Amelia Earhart's Final Flight

Around the world, Lady Bird and her crew, ready for an adventure that nobody has ever tried before. Amelia Earhart out to circle the Earth at the latitude of the equator, and that's the Earth's greatest circle. On March 17, 1937, Amelia Earhart made her final checks before taking off on her flight around the world. We held our breath when she finally took off from Oakland for Honolulu. A few of us knew she thought this would be her swan song. I have a feeling, she wrote to her husband, that there is just about one more good flight left in my system. I hope this trip is it. When I've finished, I mean to give up long-distance stunt flying. If any of her sex can make it, Amelia's the girl. The fast ship has been checked for the 27,000-mile flight, and it was on to Honolulu. Things did not go well for Amelia. In Honolulu, she crashed on takeoff. She ground-looped the Electra. It just weighed too much. She was lucky she didn't die. She shipped it back to California, in pieces. It was a lot of damage. Both the engines were destroyed, the propellers, the wings, the gear, the entire undercarriage of the aircraft. And also, it was sitting in a big puddle of fuel. She had skidded across the runway in all that fuel, because the fuel tanks had broken as well. She had always succeeded in the other flights. And when she cracked up in Honolulu, there was no question. Anybody else would have said, well, that's it. But she said no. She just took the plane back to California, had it repaired, and went the other way. It was almost three months later when Earhart tried again. It was a rainy June morning. The trade winds had changed direction, so she had to fly east. Going east meant she'd hit the longest and most dangerous Pacific lakes at the end of her journey. This departure was quiet. She just got into her airplane and left. Amelia was to set a record flying as close as she could to the equator. That's what had never been done before, was to fly at the equator. And that's where most of our trip is, across Africa, at the equator, all around Indochina. And it's going to be, there are days that she talked about it being 120 degrees outside. Across Brazil, the stresses of the flight began to show. Amelia wrote in her log, Just came through very heavy rain. It blotted out everything. Gas fumes in the plane made me sick, stomach getting weaker. She was in a hurry. She flew all 22,000 miles. She did all but the last three legs of her trip before she was lost. And she did that in a little over 30 days. So she didn't want to go and have lots of social functions or stop and have dinners. And when she got to Paramaribo, they brought dinner out to her. And they set up dinner in their hangar and they all ate together there with the engine in the background. They had to fuel the aircraft themselves from very remote locations. There were barrels all over the world with Amelia Earhart written on those barrels of fuel. People pumped gasoline into my ship from drums. Coffee, orange juice, sandwiches. I've never had better service at any airport. We're stuck with the same problems they had with the fact we will be 50% over the gross weight of the aircraft. That on takeoff at those kinds of weights, the airplane will not fly on one engine. So if we have one engine stop for any reason, the fuel doesn't flow, a fuel pump doesn't work, an oil pump doesn't work, or many things that have to work properly to support that engine running. And we lose one engine, we will not be able to fly. The airplane will crash. Amelia's expedition was getting more and more uncomfortable. Direst cockpit I've ever had. Seeing nothing but rain through wispy clouds. Oil from the props and rain on the windshield have made a smeary emulsion. Having trouble seeing.