Here’s a sto­ry I didn’t tell about that first attempt at fly­ing around the world:

When the Elec­tra splashed through the pud­dles of the Oak­land, Cal­i­for­nia airport’s run­away and lift­ed into the air on March 17, 1937, Amelia Earhart believed she was on her way to How­land Island. Sure, she had to stop in Hon­olu­lu first. But then she planned to wing her across the 2,556 mile to How­land. Already the Coast Guard cut­ter, Duane, wait­ed in the waters off­shore the island while con­struc­tion crews scram­bled to com­plete three, 150 foot wide runways.

Because it was the most haz­ardous leg of the around-the-world trip, she took along three experts (hard­ly a solo flight). There was Har­ry Man­ning, expe­ri­enced in Morse code and radio direc­tion-find­ing. He planned on stay­ing with Amelia as far as Dar­win, Australia. 

Also onboard was tech­ni­cal advis­er and pilot, Paul Mantz. In truth, Mantz was fly­ing the Elec­tra on that his­toric March day. Amelia sat in the copilot’s seat. Reporters lat­er described the take­off as “excel­lent.” They didn’t know it was the work of the tech­ni­cal advis­ers. Mantz, who claimed he was look­ing for bugs in the plane, intend­ed to fly only as far as the next stop — Honolulu.

And then there was Fred Noo­nan, arguably the world’s best aer­i­al nav­i­ga­tor. Because he didn’t have a prop­er visa to accom­pa­ny the flight far­ther than New Guinea, Noo­nan planned on con­tribut­ing his con­sid­er­able skills only as far as How­land Island. The Coast Guard would return him to Hon­olu­lu after the Elec­tra landed.

It was a good plan and a good team. And it prob­a­bly would have suc­ceed­ed if not for rainy weath­er, mechan­i­cal fail­ures, and the crash that occurred on take­off from Honolulu’s Luke Air­field. This time, Amelia was at the con­trols. The acci­dent wiped out the plane’s main land­ing gear, both pro­pellers and most of the under­side of the fuse­lage. It wouldn’t be ready to fly for month. And that delay made a huge dif­fer­ence. Instead of land­ing at How­land Island at the begin­ning of the jour­ney when “every­one was fresh,” she would be approach­ing it late in the trip – her 33^rd day out. Even worse, she would lose the expe­ri­ence of two key play­ers – Mantz and Man­ning, the only crewmem­ber famil­iar with Morse code and radio nav­i­ga­tion. It was a tremen­dous loss. And it caus­es one to won­der… What would the out­come of Amelia’s around-the-world-flight have been if the first attempt had not met with such dis­as­ter? Would she have made it? Would she still be with us? And if so, would she still be an icon of his­to­ry? Or was it her dis­ap­pear­ance that pro­pelled her into his­tor­i­cal stardom?