"...The date was July 2, 1937, and the pair were near the end of a 2,550-mile trek from Lae, New Guinea, the longest and most perilous leg of a much-publicized "World Flight" begun 44 days earlier in Oakland, Calif.
At the journey's end there a few days hence, Earhart, already the most famous aviator of the decade, was to become the first female pilot to circumnavigate the globe.
Noonan, a former Pan American Airways navigator, estimated when the plane would reach an imaginary "line of position" running northwest-southeast through Howland, where they were to land, rest and refuel for the onward flight to Hawaii.
Earhart pushed the talk button on her radio mike and said, "200 miles out."
Her voice — described as a "whispery drawl," evoking her Kansas roots — was heard by the Coast Guard cutter Itasca, rocking gently in calm seas off Howland. The U.S. government had built an airstrip on the treeless, 500-acre coral spit, and at the request of Earhart's husband and manager, publisher George Putnam, dispatched the cutter from Hawaii to help her find her way.
During the night, Itasca's radio operators had become increasingly exasperated. Earhart's voice had come through in only a few, brief, static-marred transmissions — "sky overcast" was one — and hadn't acknowledged any of Itasca's messages or its steady stream of Morse code A's sent as a homing signal: dot-dash, dot-dash ... They decided the glamorous 39-year-old "Lady Lindy" was either arrogant or incompetent.
What nobody knew — not Earhart, and not Itasca — was that her plane's radio-reception antenna had been ripped away during the takeoff from Lae's bumpy dirt runway. The Itasca could hear Earhart, but she was unable to hear anything, voice or code.
Also listening in the Itasca's radio room was James W. Carey, one of two reporters aboard. The 23-year-old University of Hawaii student had been hired by The Associated Press to cover Earhart's Howland stopover. His job was to send brief radiograms to the AP in Honolulu and San Francisco.
But during the eight days since arriving at Howland, Carey also had been keeping a diary.
In small notebooks, he jotted down comments about the island's "gooney birds," beachcombing and poker games in Itasca's wardroom. He also noted how Earhart's delayed departure from Lae was affecting crewmembers' morale, writing on June 30: "They are getting tired of waiting for a `gooney' dame who doesn't seem to be aware of the annoyance the delays have made."
First of all, she was hardly the most famous aviator of her time, duh. A gimmick from the get-go, many of the civilian and service people of the day thought she was indeed a goony bird, and there never seemed to be much doubt that she took the plane into the drink and that was that. But not wishing to let a juicy story die a natural death, the media, along with plenty of help from a military that wanted the Japs to be seen in the most unflattering light as possible, began concocting one fantastic tale after another. The pilots of the day believed her to be unqualified, but she sold tons of ladies wear.
Pictured: Navigator Fred Noonan casually explores the contours of Amelia's tight little ass as they posed for pictures
No comments:
Post a Comment