One More Good Flight Book preview by USNIBooks

ONE MORE GOOD FLIGHT THE AMELIA E A R H A RT T R A G E DY By Ric Gillespie

NAVAL INSTITUTE PRESS Annapolis, MD

Contents List of Illustrations Preface Acknowledgments

vii ix xi

PART ONE

The Real Amelia Earhart 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15

Plane Crazy, 1927–31 Fame and More Fame, 1932–35 Bait and Switch, January–February 1936 The Realization of a Dream, March–July 1936 Teething Troubles, August–September 1936 Delay, Desperation, and Deliverance, October–December 1936 House of Cards, January–February 1937 The Weakest Link, March 1937 Aftermath, April 1937 Formula for Failure, May 1937 Barging Through, June 1–8, 1937 Mad Scramble, June 9–22, 1937 Where Is Amelia? June 23–28, 1937 Personnel Unfitness, June 29–30, 1937 Delay and Denial, July 1, 1937

3 10 18 25 36 45 53 59 68 76 85 90 100 107 112

PART TWO

1937: The Final Flight, the Failed Search, and Earhart’s True Fate 16 17 18 19

Everything Okay, 0000–0719 GCT, July 2 Darkness and Silence, 0720–1743 GCT, July 2 We Must Be On You, 1744–2025 GCT, July 2 Salvation, 2025 GCT July 2–0410 GCT, July 3

121 128 134 142

Contents

20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32

We Hear Her Now, 0410–0611 GCT, July 3 Hopes and Hoaxes, July 3 All Possible Energy, July 3 Ship on Reef, July 3–4 Confusion and Chaos, July 4 Dashes, July 4–5 Damsel in Distress, July 5 281 North, July 5 Colorado, July 6–7 Death Warrant, July 8 Signs of Habitation, July 9 Lexington, July 10 Last Days, July 10–unknown

151 157 163 168 175 182 192 199 205 212 217 223 231

PART THREE

Changing Mystery to History 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45

Blame the Victim, July 18–24, 1937 Coverup, July 20, 1937–June 4, 1940 Near-Misses, October 13, 1937–December 5, 1939 The Castaway of Gardner Island, April 1940–January 1941 Losing Amelia, February–September 1941 Captured, 1937–61 Backlash, 1961–89 The Earhart Project, 1988–91 Good Data and Good Luck, 1992–2010 Red Herrings and Wild Geese, 1991–2019 Chasing the Plane, 1990–2012 Missing the Plane, 2012–19 Changing Mystery to History

237 244 251 259 268 277 284 289 296 305 312 322 328

Notes Bibliography TIGHAR Literary Guild Index

333 365 369 371

Illustrations Maps 1. Miami to Natal 2. Coast of Africa with routes 3. Bandoeng to Lae 4. Lae to Nukumanu Islands 5. Nukumanu to sunup 6. LOP to Gardner 7. Positions profile 8. All bearings 9. The Western Pacific High Commission 10. Possible landing 11. 1991 expedition 12. Campsite location 13. Northwest end of Gardner Island

86 89 106 126 130 145 145 195 256 292 295 304 317

Photographs 1. Amelia Earhart, 1928 2. Amelia Earhart, Ruth Nichols, and Louise Thaden, 1929 3. The Lockheed Model 10 Electra prototype 4. Amelia Earhart and George Putnam, 1935 5. Amelia Earhart and Purdue University president Edward C. Elliot 6. Electra as delivered, July 21, 1936 7. Electra’s cabin without tanks, August 3, 1936 8. Schematic of fuel tank configuration of Earhart’s Electra 9. Amelia Earhart Luggage promotional photograph, September 1936 10. Electra, December 21, 1936 11. Amelia with loop antenna, February 26, 1937 12. Amelia Earhart and Harry Manning, March 6, 1937

5 7 13 15 31 34 37 38 41 51 58 60

viii

13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37.

List of Illustrations

Electra in Oakland, California, March 14, 1937 Paul Mantz, Amelia Earhart, Harry Manning, and Fred Noonan, March 17, 1937 Aftermath of Hawaii accident, March 20, 1937 Electra’s ignominious return to California Preparing to depart Burbank, May 21, 1937 A phony farewell, May 31, 1937 Putnam bids Earhart farewell, June 1, 1937 Altered note by Fred Noonan USCGC Itasca Howland Island The last photograph of Amelia Earhart, July 1, 1937 Itasca’s radio room Gardner Island NR16020 plane on reef SS Norwich City, 1935 Rear Adm. Orin G. Murfin USS Colorado, July 7, 1937 Aerial search of Gardner Island, July 9, 1937 USS Lexington Gardner Island’s shoreline, October 15, 1937 Gerald B. Gallagher Skeleton sketch Reef Analysis Analysis of photographed object Accident in Hawaii, March 20, 1937

63 64 67 72 80 83 83 88 97 102 113 122 146 147 183 195 209 218 226 255 261 272 313 318 319

Preface

hortly before embarking on her attempt to circumnavigate the globe, Amelia Earhart confided to Herald Tribune aviation editor and long-time friend C. B. Allen, “I have a feeling there is just about one more good flight left in my system and I hope this trip around the world is it.” Amelia’s “one more good flight” ended in what would become one of history’s greatest mysteries, and over the decades, dozens of books have argued for a cavalcade of solutions. None have presented proof. Neither does this one. Proof, as a scientific principle, exists only in mathematics and logic. The validity of a proposed solution to a mystery is always a question of probability. One hundred percent is unachievable but, with sufficient supporting evidence, the probability that the answer is true can be high enough for the solution to be accepted as fact. I believe the evidence presented in this book meets that standard. This book is the product of the Earhart Project, a thirty-four-year investigation of the Earhart tragedy by The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery (TIGHAR), the nonprofit foundation it is my privilege to lead. TIGHAR’s inquiry differed from others in that we had no agenda. We were not out to advocate, excuse, honor, or impugn. We saw the Earhart disappearance as an aviation accident, and we reasoned the answer to its cause and outcome should be discoverable if we could find, assemble, and analyze the relevant data. An essential part of any aviation accident investigation is the consideration of human factors, and the cultural status of the human in this case made that assessment especially difficult. Filmmaker Ken Burns has observed that iconic historical figures are often “smothered in mythology,” and it is the task of the historian to liberate them from “the barnacles of sentimentality that attach.” Barnacles might not be the most apt metaphor for the legends surrounding the life and loss of aviator Amelia Earhart, but no American icon has been more smothered in mythology since George Washington chopped down the cherry tree. To understand why she died, it is necessary to strip away the myths and sentimentality that have grown up over the years and examine the hard truths behind Earhart’s aviation career, how her trip around the world came about, and why it went so terribly wrong. My own professional background in aviation provided some important insights when addressing events that occurred in the context of golden age aviation. My five-thousand-plus hours of pilot-in-command time in an array of piston-powered aircraft—from open-cockpit biplanes to large, twin-radial engine aircraft similar to Earhart’s Lockheed Electra—gave me a seat-of-the-pants feel for

Preface

flying in the 1930s. I also had the advantage of a twelve-year career as an underwriter and accident investigator in the aviation insurance business, but uncovering the truths behind the Amelia Earhart tragedy was far beyond the capabilities of any one person. Determining the cause and consequences of the events of July 2, 1937, was a group accomplishment by dozens of professionals from a dizzying array of scientific disciplines and volunteer researchers who dedicated untold thousands of hours, and sometimes literally risked their lives, to find and assemble the pieces of an impossibly complex jigsaw puzzle. I am immensely proud of their achievement. Each piece of the puzzle was, itself, a mystery to be solved, usually by old-fashioned detective work and forensics, but sometimes through pure dumb luck. The puzzle is not, and never will be, finished, but the picture is more than sufficiently complete to know what happened. I received no compensation for writing this book beyond my regular remuneration as the executive director of TIGHAR. The organization holds the copyright and will receive any royalties, but the words in this narrative are mine and mine alone, as are any errors.

Plane Crazy 1927–31

n reflecting upon the life and death of her friend and fellow pilot Amelia Earhart, Florence “Pancho” Barnes wrote: “There were at that time, dozens of more competent women pilots than Amelia but because of her disappearance and all of the publicity that surrounded her last flight, she achieved her great aim, to be the most famous woman pilot. She will undoubtedly continue to hold this position—and I hope she does.”1 Barnes’ prediction, and selfless wish, came true to a degree she could never have imagined. Lost in the glare of Earhart’s posthumous elevation to aviation sainthood are the other women pilots of aviation’s golden age who, as much as Earhart, defied the era’s systemic misogyny to prove a woman’s place was in the cockpit. Forgotten is how Earhart substituted courage for competence to achieve fame, and missing is an appreciation of the unique socioeconomic environment that made it possible. In the 1920s American women were throwing off the corsets and conventions of Victorian expectations. The Great War had taken many of them out of the kitchen and into the workplace, where they found a new sense of worth and purpose they were loath to relinquish when the boys came back from over there. In 1920 the Nineteenth Amendment gave them the right to vote, but women were still prohibited from serving on juries, driving taxicabs, and working night shifts.2 In 1919 Prohibition gave everyone a law to break and, beginning in 1921, Margaret Sanger’s American Birth Control League made information about contraceptive techniques widely available. Speakeasies catered to “flappers” in daring fashions who smoked cigarettes, loved jazz, and popularized sexually scandalous dances like the Charleston and the Shimmy. While the 1920s roared, women demanded admission to career opportunities in traditionally male-only pursuits and professions but with little success—until a seminal event in 1927 sparked a paradigm shift in American popular culture. America invented the flying machine in 1903 and then dropped the ball. Frustrated by government indifference and bureaucratic stonewalling by the U.S. Patent Office, in 1909 the Wright 3 Uncorrected page proof. Copyright © U.S. Naval Institute. Not for distribution.

The Real Amelia Earhart

brothers turned to France, where Wilbur Wright’s flying demonstrations became a national phenomenon and inspired an explosion in aeronautical innovation. Historians have acknowledged the Gallic dominance of aviation’s infancy: “[D]uring the years before 1914 the French identified themselves and were identified by others as the ‘winged nation’ par excellence. It was a Frenchman, Louis Bleriot, who was the first to fly the English Channel; and it was the French who organized the first successful aviation competition, staged the first exhibition of aircraft, operated the first flight training schools, and led the world before 1914 in the manufacture of airplanes.”3 At home, aviation development stagnated. When the country entered World War I in 1917, American pilots flew French and British aircraft. After the war, “barnstormers” flew obsolete surplus trainers from town to town selling rides. Air circuses featured death-defying stunts and intentional crashes. Airlines flew mostly empty airplanes, surviving entirely on government airmail contracts. On May 20, 1927, a young, publicity-shy airmail pilot named Charles Lindbergh coaxed his overloaded single-engine monoplane off a muddy runway on Long Island in the latest attempt to win the $25,000 Orteig prize for the first nonstop flight connecting New York to Paris. So far, four Americans had died in attempts to get large, tri-motored machines off the ground with sufficient fuel to make the flight. Twelve days earlier, French wartime aces Charles Nungesser and Francois Coli had taken off from Paris with enough gas to reach New York. If the famous fliers succeeded, as everyone (including Lindbergh) fully expected, it would further cement France’s place as the world leader in aviation, but their giant white biplane did not arrive. As Lindbergh later wrote, “Step by step, newspaper headlines have followed Nungesser and Coli . . . only to have them vanish like midnight ghosts.”4 A fruitless international search dominated the headlines until Lindbergh, dubbed the Flying Fool by a skeptical press, was on his way. Millions on both sides of the Atlantic held their breath. Thirty-three-and-a-half hours later, the Spirit of St. Louis landed in Paris, and the world changed. For Americans, Lindbergh’s accomplishment was affirmation of their own exceptionalism. His achievement was a national achievement. As proclaimed in a song that hit the airwaves two days later, he was “Lucky, Plucky, Lindbergh, the Eagle of the U.S.A.,”5 and the nation was suddenly plane-crazy. In quintessentially American style, Lindbergh’s fame inspired a flood of glory-hunting would-be trans-Atlantic fliers. Some sought to (and did) beat his distance record, while others tried to be the first to cross east to west against the prevailing winds. Another obvious prize was the distinction of being the first female to make the crossing. The woman wouldn’t need to be the pilot. Just being aboard was seen to be an incredible act of bravery; and so it was. By June 1928 five women had tried; one was rescued at sea, one crashed on takeoff, and three had disappeared. The sixth aspirant was Amy Guest, a fifty-five-year-old heiress who bought a tri-motored Fokker F-VII on floats and hired two experienced male aviators to fly her across the Atlantic. When her family vetoed her participation in the flight, Guest sought a replacement who met specific qualifications. Although she was expected to do no flying, for appearance’s sake, she should be a licensed pilot. She must be good looking, of the right type to meet with approval among polite society, and have a good education. The unstated but most important trait was the courage to undertake such a hazardous venture.

Plane Crazy

Publisher George Palmer Putnam found a thirty-year-old social worker who filled the bill. Her name was Amelia Earhart, and she had been an off-and-on recreational pilot since 1921. For Putnam, that she was attractive but not glamorous was a plus, and she bore an astonishing resemblance to Charles Lindbergh. She had never completed a course in higher education, but she was well-read, articulate, and scandal-free. When asked by Guest’s attorney, “Why do you want to fly the Atlantic?” she answered with a question: “Why does a man ride a horse?” Nonplussed, the lawyer said, “Because he wants to, I guess.” Her response: “Well, then.” Asked if she wanted to be paid, she said, “No, thank you.”6 Putnam was put in charge of organizing the flight, and his shrewdness was quickly evident. To accomplish its purpose, the Fokker need not duplicate Lindbergh’s New York to Paris feat; it need only carry a female across the Atlantic Ocean. A landing anywhere in the British Isles would do the job, so the departure would be from Newfoundland, the most easterly point in North America. From there to Ireland was two thousand miles, just over half the distance flown by Lindbergh. Putnam negotiated a $10,000 agreement with the New York Times for the exclusive rights to Earhart’s story, and he staged photo sessions in New York carefully posed to maximize her resemblance to Lindbergh, prompting the press to dub her Lady Lindy. Another deal gave Paramount News exclusive rights to newsreel coverage.7 The Fokker’s departure from Trepassey Bay, Newfoundland, was delayed for weeks by mechanical trouble and contrary winds. When the two male flyers became discouraged and turned to drink, it was Earhart who held the project together. On June 17, 1928, pilot Wilmer Stultz finally succeeded in coaxing the overloaded tri-motor into the air. Twenty hours and forty minutes later, he, mechanic Louis Gordon, and passenger Amelia Earhart touched down in Burry Port, Wales. Public reaction to the flight was phenomenal, with ticker-tape parades in New York and Chicago, but the lion’s share of the attention was on Earhart. Both she and Putnam, each for their own reasons, saw promise in a continued relationship. For Earhart, her newfound fame and Putnam’s promotional support might make aviation a profession instead of a social worker’s hobby. For his part, Putnam saw a property with tremendous potential for further development. America’s sudden obsession with all things aeronautical meant opportunities for women, not just as baggage, but as pilots. A few airplane manufacturers, eager to show that flying was safe and easy, hired women as sales demonstration pilots. After all, if a girl could learn to fly, anyone could. Louise Thaden sold Photo 1. Amelia Earhart, 1928. airplanes for Travel Air in Wichita, Kansas; Elinor Smith flew for Earhart poses for pref light publicity photos. TIGHAR Collection Uncorrected page proof. Copyright © U.S. Naval Institute. Not for distribution.

The Real Amelia Earhart

Bellanca Aircraft in New Castle, Delaware; and Ruth Nichols was a “flying salesgirl” for Fairchild Aircraft in Baltimore, Maryland.8 In search of publicity, companies loaned airplanes to women for attempts to win races or set altitude, endurance, and speed records, but the machines were rarely top-of-the-line, high-performance types, and the records were “women’s records,” not to be confused with real records set by men like Jimmy Doolittle and Col. Roscoe Turner. Nonetheless, Ruth Elder, Blanche Noyes, Ruth Nichols, and others made headlines in a country hungry for aviation heroes. They were young, many were beautiful, and all were skilled aviators and extraordinarily brave. They knew they were being exploited, but they accepted it as the price they had to pay to fly, and nothing mattered more than flying. With the Atlantic flight, Amelia Earhart joined the ranks of famous women aviators without having to prove her piloting ability; all she had to prove was her courage. But even with Putnam’s talent for monetizing her accomplishment, if Earhart was going to make a living as a flyer, she would have to do some newsworthy flying. While in London in May 1928, she bought the 85-horsepower (hp) Avro Avian biplane in which Mary, Lady Heath, had recently completed a twelve-thousandmile solo round-trip flight from England to South Africa. But within weeks of the little airplane’s arrival in the United States, Earhart had ripped off the landing gear, shattered the propeller, and cracked one wing in a landing accident. This was not the newsworthy kind of flying she needed. Putnam quickly covered for her in a statement to reporters: “Miss Earhart made a perfect landing and was taxiing to a stop when the plane hit an unmarked ditch. The plane made what is called a ground loop and nearly turned over. Miss Earhart feels it is unfortunate that the accident should have happened, particularly as it occurred through no fault of hers.”9 The best opportunity for Earhart to establish her credentials as a pilot was at the following year’s National Air Races in Cleveland, Ohio, featuring ten days of military aviation demonstrations, stunt flying, wing-walking, and parachute jumping. The closed course and cross-country races would draw thousands of paying spectators, and the world’s premier aviators (male, of course) would vie for top honors and purses in the hottest ships commercial manufacturers and private designers could devise. To an even greater degree than motor racing, air racing offered the public cutting-edge technology, record-setting speed, and, all too often, accidents and death. Female participation was traditionally limited to parachute jumps, but for the 1929 National Air Races in August, there would be a women’s air derby. Derisively labeled the “Powder Puff Derby” by humorist Will Rogers, the race was to be a grueling nine-day, 2,800-mile transcontinental marathon from Santa Monica, California, to Cleveland. Earhart would be up against some of the best women pilots, but they were perpetually cash-strapped and would be flying whatever craft they could beg, borrow, or steal. Thanks to Putnam’s adroit, if ruthless, management, Earhart was in a better financial position to pick a mount. In March 1929 she went to the Bellanca Aircraft factory intending to buy one of the company’s new CH Skyrocket monoplanes. Elinor Smith later described what happened: George Haldeman [Bellanca’s chief engineer] invited her to go up for a trial spin, and the three of us took off. She sat up front with him, and I stayed down in the last of the cabin’s six seats. We had climbed to about 1,000 feet when George leveled off and motioned Amelia

Plane Crazy

Photo 2. Amelia Earhart, Ruth Nichols, and Louise Thaden in 1929. George Putnam taught Earhart to always stand on the left in group photos so her name would appear ﬁrst in the caption. TIGHAR Collection

to take over the controls. Our big calm bird suddenly lurched out of control and wobbled all over the sky. Amelia was embarrassed and motioned George to take over. He landed, and we disembarked in silence. She pulled me aside and asked if we could go up again by ourselves. . . . We were quickly airborne. I flew about 15 miles north of the field. When I climbed to 2,000 feet I guided Amelia through some gentle, banking turns, carefully explaining the ship’s normal flight positions. . . . Again we slipped and skidded all over the sky. I was baffled, for once the ship’s flying position was established, the rest of it should have been exactly like flying a small biplane. I pointed to the fuel gauge, and Amelia understood we would have to go back. I set down at the far end of the field to give her time to compose herself and me time to think of something to say. I have yet to live through a more awkward moment. Either Lady Lindy had never flown at all, or she had flown only briefly.10 Giuseppe Bellanca was protective of his firm’s reputation and was notoriously discriminating about who was allowed to buy his designs. After hearing Smith’s account of the trial flights, he decided not to sell the airplane to Earhart. Undaunted, Earhart doubled down on her desire for a high-performance ship and, in July 1929, bought a Lockheed Vega. The Vega 1, introduced by the newly incorporated Lockheed Aircraft Company in 1927, was a snub-nosed bullet. In a world of angular frame-and-fabric biplanes with

The Real Amelia Earhart

strut- and wire-braced wings, the Vega was a high-wing cantilevered (strutless) monoplane with a smooth, cylindrical molded plywood fuselage and a 220 hp Wright Whirlwind engine.11 With a maximum speed of 135 miles per hour (mph), it was faster than most of its contemporaries, but swiftness came at a price. The Vega’s high center of gravity and narrow landing gear made it a bear to land. As Earhart later told it, she bought a “third-hand clunk” Vega and flew it from New York to the Lockheed factory in California for “a few adjustments.” Upon evaluating the airplane, Lockheed was appalled at its handling characteristics. “The fact that [Earhart] should have been able to herd such a hopeless piece of mechanism across the continent successfully” so impressed Lockheed management that they swapped it for a brand-new Vega at no charge. The “clunk” never flew again.12 What Earhart neglected to mention was that Army Air Corps Lt. Orville Stevens had been flying the airplane for her since its purchase, and he accompanied her on the cross-country trip. The Vega cockpit had only one seat, so unless Lieutenant Stevens was just hitch-hiking a ride to California in a “third-hand clunk” with a pilot who had never before flown a hot ship, it was the Army pilot who herded the “hopeless mechanism” across the continent.13 Flying with a man in the Women’s Air Derby was out of the question, so Putnam approached Elinor Smith with a proposition. He would pay her seventy-five dollars a week to pilot Amelia’s plane in the race and, afterward, in a nationwide speaking tour. Smith turned down Putnam’s offer, so Earhart would be flying the Vega herself. Meanwhile, the race organizers were having second thoughts about the Women’s Air Derby. In June the officials decided it was “too much of a task on the ladies.” The course would be dramatically shortened, and each woman would be required to fly with a man. Louise Thaden was livid and met with Earhart to discuss what could be done. Earhart proposed a boycott, Thaden agreed, and the other entrants signed on. In a public announcement, Earhart said, “None of us will enter, unless it’s going to be a real sporting contest. How is a fellow going to earn his spurs without at least trying to ride?”14 Press coverage of the revolt was disastrous for the race organizers, and they scrapped the proposed changes. Under Earhart and Thaden’s leadership, the women pilots had banded together in opposition to sexist inequality and won. A sisterhood had been forged that would, later that year, flower into a quasi-union for women pilots. All licensed female fliers were invited to join. Eighty-five percent (ninety-nine women) responded, and the organization was dubbed the Ninety-Nines. With 600,000 paying spectators, the 1929 National Air Races dwarfed the World Series, Kentucky Derby, and Indianapolis 500 combined. On August 27 Louise Thaden, the “World’s Leading Woman Flier,”15 made a perfect landing before a cheering crowd in Cleveland, winning the Women’s Air Derby, but her victory was tempered by the death of Marvel Crosson, who had crashed shortly after leaving Yuma, Arizona, the day before.16 Elinor Smith was standing at the finish line in Cleveland as the racers came in: A shout went up as Earhart’s Lockheed hove into view, but when the elapsed times were announced, she finished a full two hours behind Thaden, a disappointing third. Because she was flying the fastest ship in the race, her lack of expertise in both navigation and flying

Plane Crazy

was pitilessly exposed. Her landing in Cleveland was amateurish as she bounced the big monoplane completely across the vast airport. There were snide remarks from onlookers as she frantically braked the ship out of a ground loop before rolling to a stop. But at that moment I was filled with admiration for her. Had her detractors known what they were looking at, they would have been cheering. It was barely five months since the New Castle incident. . . . There was absolutely no way she could have built enough air time to be at ease behind the controls of the fastest heavy monoplane in the air. The landing speed of the Lockheed was at least a third faster than any other plane in the race, and some of the airports along the way were little more than cow pastures. Her difficulties were compounded by the extreme heat. When she failed to realize that this would thin the air, making it less resistant, thereby decreasing its lift and increasing her landing speed, she nosed over in Yuma, Arizona, and a new propeller had to be flown in to enable her to stay in the race. Despite this delay, she flew on to overtake the others but used up precious time when she lost her way on several laps. From Putnam’s standpoint this competition was a disaster. But from hers, it was a challenge that she met head-on. . . . This was gut courage that transcended the sanity of reason. 17 Earhart needed to find another way to bolster her flying credentials. Navigation errors had cost her the Women’s Air Derby despite having the fastest aircraft, so solo cross-country races were out. If she could get access to faster aircraft than other women, setting women’s speed records would be a sure bet. In November Earhart set a women’s speed record in a borrowed Vega 2 with a 300 hp engine, and the following year she set three more records in a 450 hp Vega DL-1. Earhart’s professional collaboration with George Putnam was working well, but Putnam wanted more and peppered a reluctant Earhart with marriage proposals. In February 1931 Earhart relented, with a written caveat that “I shall not hold you to any midaevil [sic] code of faithfullness to me nor shall I consider myself bound to you similarly.”18 The extent to which she availed herself of the sexual freedom she insisted upon has never been reliably established. In April 1931 Earhart set an unofficial altitude record in a Pitcairn autogyro (a rotary-wing, short-takeoff-and-landing predecessor of the helicopter) and that summer made a round-trip coastto-coast flight sponsored by Beechnut, destroying two autogyros in the process. If she was going to maintain and grow her fame, she needed something more; the something more she had in mind was to reprise her 1928 Atlantic crossing, but this time as pilot, and she would do it alone. Being not just the first woman, but the first person, to solo the ocean since Lindbergh would be sure to put her on top as the nation’s most famous female flyer. She had upgraded from the Vega 1 to a Vega 5 with more than twice the horsepower, higher speed, and greater payload. Modified with long-range fuel tanks, it would be the perfect airplane to carry the first woman to fly solo from Newfoundland to Paris. Ruth Nichols thought so too. She had set women’s speed and altitude records with her Vega 5, and on June 22, 1931, while Earhart dreamed, Nichols took off from Brooklyn, headed north, in a much-heralded attempt to become the first woman to solo the Atlantic.

Fame and More Fame 1932–35

efore setting off, Ruth Nichols had assured her investors, “There is no possibility of failure except the usual law of Fate, which we meet every day of our lives.”1 It took fate a little over three hours. The runway at her first stop, Saint John, New Brunswick, was short and surrounded by trees. Nichols landed long and tried to go around but hit a rocky embankment, wrecking the Vega and breaking two vertebrae in her back. A year later, Earhart was ready to make her bid. Putnam had savvily timed her departure for the fifth anniversary of Lindbergh’s flight, May 20, 1932. Earhart would follow the same route Nichols had planned to take, but she would not try to deal with the treacherous airfield that defeated her friend. Veteran Atlantic flyer Bernt Balchen would fly the Vega from New York to New Brunswick and on to Newfoundland, while Earhart rode in the cabin behind a fuel tank with her mechanic, Eddie Gorski. After a short stop in Saint John, they arrived in Harbour Grace at 2:15 p.m., where Earhart “found a friendly bed and restful nap” while Balchen and Gorski serviced the ship. At 7:12 p.m. she took off and set out across the Atlantic for the second time.2 During the night, ice nearly brought Earhart down, the engine’s exhaust manifold cracked, and she landed far off course in County Derry, Ireland, six hundred miles short of her intended destination of Paris, but no matter. She had soloed the Atlantic, and the triumph had the desired effect. With another Manhattan ticker-tape parade, a gold medal from the National Geographic Society, and a Congressional Distinguished Flying Cross (the first and only such medal awarded to a civilian), she was the world’s most famous woman pilot. A congratulatory telegram from Eleanor Roosevelt, the wife of the governor of New York, took on special significance when the presidential election on November 8 made Mrs. Roosevelt first lady of the United States. Less than two weeks later, Earhart and Putnam were invited to dinner at the Roosevelts’ home at Hyde Park, New York. Earhart and Mrs. Roosevelt struck up a friendship, adding a White House connection to Earhart’s fame and influence.

Fame and More Fame

Other aviators set records and made headlines, but it was Earhart who was constantly in the news, speaking out for aviation and women’s rights in magazine articles, books, and hundreds of paid speaking engagements that also raised money for her next adventure. Branding also maintained name recognition and generated income through a line of lightweight “Amelia Earhart Luggage,” women’s fashions “designed by Amelia Earhart,” and innumerable product endorsements from chewing gum to candy, automobiles, and airplane engines. In late 1934, having twice conquered the Atlantic, Earhart set her sights on the Pacific, but with a carefully selected record in mind. Flying from California to the territory of Hawaii meant finding the islands after a 2,400-mile trek over trackless ocean. Many had tried, some had succeeded, and others had died—most recently Australian aviator Charles Ulm. On December 3, 1934, Ulm and his two-man crew missed Hawaii, ditched at sea, and were never found despite a month-long search by U.S. Coast Guard ships. For one cutter, USCGC Itasca, it would not be the last failed search for a missing airplane. Finding a continent is easier than finding islands, but most pilots could not afford to ship their aircraft to Hawaii, so no one, male or female, had made the trip in the opposite direction. When Earhart announced she would fly her Vega from Honolulu to Oakland, the proposed flight came under criticism from the Honolulu Star-Bulletin for being a pointless publicity stunt. The British weekly The Aeroplane called it a “useless adventure.”3 If Earhart should suffer a similar fate as Ulm, the taxpayers would pay the price for her folly—an unwittingly prescient prediction. Folly or no, the prospect of another first-ever solo transoceanic record was irresistible. To help prepare for the Honolulu to Oakland flight, she hired Hollywood stunt pilot Paul Mantz to be her technical advisor. His company, United Air Services, Ltd., was based at the Union Air Terminal in Burbank, California, about a mile from the Lockheed factory. For convenience, Earhart rented a house in nearby North Hollywood. She loved California—the warm climate, good flying weather, vibrant aviation community—and she enjoyed rubbing elbows with the constellation of Hollywood stars in Mantz’s circle of friends. Having no experience in long-distance flying, Paul Mantz might seem an odd choice, but in some important respects he was perfect. As an aerial stuntman, his expertise in piloting technique was unparalleled and, as a creature of the motion picture industry, he understood show business— and show business was the essence of Earhart’s quest for fame. Mantz, like Earhart’s friends and competitors, knew her public persona was carefully crafted. As Elinor Smith put it in her 1981 autobiography Aviatrix, “The image of a shy and retiring individual thrust against her will into the public eye was a figment of Putnam’s lively imagination. Amelia was about as shy as Muhammad Ali.”4 Earhart, Putnam, and Mantz took the Vega to Oahu aboard the Matson liner Lurline, but preflight press coverage turned sour. Word had leaked that Earhart would be paid $10,000 by the Hawaiian Sugar Planters’ Association to make the flight as a way of promoting closer ties between Washington and the territory of Hawaii. Earhart was accused of being a shill for lobbyists seeking more favorable tariffs.5 Spooked by the negative press, the businessmen threatened to back out of the deal until Earhart confronted them during a meeting at the Royal Hawaiian Hotel four days before her planned departure: “Gentlemen, there is an aroma of cowardice in this air. You know as well as I do that the rumor

The Real Amelia Earhart

is trash, but if you can be intimidated, it might as well be true. Whether you live in fear or defend your integrity is your decision. I have made mine. I intend to fly to California within this next week, with or without your support.”6 The threat was withdrawn, and Earhart made the flight, landing in Oakland before an adoring crowd, a forest of newsreel cameras, and one exasperated Cassandra. When the tumult subsided, Louise Thaden took Earhart aside: “Maybe I’m getting old, but darn your hide, I could spank your pants! Would you mind telling me sometime in strict confidence why the heck you DO things like that? Dimmit, you’re worth more alive than dead, and what profit fame when you are not here to reap the benefits, presupposing there are benefits. I wish you would rest on your laurel. When it comes down to brass tacks, I don’t know you at all. I doubt anyone does.”7 That spring, the government of Mexico, seeking to bolster tourism, invited Earhart to make a flying visit to Mexico City, the cost to be covered by a deal to give her two hundred special commemorative postage stamps she could sell. From there she would set another record by flying nonstop to Newark, New Jersey. On May 8, 1935, during the seven-hundred-mile flight across the Gulf of Mexico, Earhart reflected on her past ocean crossings and had something of an epiphany: All three voyages were flown chiefly at night, with heavy clouds during most of the daylight hours. So in the combined six thousand miles or more of previous over-ocean flying it happened I had seen next to nothing of ocean. Given daylight and good visibility, the Gulf of Mexico looked large. And wet. One’s imagination toyed with the thought of what would happen if the single engine of the Lockheed Vega should conk. So, on that sunny morning out of sight of land, I promised my lovely red Vega I’d fly her across no more water. And I promised myself that any further over-ocean flying would be attempted in a plane with more than one motor, capable of keeping aloft with a single engine. Just in case. Where to find the tree on which costly airplanes grow, I did not know. But I did know the kind I wanted—an Electra Lockheed.8 Earhart’s enthusiasm is not hard to understand. To a degree matched by few other aircraft of aviation’s golden age, the Lockheed Model 10 Electra had what can only be called charisma. The perfectly proportioned nose pointed skyward with an air of self-assurance and even arrogance. To either side, the hulking engines spoke of muscularity and the ability to pull the gracefully tapering silver fuselage through the sky with ease and speed. Although the Model 10 served with many airlines in the United States and overseas, the design will always be emblematic of Earhart’s ill-fated world flight, but traditional accounts of how she acquired her Electra are largely myth. According to legend, the money came from Purdue University, and that is true, but it didn’t happen the way Earhart and her husband George Palmer Putnam described the process—not even close. As Earhart told it in Last Flight, published posthumously in

Fame and More Fame

Photo 3. The Lockheed Model 10 Electra prototype. First ﬂight

was on February 23, 1934. James Borden Photography Collection

1937: “One day last summer President Edward C. Elliott of Purdue asked my husband what most interested me beyond academic matters. . . . [H]e divulged my suppressed pilot’s yearnings for a bigger and better airplane.”9 George Putnam repeated the fable in his 1939 book Soaring Wings: “In the summer of 1936 President Elliott of Purdue asked me what I thought there was in the field of research and education that interested [Amelia Earhart] most beyond academic matters. I told him she was hankering for a bigger and better plane.”10 By the summer of 1936 Earhart’s Electra had already been built and delivered. The suggestion that Purdue University satisfy his wife’s hankering for a bigger and better plane dates from November 1935. Earhart’s association with Purdue grew out of a September 1934 conference in the Grand Ballroom of the Waldorf Astoria in Manhattan. Three thousand attendees heard First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, New York Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia, Purdue University president Edward C. Elliott, Amelia Earhart, and other influential public figures speak about the changing world and nation. Elliott felt that the country’s economic recovery from the Great Depression relied upon harnessing the energy of young people, especially women. The head of the Girl Scouts of America spoke of the need to prepare young women to be competent household managers and good wives. Amelia Earhart had a message more in tune with Elliott’s: Women were being unfairly denied professional positions in aviation. The education of young women in technical fields was essential to the future of the industry. Elliott was impressed with Earhart and began trying to figure out a way to use her to boost the university’s appeal to women. By the following spring he was ready to make her a formal proposal. On May 18, 1935, he asked that she accept a position as “Department Head, or nonresident professor, or lecturer on careers for women” in a new department that would provide professional advice

The Real Amelia Earhart

to female students. She would be paid $2,000 per year but would need to spend only two weeks out of each semester at the university giving addresses, classes, or conferences. She would also be chief consultant for the university’s work in aeronautical engineering.11 Earhart eagerly accepted the offer. Working with young women to bring them out of the kitchen and into the cockpit would put her hard-won fame to use in the most productive way possible. Besides, being chief consultant in aeronautical engineering was irresistibly flattering to the woman who had never completed a course in higher education beyond high school and who had said her flights had meant nothing toward scientific advancement in aviation.12 Elliott’s gambit worked. The announcement on June 3, 1935, that Amelia Earhart Putnam would join the Purdue University faculty as a woman’s career advisor13 prompted a fifty-percent increase in the enrollment of freshman women before Earhart ever set foot on campus. For Earhart, the timing of this new career opportunity was perfect. By the summer of 1935 she had accepted that her long-distance flying career was probably over. Entrepreneurial aviation recordsetting in single-engine wooden airplanes, so popular throughout the late 1920s and early 1930s, was a dying profession. The boundaries of flight were now being pushed back by a new generation of all-metal commercial designs whose cost was far beyond the reach of even a well-sponsored individual. The 1934 MacRobertson Race from England to Australia had been won by a small, purpose-built de Havilland Comet, but second and third place went to a Douglas DC-2 and a Boeing 247, large, off-the-shelf, multi-engine commercial airliners. In April 1935 Pan American’s Pacific Division, under the guidance of senior navigator Fred Noonan, began surveying airmail and passenger routes across the northern Pacific with four-engine Sikorsky flying boats. Aviation was emerging from its reckless adolescence and starting to find its way as a viable transportation industry. Not only were new airplanes becoming too expensive, but some in the press also had begun to see “individually sponsored trans-oceanic flying” as the “the worst racket” in aviation.14 As Newsweek put it, “Every so often Miss Earhart, like other prominent flyers, pulls a spectacular stunt to hit the front pages. This enhances a flyer’s value as a cigarette endorser, helps finance new planes, sometimes publicizes a book.”15 Only once, at the beginning of her career, did Earhart endorse a brand of cigarettes, but it was true that her primary sources of income were product endorsements, book sales, and the lecture circuit. It was a business model managed and honed to perfection by Putnam. After the Mexico City to Newark flight in May 1935, with no further records to set in the obsolete Vega, Earhart was ready to move on. In June she accepted the part-time consulting job at Purdue and, in July, ordered the long-range fuel tanks removed from her Vega and had the cabin converted to passenger configuration for use in a charter and flight school business she was planning to start in partnership with Mantz. The future that lay before her, while less exciting than spanning oceans, promised a rewarding, more stable, and certainly much safer lifestyle. As if to put an exclamation point on the latter consideration, on August 15, 1935, Earhart’s friend Wiley Post and humorist Will Rogers were killed when their Lockheed Orion crashed shortly after takeoff near Point Barrow, Alaska. It is tempting to imagine what Amelia Earhart’s legacy might have been had the trajectory of her life continued on this new and tamer course. She actively campaigned for Franklin D. Roosevelt and down-ballot Democrats in the 1936 election, but her ideology went far beyond democratic

Fame and More Fame

Photo 4. Amelia

Earhart and George Putnam, 1935. Partners in business and marriage.

Courtesy of Remember Amelia, the Larry C. Inman Historical Collection on Amelia Earhart

socialism. In a May 22, 1936, letter to her mother, she wrote: “Please don’t down the Roosevelt administration. It’s all right to be reactionary inside but it is out of step with the times to sound off about the chosen people who have inherited or grabbed the earth. You must think of me when you converse and I believe the experiments carried on today point the way to a new social order when governments will be the voice of the proletariat far more than democracy can ever be.”16 Charles Lindbergh’s opposition to U.S. support for Britain in the three years before Pearl Harbor and American entry into World War II toppled him from his pedestal of fame. Had she not joined the ranks of American icons who died young, the Cold War might have brought down a fifty-yearold Earhart. George Putnam recognized Edward Elliott’s enthusiasm for his wife’s association with the university as an opening that, if properly exploited, could put Earhart back in the lucrative long-distance flying game. The die was cast at a meeting in Washington, DC, on November 11, 1935, at which Putnam presented Elliott with a proposal he called the Amelia Earhart Project. Earhart was not

The Real Amelia Earhart

present, having arrived in Lafayette, Indiana, five days earlier to start her work at Purdue. Throughout the fall of 1935 she had been occupied with a brutal schedule of 136 speaking engagements to audiences totaling 80,000 people—driving, not flying, from town to town across the Midwest. For $250 she gave what Putnam called “a straight, flying-is-safe and pleasant sermon” to women’s clubs and civic groups.17 In her surviving letters and telegrams from that time, there is nothing relating to the proposal her husband presented to Elliott on November 11. In a typed memorandum describing the project, Putnam came right to the point: “The widespread attention given Amelia Earhart’s association with Purdue has identified her with the University. A further focusing of interest on this alliance can be of increasing importance from the standpoint of external institutional propaganda and internal inspiration.”18 In fairness, the term “propaganda” did not carry the pejorative connotation it has acquired since then. According to Putnam, Earhart wanted to continue her “pioneering flying,” set new records, and conduct “certain flights as laboratory tests involving various scientific aspects of modern aviation.” However, her current airplane “is no longer sufficiently speedy or modern to hold its place in competition.” And, for further overwater flying, she wanted “a two-motor plane.”19 Without mentioning the make or model, Putnam said there was an airplane available that fit the bill: “It embraces refinements and improvements whose practical demonstration can be important factors in commercial aeronautical progress.” It was a multi-engine aircraft capable of sustained flight on one motor. It had a maximum cruising speed of over 225 mph and a cruising range, with full load, of more than six thousand miles. Equipped with “special tanks, instruments, and other devices,” this marvelous machine was not an experimental ship but rather a “development of proved design.” It could be had as a stock model or a “custom-built job” for a base price of $30,000: “The maximum total cost, including special equipment, preparation, flight outlays, etc., would be $40,000. That figure would be the guaranteed top.”20 After becoming “intimately familiar with the ship under all conditions,” Earhart would establish some new transcontinental records, make a flight to Panama or Cuba, and undertake “detailed experimental work at various altitudes, including oxygen flight.”21 These preliminary flights would be followed by “the ultimate big flight, to be attempted only if and when everything proves out satisfactorily, to be around-the-world [emphasis in the original], starting at the Purdue airport and ending at Purdue. The plane could carry the name ‘Purdue.’<\q>”22 If the university would put up the money, Putnam was willing to share the net financial returns from the world flight. Finally, “at the end of its career of usefulness the plane itself could be installed as a permanent exhibit at Purdue. Meanwhile it would be useable by Miss Earhart—to be maintained and operated at her expense.”23 The airplane he described did not exist. It is clear from later correspondence that the airplane Putnam had in mind was to be either a modified or custom-built Lockheed Electra, but the capabilities Putnam claimed were pure fantasy. In November 1935 the Model 10 Electra had been in production for a year and a half. Lockheed had delivered thirty-six Model 10As powered by Pratt & Whitney 450 hp Wasp Jr. engines, and five Model 10Bs with Wright 450 hp Whirlwinds.24 Neither version was capable of anything near the performance described by Putnam. Even the more powerful Model 10E with Pratt & Whitney 550 hp Wasp engines (planned but not yet in production) would fail to meet Putnam’s claims.

Fame and More Fame

President Elliott’s reaction to Putnam’s proposal was enthusiastic. Upon his return to Purdue on November 14, he wrote: “Since our thrilling conversation Monday, I have accumulated some ideas which I hope to be able to discuss with you when I am in New York during the week of the twenty-fifth. I have just come from a conference here in connection with the aeronautical meeting in progress on the campus today and tomorrow. A.E. is performing in noble fashion. She has the entire campus on its toes.”25 While performing in noble fashion, Earhart was not involved in the discussions that would so profoundly affect her life. The legend that has grown up around Earhart would have it otherwise. An oft-repeated story is that “in the autumn of 1935, at a dinner party at Elliott’s home, Amelia outlined her dreams for women and aviation and spoke of her desire to conduct studies on how long-distance flying affected pilots. Before the evening was over, guest David Ross offered to donate $50,000 as a gift toward the cost of providing a machine suitable for the flying laboratory.”26 Versions of the story in several Earhart biographies vary as to exactly who was present and how much was pledged, but none of the accounts give a specific date for the dinner. The event is not mentioned in Earhart, Putnam, or Elliott correspondence nor in any other contemporary source. The only time Earhart was at Purdue in the autumn of 1935 was from November 6 to November 26. On December 7, 1935, by which time Earhart was gone from Purdue, Elliott wrote to Putnam saying only that he had “been able to do some preliminary work with reference to the proposal presented in your memorandum.”27 The apocryphal dinner party story is charming, but it is not how Purdue University came to fund the purchase of the aircraft in which Amelia Earhart met her fate. On December 9 Putnam thanked Elliott for his “pleasant note of the 7th” and mentioned that he had taken some initial steps toward soliciting the involvement and support of the National Geographic Society: “This would lend a further dignity and international importance to the whole project. Also, of course, it would be a great financial aid. As I hear further from them I will report to you.”28 Elliott did not share Putnam’s enthusiasm for courting National Geographic’s participation and made no response to the suggestion. Exactly when Putnam told his wife he may have found the tree upon which costly airplanes grow is not clear, but Earhart was delighted. Contrary to legend, it was not the prospect of a trip around the world that excited her so much as the opportunity to make genuine contributions toward aeronautical progress through “certain flights as laboratory tests” in a state-of-the-art aircraft. Elliott visited Putnam and Amelia in New York over the Christmas holidays to discuss “important and encouraging new developments in the new project.”29 Possible donors had made no firm commitments, but they were reacting favorably to Elliott’s advocacy for the Amelia Earhart Project. Earhart seems to have been as unaware as Elliott that Putnam’s promise of scientific tests was a ruse to acquire an airplane for a lucrative record-setting world flight in the same pattern as her previous ocean flights.

Index DUMMY TEXT A2F-1, 81–82; conversion to EW platform, 84; DECM equipped, 68 A3D-1, 46, 48, 63, 64, 71 A3D-1Q, first squadron 47–48 A3D-2, DECM equipped, 68; tanker/ jammer conversion, 99 A3D-2D, countermeasures for, 66; enters service, 67 A3D-2Q, 48, 51; characteristics, 163–64; ECM suite, 78; enters service,78 A3-F, 71 A3J-1, 71, 84; DECM equipped, 68 A3J-2, 84 A-4, 90; and ALQ-51, 91, 93 A-4E, 92 A-6A, 90, 101 AAR-37, 129 Abercrombie, Neil, 145 active electronic scanned array (AESA), 145 AD-1, 39, 40–41, 81 AD-1Q, 40–41 AD-2Q, 40–43; characteristics, 162–63 AD-3, 41 AD-3Q, 41 AD-3W, 40 AD-4, 41 AD-4N, 40, 44, 74; VMC-3 AD-4NL, 44 AD-4Q, 40–41; characteristics, 162–63 AD-4W, 43; VMC-3,72 AD-5, 41 AD-5N, 41; ECM improvements, 74 AD-5Q, 41, 78; characteristics, 162–63 Addabbo, Joseph P., 128 Advanced Multi-mission Sensor System (AMSS), 136–37 ADVCAP, 112–13; EA-6B upgrades, 107 AEA. See airborne electronic attack Aerial Common Sensor Program, 124 AESA. See active electronic scanned array AGM-114 Hellfire, 110 AGM-45 Shrike, 83, 96–97, 154 AGM-88 HARM, 107, 108–9; ASQ-213 targeting system, 154; Desert Storm, 110–11; Operation Allied AH-64, 110 AIM-7, 96

AIM-9, 70; fitted to P-3, 122 Air Force Magazine, 153 Air Force Security Airborne Communica-tions Reconnaissance Program, 55–57 airborne electronic attack (AEA), 142 airborne electronic reconnaissance, 33–34 Airborne Instrument Laboratory, 103 Airborne Reconnaissance Integrated Electronic System (ARIES), 121. See also EP-3E (ARIES) Airborne Signals Intelligence Architecture program, 124 Aircraft Instruments Laboratory, 84 aircraft numbering system, xxi Aircraft Radio Corporation, 27 Alekseyev, Yevgeni Ivanovich, 4 Alverez, Luis, 10 America (CV 66), 106, 108; in Operation El Dorado Canyon 109 America’s Cup races, 2 AMSS. See Advanced Multi-mission Sensor System AN numbers. See Joint Army-Navy Nomenclature System antennas: APA-24, 162; ALA-12, 170 antennas, direction finding: APA-11, 24; on TBM-3Q, 160 antennas, direction finding system: APR-17, 29; APR-24 Applied Technology, 93 ARIES aircraft, 121–34 ARINC enclosure, 21 Ashville (PF-1), 26 ASN-66 inertial navigation computer, 83 ASQ-10 MAD magnetic detecting set, 121 Athearn, Pop, 3 Atlantic Fleet ELINT Center, 79 aviation community preferences, 152 Aviation Today, 145 AYK-14 mission computer, 115 B-2, 119 B-17E, 13, 14, 29 B-29, 73 B-47, 77 B-52, 64; and NGJ competition, 145; and stand-off jammer, 144–45 BAE, and NGJ competition, 145; ASE-239 ECM suite, 156; NGJ protest, 148–49 371

372

Index

Balwin, William, 143 barrage jammer, 82 Battle Group Passive Extension System (BGPHES), 137–40 Battle of Coral Sea, 8 Battle of Jutland, 7–8 Battle of Midway, x, 8 Beesly, Patrick, 7 Beggar Shadow, 55–62 Bellini-Tosi directional, 5 Benner (DD 807), 28 BGM-109B Tomahawk, 128 BGPHES. See Battle Group Passive Exten-sion System Big Look (ALQ-110), 97–98, 125, 129; improvement program, 135 bistatic radar intelligence, 53 Black Bat Squadron, 123 Black Cats, 14 Blake, Gordon A., 56 Bletchley Park, x Block 89 upgrade, 114–15 Boeing and EA-18G, 142 Boeing Company, 13, and EA-18G, 143; switches production for Navy, 16 Boeing 727, 109 Boucher, Joe, 42, 74 boundary layer control, 84 Bowers, Peter M., 121 BQM-34F, 102 Brigand, 53–54, 87, 125 British Technical and Scientific Mission, 10 Broad Area Maritime Surveillance, 124 broadband receivers: ALR-22, 125–26 ALR-44, 125 ALR-60, 126, 129 SER-212, 125 Brown, Howard, 3 budgets and electronic warfare, 152 Bumby Action, 101–2 Bunker Hill (CV 17), 24 Burgess, Rick, 153 Burns, John J., 104 Bush, George W., 111 C-1, 49 C-47, 29 Canter, Charles, 44 Carey, Bill, 145 Carlson, Eliot, 8 Cast Mike Project 1, established 12–18 Central Intelligence Agency, 64; and P3A’s to Republic of China, 121, 122; ELINT Office, 123; secret ELINT-COMINT tactical data system, 122 Century of U.S. Naval Intelligence, 124 Chaff, 90 chaff dispensers: ALE-18, 166; ALE-32, 169, 83, 101; ALE-39, 107ALE-41, 83;

ALE-43, 130; ALE-92E, 168; MX900, 44,163; in TBM-3M, 21, 28 Chinese National Air Force, 71 Christman, Charles, 98 Chu, Lan, J., 22 Churchill, Jack, 13–15 Churchill, Winston, 6–7, 10 Cleveland, John, 74 Clingan, Bruce, 143 CLIOP. See conversion in lieu of pro-curement Cohen, William S., 119 Cold War: and electronic warfare, x; attacks on U.S. Navy patrol planes, 35–36 Collins Radio Corporation, 27 Combat Aircraft, 149 Combined Fleet Decoded, 8 COMINT: defined, xvi; WII effort, 8 Commando Royal, 57 Commission on Roles and Missions of the Armed Force, 113 communication interception receivers: AAR-5, on EC-1A, 163 ALD-8, 129 ALR-67, 138 APR-9, 27–28, 39; in AD-4N, 44 APR-9A, 162 ARR-5, 24; on PB4Y-2, 159 ARR-7, 24; on PB4Y-2, 159; on P4M-1Q, 162; on P4M-1Q, 162 communication jammers: ALQ-38, 66 ALQ-55, 68, 69, 71, 101–2 ALQ-77, 146; ALQ-191, 106 ALQ-92, 99; ALQ-149, 113–15 ALQ-227(V)1, 154 URR-74, 170 USQ-113, 115–16, 118–19 Comptek Federal Systems, 116 conversion in lieu of procurement (CILOP), 127–29 Conway, Richard, 80 Coral Sea (CVA 43), 87; in Operation El Dorado Canyon, 107–9 Corman, Otis W, 88 countermeasures dispenser, ALE-47, 172 Court of Federal Claims, 151 Cuban Missile Crisis, 79–80 Dangwal, Ashish, 154 Danzig, Richard, 118 Davis, Peter, 92 DC-130, 102 Deadeye Southeast, 112 Deep Sea 129, 57–62 DECM: ALQ-35 on EA-3B,164 ALQ-41 on EA-3B, 164 ALQ-51 on EA-3B, 164 ALQ-65, 107

About the Author The son of a decorated World War II pilot, Richard E. Gillespie learned to fly while he was still in high school. After graduating from the State University of New York at Oswego with a BA in history, he flew professionally until going on active duty with the U.S. Army in 1970. Gillespie completed infantry officer candidate school and attended the Army’s advanced radio systems school before being assigned to the First Cavalry Division, where he served as communications officer for an aviation battalion. Following his military service, he embarked on a career as an aviation risk manager and accident investigator for the aviation insurance industry. Servicing his clients throughout the northeastern United States, he logged many thousands of hours in single and twin-engined light aircraft, often with minimal avionics, in all kinds of weather. As Ric says, “It was a pretty good simulation of 1930s flying.” In 1985 he left the insurance business and, with his wife Patricia Thrasher, founded The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery. Known by its acronym TIGHAR (pronounced tiger), the nonprofit foundation has an international membership of several hundred scholars, scientists, and enthusiasts whose volunteer expertise and financial contributions support the organization’s mission to change aviation mysteries to history through applied science. Since launching TIGHAR’s investigation of the Earhart disappearance in 1988, he has led twelve expeditions to the Phoenix Islands and multiple archival research trips to the United Kingdom, New Zealand, and Kiribati. Ric Gillespie’s writings on the Earhart disappearance have appeared in the organization’s journal TIGHAR Tracks and in the U.S. Naval Institute’s Proceedings and Naval History. His book Finding Amelia: The True Story of the Earhart Disappearance was published by the Naval Institute Press in 2006. For TIGHAR’s extensive archive of Earhart source material, information about other TIGHAR investigations, and the benefits of TIGHAR membership, visit the TIGHAR website at tighar.org.

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