Friday, June 8, 2012

Today She Didn't Go Far

On this day seventy-five years ago Amelia Earhart flew only 163 miles from Saint Louis, Senegal, to Dakar, Senegal.  She will not leave Dakar until June 10.  From her log book we learn that " ... the chief reason I decided to lay over a day at Dakar instead of proceeding east was because my fuel meter gave out two hours after we left Natal. The very efficient chief mechanic at Dakar discovered that a piece of the shaft was broken. While he worked on that - a difficult job to manage from a blueprint printed in English, which he did not understand, in an aeroplane he did not know - I had a forty-hour check of the engines, probably all they  would need until we reached Karachi."  Pictured below is a section of the flight plan for Dakar.  Historic gossip speculates that Amelia's going left when her navigator said to go right might offer a clue to the alleged disappearance.  But This Is Different http://butthisisdifferent.com proposes that Amelia wasn't being stubborn when she refused to follow Fred's directions.  She just had other plans.


No comments: