P/Card 9 from Ireland: Women Flying high.

Amelia Earhart

I am suddenly interested in woman fliers. See me reference in postcard 8 to   Margaret Thomas Warren 

 Now B - who keeps me up to date with news even here in the far Western shaw -  tells me today it is seventy five years since the ill fated final flight of brave aviatrix Amelia Earhart. On this day she was lost some where in Pacific on a record breaking attempt to fly round the world. The post I wrote earlier here this year about aviatrix Anne Morrow Lindbergh has been much visited.

'Their next destination, and the most dangerous stop of the trip, was Howland Island, a tiny island in the Pacific Ocean, 2,556 miles (4,113 kilometers) away. Before Earhart took off from Lae on July 1, there was confusion about which radio frequencies were to be used, which remained unresolved before she took off. As the scheduled time neared for Earhart to approach the island, several transmissions were received from her, demanding to know the weather. A new weather report describing heavy clouds and rain northwest of Howland had been issued, and Earhart had apparently run into the storm. Earhart transmitted several more times but never reached her destination, disappearing somewhere off the coast of the island. A large search party was quickly organized, but no remains of the crew and the plane were ever found. '

Despite our hard won, modern, liberated stance we are rendered somehow timid these days - weighed down by knowledge and the containment of risk, The adventurous spirit and the courage if these women stands outside time.

I salute them here from my safe, even smug, Western  shore.

Still, wish you were here. flying high.
wx