Brimming With Enthusiasm

CXCVII

On the twentieth of May 1937, Amelia Earhart’s fully-refurbished Lockheed Electra Model 10E Special rolled out of the Lockheed plant in California, and took to the skies in what became her second Worldflight attempt. 

Amelia Earhart in full flying togs

There were significant differences between the first Worldflight and the second Worldflight. Chief among them was the route. Instead of flying west from California (making the Pacific hop the first great challenge) Amelia decided to fly east, across the United States, over the Atlantic, and so onward. In part, the changed route reflected changes in the seasonal weather patterns around the world between Spring and high Summer, but Amelia also felt an irrational sense of anxiety about the long, lonely Pacific hop, and wanted to address it last.

It was likely not a wise decision on her part. She would be facing the most technically challenging part of the flight at the precise point when she would be most fatigued by the trip. She had been complaining about excessive fatigue and a lack of stamina anyway, and had admitted obliquely in a letter to a friend that she believed she might be finally pregnant at age 39.  There were some changes to the staging stops as well that added some miles to the trip.

A bubble compass similar to the type Fred Noonan would have known

Earhart would be making the flight alone, except for Fred Noonan. Harry Manning had dropped out of the project entirely. Paul Mantz was supposed to have accompanied Noonan and Earhart on the transcontinental “shakedown” leg of the Worldflight, but in the event she departed Oakland without even telling Mantz. That marked the coda to their personal relationship. Initially, Mantz was furious with her; later, he blamed George Putnam for the subterfuge and for “forcing” Amelia to make the flight (Mantz’s criticisms of Putnam became canonical to Amelia Earhart’s story in the 1950s, and only recently have they been reexamined). 

There were changes to the aircraft as well. The standard Western Electric radio and navigation equipment had been removed and had been entirely replaced by Bendix equipment, strictly for promotional purposes. The large radio navigation unit directly in front of Amelia at forehead level, on which she had bruised herself during the crash at Luke Field, had been removed and an even larger and bulkier unit had taken its place (sharp-edged metal boxes filled with wires and vacuum tubes were the height of technological advancement in that era). 

Everyone involved with both Worldflights noted that Earhart was exceptionally cavalier in regard to training in the use of her radio and navigation equipment. According to her ground crew and to experts hired to train her in its use she was hardly familiar with the Western Electric gear, and she was apparently even less familiar with the Bendix gear which had more functionality but was more complex to operate.

 

A pelorus, used by navigators to take bearings. The Electra had two pelori installed, one on either side of the cabin

Paul Mantz had worked out a complex manual of throttle settings and fuel leanings for the Electra that had been intended to be a kind of “flight bible” for Amelia, who otherwise wasted fuel by running the engines hot and at full throttle at all times. Using Mantz’s guide she had accomplished the Oakland-to-Honolulu leg of the first Worldflight in record time and with four hours fuel to spare, but whether she used the same rules during the second Worldflight is not known. Amelia did not log such details, just as she did not give regular position reports during her scheduled radio check-ins on the quarter- and three-quarter hour. 

The Electra had a brimming fuel capacity of 1,150 gallons. At six pounds per gallon, the plane could carry a maximum of 6,900 pounds of fuel which (properly shepherded) could allow her to remain aloft for 24 hours in optimal conditions. But after the Luke Field crash (which she blamed on overloading and a resultant unbalancing of the Electra, she insisted on carrying only 950 gallons of fuel on any leg. With that load, in optimal conditions, she could stay aloft just over 20 hours. It was enough fuel even to make the long Hawaii-to-California hop against headwinds, but her cushion of safety could be reduced to the thickness of a bedsheet if anything went seriously wrong. 

She had no reason to believe that anything would go wrong. After a year of constant usage, the Electra was a comfortable to her as an old shoe. She knew what she could ask it to do and it would do it. She believed she had learned from her earlier mistakes. And she had Fred Noonan, arguably the greatest working Navigator in the world sitting just over her shoulder. 

What could go wrong?    

Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan (back to the camera) at Lae on the island of New Guinea shortly before liftoff. Possibly the last photo ever taken of Amelia