It seems that Amelia Earhart and Purdue go together like props and wings. Purdue opened the first public university airport in 1930 as part of their commitment to flight. (Fortunately, for Wiley Post, the airport was there for an emergency landing in 1935.) According to John Norberg in Wings of Their Dreams, Purdue graduate James Turpin helped the Wright Brothers with their flying machines. Engineering and agriculture were the foundation of Purdue; aeronautical engineering was part of the mix. Purdue continued the march toward conquering the skies and beyond and is known as the mother of astronauts with twenty-two Purdue graduates in the space race. Purdue’s journey began with the Wright Brothers, had help from Amelia Earhart, and is still hurtling toward the future.
Upward and onward was Earhart’s motto, so in May 1932, three years before her Purdue faculty appointment, she was at the controls of a gorgeous shiny red Lockheed Vega 5B, a single engine plane on display at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C. That craft seems too small to have flown across the Atlantic. The plane had a spruce veneer fuselage and the single cantilever wing (the braces were internal) was also spruce, making the plane light to compensate for extra fuel tanks. Most planes in 1927 (when the Vega was manufactured) had bi-wing constructions. It was the first design from Lockheed. Earhart seemed to prefer this manufacturer to others.
Earhart’s nonstop flight across the Atlantic was a tribute to Charles Lindbergh. She left Harbor Grace, Newfoundland on May 20, 1932, for Northern Ireland, exactly five years after the famous Lucky Lindy flight. Not only did she suffer the same problems with fatigue that Lindbergh had on his flight, but she had her own problems from the start. Bad weather, the bane of pilots, iced the Vega’s pretty red wings until white hid the red. The Vega didn’t have boots like later aircraft to break the ice from the wings, so Earhart’s nightmare came true. Ice added so much weight to her Vega that the plane refused to fly. It dropped 3,000 heart stopping feet before enough ice broke away on its own, and Earhart leveled off. It was enough to wake up an exhausted lady for awhile. Fatigue occurs easily when there is nothing but sky that merges with a like-colored ocean below. Earhart’s nearly fifteen hour flight covered 2,026 miles, but must have seemed like a flight to the moon and back. She landed in a field near Culmore, Londonderry, Northern Ireland.
According to material found in the Purdue University Libraries Archives, Earhart became the first person to cross the Atlantic twice without stopping, set the record for the fastest flight across the Atlantic, and set the record of the longest distance ever flown by a woman. For this Earhart was awarded the Army Air Corps Distinguished Flying Cross by the United States Congress. Many of her medals are from foreign countries. She was not only the darling of America, but of the world. It was the perfect life for a lady who loved to fly.
This is part two of the Purdue-Earhart series. Read part one.
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