The Endless Summer Solstice

CCXXIV

June Twenty-First, the Summer Solstice, is the longest day of the year in the Northern Hemisphere, and, as the Winter Solstice, is the shortest day of the year in the Southern Hemisphere.  Such details matter little in Equatorial latitudes, where the difference in daytime and night is minimal due to the global shape of the Earth. And, as far as weather, they matter even less. At the center of the Tropics, heat and rain and sun are constant companions. Singapore lies just one degree north of the Equator; and Bandoeng, in the Dutch East Indies (today’s Bandung, Indonesia), lies seven degrees south of the Equator.  The main difference between them, and a welcome one, is that cooler Bandoeng stands at an elevation of 2500 feet, while low-lying Singapore, at 50 feet, is far more torrid. 

It was a 621 mile flight that took about five and a half hours through squalls. When Amelia and Fred touched down in Bandoeng, they were charmed to see a  pleasant city of classic colonial architecture interspersed with modern Art Deco buildings.

Amelia was in a foul mood. Not long after lifting off from Singapore she had been struck by a case of what seemed to be the Traveler’s Complaint, and she’d flown the distance with severe stomach cramps. To add to her bad state of mind, the balky just-repaired fuel analyzer was on the blink again, and so were the fuel flow meter and the generator meter. She would need all of them working perfectly for the long Pacific hop that was drawing ever closer, and the fact that everything had gone on the fritz all at once and not very long after the Electra had been fully serviced, caused her no end of upset. She muttered and swore in a most sailorly fashion, and turned her frustrations on the only target available, Fred Noonan --- there is evidence, admittedly cryptic, that Fred had fallen off the wagon, and more evidence, obscured by the lens of time, that the two were getting on each others’ nerves.

Amelia tended to be waspish when frustrated and stubborn when tired, and she was both at this stage of the Worldflight. She had pushed herself, the plane, and Fred unmercifully for nearly a month now, and all three were struggling to go on. She had flown nearly a thousand miles a day on each day she was in the air, and had taken too few days to rest and recuperate. 

Bandoeng, much cooler than sweltering sea-level Batavia (Djakarta), was the cultural epicenter of Dutch colonial power in the East Indies. Braga Street was a trendy avenue of clubs, shops, and cafes

Bandoeng was nearly a repeat of this pattern. After a brief stop during which the troublesome gauges were adjusted and fuel added to the tanks, she elected to fly on to Soerabaja, the next stop on her itinerary. She had had a surprise telephone call from George during her Bandoeng stop. Thrilled to hear his voice, she had excitedly told him that she would be home by July Fourth --- given the distance yet to fly, the uncertain tropical weather, the grueling nature of the long transpacific flight, and her own weariness and illness, it was an unrealistic deadline at best, and an absurd one at worst.

The Electra had barely flown out of sight of Bandoeng when several things happened essentially at once. The monsoon rains closed in, battering the plane with their usual ferocity, and the just-repaired instruments seemed to go sour again.   

 

A Dutch official in Bandoeng poses with Fred Noonan and A.E.. Note how drawn Amelia appears to be

Noonan insisted they turn back. What was said, whether it was loud or too soft, or whether Amelia agreed or not, she put the Electra into a wide swooping turn that brought them back to Bandoeng. They would remain there several days, grounded by weather, by the need for repairs, and by some mysterious “crew indisposition” that historians and time have never brought to light. For the second time during the Worldflight, Amelia Earhart had had to turn back on her track.

 

Fred Noonan and Amelia Earhart were to spend several restorative days in Bandoeng, grounded not by common sense but by weather and the slow pace of the tropics

*Today, July 24, 2017, would have been Amelia Earhart’s 120^th birthday. As far as anyone knows, she did not live to see her 40^th. She shares a birthday with this blogger.