“Her many records were not just records for female aviation, but they were records of aviation firsts.”
Born in Atchison, Kansas on July 24, 1897, Amelia Earhart was an American aviation pioneer, author, and member of the National Woman’s Party. She was an early supporter of the Equal Rights Amendment.
She wrote best-selling books about her flying experiences and was instrumental in the formation of The Ninety-Nines, an organization for female pilots. She was the first female to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean, earning her the US Distinguished Flying Cross for this record.
According to the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum (SASM) biography, Earheart took her first flight in December of 1920 with veteran flyer Frank Hawks and declared, “As soon as I left the ground, I knew I myself had to fly.”
“Her first instructor was Anita ‘Neta’ Snook who gave her lessons in a Curtiss Jenny. To pay for flight lessons, Earhart worked as a telephone company clerk and photographer. Earhart flew solo in 1921, bought her first airplane, a Kinner Airster, in 1922, and wasted no time in setting a women’s altitude record of 4,267 meters (14,000 feet). In 1923, Earhart became the 16th woman to receive an official Fédération Aéronautique Internationale pilot license,” the SASM site stated.
Earhart wrote three books about her flights —20 hours and 40 Minutes; The Fun of It; and Last Flight —along with articles, editorials, and columns for many magazines and newspapers. She served as aviation editor for Cosmopolitan Magazine and wrote about her flights for National Geographic.
In 1935, Earhart “became a visiting faculty member at Purdue University as an adviser to aeronautical engineering and a career counselor to women students,” SASM’s biography stipulated.
She was a legendary pilot and considered one of the most famous women in the world.
Record-Setting Pilot
Amelia Earhart became the first woman vice president of the National Aeronautic Association, which authorized official records and races. Her many records were not just records for female aviation, but they were records of aviation firsts and include the following records from the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum:
1922 — Feminine altitude record of 4,267 meters (14,000 feet).
1928 — First woman to fly across the Atlantic as a passenger in the Fokker F.VII Friendship.
1929 — Feminine speed record.
1930 — Feminine speed record.
1931 — First woman to fly an autogiro.
1931 — Autogiro altitude record of 5,612 meters (18,415 feet).
1932 — First woman (and only the second person) to fly solo and nonstop across the Atlantic. Also, the first person to cross the Atlantic twice by air.
1932 — First woman to fly solo and nonstop across the United States.
1933 — Reset her transcontinental record.
1935 — First person to fly solo from Honolulu, Hawaii, to the US mainland (Oakland, California).
1935 — Speed record between Mexico City and Washington, D.C.
1935 — First person to fly solo from Mexico City to Newark, New Jersey.
The Final Flight
She was a legendary pilot and considered one of the most famous women in the world. The mystery of her disappearance over the Pacific in 1937 has fueled decades of fascination, books, movies, conspiracies, and theories of her fate.
In an attempt to complete a marathon 29,000-mile flight to circumnavigate the globe, the celebrated aviator and women’s rights symbol took off with navigator Fred Noonan in her Lockheed Electra at an airfield in Papua, New Guinea on July 2, 1937. They flew east toward Howland Island, a tiny sliver of land in the central Pacific Ocean. Somewhere over the ocean, they vanished.
Well-publicized theories included that Earhart and Noonan ran out of fuel and ditched their twin-engine Lockheed Electra near Howland Island while on the third-to-last leg of their trip. Some even speculated that they were “captured and held by the Japanese.” The many theories include that Earhart and her navigator died as castaways after “landing her plane on the remote island of Nikumaroro, a coral atoll 1,200 miles from the Marshall Islands.” This theory stemmed from the fact that “13 human bones were found on Nikumaroro, also known as Gardner Island, three years after Earhart’s disappearance,” reported the New York Post.
The Mystery Solved?
A new forensic analysis of bones found on Nikumaroro hypothesized the bones are likely those of the lost aviator Amelia Earhart. Professor Richard Jantz, professor emeritus of anthropology and director emeritus of University of Tennessee’s Forensic Anthropology Center, re-examined the bones. The Washington Post reported these particular bones were initially determined to be that of a man when measurements were conducted in 1940 by physician D.W. Hoodless.
Modern forensic techniques were unavailable in 1940 when the bones were initially examined. Professor Jantz utilized a modern bone measurement analysis in a computer program called Fordisc, which estimates the sex, ancestry, and stature from skeletal measurements.
The professor re-examined four of the skull and three of the tibia, humerus, and radius bones to determine the bones were likely those of Earhart.
Professor Jantz and other researchers believe the theory that she died as a castaway on the island now known as Nikumaroro, where the bones were discovered in 1940, is the correct one. Professor Jantz concluded that Earhart “was known to have been in the area of Nikumaroro Island, she went missing, and human remains were discovered which are entirely consistent with her. Due to her stature, the bones were inconsistent with most other people.”
Just released this week, Professor Jantz’s research has already made major headlines around the world. Amelia Earhart and the Nikumaroro Bones: A 1941 Analysis versus Modern Quantitative Techniques was published in the US peer-reviewed science journal Forensic Anthropology of the University of Florida in collaboration with The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery (TIGHAR).
From his published research study, Professor Jantz writes:
Forensic anthropology was not well developed in the early 20th century. There are many examples of erroneous assessments by anthropologists of the period.
When Hoodless conducted his analysis, forensic osteology was not yet a well-developed discipline. Evaluating his methods with reference to modern data and methods suggests that they were inadequate to his task; this is particularly the case with his sexing method.
We can agree that Hoodless may have done as well as most analysts of the time could have done, but this does not mean his analysis was correct.
Therefore his sex assessment of the Nikumaroro bones cannot be assumed to be correct. To address the question of whether the Nikumaroro bones match estimates of Amelia Earhart’s bone lengths, I compare Earhart’s bone lengths with the Nikumaroro bones using Mahalanobis distance.
This analysis reveals that Earhart is more similar to the Nikumaroro bones than 99% of individuals in a large reference sample. This strongly supports the conclusion that the Nikumaroro bones belonged to Amelia Earhart. The bones are consistent with Earhart in all respects we know or can reasonably infer.
Until definitive evidence is presented that the remains are not those of Amelia Earhart, the most convincing argument is that they are hers.
The mystery has gone unsolved for eight decades until now. Amelia Earhart’s legacy is that she faced the unknown with boldness and confidence, thus securing her place in the world as a legendary female pilot in the annals of history.
