Amelia Earhart becomes the first woman to fly the Atlantic solo
On this day · 21 May 1932
Five years after Lindbergh, Earhart aimed for Paris, fought ice and a leaky fuel line, and put her plane down in an Irish pasture instead.
On May 20, 1932, Amelia Earhart lifted her red Lockheed Vega off a field at Harbour Grace, Newfoundland, intent on flying alone to Paris and matching Lindbergh’s feat. She did not reach France—but she made history anyway.
The crossing was brutal. Earhart battled a cracked manifold spitting flames, a leaking fuel tank, ice that nearly forced her into the sea, and an altimeter that failed early on. After roughly 15 hours, with the cockpit smelling of fuel, she gave up on Paris and came down in a pasture near Culmore, outside Londonderry, Northern Ireland.
A startled farmhand watched her climb out; she asked simply where she was.
The flight made her the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic, and only the second person ever to do it nonstop and alone. The achievement earned her the Distinguished Flying Cross and cemented her fame.
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