ANNALS OF AVIATION - TURBULENCE

Amelia Earhart’ husband pushed her to keep tempting fate for the sake of fame.

- BY LAURIE GWEN SHAPIRO

Sparks flew, a wing bent, and the landing gear snapped off as the silver Lockheed Electra 10-E plane smashed into the runway at Luke Field, outside Honolulu. The pilot’s only stroke of luck was that the aircraft, which contained nearly a thousand gallons of fuel, didn’t explode.

The thirty-nine-year-old Amelia Earhart and her crew of two navigators, Fred Noonan and Harry Manning, crawled out of the wreckage, unsettled but otherwise unhurt. They had meant to depart on the second leg of a gruelling voyage: a round-the-world flight that had begun in Oakland, California, and would continue westward, with two dozen or so stops, before ending up back in Oakland. People close to Earhart knew that she wasn't fully ready for a challenge of this magnitude, and so a work-around had been devised. An extra crew member with extensive flight experience, Paul Mantz, had joined the flight to Hawaii. On the runway in Oakland, he switched places with Earhart and assumed the throttles during takeoff. She then piloted most of the way to Oahu, but Mantz often took over.

As they approached Luke Field, Mantz sensed that Earhart had “pilot fatigue.” He asked her, “Do you want to land it?”

“No, you land it,” Earhart said. He did so, then said farewell. Earhart had been able to observe Mantz’s handling of the plane over the Pacific, and from now on she would be the only pilot onboard. Flying the Electra solo wouldn't be easy. Although the plane had state-of-the-art technology for its time, piloting it demanded constant coördination among the throttle, the rudder, and the control column—especially during takeoff and landing. While taking off on the second leg, Earhart ignored advice that Mantz had given her not to “jockey the throttles”—change the speed to maintain direction and balance—and the plane veered into a violent spin across the runway. The press had assembled to watch Earhart soar, and instead witnessed an embarrassment.