In the movie Amelia, famed aviator Amelia Earhart is depicted as a heroic woman with the adventurous spirit and fearlessness of a ten-year-old. But the nitty-gritty of her flights and her passion for adventure don't get nearly as much attention as her love affairs, ideas of open marriage, or her fame as a celebrity of the ‘30s.

The movie begins in 1937 with the breathtaking face of Earhart (Hilary Swank) sitting in the cockpit of her Electra, navigating her way around the world. It then flashes back to her childhood in Kansas, then forward to 1928, when she meets Mr. Putnam (Richard Gere). Gere asks Swank why she wants to fly, and she responds, “Why does a man ride a horse?” Of course, the answer is “to be free.” I hoped this answer would be the baseline of the film, but Earhart’s freedom is short-lived. Soon she is selling clothing, posing for pictures, and doing commercials for waffle irons.

Amelia, which earned mixed reviews and had a less-than-heroic opening weekend, also neglected to mention one part of Earhart’s extraordinary life: her strong connection with National Geographic. In May 1932  she was awarded the National Geographic Society’s gold medal, presented by President Herbert Hoover (photo, above). And three years later  she contributed an article to the magazine titled “My Flight From Hawaii.” Here are some excerpts that fill in several of the movie gaps and give a bit of insight into what it was like to be a pioneering flyer in the 1930s.

Mastering the Details. Amelia Earhart knew all the specifics about flight, and she loved to write about them: her radio code, “KHABQ (a mouthful indeed!),” the number and function of each clock in the cockpit. She writes at length about the weight of her plane (6,000 pounds), the steps taken to land in water (“a steep dive into the sea would so damage any plane that it would tend to sink at once”), and even the fueling process. “Every one of my nine tanks had to be filled, run dry, and checked at different altitudes for various characteristics,” she writes. “It took hours of work to determine how many gallons of gasoline the motor consumed."

Her Words to Live By. With every flight Earhart stuck to her motto: “If there is any time when experience counts it is in putting down the temptation to wander from that course which instruments declare is true to that which the human mind would like to try. A pilot’s maxim should be, usually the instruments are right and you are wrong.” She also writes, “On my first solo Atlantic flight, the altimeter failed, the first failure of the kind I had ever encountered. Over the Pacific my instrument board carried two altimeters, as well as three compasses and other duplications. Also, metal gasoline lines were encased throughout their length in rubber tubing. Live and learn.”

Fear of Fatigue. “I like comfort in flying. More important, I believe comfort decreases fatigue on long flights, and fatigue is a factor to be considered.”

No Pillow Talk in the Plane. "And then, some hundreds of miles out over the Pacific, I heard my husband’s voice as though he were in the next room. “'A.E.,’ he said, “'the noise of your motor interferes with your messages. Please speak a little louder.’”

“A few minutes later I talked back to him, through the little cup microphone—louder, as requested.”

By contrast, when she writes about her motor, she says, “It sounded crisp and lusty.”

Mmmm, Food. What did Earhart eat at 8,000 feet during her flight over the Pacific? "My standard ration—plain tomato juice, one hard-boiled egg, and the most memorable cup of hot chocolate I have ever had.” Earhart also mentions the delicious delicacies in the getaway raft: “The sealed compartments of the raft held tomato juice, chocolate, malted-milk tablets and a container of water.” But she wasn't a big eater while in the air: "One seems to require very little nourishment on a long pull of this kind. Though I had had the lightest sort of lunch at noon in Honolulu, when I reached Oakland I was in no hurry for food. Actually my first meal was postponed until evening, 24 hours after taking off. But I vanquished a roast chicken then, with ease."

A Little Poetry. “The night I found over the Pacific was a night of stars. They seemed to rise from the sea and hang outside my cockpit window, near enough to touch, until hours later they slipped away into the dawn.”

Her Reaction to Seeing Land. “I was glad to see land—but not in a state to 'scream for joy,' as reported in one fervid account. My faithful plane, I believe, would fall apart under me if its pilot grew so senselessly emotional.”

The Hardest Part of Any Flight. “The last hour or two of any flight is always the hardest. If there are clouds the pilot, straining his eyes, is likely to see the illusion of land... I do not let myself turn from my course to explore.”

Earhart the Visionary. Earhart predicted the future of air travel: “To me it seems that regular air transport across both oceans is inevitable, and will probably come out sooner than most people suspect.”

Gadget Geek. Impressed by her new Lear compass, she concludes her article by noting: “With this latest addition to my already generously populated instrument board, I anticipate instructive experience in this most modern means of finding one’s way in the air.” —Nina Page

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