The Hottest Place On Earth

CCXIII

Having refueled at Khartoum, Earhart and Noonan flew on to Massawa, an ancient port city in the colony of Italian Eritrea. Once famed as the 8^th Century capital of the Kingdom of Axum, Massawa in 1937 was remembered for recording the hottest temperature recorded on Earth, 136 degrees Fahrenheit. It holds the record for the highest mean temperature as well, averaging 120 degrees a day.  Amelia described the evening of her arrival as “relatively cool” in the high nineties.*

Eritrean men enjoying the pleasures of the hookah and the shade, 1937

 

The 300 mile hop to Massawa made little sense from a logistical standpoint. It had been Earhart’s plan to have the plane receive a 40-hour servicing at Massawa (its third in a week) before setting out across the trackless Rub’-al-Khali, the “Empty Quarter” of Arabia, the single largest contiguous sand desert (Erg) in the world. As a practical matter, Khartoum, only an hour-and-a-half in the past had better airport facilities. She also discovered that the Italians had helped themselves to a good bit of her high-octane fuel before she’d arrived. In the event, the decision was made to fly down to Assab, and so she stayed grounded just long enough to top off the Electra’s tanks before flying south to the capital of Italian Eritrea, another 283 miles onward. 

Noonan and Earhart on the ground at Massawa. The briefcase in this picture has been fodder for an Earhart conspiracy theory. According to some sources it was discovered on Saipan years after her disappearance filled with her personal documents. The documents, however, have never been produced for verification

*Massawa still holds the record for the highest sustained temperature on earth and the highest daily average, though in these days of climate change the record is perilously near to being broken. Since the beginning of the 21^st Century, several locales have recorded temperature spikes beyond the record held by Massawa.