Into The Wild Blue Yonder

Honoring the history of aviation and its many achievements. This blog aims to celebrate aviators, aviatrises, military aviation, commercial and recreational aviation, aviation in pop culture, and the history of flight.

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Pan Am Stewardess

(Peter Stackpole. 1952)

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1921 Tampier Avion Automobile

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U. S. Navy Report of the Search for Amelia Earhart, July 2-18, 1937., 7/31/1937

“At 1100, 2 July, information was received that failure of the flight was imminent, and shortly thereafter that the plane was believed to be down.”

Series: World War II Action and Operational Reports, 12/7/1941 - 1946 Record Group 38: Records of the Office of the Chief of Naval Operations, 1875 - 2006

80 years ago on July 2, 1937 famed aviatrix Amelia Earhart went missing during her round-the-world flight along with navigator Fred Noonan.  Following the report of her disappearance, U.S. Navy and Coast Guard vessels, including the aircraft carrier USS Lexington, assisted in search operations.  These efforts are detailed in these pages excerpted from the “U.S. Navy Report of the Search for Amelia Earhart, July 2-18, 1937″.  Read the entire report in the National Archives Catalog.

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Charles Lindbergh in May 1927, a few days before crossing the Atlantic.

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Boeing negative No. 4428B Print from Boeing Co. Historical Services Office, Seattle, Washington.

Found photo from estate sale

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Found in Trouble in Paradise.

A Hero for a Night, 1927.

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Lyubov Aleksandrovna Galanchikova (1889—1961), one of the first aviatrixes of the Russian Empire

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An American B-17 and her crew in England in 1942. (LIFE/Margaret Bourke-White)

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Endless List of Favorites

→ historical figures: Wing Walkers

The earliest known instance of a wing-walking on a powered aircraft was an experimental flight in England involving a biplane built by Colonel Samuel Franklin Cody in 1911. At Laffan’s Plain Cody wished to demonstrate how his Flying Cathedral biplanes had the greatest lateral stability even with a passenger 10 feet 6 inches away from the aircraft’s center of gravity. The first wing walker to perform daring stunts was 26-year-old Ormer Locklear. Legend has it that he first climbed out onto the lower wings during his pilot training in the Army Air Service during World War I. Undaunted, Ormer just climbed out of the cockpit onto the wings in flight whenever there was a mechanical issue and fixed the problem. Wing walking was seen as an extreme form of barnstorming, and wing walkers would constantly take up the challenge of outdoing one another.  After this first demonstration, wing walkers continued to play an important part in the Army Air Corps (now the U.S. Air Force) and Navy in the advancement of aviation. They were instrumental in the first air-to-air refuelling, as well as long-distance flight records. Variations on wing walking became common, with such stunts as doing handstands, hanging by one’s teeth, and transferring from one plane to another. When the stock market crash of 1929 occurred, many of the more prominent flying circuses such as The Gates Flying Circus folded. Smaller operations, such as the Flying Aces, with Jimmy and Jessie Woods, continued until the 1938 Air Commerce Act required them to wear a parachute. X

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Dinner aboard a German Berlin-Paris airplane, 1928

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Myrna Loy in Wings in the Dark, 1935

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1923 Martin  MS-1

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Katherine Sui Fun Cheung, the first Chinese-American woman to be a licensed pilot, 1932

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Boeing 307 1940s

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Amelia Earhart was the first female aviator to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean. She has became an inspirational model for many women over the world. Despite her success, in 1937 she disappeared over the central Pacific Ocean, during an attempt to make a circumnavigational flight of the globe. The mystery of her final trip is still continuing today.

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Myrna Loy, Clark Gable / during production of Victor Fleming’s Test Pilot (1938)

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A completed B-17F heavy bomber is checked by final inspectors at the Long Beach, Calif., plant of the Douglas Aircraft Company before it moves to the flight line for rigid acceptance tests, ca. Oct 1942.

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