MEELIE

Amelia Earhart wanted a life out of the ordinary. She wanted to be a free woman shackled to no-one. She was resilient and driven, had a mind of her own and wasn’t afraid to express what she thought – and yet, she loved reading and being alone in her library – but to power all this she had to be different, to be adventurous and be in the public eye, yet she was also a shy retiring and private person all at the same time. In one breath she embraced the crowds and in the next she craved the air and the freedom it gave her, far from the maddened crowds that enveloped her and her aviation exploits.
Even though Amelia abhorred the attention, quite anathema to her, she knew it was absolutely necessary. Without them there would be no talks, no money, no sponsorship and no flying. She did her rounds as a speaker, for the public craved her presence, without the articles she herself wrote and the international press to build her reputation there would be no Amelia Earhart, no Lady Lindberg. She was the first woman to cross the Atlantic in an aircraft piloted by men and the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic, and the first to fly solo after Lindberg’s historic flight. Between Lindberg and Earhart there had been many solo attempts but all had failed.
Amelia succeeded in all her endeavours, the flight around the world in her Lockheed Electra was to be her last aviation exploit, something to cap her career. In 1936 the Electra was the first of a new breed of all metal aircraft that could fly around the world, across mainland America and pretty well anywhere around the globe, or so it seemed. Its range was still limited and Amelia relied on a bevy of extra fuel tanks installed in the main cabin. Fred Noonan was to be her navigator. The aircraft and its occupants disappeared on June 2, 1937.