Noonan could communicate by hollering, but it was by far not the best way for them to exchange information.  Instead, they worked up a crude pulley system out of a household clothesline. Noonan (or Earhart) could scribble a note, hook it to the line with a wooden clothespin, and reel it back (or forth). The problem with scribbled notes, of course was that they did not allow for a great deal of detail or quick brainstorming in flight. 

The noise of the engines also made it difficult to use the radio, even with earphones and a specially-designed microphone, and if anything went wrong with the radio it would be virtually impossible to adjust it, diagnose it, or fix it. Even if Amelia knew how to tweak the radio (and there’s no evidence that she did) that would necessitate leaving the controls, an impossibility in the days before the invention of a practical autopilot.

Upon reaching the Dutch East Indies the Electra underwent a full maintenancing in preparation for the transpacific legs of the flight. Note the RDF loop atop the cabin

There was no on-board head. Noonan could always urinate in a container, but it was far more difficult for the seated Amelia, unable to leave the controls or move around much in the cockpit, to relieve herself when necessary. It can only be assumed that the two had an implicit agreement to respect each others’ dignity during such moments. There were no facilities for moving one’s bowels, but unless the crew were suffering from a tropical malady, this problem could be addressed at a staging stop. It’s likely they drank little and ate less in flight, conditions which could also be fatiguing. 

Compounding these inherent shortcomings in the aircraft’s design and outfitting was Amelia’s near-obsessive concern with weight. At every staging stop she would ship home anything she felt had outlived its usefulness. Some of it made sense: Charts of overflown areas, for example, constituted useless weight, however nominal. But she also sent home notes (usually cryptic, and intended to jog her memory when she finally would get the chance to write her memoirs of the flight) and flight logs. She was a notoriously sloppy logbook-keeper, but the technical notations she did make during the earlier stages of the flight would have at least helpful as reference material during later stages. She also sent home her Very’s pistol and emergency flares and the crew’s parachutes. She kept a U.S. Navy yellow rubber life raft and “a very orange kite” aboard.