"Equally Jake with me."

CXCVI

As the wreck of the Lockheed Model 10E Special was crated up for return to the States and its eventual rebuilding, Ed Musick and the crew of the Pan American Clipper II were receiving their accolades in Auckland. It was a bitter pill for George and Amelia to swallow. Immediately after the accident, George had sent Amelia a telegram, “Whether you want to keep going or call it a day, is equally Jake with me.”   

Before Amelia even received the telegram she was announcing another attempt. 

There were going to be changes. Paul Mantz, who had uttered the sacreligious words “pilot error” (in the hearing of a newspaperman no less!) remained technical advisor to the project, but his role was greatly decreased.

 

George had been naturally embittered about the accusations of an affair between Paul and Amelia and never really trusted Mantz thereafter; Mantz, for his part, began to believe that George was pressuring Amelia to complete what was, after all, in all its essentials a very dangerous flying stunt. Much of the tarnish on George’s reputation appeared after George’s death when he was unable to defend himself from Mantz’s articulate if one-sided criticisms.

Harry Manning dropped out entirely, claiming that he could not extend his leave of absence from United States Lines any longer; in truth, he didn’t want to. 

A few days after Manning took his leave, a letter appeared in the Cleveland Press, written by a Major Al Williams, a very respected U.S. Army flier. He wrote in part:

 

Major Al Williams

[A]viation suffers from . . . ingeniously contrived rackets . . . the worst racket of all is individually sponsored transoceanic flying . . . Amelia Earhart’s “Flying Laboratory” is the latest and most distressing racket . . . there is nothing in that “Flying Laboratory” beyond . . . apparatus to be found aboard every major airline transport. [N]o one ever sat at the controls . . . who knew enough to obtain a job on a first-class airline . . . Paul Mantz was the only pilot in the ship who knew how to take airplanes off and land them. [Amelia Earhart] lost control of the plane during a takeoff on the concrete runway of a standard Army aerodrome and wrecked . . . That ship got away from her on the take-off --- that’s the low-down. 

Planes have to be held by clever pilots to straight courses on a getaway . . . Neither landing gear nor tires [are] designed to be jammed into the ground . . . Her plane [is] a stock type which is carrying passengers and mail in this country day after day. [My guess is that] the Bureau of Air Commerce . . . will not grant Mrs. Amelia Earhart permission to make another attempt . . . It is high time they put an end to aviation’s biggest racket  . . .

The letter stung, it made news, and neither George nor Amelia ever believed that Williams had written the letter without input from Mantz and Manning. That, privately, they both knew the critique to be valid to a point did not ease their reactions.

Ironically, it drove both of them harder to make another attempt at a Worldflight as soon as possible. Although they knew that the newly-renamed Samoan Clipper would be flying the Alameda-to-Auckland route again (this time with inaugural mail) in December 1937 and would be afforded a picket line of guard ships along its route, and that Amelia could easily have taken advantage of this accommodation (as she had planned to initially in March), it was decided to go as soon as the Electra was repaired and not wait, despite the fact that only the United States Coast Guard Cutter Itasca would be available to help track the Electra during the long hop to Howland Island.  

USCGC Itasca

The reason for the rush was strictly financial. The Electra was uninsured (because no company wished to assume the risk) and so George and Amelia had to absorb the costs of rebuilding the plane. They also had to fund (once again) all the worldwide logistical support that had been suspended after the first attempt. There were donations (though not as many as before) and money from Purdue (though not as much as before) and George had to mortgage all the Putnam properties to the hilt to make the second Worldflight come to pass. Both of them knew that the faster she went the faster she would return and the faster the lecture tours, books and movies would begin generating desperately-needed income.

In retrospect and eighty years on, it seems that the lessons of the first failed Worldflight went unlearned, ignored in the harsh glare of the floodlighted fame trap Amelia had designed for herself. In that respect, her critics were correct: The second Worldflight was a stunt designed to fill the Putnams’ empty coffers.

“Adventure is worthwhile in itself.”

Amelia wanted to fly around the world because she wanted to fly around the world and she wanted to be the first woman to do so. It’s doubtful anyone could have stopped her. But perhaps the plan was flawed: The wrong plane and the wrong route and the wrong time. But was she, as some have since conjectured, the wrong aviatrix?