Amelia Earhart once said that preparation is two-thirds of any venture. But on the morning of July 2 1937, even the best-prepared flight ended in tragedy when Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan, vanished as they approached a tiny Pacific island on one of the last legs of a groundbreaking round-the-world flight.
Now, almost 70 years later, a team of marine explorers is launching a fresh attempt to find the wreckage of her twin-engine Lockheed Electra.
”Things tend to last a time in the deep ocean,” said David Jourdan of Nauticos, a company based in Maine. ”Our expectation is that the plane will be largely — if not completely — intact.”
Jourdan plans to begin an expedition in the spring to explore a 12 560-square-kilometre area of the seabed west of Howland island, halfway between Australia and Hawaii, where the waters are up to 5 000m deep.
Others have tried in vain to find the remains of Earhart’s plane. Jourdan was involved in one such mission two years ago.
The United States navy mounted a massive search immediately after Earhart disappeared.
She died just before her 40th birthday, a true hero in the depression-era US. The first woman to receive a pilot’s licence from the Federal Aviation Institute, she established a series of altitude, distance and endurance records.
Earhart was known for her colourful personality as well as her flying prowess.
She refused to wear what she termed ”high-bred aviation togs” — instead wearing a suit or dress and tight-fitting hat inside the cockpit, and only putting on goggles for takeoff and landing.
She became friends with the then US first lady, Eleanor Roosevelt, and planned to teach her to fly. The press dubbed her ”Lady Lindy” because of her resemblance to the aviator Charles Lindbergh.
”I have a feeling that there is just about one more good flight left in my system, and I hope this trip is it,” she said as she prepared for her final 46 000km flight.
Earhart and Noonan left Miami on June 1 1937. By June 29, they had only 11 200km remaining, but the fateful leg from New Guinea to tiny Howland island was the most challenging.
Adverse weather caused the plane to use more fuel than had been anticipated.
At 7.42am on the morning of July 2, in one of her last radio communications, Earhart reported: ”One half-hour fuel and no landfall.”
After a few more sporadic communications, nothing was ever heard of Earhart and Noonan again.
While most accepted that they had run out of fuel and crashed, conspiracy theories emerged. Some speculated that she had landed on a desert island, but had then died; others that she had been captured and eventually killed by the Japanese. Another unlikely theory had it that she lived out the rest of her life as a New Jersey housewife.
In a letter she left for her husband, George Putnam, in the event of her death, she wrote: ”Please know I am quite aware of the hazards. I want to do it because I want to do it. Women must try to do things as men have tried. When they fail, their failure must be but a challenge to others.” — Guardian Unlimited Â