Does anyone know where I can find short summaries or reports on Amelia Earhart?

Answer 1

Amelia Mary Earhart, July 24, 1897 – missing as of July 2, 1937, was a noted American aviator whose aviation career had many milestones. The first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic[1], as well as setting numerous records[2], Earhart disappeared over the central Pacific Ocean during an attempt to make a circumnavigational flight in 1937.

Earhart was an influential early female pilot [3]instrumental in the formation of The Ninety-Nines, a women's pilots' organization[4]. Among her many awards and achievements, Earhart was the first woman to receive the Distinguished Flying Cross[5]. Intense public fascination with her life, career and ultimate disappearance continues to this day[6].


Early life

Childhood

Amelia EarhartAmelia Earhart (daughter of Edwin Stanton Earhart and Amy Otis Earhart) was born in Atchison, Kansas in the home of her maternal grandfather, Alfred Otis, a former federal judge, president of the Atchison Savings Bank and a leading citizen in Atchison. Alfred Otis had not initially favoured the marriage and was not satisfied with Edwin's progress as a lawyer. Amelia was named, according to family custom, after her two grandmothers. [7] From early on,"Meeley" (sometimes "Milie") was the ringleader while younger sister, Grace Muriel or "Pidge," the dutiful follower. Both girls continued to answer to their childhood nicknames well into adulthood. [8]Their upbringing was unconventional since Amy Earhart did not believe in molding her children into "nice little girls."[9] Their maternal grandmother disapproved of the "bloomers" worn by the Earhart children and although Amelia liked the freedom they provided, she was aware that other neighbourhood children did not wear that fashion.


[edit] A sense of adventure
A spirit of daring seemed to abide in the Earhart children. As a child, Amelia spent long hours playing with Pidge along with climbing trees, hunting rats with a rifle and "belly-slamming" her sled downhill. Some biographers have even characterized the young Amelia as a tomboy. [10] In 1904, with the help of her uncle, she cobbled together a home-made ramp fashioned after a roller coaster she had seen on a trip to St. Louis and secured it to the roof of the family toolshed. Amelia's well-documented first flight ended dramatically. She emerged from the broken wooden box that had served as a sled with a bruised lip, torn dress and a passion for adventure. She exclaimed, "Oh, Pidge, it's just like flying!" [11]

Although there had been some missteps in his career up to that point, in 1907, Edwin Earhart's job as a claims officer for the Rock Island Railroad led to a transfer to Des Moines, Iowa. The next year, at the age of 11, Amelia saw her first airplane at the Iowa State Fair in Des Moines. Her father tried to interest her and her sister in taking a flight. One look at the rickety old "fliver" was enough for Amelia who promptly asked if they could go back to the merry-go-round.[12] She later described the biplane as “a thing of rusty wire and wood and not at all interesting.” [13]


[edit] Education
While her father and mother found a small home in Des Moines, Amelia and Muriel (she never used Grace) remained with their grandparents in Atchison. Until she was 12, Amelia and her sister received a form of home-schooling from her mother and a governess. In 1909, when the family was finally reunited in Des Moines, the Earhart children were enrolled in public school for the first time with Amelia entering the seventh grade. Her father received a promotion, becoming the head of the railroad's Claims Department with a substantial increase in salary and the use of a private railway car. Family trips had always involved the children and with the new privileges, whenever he went on a long trip, Edwin invariably pulled Amelia out of school. She never complained, justifying her frequent absences in that "she gained as much from travel as from curricula."[14]


[edit] Family fortunes
While the family's finances seemingly improved with the acquisition of a new house and even hiring two servants, it soon became apparent Edwin was an alcoholic. Five years later (in 1914), he was forced to retire and although he attempted to rehabilitate with treatment for his alcoholism, he was never reinstated at the Rock Island. At about this time, her grandmother, Amelia Otis died suddenly, leaving a substantial estate that placed her daughter's share in trust, fearing that Edwin's drinking would drain the funds. The Otis house and all of its contents was auctioned; Amelia was heart-broken and later described it as the end of her childhood. [15]

In 1913, after a long search, Amelia's father found work as a clerk at the Great Northern Railway in St. Paul, Minnesota, where Amelia entered Central High School as a junior. Edwin applied for a transfer to Springfield, Missouri in 1915 but the current claims officer reconsidered his retirement and demanded his job back, leaving the elder Earhart with nowhere to go. Facing another calamitous move, Amy Earhart took her children to Chicago where they lived with friends. Amelia was enrolled in Hyde Park High School but spent a miserable semester where a yearbook caption captured the essence of her unhappiness, "A.E.- the girl in brown who walks alone." [16]

Amelia graduated from Hyde Park School in 1916. Throughout her troubled childhood, she had continued to aspire to a future career; she kept a scrapbook of newspaper clippings about successful women in predominantly male-oriented fields, including film direction and production, law, advertising, management and mechanical engineering. [17]She began college at Ogontz School in Rydal, Pennsylvania but did not complete her program. During Christmas vacation in 1917, she visited her sister in Toronto, Ontario. World War I had begun and Amelia saw the returning wounded. After receiving training as a nurse's aide she began work at Spadina Military Hospital in Toronto, Ontario with the Volunteer Aid Detachment until after the Armistice ending World War I was signed in November 1918. By 1919, Earhart had enrolled at Columbia University to study pre-med, but quit a year later to be with her parents who had reunited in California.


[edit] Early flying experience
In Long Beach, she and her father went to a stunt-flying exhibition. A pilot overhead spotted Earhart and her friend, who were watching from an isolated clearing, and dove at them. "I am sure he said to himself, 'Watch me make them scamper,'" she said. Earhart characteristically stood her ground, swept by a mixture of fear and pleasure. As the plane swooped by, something inside her awakened. "I did not understand it at the time," she said, "but I believe that little red airplane said something to me as it swished by." [18]

On December 28, 1920, famed pilot Frank Hawks gave her a ride that would forever change Earhart's life. "By the time I had got two or three hundred feet off the ground," she said, "I knew I had to fly." After that ten-minute flight, she immediately became determined to learn to fly. She drove a truck and worked at the local telephone company to earn $1000 for lessons. Earhart had her first flying lessons, beginning on January 3, 1921, at Kinner Field near Long Beach but to reach the airfield Amelia took a bus to the end of the line, then walked four miles. [19] Her teacher was Anita "Neta" Snook, a pioneer female aviator who used a surplus Curtiss JN-4 "Canuck" for training. Amelia arrived with her father and a singular request,"I want to fly. Will you teach me?" [20] Six months later, Amelia purchased a second-hand bright yellow Kinner Airster biplane which she nicknamed "The Canary." On October 22, 1922, Earhart flew it to an altitude of 14,000 feet, setting a world record for women pilots. On May 15, 1923, Earhart became the 16th woman to be issued a pilot's license by the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale (FAI).[21]


[edit] Aviation career and marriage

[edit] Boston
According to the Boston Globe, she was "one of the best women pilots in the United States" although this characterization has been disputed by aviation experts and experienced pilots in the decades since.[22] [23] Amelia was an intelligent and competent pilot but hardly a brilliant aviator whose early efforts were characterized as inadequate by more seasoned flyers. One serious miscalculation occurred during a record attempt that had ended with her spinning down through a cloud bank, only to emerge at 3,000 ft. Experienced pilots scolded her, "Suppose the clouds had closed in until they touched the ground?"[24] Amelia was chagrined but daring and impulsiveness became her trademark, yet Amelia acknowledged her failings and continued to seek out assistance throughout her career from various instructors. [25]

Throughout this period, her grandmother's inheritance which was now administered by her mother, was constantly depleted until it finally ran out following a disastrous investment in a failed gypsum mine. High-altitude neophyte flyers made little money, consequently, Earhart sold "Canary" as well as a second Kinner and bought a yellow Kissel roadster which she named "the Yellow Peril." After trying her hand at a number of interesting ventures including setting up a photography company [26], Amelia set out in a new direction. Following her parents' divorce in 1924, she drove her mother in the "Yellow Peril" from California to Boston, Massachusetts where Amelia found employment first as a teacher, then as a social worker in 1925 at Denison House and lived in Medford.

Earhart maintained an interest in aviation, becoming a member of the American Aeronautical Society's Boston chapter, eventually elected its vice president. She also invested a small sum of money in the Dennison Airport as well as acting as a sales representative for Kinner airplanes in the Boston area.[27] She wrote local newspaper columns promoted flying and as her local celebrity grew, laid out the plans for an organization devoted to women flyers. [28]


[edit] 1928 transatlantic flight
After Charles Lindbergh's solo flight across the Atlantic in 1927, Amy Guest, a wealthy American living in London, England, expressed interest in being the first woman to fly (or be flown) across the Atlantic Ocean. After deciding the trip was too perilous to make herself, she offered to sponsor the project, suggesting they find "another girl with the right image." While at work one afternoon in April 1928, Earhart got a phone call from publicist, Capt. Hilton H. Railey, who asked her, "Would you like to fly the Atlantic?"

The project coordinators (including book publisher and publicist George P. Putnam) interviewed Amelia and asked her to accompany pilot Wilmer Stultz and co-pilot/mechanic Louis Gordon on the flight, nominally as a passenger but she would keep the flight log. The team departed Trepassey Harbor, Newfoundland in a Fokker F7 on June 17, 1928, landing at Burry Port (near Llanelli), Wales, United Kingdom, approximately 21 hours later. Since most of the flight was on "instruments" and Amelia had no training for this type of flying, she did not pilot the plane. When interviewed after landing, she said, "Stultz did all the flying- had to. I was just baggage, like a sack of potatoes." She added, "...maybe someday I'll try it alone." [29] When the crew returned to the United States they were greeted with a ticker-tape parade in New York followed by a reception with President Calvin Coolidge at the White House.


[edit] An image is crafted

Earhart walks on White House grounds with President Herbert Hoover, January 2, 1932.Trading on her physical resemblance to Lindbergh, [30] whom the press had dubbed "Lucky Lindy," some newspapers and magazines began referring to Amelia as "Lady Lindy." The United Press was more succinct, to them, Earhart was the reigning "Queen of the Air." [31] Meanwhile, Putnam had undertaken to heavily promote her in a campaign including publishing a book she authored, lecture tours and using pictures of her in mass market endorsements for products including luggage, "Lucky Strike" cigarettes (this caused image problems for her, with McCall's magazine retracting an offer[32]) and women's clothing and sportswear. The money that she made with "Lucky Strike" had been earmarked for a $1,500 donation to Commander Richard Byrd's imminent South Pole expedition [33].

Rather than simply endorsing the products, Amelia actively became involved in the promotions, especially in women's fashions. For a number of years, she had sewn her own clothes but the "active living" lines that were sold in 50 stores such as Macy's in metroplitan areas were an expression of a new Earhart image. Her concept of simple, natural lines matched with wrinkle-proof, washable materials was the embodiment of a sleek, purposeful but feminine "A.E." (the familiar name she went by with family and friends).[34][35] The luggage line that she promoted (marketed as Modernaire Earhart Luggage) also bore her unmistakable stamp. She ensured that the luggage met the demands of air travel; it is still being produced today. The endorsements would help Amelia finance her flying. [36]


[edit] Competitive flying
Although she had gained fame for her transtlantic flight, Earhart endeavored to set an "untarnished" record of her own. [37]She made her first attempt at competitive flying in 1929 during the first Santa Monica-to-Cleveland Women's Air Derby (later nicknamed the "Powder Puff Derby" by Will Rogers), placing third. In 1931, flying a Pitcairn PCA-2 autogyro, she set a world altitude record of 18,415 feet (5613 m) in a borrowed company machine.

During this period, Earhart became involved with The Ninety-Nines, an organization of women pilots providing mutual support and advancing the cause of women in aviation. She had called a meeting of women pilots in 1929 following the Women's Air Derby. She suggested the name based on the number of the charter members; she later became the organization's first president in 1930.[38] Amelia was a vigourous advocate for women pilots and when the 1934 Bendix Race had banned women, she openly refused to fly screen actress Mary Pickford to Cleveland to open the races [39].


[edit] Marriage

Amelia Earhart and her husband, George P PutnamFor a while she was engaged to Samuel Chapman, a chemical engineer from Boston, breaking off her engagement on November 23, 1928.[40] During the same period, Earhart and Putnam had spent a great deal of time together, leading to intimacy. George Putnam (GP to close acquaintances) divorced in 1930 and sought out Amelia, proposing to her numerous times before she finally agreed. [41]After substantial hesitation on her part, they married on February 7, 1931 in Putnam's mother's house in Noank, Connecticut. Earhart referred to her marriage as a "partnership" with "dual control." In a letter written to Putnam and hand delivered to him on the day of the wedding, she wrote, "I want you to understand I shall not hold you to any medieval (midaevil [sic]) code of faithfulness to me nor shall I consider myself bound to you similarly.[42]" [43] [44]

Amelia's ideas on marriage were liberal for the time as she believed in equal responsibilities for both "breadwinners" and pointedly kept her own name rather than being called Mrs. Putnam. When the New York Times insisted on calling her by her formal, married name, she laughed it off. GP also learned quite soon that he would be called "Mr. Earhart.[45]" There was no honeymoon for the newlyweds as Amelia was involved in a cross-country tour promoting autogyros and "Beechnut Gum."


[edit] 1932 transatlantic solo flight

Lockheed Vega 5b flown by Amelia Earhart as seen on display at the National Air and Space MuseumAt the age of 34, on the morning of May 20, 1932 Earhart set off from Harbour Grace, Newfoundland with the latest (dated) copy of a local newspaper. She intended to fly to Paris in her single engine Lockheed Vega, duplicating Charles Lindbergh's solo flight. After a flight lasting 14 hours, 56 minutes during which she contended with strong north winds, icy conditions and mechanical problems, Earhart landed in a pasture at Culmore, north of Derry, Northern Ireland. When a farm hand asked, "Have you flown far?" Amelia replied, "From America." The site is now the Amelia Earhart Centre [46].

As the first woman to fly solo non-stop across the Atlantic Earhart received the Distinguished Flying Cross from Congress, the Cross of Knight of the Legion of Honor from the French Government and the Gold Medal of the National Geographic Society from President Herbert Hoover.


[edit] Other solo flights
On January 11, 1935, Earhart became the first person to fly solo from Honolulu, Hawaii to Oakland, California. Later that year, she soloed from Los Angeles to Mexico City and back to Newark, New Jersey. Between 1930-1935, Amelia set seven womens' speed and distance records. She also participated in long-distance air racing, placing fifth in the 1935 Bendix Trophy Race, a commendable effort considering her stock Lockheed Vega was outclassed by purpose-built air racers [47].


[edit] 1937 world flight

Amelia Earhart's Lockheed L-10E Electra
[edit] Planning
Earhart joined the faculty of Purdue University in 1935 as a counselor on careers for women. In July 1936, she took delivery of a Lockheed 10E Electra financed by Purdue and started planning a round-the-world flight. Not the first to circle the globe, it would be the longest at 29,000 miles (47,000 km), following a grueling equatorial route. Although the Electra was publicized as a "flying laboratory," little useful science was planned and the flight seems to have been arranged around Earhart's intention to circumnavigate the earth along with gathering raw material and public attention for her next book. Her first choice of crew was Captain Harry Manning, who had been the captain of the President Roosevelt, the ship that had brought Amelia back from Europe in 1928.

Through contacts in the Los Angeles aviation community, Fred Noonan was subsequently chosen as a navigator. He had vast experience in both marine (he was a licensed ship's captain) and flight navigation. Noonan had recently left Pan Am, where he established most of the company's seaplane routes across the Pacific. He hoped the resulting publicity would help him establish his own navigation school in Florida. The original plans were for Noonan to navigate from Hawaii to Howland Island, a particularly difficult portion of the flight, then Manning would continue with Earhart to Australia and she would proceed on her own for the remainder of the project.


[edit] First attempt

Earhart and Noonan by the Lockheed L10 Electra during their World Flight, 1937.On St Patrick's Day, March 17, 1937, they flew the first leg from Oakland, California to Honolulu, Hawaii. In addition to Earhart and Noonan, Harry Manning and Hollywood stunt pilot Paul Mantz (who was acting as Earhart's technical advisor) were on board. Due to lubrication and galling problems with the propeller hubs' variable pitch mechanisms, the plane needed servicing in Hawaii. Ultimately, the plane ended up at the U.S. Navy's Luke Field on Ford Island in Pearl Harbor. The flight resumed three days later from Luke Field with Earhart, Noonan and Manning onboard, but a tire apparently blew on takeoff and Earhart ground-looped the plane. The circumstances of the ground loop remain controversial. Some witnesses at Luke Field said they saw a tire blow. Earhart thought either the Electra's right tire had blown and/or the right landing gear had collapsed. Some sources cite pilot error.

With the plane severely damaged, the flight was called off and the aircraft was shipped by sea to the Lockheed facility in Burbank, California for repairs.


[edit] Second attempt
While the Electra was being repaired Earhart and Putnam secured additional funds and prepared for a second attempt. This time flying west to east, the second attempt began with an unpublicized flight from Oakland to Miami, Florida and after arriving there Earhart publicly announced her plans to circumnavigate the globe. The flight's opposite direction was the result of changes in global wind and weather patterns along the planned route since the earlier attempt. Fred Noonan was Earhart's only crew member for the second flight. Earhart and Noonan departed Miami on 1 June and after numerous stops in South America, Africa, the Indian subcontinent and Southeast Asia they arrived at Lae, New Guinea on June 29. At this stage about 22,000 miles (35,000 km) of the journey had been completed. The remaining 7,000 miles (11,000 km) would all be over the Pacific.


[edit] Departure from Lae
On July 2, 1937 (midnight GMT) Earhart and Noonan took off from Lae in the heavily loaded Electra. Their intended destination was Howland Island, a flat sliver of land 6500 ft (2000 metres) long and 1600 ft (500 metres) wide, 10 feet (3 m) high and 2556 miles (4113 km) away. Their last known position report was near the Nukumanu Islands, about 800 miles (1,300 km) into the flight. The United States Coast Guard cutter Itasca was on station at Howland, assigned to communicate with Earhart's Lockheed Electra 10E and guide them to the island once they arrived in the vicinity.


[edit] Final approach to Howland Island
Through a series of misunderstandings or errors (the details of which are still controversial), the final approach to Howland using radio navigation was never accomplished. Some sources have noted Earhart's apparent lack of understanding of her Bendix direction finding loop antenna, which at the time was very new technology. Another cited cause of possible confusion was that the USCG cutter Itasca and Earhart planned their communication schedule using time systems set a half hour apart (with Earhart using Greenwich Civil Time (GCT) and the Itasca under a Naval time zone designation system).[citation needed] Motion picture evidence from Lae suggests that an antenna mounted underneath the fuselage may have torn off from the fuel-heavy Electra during taxi or takeoff from Lae's turf runway. The many scattered clouds in the area around Howland Island have also been cited: Their dark shadows on the ocean surface may have been almost indistinguishable from the island's subdued and very flat profile.

During Earhart and Noonan's approach to Howland island the Itasca received strong, relatively clear voice transmissions from Earhart but she apparently was unable to hear transmissions from the ship. Earhart's transmissions seemed to indicate she and Noonan believed they had reached Howland's charted position, which was incorrect by about five nautical miles (10 km). The Itasca used her oil-fired boilers to generate smoke for a period of time but the fliers apparently did not see it.


[edit] Radio signals
After several hours of frustrating attempts at two-way communications contact was lost. Her last voice transmission received on Howland indicated Earhart and Noonan were flying along a line of position (157 - 337 degrees, presumably through Howland Island). Subsequent attempts were made to contact the flyers by radio using both voice and Morse code transmissions. Apparent signals from the downed Electra, although usually unintelligibly garbled and/or weak, were received by operators across the Pacific. Some of these transmissions were later shown to be hoaxes but others were deemed authentic. Bearings taken by Pan American Airways stations suggested the distress calls were originating in the vicinity of Gardner Island. These signals would indicate Earhart and Noonan were on land (or at least partially so) because the Electra's right engine had to be running in order to charge the power-hungry radio's battery. Signals from the plane were heard intermittently for four or five days following the disappearance, however none of these transmissions yielded any understandable position for the downed Electra. Incredibly, a couple of short wave radio listeners on the US mainland may have heard distress calls on upper harmonic frequencies.


[edit] Search efforts
The Itasca made an ultimately unsuccessful search north and west of Howland island based on initial assumptions about transmissions from the plane. The U.S. Navy soon took over the search and over a period of about three days sent available resources to the search area in the vicinity of Howland Island. Based on bearings of several supposed Earhart radio transmissions (along with her last known transmission giving a line of position), some of the search efforts were eventually directed to the Phoenix Islands south of Howland Island. Naval aircraft flew over remote Gardner Island and reported "signs of recent habitation" but the pilots were not aware the island had been uninhabited since 1892. Other Navy search efforts were again directed north, west and southwest of Howland, based on a belief the plane had ditched in the ocean.

The official search efforts lasted about two weeks but Earhart, Noonan and the Electra 10E were never found. At $4 million, the air and sea search by the Navy and Coast Guard was the most costly and intensive in history up to that time but search and rescue techniques during the era were rudimentary. Some of the search was based on erroneous assumptions and flawed information. Official reporting of the search efforts was influenced by individuals wary about how their roles in looking for an American hero might be reported by the press.[citation needed]


[edit] Theories
Two theories concerning Earhart and Noonan's fate have prevailed among researchers and historians. As with many aviation mishaps, poor planning is often cited as a contributing cause.


[edit] Crashed and sunk theory
Many researchers believe the plane ran out of fuel and Earhart and Noonan ditched at sea. This "crashed and sunk" theory, researched for 35 years mainly by Elgen Long, is the most widely accepted explanation for the disappearance.[48]


[edit] Gardner Island theory
The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery (TIGHAR) has suggested Earhart and Noonan may have flown for two-and-a-half hours along the standard line of position Earhart noted in her last transmission received at Howland, arrived at then-uninhabited Gardner Island (now Nikumaroro, Kiribati) in the Phoenix Islands group, landed on the extensive reef-flat there near the wreck of a large freighter and ultimately perished. TIGHAR's research has produced a range of documented, archaeological and anecdotal evidence (but no proof) supporting this theory [49][50]. For example, in 1940, Gerald Gallagher, a British colonial officer (also a licensed pilot) radioed his superiors to inform them that he believed he had found Earhart's skeleton, along with a sextant box, under a tree on the island's southeast corner. He was ordered to send the remains to Fiji where in 1941 British colonial authorities took detailed measurements of the bones. In 1998 an analysis of this data by forensic anthropologists indicated the skeleton had belonged to a "tall white female of northern European ancestry." TIGHAR's executive director Ric Gillespie authored the book Finding Amelia (2006) which describes almost two decades of research regarding Earhart's world flight attempts.


[edit] Legacy

Earhart is widely regarded as a feminist iconAmelia Earhart was a widely-known international celebrity during her lifetime. Her shyly charismatic appeal, independence, persistence, coolness under pressure, courage and goal-oriented career along with the circumstances of her disappearance at a young age have driven her lasting fame in popular culture. Hundreds of books have been written about her life which is often cited as a motivational tale, especially for girls. Earhart is generally regarded as a feminist icon.

Answer 2

go to google type Amelia Earheart summary then they give it to you