The broken wings of Amélia Earhart, aviator with a tragic destiny

• To entertain you on your beach towel or during your hiking break,

  20 Minutes

  , in partnership with RetroNews, the BnF press site, offers you a series of articles on the pioneers of aviation and the automobile.

• A look back at the fabulous but nevertheless tragic destiny of Amélia Earhart, an aviation pioneer whose adventures captivated the press of the time for more than ten years.

• Disappeared in the Pacific in 1937, her destiny still fascinates today.

  Until recently, searches were underway to try to find his plane.

​

May 21, 1932, somewhere in the sky west of the British Isles.

Flames emanate from the engine of his Lockhead Vega, a monoplane aircraft.

Gasoline spills in the cabin of the plane piloted by Amélia Earhart.

It has been flying over the Atlantic for more than ten hours.

Despite the fatigue, the pioneer of aviation remains clear-sighted.

She gets sidetracked and manages to land, safe and sound in a field in Ireland.

The feat is resounding.

Part of Newfoundland (Canada), and if Paris was originally targeted, the 35-year-old American has just completed a solo crossing of the North Atlantic.

“I am proud of my sex”

“She smiles as she recounts her adventures, she even smiles as she speaks of the danger she ran, she smiles as she remembers how close she came to falling into the sea in her burning plane.

She always smiles because in this body with a frail and delicate appearance hides a strong soul”.

reporter

does not lack words to salute the feat accomplished by Amélia Earhart.

Five years after Charles Lindbergh, the young aviator Amélia Earhart became the first woman to cross the Atlantic alone in an airplane.

In a world of men, the young woman, born in 1897 in Kansas, fascinates.

"I am not a feminist in the political sense of the word", she explains to her interlocutor, "but I am proud of my sex".

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Amélia Earhart, quickly nicknamed “Lady Lindy”, in reference to her male counterpart (Charles Lindbergh) with whom she shares, according to the press of the time, certain physical traits, may seem to be playing with fire;

she has nothing of a hothead, however.

She took aviation lessons in 1921 before crossing the thresholds step by step.

High altitude first, with a flight at 4,300 meters - a first for women already - then a crewed transatlantic and a solo crossing of the American continent in 1928 - another first for women - four years before her flight which propelled her to new in One of the newspapers which she has been accustomed to for ten years and her first record.

Her insatiable character pushes her to constantly consider new challenges.

Especially since the public is at the rendezvous.

Because the pilot, married to a publisher, also writes successful books:

, published in 1928 and which recounts his crewed crossing of the Atlantic, then

, (The pleasure part) in 1932, a more personal essay .

Commercial issues for passenger transport

From 1936, she began to nurture an ambitious project: to go around the world by the equator, which she initially planned to accomplish alone.

"A performance of perfectly commercial utility" and "the most extraordinary adventure that an aviator has ever risked", notes

of June 21, 1936. The era is then to conquer the sky for the transport of passengers still largely dominated by rail and ocean liners.

For this new exploit, the native of Kansas has also procured a Lockheed L-10 Electra, baptized “Flying Laboratory” by the pilot, “a transport plane roughly similar to all those which circulate on the commercial lines Americans,” Amélia Earhart points out to the journalist.

She took off west on June 1, 1937 from Miami.

After 32,800 kilometers and stops in Puerto Rico, Venezuela, Suriname (then Dutch Guiana), Brazil, Senegal, Eritrea, India and Burma then Java, Australia and New Guinea, the young woman completed the three quarters of the course.

She still has to face probably the most complicated part: the crossing of the Pacific and a stage of more than 4,000 kilometers which must lead her to the island of Howland, a tiny point in the immensity of the ocean.

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On the evening of July 2, accompanied by the American pilot Fred Noonan, Amélia Earhart takes off towards her destiny.

A tragic fate.

The pioneer of aviation and her pilot disappear body and property forever.

The next day, the press gets carried away and is passionate about this disappearance.

In its July 4 edition of

title "Amelia Earhart and her navigator have not yet been found",

abounds, always in One "Amelia Earhart lost in the Pacific".

Subtitled with a distress message that would have been captured: "I do not see the land and have only half an hour of gasoline".

"It was yesterday (7:12 p.m., universal time), then nothing," concludes the daily then develops this information on page 5, alongside a full page devoted to the rise of Nazism and the rearmament of Germany.

During the days that followed, significant search resources were deployed.

It is believed for a time, picked up by an English ship, then taken refuge on an atoll of the Phoenix Islands.

Her husband finances expeditions until October, before realizing it.

Proof that we still hoped for a long time, the pilot was not officially declared dead until eighteen months later.

Research until 2019

In August 2019, Robert Duane Ballard, an American marine scientist, also from Kansas and to whom we owe the discovery of the wreck of the Titanic, challenged himself to find the Lockheed L-10 Electra.

Without success.

Many theories still circulate today, especially about bones found on the island of Nikumaroro.

It is more likely, however, that the ocean keeps its secret forever.

Amélia Earhart, she bequeathed to humanity a part of history.

"Adventure in itself is a worthwhile thing," she wrote.

I leave you with another one of these quotes: “[Women] receive more glory than men for similar feats.

But, also, women get more notoriety when she spits herself.”

Finally, let's leave the conclusion to Walter J. Boyne, a US Air Force pilot and book author: “Amelia Earhart had undoubtedly arrived ahead of her time”.

If she was way ahead, let's say she didn't lose it.

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