PART TWO
CHAPTER FIVE
In the spring of 1928 Amelia Earhart made two decisions. The first was to accept the offer of the Friendship flight, the second, to return to Denison House when it was over. “I’ll be back for summer school,” she told Marion Perkins. She made both decisions as independently as she had when she defied her Hyde Park classmates in Chicago, when she left Ogontz for a Toronto hospital, when she dropped out of Columbia University, and when she decided to be a pilot. But “the girl in brown who walks alone” was now locked in step with others who had converging interests and equally strong wills.
One was Cmdr. Richard Evelyn Byrd, USN, conqueror of the North Pole in 1926. The thirty-year-old Byrd, brother of Sen. Harry Byrd of Virginia, was described by a fellow officer as a great navigator, a competent pilot, a fine companion, but a “publicity hound.” “The minute he got back from one thing and sat on his fanny for a week or two he commenced to get agitated. Wanted to do something else … good at raising money … equipment from the Navy, ‘custodial loans’ which the Navy never got back.”
The ambitious, restless Byrd was both friend and client of G. P. Putnam who published his books and publicized his expeditions. Byrd not only agreed to secretly sell his trimotor Fokker to Mrs. Guest, he also offered to pick a crew for the enterprise, an offer Putnam welcomed. Although nominally captain of the Friendship, Amelia was not consulted. Byrd asked Wilmer “Bill” Stultz to be pilot. Stultz was a magnificent pilot. Only twenty-eight, he was already a veteran of both the Army and Navy air services. He had worked for Curtiss Export Company, delivering forty planes to Rio de Janeiro, where he taught the Brazilian air force pilots to fly them. From Curtiss he went to Anthony Fokker’s firm as a test pilot and only one month before he accepted Byrd’s offer as pilot of theFriendship he had flown Charles A. Levine and Mabel Boll to Havana. The wealthy Miss Boll, known to the public as the “Diamond Queen,” told the press that she would sell all her diamonds to make a transatlantic flight and that Stultz had agreed to be her pilot. Either she misunderstood or Stultz had reneged before he accepted Byrd’s offer. Stultz was also an alcoholic, not an unusual condition for test pilots of that era.
To assist Stultz as mechanic and copilot, Byrd chose Louis Edward “Slim” Gordon. A year younger than Stultz, Gordon was also a veteran of the Army Air Service. An additional pilot, Louis Gower, was put on standby by Byrd.
Byrd also chose three more members of the Friendship team, retired Navy Cmdr. E. P. Elmer as technical advisor, Capt. William Rogers of the International Mercantile Marine to make the flight charts, and Dr. James H. Kimball of the U.S. Weather Bureau in New York to provide weather advisories.
Although Byrd selected most of the personnel, real control of the Friendship flight was always Putnam’s. The suave, handsome Putnam was everything he claimed to be to Amelia—author, editor, explorer, publisher, and friend of the famous. Putnam knew how to provide heroes to a hero-worshipping public. This time he had a potential heroine. Physically, this woman was the feminine equivalent of Lindbergh. Her tall, erect, slender figure, piercing blue-grey eyes, high forehead, firm chin, and Nordic coloring were a guarantee for a “Lady Lindy” image. She had the same shy smile and the same hesitation before speaking. In addition she was an intelligent, compassionate social worker who didn’t smoke or drink, an unmarried woman with a reputation as unsullied as a Girl Scout’s. If the Friendship crossing was successful Putnam was certain he could make Amelia Earhart a national heroine.
Secrecy and speed were essential to Putnam’s plan. Amelia’s crossing would have to be a surprise and she would have to be the first woman to do it. The plane sale was made through a go-between, millionaire Donald Woodward of Le Roy, New York, owner-president of the Mechanical Science Corporation. The sale was registered on April 9, 1928, with the corporation as buyer.
Making Amelia the first woman to cross the Atlantic by airplane was more difficult. Two others were threatening to do it. The first was Mabel Boll, who had the use of Levine’s Columbia, the plane in which he and Chamberlin had flown to Berlin in 1927, and who continued to badger Stultz about his alleged promise to be her pilot. The second challenger was Thea Rasche of Germany who announced on May 6 that she intended to make the flight from New York with Ernst Udet, a German war ace. A few days later Rasche said she would take off after June 10, as soon as weather permitted.
Along with the challenges of the “Diamond Queen” and the “Flying Fraulein,” there was the chance that the public could become jaded from too many successful transatlantic flights. In mid-April two Germans and an Irishman had made a westbound flight from Dublin to Newfoundland. During May two Germans, an Englishman, two Frenchmen, a Pole, a Swede, and two Spaniards all announced plans for crossing from west to east. A prize of thirty thousand dollars was offered by the Belgians to the first airman to land at Oestand Farm from New York. Although Hollywood’s biggest box-office hit of the year was William Wellman’s Wings, if even half the aspiring transatlantic fliers made it, the public might well tire of aviation exploits.
In addition to the Friendship team, the only other persons who knew of Amelia’s plans were Marion Perkins and Sam Chapman. Although Amelia would not marry Sam, she thought of him as part of her family and gave him the onerous task of telling her mother and sister her plan after the flight left Boston. Amelia told no one else and avoided being seen near the plane:
I did not dare show myself around Boston airport where the ship was being worked on. Not once was I with the men on their test flights.… I actually saw the Friendship only once before the first attempted take-off. To have been detected in the picture would have brought premature publicity and swamped all concerned with thrill writers and curiosity seekers.
During April and May she carried on her customary schedule, working at Denison House and spending weekends at Dennison Airport. She kept up her correspondence, writing again to Ruth Nichols on April 24 about a women’s flying organization. She suggested to Nichols that they be “autocratic about officers at first, in order to start something. One of us should be chairman, and a secretary and treasurer may be selected later.”
Putnam’s newest protégée was as aware as he of the uses of publicity. To increase support for the Boston NAA, she wrote to its secretary, Bernard Wiesman, that the chapter should receive all visiting fliers, offer speakers on aviation to clubs and schools, and ask department stores to feature aviation displays. “The mob should be thought of too,” she wrote, “as it is or will be the support of the industry.” The letter brought an immediate response. The nominating committee named her a vice-president, “the first woman chosen as an officer of the NAA anywhere in the country.”
The Friendship was ready by early May, its wheels replaced by pontoons, its wings painted gold, spanning seventy-one feet, and its three two-hundred horsepower motors overhauled and tested. For the next three weeks the crew waited while one adverse weather report followed another. When conditions were good over the Atlantic, there was not enough wind for a takeoff from Boston Harbor. The clumsy, box-like aircraft was hobbled by the pontoons that Byrd insisted might save lives in the event of a forced landing at sea. But for takeoff the pontoons required wind-roughened waters. Without waves they induced suction like a coin on a flat, wet surface, holding down the aircraft with its heavy fuel load. Not until July 1 did meteorologist Kimball issue a really promising forecast.
On Friday, July 1, Amelia moved into a room at the Copley-Plaza Hotel. That night she wrote a letter to Muriel:
Dear Snappy,
I have tried to play for a large stake and if I succeed all will be well.
If I don’t I shall be happy to pop off in the midst of such an adventure. My only regret would be leaving you and mother stranded for a while.
I haven’t told you about the affair as I didn’t want to worry mother, and she would suspect (she may now) if I told you. The whole thing came so unexpectedly that few knew about it. Sam will tell you the whole story. Please explain to mother. I couldn’t stand the added strain of telling mother and you personally.
If reporters talk to you, say you knew, if you like.
Yours respectfully,
Sister
P.S. I have made my will and placed my house in order. I have appointed a girl friend at Denison House administrator in case of my death.
Amelia was awakened at 3:30 on Sunday morning. She dressed for the flight in brown riding breeches, high, laced boots, a white silk blouse with a red kerchief tied at the neck, and her old leather coat, bought when she was learning to fly in California. Over all she wore a fur-lined flying suit, borrowed from Maj. Charles H. Woolley, an Air National Guard pilot who did not know why she had asked for it. With her she carried a camera given her by David Layman, field glasses from G. P., and a copy of Byrd’s book,Skyward, which he asked her to give to Mrs. Guest. Assembled in the hotel lobby for a drive through the dark, wet streets to Boston Harbor’s “T” Wharf were Bill Stultz, Commander Elmer, and Lou Gower, all accompanied by their wives; Slim Gordon and his fiancée, Ann Bruce; G. P., Marion Perkins, and J. E. “Jake” Coolidge, a Paramount News cameraman hired by G. P. No other reporters or photographers were present.
At the wharf a tugboat, Sadie Rose, took the party out to the Friendship, where Amelia, Stultz, Gordon, and Gower, who was to accompany the first three as far as Trepassey, Newfoundland, boarded the plane. Stultz took the pilot’s seat, Amelia stood amidships between two auxiliary fuel tanks, and Gower went aft. Slim Gordon balanced on the pontoons while he started each of the three engines, then climbed into the copilot seat. The big ship taxied down the bay followed by the tug, but when Stultz gunned the motors and raced across the bay, it would not lift off. There was not enough wind to stir the waters and counteract the suction of the pontoons. Gower moved as far aft as possible, hoping his weight would raise the nose, and they tried again without success. On a third attempt they threw out six five-gallon tins of gasoline before Stultz taxied up to the tug and shouted that he thought he could make it with a few less pounds. Putnam and Elmer rowed over from the tug in a small boat and took Gower off. As Stultz turned into the wind for another try, the breeze freshened, the motors roared, and the Friendship was airborne.
A report of the takeoff stated, “Those on the tugboat who saw Miss Earhart at close range in her flying togs were amazed at her resemblance to Colonel Charles A. Lindbergh. ‘Lady Lindy’ was what one deckhand called her.” The same story included a comment by a Norwegian artist, Brynjulf Strandenaes, who was in Boston the week before and who had done a portrait from life of Lindbergh. “She looks more like Lindbergh than Lindbergh himself,” he told the reporter.
The New York Times’s man described her as tall and slim with a boyish face, a high forehead, level grey eyes, a firm chin, and very white teeth, which she displayed in a “quick, flashing Lindbergh smile.” Her hair, he wrote, was yellow, bobbed, curly, and unruly.
The description was accurate except for her hair being darker than yellow and the writer failing to note a marked space between her two front teeth, so noticeable in black-and-white newspaper photographs that she soon took G. P.’s advice to smile with her lips closed. The shadow of Putnam’s image-making fell over the whole story. Although an enterprising reporter could have found a deckhand as soon as the tug docked, even one who might say that she looked like Lindbergh, and that same reporter could also have elucidated a quote from the artist who painted Lindbergh, no reporters were aboard the tug. G. P. was there, however, to make it easier and G. P. was a personal friend of the Times publisher, Adolph Ochs.
Nevertheless, even G. P. could not create a “Lady Lindy” out of whole cloth. He could only direct attention to an attractive woman with a distinctive style, a slim figure, a beautiful smile, and a unique hair style. Colleagues who later grumbled that G. P. even invented the haircut that would soon cause instant recognition by millions of admirers were wrong. Bernard Wiesman noticed her hair the first time he met her in Boston two years before the flight. It was bobbed, dark blonde, curly, and unruly.
The departure of the Friendship was far more perilous than it appeared to the spectators. Just before the takeoff, the latch on the cabin door had broken and Amelia held it closed until Gordon left the copilot’s seat and tied the handle to a heavy gasoline tin with a rope. When the big plane rose, the door, forced open by the wind, dragged the can across the deck. Amelia leapt on the tin and held it, rolling toward the open door and shouting for Gordon. He jumped up from his seat and dragged her back with the tin, then teetered on the door ledge, reaching out for the handle of the door. The plane banked, throwing him back into the cabin and slamming the door behind him. This time he tied it securely to a leather thong on the door frame. They were on their way at last, at 6:30 in the morning, heading up the New England coast, into a brilliant sun. Amelia sat on a gasoline tin keeping a log in a stenographer’s notebook.
The heavily laden Friendship lumbered along at an average speed of 114 miles an hour, crossing over Fear Island near Nova Scotia by 8:55 A.M. The haze of the sun was swallowed up by grey clouds and fog so thick that thirty miles past Halifax, Stultz turned back and circled until, through a hole in the fog, he saw the Halifax Naval Air Station in Halifax Harbor. He landed there, moored near the station, and went ashore with Gordon for weather reports, leaving Amelia aboard the plane. Returning at 1:30 P.M. when the fog appeared to lift, Stultz took off again, but halfway to Trepassey he was forced to turn back to Halifax again.
They checked into a hotel in Dartmouth, where Stultz and Gordon again left Amelia while they went to a Chinese restaurant. There two reporters and a photographer found them sitting at a counter. Stultz said that, weather permitting, he would go on to Trepassey the next morning, take on more fuel, and leave immediately for Ireland. Back at the hotel Amelia refused to be interviewed. While reporters dogged Amelia’s footsteps in Newfoundland and besieged Amy and Muriel Earhart in Boston, they were pleasing G. P. in New York. The New York Times four-column, front-page headline read, “Boston Girl Starts Atlantic Hop, Reaches Halifax, May Go On Today.” The following day she shared another four-column, first-page headline with Sir Charles Kingsford-Smith and his crew on the Southern Cross who had just completed the longest nonstop flight ever made, from Honolulu to Fiji.
On Monday morning, twenty-four hours after the Friendship left Boston, Stultz took off from Halifax for Trepassey, reaching it at two in the afternoon. By this time the flight was worldwide news. Once ashore, Amelia again dodged reporters, walking to a nearby Roman Catholic convent where she visited with the nuns, while Stultz and Gordon returned to the ship to pump gas until sundown. Stultz said they would spend the night at the house of a local family and take off for Ireland at noon.
When reporters could not talk to Amelia they described her: “Miss Earhart’s slightness of build was accentuated by the tight-fitting brown knickers [sic] and high-laced boots she wore when she stepped from the plane here.… Her close-cut, light hair was tousled by the wind, for she wore no hat.” In New York G. P. gave the press the cable he had received from her: “Good trip from Halifax. Average speed 111 miles per hour. Motors running beautifully. Trepassey harbor very rough.… Everybody comfortably housed and happy.”
It was the last time the crew of the Friendship would be comfortable or happy for the next thirteen days. During those days Amelia kept in constant touch with G. P. In Boston where she had seen him frequently, along with Railey and Byrd at the latter’s house, she realized that the flight was only one of a dozen projects Putnam managed at any given moment. She could not resist teasing him about this, telling him a child’s story about a shrewd cat named Simpkin who caught a mouse and because he was not hungry at the moment stored it under a teacup. Having a mouse available whenever he wanted one seemed such a good idea he thought it even better to catch and store more. Amelia told G. P. he was a “Simpkin” and it was to “Simpkin” she sent her messages. When he suggested she “turn in and have your laundering done” she answered, “No laundry because underwear all worn out and shirt lost to Slim at gin rummy.”
Amelia’s cheery cables disguised her growing anxiety. Within forty-eight hours of their landing at Trepassey she realized Stultz was an alcoholic. The only member of the crew competent enough to pilot the trimotored Fokker and navigate the Atlantic, the restless, nervous Stultz began to drink. While Amelia played cards with Slim Gordon in the drafty, primitive house where they stayed, or went hiking with him whenever the gale-force winds abated, Stultz found solace in the bottle. He left it only to make dangerous and futile attempts to get the Friendship airborne.
Stultz made three attempts on June 6 and eight on June 12, four of them after discarding the movie camera, film, a large thermos, and all their extra clothing. He tried again the next day, dumping 135 gallons of gasoline to lighten the plane but he could not lift it off the choppy waves of the harbor. After this failure he decided to overhaul all three engines with Gordon but he beached the plane on a sand ledge and could not get it off until midnight when the tide rose. That same day Mabel Boll sent Amelia an invitation from Harbor Grace, another port in Newfoundland, where she had already arrived in the Columbia, suggesting that the Friendship return to Harbor Grace where smoother waters would make it easier to take off. Boll was inviting Amelia to a race with theColumbia, a plane Stultz knew was faster than the Friendship. The message provided yet another excuse for him to drink himself into a stupor.
On the night of June 16 Amelia took command of the flight. She was already legally the captain, authorized in writing “to have control of the plane … and of all its employees as if she were the owner.” The agreement had been written by lawyer Layman whocabled her on June 13: “Please send Putnam confidential report what goes on. Are you satisfied there? Can we help more here or there? Do you see his [Stultz’s] messages?”
Amelia realized something would have to be done. She told Gordon her decision while she sat with him at the dining-room table, listening to Stultz up in his room, drunk and feverish with a cold, cursing as he paced up and down. If Gordon was willing, Amelia wanted to leave the next morning. The good-natured Gordon was willing. Stultz had so exasperated him that he was ready to take the next boat back to Boston unless Amelia took over.
They both knew the risks were appalling. Stultz had yet to lift the big plane off the bay waters. To do so he would have to cut back fuel to a dangerous minimum. Doc Kimball’s latest message from New York warned of unstable weather conditions. But at seven the next morning, a Sunday, Amelia pounded on the door of the room shared by Gordon and Stultz. When Gordon opened the door she saw Stultz sprawled on the bed, snoring. Gordon pushed him under a cold shower, dressed him, and brought him back to Amelia, who forced him to drink cup after cup of hot coffee. An hour later he was downstairs, sober enough to eat breakfast. Amelia left the table long enough to send a cable to G. P. It read, “Violet. Cheerio! A.E.” Violet was the code word for takeoff. When she returned she told reporters, “We are going today in spite of everything.”
They left the boarding house with Amelia and Gordon steadying Stultz between them, walking him down the steep path to the wharf. Amelia helped load more gasoline into tanks while Gordon put Stultz and four extra tins of fuel aboard. An hour later, when Gordon climbed down onto a pontoon to start the engines the surly Stultz left him barely enough time to scramble back into the cabin before gunning the engines and taxiing out onto the harbor. Three times Stultz tried and failed to raise the heavy craft. Twice they dumped auxiliary fuel tins overboard. On the fourth attempt, the Fokker plowed through the water for two miles, rose slowly, dipped, steadied, and rose again, wobbling up through the fog, one water-drenched engine sputtering. They were on their way.
The captain of the Friendship retired amidships where she started the log with the time of departure—11:40 A.M. Not long after she spied a whiskey bottle lodged between a rib of the fuselage and Gordon’s tool kit. Her impulse was to open the hatch and throw it out just as she had once poured her father’s hidden supply down the sink, but she left the bottle where it was. Stultz might need it later.
Three hundred miles out of Trepassey the plane was enveloped by fog. Searching for a clearing, Stultz climbed into a snow squall. Without de-icing equipment, he was forced to take the ship down again, so quickly that Amelia slid across the deck and into the oil drums stored behind the seat. Regaining her place amidships Amelia watched him struggle to stay awake for the next one hundred miles until the weather cleared when he signaled for Gordon to take over, then fell asleep in his seat.
Seven hours out Amelia wrote in the log, “I am … kneeling here at the [chart] table gulping beauty. Radio contact. Rexmore, Britisher bound for New York.” It was the last radio contact. Amelia dozed off after midnight until she was awakened by Gordon’s voice calling for ships to “come in.” None did. The radio was dead. They would have to depend on Stultz’s navigational skills. They had been flying for sixteen hours and had four, possibly five, hours of fuel left.
At dawn Stultz came down through the clouds searching the cold, grey waters for a ship. At 6:30 they sighted the S.S. America, which Stultz circled while Amelia tied a message to two oranges and dropped it. She missed. Now on the emergency tank with about one hour’s fuel remaining, Stultz sighted a fleet of fishing boats. Minutes later Amelia saw land, then a smokestack less than a mile off. Stultz circled what seemed to be a factory town on the coast and brought the ship in for a perfect landing. The Friendship’s flight across the international time zones of the Atlantic ended at Burry Port, Wales, where it was one o’clock in the afternoon of June 18, twenty hours and forty minutes after their departure from Trepassey. Its crew was 3,000 miles from Boston and 140 miles from Southhampton, where a vast crowd had gathered to see the first woman to cross the Atlantic in an airplane.