The Traveler's Steampunk Blog

Posted By Traveler on 2. Juli 2010

Today in 1937 Amelia Earhart, famed aviatrix and, aviation pioneer and author, vanished together with her navigator Fred Noonan somewhere over the Central Pacific.

Earhart and Noonan

In many ways, Amelia Earhat is the real-life material, many fictional Dieselpunk-heroines are made of. She was a bold, daring woman and for her time very independent. She kept her family name after marriage and made one thing very clear to her husband (quote including errors): “I want you to understand I shall not hold you to any midaevil code of faithfulness to me nor shall I consider myself bound to you similarly.”

A very liberal and for a woman of the 1930′s very daring statement and position. You cannot help but applaude.

After her marriage, the adventures every Steam- and Dieselpunk envies her for began. She was the first woman to pilot a plane across the Atlantic in a non-stop flight and in 1935 she was the first person ever to fly solo from Honolulu to Oakland, California.

In 1937 she and Noonan embarked on a flight around the world. They neary made it. It was the last leg of 7000 miles across the Pacific when they were lost. On July 2nd they vanished somewhere around Howland Island, having failed to find it. It would have been a refuelling stop.

She has not been forgotten, her name still resounds where aviators gather, her legend lives on!

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Category: Dieselpunk, History
Tags: Amelia Earhart, Aviation, History