 In 1937, Amelia Earhart disappeared while attempting a circumnavigation flight around the globe, and the mystery of what happened has only gotten crazier over time. Every couple of years, new, quote-unquote, evident surfaces. Stories range from her surviving and living on an island somewhere to her being captured and held in a Japanese POW camp forced to read propaganda messages during the Second World War to living under an assumed name as a housewife in New Jersey. But why exactly are we so obsessed with the idea that there is more to her story than a simple plane crash? In a word, branding. Hello, everyone. I'm Amy. If you're new here, welcome to the vintage space. If you are a regular viewer, welcome back. Today we are going to take a deep dive into the legend of Amelia Earhart. By way of a lightning-fast introduction, Amelia Earhart was an aviatrix flying in the 1920s and 1930s, a time when women pilots were so rare, they often gained notoriety among pilots just for flying. But Amelia found fame outside flying circles as the first woman to cross the Atlantic in 1928. Overnight, she became a household name. I started to think more critically about Amelia's status when writing Fighting for Space. Amelia's in here. She and Jackie Cochran, my main aviatrix, were extremely close friends. We'll get into that in a little bit. But it struck me that Jackie had a much more decorated career, and yet she's far less remembered by the wider public. Why is that? Amelia, at the end of the day, had such a brilliantly manufactured image, such that, when she disappeared, she was perfectly poised to become the enduring legend that she is. So let's see exactly how that happened. In May of 1927, Charles Limburg made history with the first non-stop trans-Atlantic solo flight from New York to Paris. It was a sometimes harrowing 33 and a half hour journey in the spirit of St. Louis that turned an unknown airmail pilot into a romantic hero overnight. In short order, Charles Limburg sold his story to publisher George Palmer Putnam. The memoir, titled We, chronicled the pilot's early life leading to the trans-Atlantic flight and sold more than 650,000 copies. Limburg earned more than $250,000 from the book, which is about three and a half million today, and became a household name. At the same time, George Putnam gained the reputation of a star maker. Not long after, and very much inspired by Limburg's daring feat, American Steel Eris, an aviation enthusiast, Amy Phipps guest, set out to prove that a woman could make the flight too. She was reasonably well positioned to score this first for women. She had considerable wealth behind her and was married to the right honorable Frederick guest, who was a member of the British Parliament, an international polo player, and the former British Air Minister. Amy leased a Fokker Trimotor plane and had every intention of making the flight herself, but was forced to abandon the plan when her family raised concerns. Amy had wealth and means, but she was not a pilot. Her original plan dashed. Amy came up with an alternative solution, use her wealth to sponsor the first woman to make the flight. That way, she wouldn't have to take any risk, but she would still have her name associated with the feat. Now, the challenge was finding the right candidate before some other woman beat her to the punch. There was a rumor going around at the time that a Miss Mabel Mibbs bowl was eyeing that transatlantic goal. To help find the right woman, Amy hired the star maker, George Putnam. Amy told George who she wanted as the woman on this flight. She wanted an American woman who knew how to fly, someone educated, someone with manners who would fit in with English society types, and someone physically active and attractive. If this woman bore even the slightest resemblance to Charles Limburg, all the better. But more than anything, this woman had to be a lady of true womanhood. So this was the woman George Putnam was charged with finding in the late 1920s, and it was a bit of a tall order. Women had fewer opportunities than men for education, and women pilots in particular were rare. This woman was going to be a proverbial needle in a haystack. Born on July 24th, 1897, in Atchison, Kansas, Amelia was raised by her railroad lawyer father and heiress mother. It was her mother's family money that afforded Amelia the opportunity to attend the Augant School in Ridell, Pennsylvania in the late 1910s. But she left one semester shy of graduation to serve as a Red Cross nurse in the First World War in Toronto, Canada. It was here she was introduced to flying, watching the Royal Flying Corps training at an airfield in Toronto. Post-war and back in the United States, Amelia enrolled as a pre-med student at Columbia University, and more significantly, took her first plane ride in December of 1920 with World War I pilot Frank Hawks in California. With just one ride, she was hooked. A month later, Amelia began taking flying lessons from Netta Snook while working as a filing clerk at the Los Angeles Telephone Company to pay for the sessions. Before the end of the year, she'd earned her pilot's license, become the first woman to earn a license from the Fédération Aeronautique Internationale, but a second-hand yellow Kinra Areser she called the Canary and had flown in her first exhibition at the Sierra Aero Drome in Pasadena, California. Professionally, Amelia didn't stick with medicine and she didn't pursue a career as a pilot either. Instead, she stayed true to her passion for helping people with a career in social work. Without any prior experience, she was hired as a social worker at Denison House in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1925, a settlement house that predominantly served immigrants and the poor with a focus on offering guidance to girls and young women. Amelia threw herself into her work and before long was appointed head of adult education programs, running classes and sometimes organizing clubs for neighborhood women. She, meanwhile, flew as an avocation as often as time and finances would allow, even though it wasn't her primary work, she did manage to make a name for herself with a handful of records. Her first she secured in 1922, when she became the first woman to fly solo above 14,000 feet. That might seem like an odd record, but recall that there were so few women flying at the time there were plenty of female firsts she could achieve. As the 1910s wore on, Amelia racked up just a few hundred hours in small planes, but she made good use of those hours. On rare occasions, she was able to marry her passion for her work with her love of flying. During one benefit for Denison House, she flew overhead, dazzling the crowd and making headlines. Amelia was at Denison House one afternoon in early 1928, when someone called wanting to speak to her. Surrounded as she was by children rushing in for games and classes, she brushed off the call. When the messenger told her the man on the phone said it was very important, she relented and went to the phone. The voice on the other end belonged to New York Times correspondent Hilton H. Rayleigh, calling on behalf of George Palmer Putnam. He asked her if she would like to fly across the Atlantic. Without hesitation, she answered yes. Days later, Amelia met with George and learned he had been tasked with finding a suitable feminine flyer for the transatlantic flight crew. This woman would be accompanying two male pilots on the flight. Intrigued as she was at the prospect of crossing the Atlantic, she was quite put off by George. She didn't like him. He was brusque and left her feeling somehow discomforted. And the whole business of the transatlantic flight felt odd. She went through multiple rounds of interviews and not much of it seemed concerned with her flying background. She was instead acutely aware that they were looking for a woman rather than a pilot, and that if she lacked any specific trait, she wouldn't get the flight. But at the same time, if she was too gallant or outgoing, the men she'd be flying with might be inspired to get rid of her by punting her from the plane and letting her drown. Finally, the verdict came back. Amelia had the right attributes. The flight was hers if she wanted it, which she did. After weeks of preparation and days of delays, the plane christened friendship lifted off from Trepesee Harbor in Newfoundland on the eastern coast of Canada. Co-pilot Wilmer Bill Stoltz and Louis Slim Gordon did the flying while Amelia kept a log of the trip. When the trio landed at Burry Port, South Wales after 20 hours and 40 minutes in the air, Amelia was the one making headlines. Thanks to George Putnam. As he had done with Charles Lindbergh, George published Amelia's story as a memoir. The book 20 Hours, 40 Minutes, captivated readers. Amelia became America's newest romantic heroine, even though, by her own admission, she'd been a passenger aboard friendship and about as useful as a sack of potatoes. Nevertheless, her celebrity grew in the months and years that followed, thanks in large part to George's aggressive promotion. She toured in support of her book and gave speeches across the country. And before long, sponsors came in spades. She became the face of women's clothing and sportswear, luggage, and even briefly lucky strike cigarettes. Her penchant for masculine inspired clothing, which was very vogue in the 1920s, coupled with her slight resemblance to Charles Lindbergh, earned her the moniker of Lady Lindy. Amelia became synonymous with the idea of female flyers, and eventually a business unto herself. But true to her passion for service, she sought to use her fame for good. Among her most enduring acts was founding the 99s in 1929, a sorority of female pilots so named because there were 99 licensed women aviators present at its creation. The whole ecosystem around Amelia now allowed her to fly full-time. Endorsements funded further flights, and George organized her routes to make sure any stops doubled as publicity appearances. He was her promoter, booking agent, manager, publisher, and in 1931 became her husband. It wasn't until 1932, though, that Amelia actually achieved the feat she'd become famous for. Three years after sitting as a passenger on a transatlantic flight, and after all the fame, she finally crossed the Atlantic Ocean alone. I mentioned earlier that I started really digging into Amelia because of her friendship with Jackie, so let's do a quick introduction to another notable aviatrix. Jackie Cochran, whose backstory is detailed in Fighting for Space, learned to fly as an adult in 1932. She quickly became a known name in flying circles with some help from the man in her life. Her beau at the time, whom she'd marry in 1936, was Floyd Bostwick Odom, the wealthy financier. Where Amelia had sponsors funding her flights, Jackie had Floyd. His financial support enabled her to achieve some incredible feats. In 1934, Jackie was the first woman to enter the MacArthur race from England to Australia, but she was forced to withdraw for technical reasons in Bucharest, Romania. Jackie was a known name, but hadn't yet secured any records or significant accolades. In her personal life, Jackie and Floyd were living between their growing ranch house in Indio, California and their apartment in Manhattan. Jackie was in her Manhattan apartment one day in 1935 when the phone rang. It was her friend Paul Hammond inviting her to dinner and inviting her to meet a very special guest, Amelia Earhart. Jackie walked into the Hammond's dining room that evening and finally met the woman whose fame she so envied. The two women were opposites in a lot of ways. While Amelia was tall, slim, good-looking, and formally educated, Jackie was nine years younger, shorter, had a fuller figure, and remained incredibly self-conscious that her own formal schooling had stopped after the second grade. While naturally quiet, Amelia preferred addressing crowds from behind a podium, Jackie craved being at the center of attention. Despite their outward differences, Jackie and Amelia quickly realized that they were very like-minded women. They were the emancipated daughters of the sucker-jets, the first generation of women for whom having a career and having a husband weren't mutually exclusive. Career freedom had imbued both women with a feeling that the whole world was open to them, aided by the men in their lives who facilitated their flying rather than resenting them for their public success. And they were both successful in the male-dominant world of flying. They even dressed alike, often eschewing dresses for slacks, though each was still very feminine in her unique way. The two pilots immediately became fast friends. Not long after that first meeting, Jackie and Amelia met for lunch, and soon after that, Amelia invited Jackie to fly west to California with her in her brand-new Lockheed Electra. The trip was beset by weather delays, but far from breeding tensions, the extra time together cemented Jackie and Amelia's friendship, and even revealed an almost magical rapport. Their conversations ran the gamut from politics to religion to science to personal matters. They discovered their flying strengths were complementary rather than competitive. Amelia favored distance records while Jackie was in pursuit of speed challenges. They even found they had a shared interest in extrasensory perception. As a quick sidebar, Amelia commemorated the flight with a gift. She gave Jackie a copy of her book, The Fun of It, inscribed in memory of an electrician across the continent. That book is now part of my own personal collection. Okay, let's get back to the interesting ESP aspects of their friendship. Jackie and Floyd first got into the world of psychic phenomena after meeting Duke parapsychologist Dr. J.B. Ryan at a dinner party. After the meal, Dr. Ryan produced a set of playing cards and asked each of the guests to sense which card he was holding without seeing its face. It was meant to be some fun entertainment, but when Jackie was able to guess the right card every time, Floyd became fascinated. The couple played around with Jackie's psychic abilities, particularly the phenomenon of automatic writing, wherein she'd let her mind relax until words flowed through her and she wrote with abandon, with no memory of thinking about what she was writing. With Amelia, Jackie explored using her extrasensory perception to find airplane crash victims. Amelia was at the Cochrane-Odlam Ranch in India one night when she and Jackie heard a news report on the radio about a missing plane en route to Salt Lake City from Los Angeles. Amelia asked Jackie to focus on the plane to see if she could sense where it might be. Jackie gave Amelia bits and pieces of what she saw in her mind's eye, a sight of a mountain, peaks in the distance, road, transmission lines. Being a pilot, she saw these landmarks as though from the air, and after conferring with a friend who knew the area well, pinpointed where she felt the wreckage might be. Amelia then drove back to Los Angeles and jumped into her own plane looking for survivors in the spot from Jackie's vision. But when she reached the transmission lines by the road with the mountain peaks in the distance, there was no sign of a plane. Both Jackie and Amelia were crestfallen until spring came. When the snow in the mountains melted, the wreckage was discovered two miles from where Jackie had seen it. Jackie's intuition proved strong with aircraft, and in particular with Amelia's planes. One night while she and Floyd were driving into Palm Springs from the ranch, she was hit with a flashing vision of a fire in one of the engines in Amelia's plane. She saw that it wasn't serious and that ground crews were already dousing the blaze. Later that night, she and Floyd heard the news of Amelia's fire on the radio. The next morning's newspapers held the full account, and it lined up with Jackie's vision. Jackie and Amelia's friendship deepened over time. Professionally, they supported one another. They worked to open all male races to women and became the first two female pilots to fly in the Bendix Transcontinental Air Race in 1935. Personally, Amelia became one of the most frequent house guests at the Cochrane-Odlem Ranch. Often, she arrived alone, staying one of Jackie's many guest houses, spending her day swimming or riding horses before joining the rotating cast of Jackie and Floyd's notable friends for dinner in the main house. On the rare occasion, Amelia arrived when her hosts were out of town, she would stay in Jackie's own bedroom, and intimacy never afforded any other guest. Even Floyd became close friends with Amelia. The only thing Jackie didn't like about Amelia was her husband, George Putnam. Jackie viewed George as a mean and manipulative man who saw his wife with his meal ticket. She didn't like that all of Amelia's roots were dictated by media stops George set up and refused to change. It gave Jackie the impression that George valued Amelia's celebrity more than her safety. In social situations, he openly berated her manners in front of their friends. On one occasion, Jackie grew so tired of George embarrassing his wife in public that she hurled an ashtray at his head. In early 1937, George was working on his latest idea for Amelia, an east to west circumnavigation around the equator. Half a dozen men had done it already, but Amelia would be the first woman. The whole thing worried Jackie. She knew Amelia was a good flyer, but also knew her limitations. Circumnavigation was a weeks long endeavor that demanded complicated and precise stellar navigation while flying over vast bodies of water. And navigation wasn't Amelia's strong suit. She would be wholly dependent on a higher guide. And Jackie was very concerned that if the guide failed, Amelia wouldn't be able to correct the error to save herself. Amelia's circumnavigation got off to a poor start with a crash in Hawaii that aborted the rest of the attempt. Shaken but unhurt, she went right to Jackie's Indio Ranch when she got back to the mainland. That night, sitting on the floor of Jackie's living room in front of the cavernous fireplace, Amelia recounted the crash to Jackie and their close friends Mike and Benny Howard, a pair of married pilots. The group discussed whether Amelia would try the flight again, but even she didn't know if she would make another attempt. The question was still on Amelia's mind days later when she and Floyd went out for a drive around the property and got stuck in the desert sand in an old car. As they waited for help to come dig them out, Amelia turned to Floyd and asked whether she should do it. He thought she meant dig the car out herself, but she meant the circumnavigation. Floyd told her, if you are doing this to keep your place at the top among women in aviation, you're wasting your time and taking a big risk for nothing. No one can topple you from your pinnacle. But if you are doing it for the adventure and because you simply want to do it, then no one else ought to advise you. As an interesting nod to their friendship, Amelia dedicated her last book, which was published posthumously, to Floyd. Amelia finally decided she'd make another attempt. She did crave the adventure, but decided it would be her last. She would retire from distance journeys after the circumnavigation. Amelia turned to the rant weeks later armed with new plans. She and Jackie, who was helping finance this last great adventure, jumped into the details. The things had changed. At George's insistence, Amelia's flight path had been reversed. She would now be flying from west to east. A route no pilot had taken before. The two women poured over every detail of the route. At Jackie's urging, Amelia hired a new navigator, Fred Newton, after her original pick had proved unable to navigate by the stars. But Jackie remained uneasy, particularly about the final leg. Flying in 1937 meant none of the navigational aids we have now. There was no GPS network, and though there were radio signals pilots could pick up from beacons, contact was only available within a certain range of an airport or beacon. There were areas of the country where there was no radio signal to follow at all, forcing pilots to rely on maps. But there was nothing when flying over long stretches of ocean, and without any landmarks, pilot had to look at the sun's position during the day and the stars at night to orient themselves and make sure they were on the right path. If they couldn't, this vital job fell to the navigator, who was expected to be an expert in stellar navigation. So the final leg. The proposed route had Amelia leaving lay airfield in New Guinea for Howland Island, a spot nearly 2,000 miles southwest of Honolulu, where the Department of the Interior had built her a landing strip. It was her last planned stop before traversing the rest of the Pacific Ocean and landing in California. But it was a tiny island to find. If Amelia was off course at all, she'd miss her only safe landing spot for hundreds of miles. Jackie was terrified and told Amelia, you're not going to see that damned island. I wish you wouldn't go off and commit suicide because that's exactly what you're going to do. As a last ditch effort for safety, and because Amelia would be out of radio range over the oceans, the women decided to see if Jackie's ESP could help, if she could track Amelia in the air and see where she was in case something happened. So they ran a test. Jackie kept a detailed log as Amelia and George flew across the country. As the trip wore on, Jackie saw that everything was fine, but that Amelia landed in Blackwell, Oklahoma one night, 50 miles away from her planned stopover point. The next morning, she felt Amelia take off at 9 o'clock for Los Angeles. When the women compared notes, George was quick to poke holes in Jackie's account. Yes, Amelia had landed in Blackwell, but she'd left Oklahoma at 7 o'clock, not 9. Jackie calmly pointed out that she, unlike he, understood the concept of time zones. On June 1, 1937, Amelia took off from Oakland, California. Jackie followed the reports, tracking Amelia across the United States, to the northern tip of South America, across Africa, India, to Australia, and finally New Guinea. When news reached America that Amelia hadn't reported in from Howlin Island, Jackie had a powerful intuition about her friend's fate. It was just like when she and Amelia had focused on finding crash sites. Concentrating hard, Jackie could see Amelia in her mind's eye, floating along in the ocean on the wreckage. Saw that she was fine, but that Fred Noonan had hit his head and was in bad shape. Jackie's vision of Amelia persisted for three days before the feeling faded. When the image of Amelia vanished, Jackie went to church and let a candle for her friend's soul, which she knew had gone off on a journey of its own. The scant data from Amelia's flight more or less lines up with Jackie's vision. So, let's take a quick look at what we know. There was a plan in place for Amelia to talk to a Coast Guard ship, the Itasca, which would guide her to Howlin Island. But whether they were on the wrong frequency or if Amelia lost her antenna, there's no concrete evidence Amelia ever received any signals from the guide ship. But the Itasca heard her. Amelia's signal grew stronger as she got closer to Howlin Island. At one point so strong, the ship's operator thought she might be right overhead. But she was nowhere to be seen. The messages continued coming in, growing increasingly frantic. We must be on you but cannot see you, she radioed. Gas is running low. Her last message said she was flying on a line 157 southeast and 337 northwest, but didn't say where she was heading. Then silence. The Itasca went out in search of the wreckage and was soon joined by the battleship Colorado and the aircraft carrier Lexington. Airborne searchers joined too, but no one saw any debris or indication of a downed plane. The simplest explanation is that she crashed and sank. This fits with rescue ships not knowing exactly where she was when contact was lost, as well as Jackie seeing her floating before finally feeling her soul slip away. But the lack of tangible evidence, coupled with her status as the foremost woman flyer, has opened the story to tantalizing possibilities. The world was following her progress, so of course the world wanted a definite answer as to what happened. When no firm answer surfaced, the world started putting forth its own theories. People have poured over Amelia's flight plan, matching known technical specifications for the Electra like distance flown on a full tank, with logs saying this climb took longer than anticipated or these headwinds took this much of a toll on her ability to cover a certain distance. Expeditions have been mounted to look for debris at various calculated potential crash sites and the sea floor has been mapped with sonar, revealing no sign of the plane. Researchers have tried to map pieces of metals found near the area, with the same model of Electra Amelia was flying, matching rivet holes to try and prove this piece of metal is from her plane. Others have looked for evidence on land. Gardner Island, which is now called Nukuma Roro and part of the Republic of Kiribati, is a spot on which some people think she might have washed up and survived for some length of time. Still, other people have found records of messages supposedly from Amelia heard well after and far away from the supposed crash site, suggesting she did make it much further than Howlin Island. But then there are theories that her radio signals were prerecorded by a sound alike and the messages from her plane weren't really her at all, and instead she landed at Buka, almost 2,000 miles west of her planned route. This fed into a theory that she was on a secret government mission and somewhat into the even stranger theory that her crash was planned so the U.S. Navy in searching for her remains could map the area without arousing suspicion. It didn't take long for her status as a legend to be cemented. Books have been written about Amelia and what happened on her flight, and my favorite incarnation might be the 1943 film Flight to Freedom. It was based theoretically on a screenplay George Putnam wrote about his wife's final flight and produced by R.K.O. Pictures, which Floyd and Jackie owned. The star, Rosalind Russell, was also a good friend of Jackie's. Which ties nicely into where this topic started for me. It's interesting that Amelia wasn't as good or as decorated a pilot as Jackie, who held more records than any pilot of the 20th century when she died, but her legacy is so much bigger. Granted, Jackie had more years in which to break barriers and records than Amelia, not to mention she had the benefit of flying in the early jet age, which allowed her to secure records at a unique time in aviation's history. Nevertheless, it got me thinking about why Amelia's legacy has been so much more enduring than her friends. If Amelia had been a nobody, far fewer people would care when she disappeared. An unknown pilot dying taking on a big record flight would probably only garner mild news coverage, especially in 1937 I'd say. Aviation was still so new that danger was part of the job. It almost wouldn't have been surprising, but Amelia's celebrity status, so carefully curated and maintained by George, gave her disappearance an almost romantic mystique. Within a year of her flying over the Atlantic Ocean as a passenger, Amelia was a known name, already considered a trailblazer and an icon for women seeking to break the mold. She and George, if you don't know about Jackie's opinion, seemed like the ultimate power couple. Amelia, the first really famous female flyer, was a unique celebrity in a lot of ways, and that makes her disappearing without a trace that much more interesting. It's like Floyd told her. No one could topple her from her position as the foremost female flyer, and she still looked at as the first really notable woman in aviation. We want to know what happened to finally put a definitive bookend on the story of one of history's more recognizable figures. But the strangest thing about the fascination with Amelia is that it's still going. If she was still alive, she would be 123 years old right now. It's wild that interest in her fate didn't peak with, say, the centennial of her birth in 1997, but instead continues to inspire new and very clickbaity articles, always claiming some new evidence that will finally put the story to rest. At the end of the day, I think her association as the best female pilot, coupled with the lack of any hard evidence, will mean we will never lose interest. It's going to be something like the Bermuda Triangle or Atlantis, more myth than anything, and myths endure more than anything. If you'd like to learn more about Jackie Cochran, fighting for space is out now. She's the main figure, but the book is really a dual biography of Jackie and Jerry Cobb, culminating in their budding heads over the question of women astronauts in the early 1960s. I've got a handy link for you to order it down in the description. And that's going to do it for me for today, guys. I want to thank you all so much for watching, and I'll see you next time.