Atlantis: Devil's Sea Read Free

range of vision was quite far. But no sign of Howland Island or the Itasca, which was supposed to be on station just offshore the unpopulated island. It was waiting for her arrival to refuel the plane.
    She and her navigator, Fred Noonan, had already flown twenty-two thousand miles in the past several months in her quest to be the first woman to fly around the world. But this section was the most dangerous: the longest they would be over water. They’d taken off from Lae, New Guinea, the previous day at noon, and she knew she only had about two more hours worth of fuel in the Lockheed Electra’s gas tanks. She had had the plane specifically modified for the flight, adding fuel tanks and radio-directionn- finding equipment.
    Noonan had been working the direction-finding equipment all through the night, trying to keep them oriented, but reception was intermittent. The Itasca was supposed to be transmitting nonstop, giving them a target to fix on, but there had been long periods where she could pick up nothing.
    “Give me a fix, Fred.” Earhart glanced at her compass. She was on a course slightly north of due east, but Howland was so small that the slightest deviation would cause them to miss it, thus the reliance on the Itasca’s transmissions. If they didn’t make the island, they would run out of gas and go down in the ocean. There was no other land within range for them to divert to.
    “I’m getting a lot of static,” Noonan reported.
    Earhart reached down and grabbed some smelling salts, taking a deep whiff, her eyes tearing. She didn’t drink coffee, and she had learned that she needed the salts on such a long flight. She’d been at the controls for eighteen hours, and tired didn’t even begin to describe how she felt. She’d recently had dysentery and had still not completely regained her strength. She had made the decision, during one of the long legs of the trip, that this would be her last flight of adventure. From now on, she would only fly for pleasure.
    She was a striking woman: tall, with short brown hair. Many in the media had called her Lady Lindbergh, and there was some resemblance between the first woman to fly across the Atlantic and the first man. Of course, Earhart’s first trip across the Atlantic had basically been as luggage, a passenger as two men piloted the plane, but that didn’t stop the sensation the flight caused in 1928. Ever since, she had been pushing the envelope, to a large degree because of the scorn of the few who pointed out that she hadn’t piloted on that first flight, and partly because her husband, George Putnam, the famous publisher, encouraged her, keeping her in the limelight. Throughout the flight, she had filed dispatches from her journal.
    She did fly the Atlantic solo in 1932, only the second person after Lindbergh to do so, and that was just one of the many long-distance-record flights she accomplished. This was to be her crowning achievement, another first in a long list of firsts. Noonan had been chosen to accompany her because he had served as a navigator on the Pan American Pacific Clipper so he was familiar with the region where they expected the most difficulty.
    She had planned on starting from Hawaii and going west, but on takeoff from Luke Field, the tip of one wing of the fuel-laden plane clipped the runway, and the Electra was badly damaged. It was shipped back to the States, and Earhart decided to reverse the direction of the flight and the start point. On 1 June, they took off from Miami, Florida, and flew to Puerto Rico on the first stage. They’d flown along the northern edge of South America to Africa at the narrowest part of the South Atlantic, then across Africa, along the southern tip of Arabia, and across India. That latter stage was another first for Earhart; no one had ever flown nonstop from the Red Sea to India before. They’d then hopped down toward Australia from Karachi to Calcutta, then to Rangoon, Bangkok, Singapore, and Bandoeng.