Amelia's Last Flight
1937 AD
1937 1937
175.00W00.00N
MISC

PACIFIC OCEAN
	There was nothing special about flying around the world, George Putnam told his wife Amelia. People had already done it.
	Yes, Amelia replied, but nobody had ever done it at the equator, where the distance around the earth is the greatest.
	So Amelia Earhart set off on an epic flight. She was already the world's premier female aviator. She was the first woman to fly across the Atlantic as a passenger, and later became the first woman to fly across on her own. Other women had attempted the flight, but none had been successful and three had died.
	Amelia was first inspired to take flying lessons after attending an air show in California. She became fascinated by the fun of flight and later wrote books about flying and taught about it at Purdue University, where she became known as the "Flying Professor."
	But the round-the-equator flight was to be her grand adventure. She flew her Lockheed Electra to South America with navigator Fred Noonan, then took off towards Africa. She and Noonan flew across the Atlantic Ocean to Africa; then stopped at Karachi (then part of India); Rangoon, Burma; Singapore; Surabaya, Indonesia; Port Darwin, Australia; and then to Lea, New Guinea.
	The next stop was Howland Island, a flyspeck of land that would be their refueling stop on the way to the Hawaiian Islands. It was 2,556 miles away from Lea and surrounded by nothing but ocean.
	The U.S. Coast Guard cutter Itasca was at the island to keep in radio contact, and at first everything seemed to go well. Amelia radioed she was making good progress and was within about 100 miles of the island. Later she radioed: "We must be on you, but we cannot see you. Our gas is running low."
	After several more messages, she gave what she believed to be her position, then the radio went dead. The cutter Itasca, a battleship, an aircraft carrier with all its planes, and four destroyers searched for 16 days, they never found a trace of the missing Lockheed Electra or its brave pilot and navigator.