WOMAN’S SOLO

Hokitika Guardian, 14 January 1935, Page 5

WOMAN’S SOLO

HONOLULU TOU.S.A.

MRS PUTNAM’S .SUCCESS

(United Press Association—By Electric

Telegraph—Copyright).

OAKLAND (California), January 12. Mrs Amelia Earhart Putnam, hopped off from Wheeler Field, Honolulu, at 4.45 p.m. on Friday, on a solo flight to Oakland, was successful. She landed at Oakland to-day (Saturday) at 1.34 p.m. Wheeler field wns’sloshy with tropical mud when Mrs Earhart Putnam foiced her wavering ship into the air. She (reported from time to time, via her twovoice wireless equipment. The weather was overcast at the start, the ceiling being at five thousand feet. She carried a collapsible lifeboat, a liferaft, and other safety factors in case she came down at sea.

Mrs Earhart Putnam’s is tbe first solo flight ever to be made from Hawaii to California. Tt took 1096 minutes.

“I am tired,” she said as she popped her bead out of the cockpit, to the

cheers of five thousand, and ran a comb through her hair. Two hours later she went to bed.

Though her plane was watched forshe took the crowd by surprise when she landed without circling the field.

“Tt was worse than my Atlantic flight,” she said. “1 thought I would like to have a sight, of land a couple of times. I was never lost, but 1 veered south. I first sighted land about sixty miles south of San Francisco. I was not sure that it wa.s land. I throttled the motor purposely to save fuel. I do not understand why anvone was worried. The reason that I did not give my position was because T did not shoot the stars with the sextant. Therefore, I. could not. 1 wasted much time because of some of the equipment. The new type of compass threw me off. The ventilator blew off. bothering me considerably, hut the motor functioned perfectly. Commercial flights between Hawaii and California are entirely feasible, and inevitable. We will be flying everywhere in a short time.”

She had two hours of fuel left.