Synopsis
When Amelia Earhart disappeared on July 2, 1937, she was flying the longest leg of her around-the-world flight and was only days away from completing her journey. Her plane was never found, and for more than sixty years rumors have persisted about what happened to her.
Now, with the recent discovery of long-lost radio messages from Earhart's final flight, we can say with confidence that she ran out of gas just short of her destination of Howland Island in the Pacific Ocean. From the beginning of her flight, a series of tragic circumstances all but doomed her and her navigator, Fred Noonan.
Authors Elgen M. and Marie K. Long spent more than twenty-five years researching the mystery surrounding Earhart's final flight before finally determining what happened. They traveled over one hundred thousand miles to interview more than one hundred people who knew some part of the Earhart story. They draw on authoritative sources to take us inside the cockpit of the Electra plane that Earhart flew and recreate the final flight itself. Because Elgen Long began his own flying career not long after Earhart's disappearance, he can describe the equipment and conditions of the time with a vivid first-hand accuracy. As a result, this book brings to life the primitive conditions under which Earhart flew, in an era before radar, with unreliable communications, grass landing strips, and poorly mapped islands.
Amelia Earhart: The Mystery Solved does more than just answer the question, What happened to Amelia Earhart? It reminds us how daring early aviators such as Earhart were as they risked their lives to push the technology of the day to its limits — and beyond.
Publishers Weekly
The mystery surrounding Amelia Earhart--who disappeared in the Pacific along with her navigator while attempting to fly around the world in June 1937--has long haunted the popular imagination. Myth and investigative reporting have variously claimed that she became a housewife in suburban New Jersey or a spy for the Defense Department who was captured by the Japanese. In this new investigation, which draws upon 25 years of research and recently rediscovered logs of Earhart's last radio transmissions, the Longs claim to have solved the mystery of her disappearance. The information that they present is convincing but less than startling--essentially, Earhart and her navigator, after hitting a lot of bad weather, ran out of gas. In this respect, the book will appeal only to die-hard Earhart fans. The "mystery" aside, the Longs' detailed look at Earhart's career and the history of early aviation affords a host of other pleasures, chief among them a nearly moment-by-moment description of the fatal flight itself. Communicating their love of flying and the sheer sense of adventure early flyers experienced, the Longs create a tense and at times hair-raising narrative out of the simple routines and extraordinary perils of piloting the primitive aircraft of the early 20th century. While their attention to detail may not grip casual readers who are uninterested in minute descriptions of the mechanics of early planes, the authors present a complete picture of Earhart's fate and offer a tribute to her bravery and risk taking. 4-city author tour; 20-city radio satellite tour. (Nov.) Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.