Content Tagged “oceania”

• While the Propellers Knotted like Pretzels

  In 1937, Time magazine had this to say about Amelia Earhart crashing her plane on the second leg of her world-circling flight. The press really hit different back then.

  For Earhart and Putnam, the crash in Hawaii was a public relations disaster. The March 29 issue of Time magazine drew on the title of a popular Eugene O’Neill play for a piece titled “Mourning Becomes Electra.” After pointing out that several people had flown around the world on commercial airlines, the article said, “Last week Aviatrix Amelia Earhart Putnam took off from Oakland ‘to establish the feasibility of circling the globe by commercial air travel.’ … With her as navigators she took three men, but not her publicity-wise husband, who stayed at Oakland to sell her autographs at $6 each.” Time’s description of the accident was no less sarcastic: “Down the long concrete runway of Luke Field the ship shot at 60 m.p.h. Suddenly the left tire blew out. Lurching, the plane crumpled its landing gear, careened 1,000 feet on its bottom in a spray of sparks while the propellers knotted like pretzels. With sirens screaming, ambulances dashed to the wreck just as Flyer Amelia stepped out white-faced. Said she, ‘Something must have gone wrong.’

  — From the book One More Good Flight: The Amelia Earhart Tragedy by Ric Gillespie, U.S. Naval Institute Press, 2024

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