Airplanes Flown by Amelia Earhart

Amelia Earhart is one of the most famous early female aviators. Because most pioneer aviators were men, she easily set records among the few fellow women flyers. However, she also set speed and distance records among male pilots.

Amelia was a typical tomboy. She spent her days climbing trees, shooting rats with her .22, and keeping a scrapbook of women who were successful in traditionally "male" professions. As a child, Amelia was not interested in flight, but that all changed when she went for a ride in an airplane piloted by barnstormer Frank Hawks.

Days later, she began taking flying lessons. In the early years of flight, there were not really standards or a certain amount of hours pilots had to have to receive a license; they simply learned the necessary skills to control a plane. She eventually did obtain her airline pilot's license a few years later, and was the first woman and only 17th pilot to do so.

Amelia flew several airplanes over the course of her short life. When beginning flying lessons, Amelia flew a Curtiss JN-4 "Jenny". This craft was a biplane used in WWI for a variety of applications, and was considered much safer and easier to fly than the JN-2 or JN-3 variants. She bought a Kinner Airster for about $2000 after gaining some flying skill. Although the Airster was only a little over 21 feet long and had a top speed of only 85 miles per hour, Amelia used it to set the record for the highest flying woman -- 14,000 feet.

Other airplanes flown by Amelia Earhart include the Fokker F.VII. Although Amelia was not the pilot (in her own words she was a "sack of potatoes"), in this plane she became the first woman to cross the Atlantic by air. She would later become the fastest person, the first woman to solo and the second solo ever to cross the Atlantic in a Lockheed Vega 5B. Crossing from Newfoundland to Ireland in about 15 hours she became an American hero in Europe. The flight took place exactly five years after Charles Lindberg's.

Amelia broke and set various other records such as the first woman to fly solo from Hawaii to the mainland, the first woman to solo across the continental US, and distance records for autogyro pilots.

Her last flight took place in a Lockheed Electra 10E in a equatorial circumnavigation attempt that ended tragically in the Pacific Ocean. While it's uncertain what really happened to Amelia Earhart, her life has been an inspiration for aviators the world around.