Amelia Earhart Biography

America's most famous aviatrix grew up in an environment of wealth and privilege, thanks to her maternal grandfather, Alfred Otis.

Amelia, known as Milly, was 10-years-old when she saw her first airplane at the Iowa State Fair...and said of it:

"It was a thing of rusty wire and wood and not at all interesting..." 

It wasn’t until 1920 that the flying bug bit, when she and her father went to an "aerial meet" at Daugherty Field in Long Beach. Given a helmet and goggles, she boarded an open-cockpit biplane for a 10-minute flight over Los Angeles. She was enthralled, and flying lessons soon followed.

By October 1922, Amelia began participating in record breaking attempts and set a women's altitude record of 14,000 feet.

In the autumn of 1925, Amelia moved to Boston, and joined the Boston Chapter of the National Aeronautic Association. During this time she took full advantage of the circumstances to promote flying, especially for women, becoming a regular subject of columns in newspapers. The Boston Globe called her "one of the best women pilots in the United States".

New York publisher George Putnam, impressed with Earhart, organised for her to be the first woman to cross the Atlantic in a plane on 3 June 1928, albeit as a passenger.

She later married him and Putnam built her public persona to such an extent that, on 20 May 1932, when she successfully crossed the Atlantic alone, she was the most celebrated woman in the world, hailed a National hero, and given numerous awards and ticker tape parades.

An around the world solo flight was the natural progression, but an early attempt in 1935 was unsuccessful, when she crashed on take off near Pearl Harbour. Undaunted, and following the rebuilding of her Electra, she tried again, departing from Miami, Florida on 1 June 1937.

Her route took her via Puerto Rico and the northeast edge of South America, then on to Africa, the Red Sea and on to Pakistan (another first; no one had ever flown non-stop from the Red Sea to India before). Following weather delays, she departed for Australia, then on to Lae in New Guinea. She had, at that stage, travelled 22,000 miles, with 7,000 remaining.

Leaving late on 2 July, Amelia made her last radio contact at 20.00 GMT with the US Coast Guard cutter Itasca and, despite a $4 million search authorised by President Roosevelt, involving 66 airplanes and 9 naval ships, no trace of Earhart and her plane have ever been found.