Amelia Earhart Read Online Free PDF

Pictures, G. P.’s paycheck was insufficient for him to maintain the lifestyle to which he had become accustomed. Furthermore, it certainly would not fund a new airplane for Earhart.
    In 1935, after renting out the house in Rye, New York, Putnam and Earhart moved into a small house in Toluca Lake, California, a suburb of North Hollywood. Amelia decided to enter her Vega in the National Air Races in Cleveland to be held in August. She came in fifth place and won $500. After returning to California, Earhart went into business with Mantz setting up a flight school. G. P. would handle the publicity. Earhart and Mantz were described as a “solid team” and were rarely seen apart.
    Trouble was not long in coming. In September, Myrtle Mantz sued her husband for divorce, naming Earhart as the other woman responsible for the breakup. Before the year was out, Mantz and Putnam grew at odds with each other over the way the latter conducted business.
    In November, Earhart and Putnam attended a dinner hosted by the president of Purdue University. At the time, Earhart was serving as a parttime counselor for women at the school. During the event, Earhart and Putnam were introduced to a number of the university’s benefactors, including the wealthy industrialist David Ross. Putnam explained the need for a new airplane suitable for an around-the-world journey but stated that the aircraft could also serve as a flying laboratory for Purdue’s aviation research orientation. Eighty thousand dollars was raised, and within weeks a new twin-engine Lockheed Electra was delivered.
    Earhart lost no time in contacting Harry Manning. Earhart first met Manning after her trip across the Atlantic with Stultz and Gordon. Manning was the captain of the SS Roosevelt , which carried the crew back to the United States. Later, Manning would be awarded a Congressional Medal of Honor for rescuing the crew of a freighter during a severe Atlantic storm. Manning was also a pilot and was regarded by some as a competent course plotter. Earhart invited Manning to accompany her on the around-the-world flight as her navigator.
    Flights around the world had been made previously. In 1924, a U.S. Army Air Service plane made the trip in 175 days. In 1932, a man named Wolfgang von Gronau made it in 110 days in a seaplane. Wiley Post, flying solo in 1933, did it in seven days and eighteen hours. None of these flights, however, crossed the wide expanse of the Pacific Ocean. Furthermore, never had a woman attempted such a feat. In 1936, when time permitted, Earhart and Manning would meet in New York to discuss details of her trip.
    One year earlier, Pan American Airways captain Edwin Musick and navigator Fred Noonan surveyed the Pacific Ocean in order to determine the practicality of transoceanic flights. A major problem involved with such an undertaking was the scarcity and incompatibility of communications systems. The two men would eventually make recommendations to facilitate travel across the wide Pacific. Fred Noonan would soon assume a consequential role in Earhart’s future.

• 7 • Flight around the World: Preparation
    B oth Amelia Earhart and G. P. Putnam were riding the high-profile publicity and financial wave of Earhart’s accomplishments and popularity during the late 1920s and early 1930s. As a result of the efforts of Putnam, Earhart had her name attached to lines of luggage, suits, pajamas, sports outfits, and stationery.
    Putnam worked almost full time keeping Earhart’s name and photograph in the nation’s and the world’s newspapers. Now, he realized, was the time for the greatest accomplishment ever for a woman pilot—an around-the-world flight. Though there were a number of skilled and credentialed female pilots in the United States, they had neither the charisma of Amelia Earhart nor the publicity machine in the form of the skilled G. P. Putnam backing them. It was time.
    Most of Earhart’s aerial