PETER SCOTT,
Sir, - Your edition of May 20th carried two articles to mark the 75th anniversary of Charles Lindbergh's epic first solo aerial crossing of the Atlantic in 1927. No mention was made of the fact that, five years later to the day, Amelia Earhart became the first woman to successfully perform a similar feat. This achievement established her as the acknowledged queen of the air, earned her the respect of fellow pilots, and attracted extraordinary attention throughout Europe and the US.
Like Lindbergh, her planned destination was Paris, but serious mechanical problems forced her to make an emergency landing at Culmore, near Derry. The plane came to rest in a field, at the other end of which some children were at play. She subsequently explained to newsmen that, though never in Ireland before the sight of the thatched cottages, green grass and trees had left her in no doubt as to her location. It was an extraordinary coincidence that she had in fact come to the very city in which her great-great-grandfather, John Patton, had been born in 1774.
On May 21st, 1937, the fifth anniversary of her arrival in the maiden city, Miss Earhart set out from Oakland, California, accompanied by Irish-American, Fred Noonan as navigator, to begin a round-the-world flight from east to west. On July 2nd, the plane and its occupants vanished without trace while en route from Lae, New Guinea to tiny Howland Island in the Pacific. A massive sea and air search yielded no results and was eventually abandoned. As someone has observed, however, Amelia Earhart's story is one of those rare events, like Pearl Harbour or the assassination of John F. Kennedy, that refuse to die and continues to this day to generate many theories, some of them quite bizarre.
In the 1960s Saipan, so much in the headlines lately, became the focus of attention. Acting on the basis of evidence which seemed to indicate that the plane might have come down on the island, and that the Japanese, then in control of the territory, had subsequently executed the crew, teams of investigators organised a number of expeditions to Saipan. Receiving much co-operation and encouragement from a number of Catholic priests ministering there, the researchers questioned many residents and excavated various graves. Nevertheless, nothing that could be regarded as conclusive came to light. - Yours etc.,
PETER SCOTT,
Fairview Heights,
Dromore,
Co Tyrone.