Amelia Earhart's 1937 World Flight

30 Day Map Challenge · Prompting only. Amelia Earhart and navigator Fred Noonan's 1937 attempt to become the first to circle the globe near the equator: roughly 29,000 miles, eastbound from Oakland, in a Lockheed Electra 10E (NR16020). They flew about 22,000 miles in six weeks before vanishing on the 2,556-mile leg from Lae, New Guinea, to Howland Island on July 2, 1937.

The plan

• Attempt #1 left Oakland westbound on March 17, 1937, and ended on March 20 when the Electra ground-looped on takeoff in Honolulu.
• Attempt #2 reversed direction because of seasonal weather. It left Oakland quietly on May 20 as a "shakedown" flight; the eastbound world flight wasn't announced until the crew reached Miami, and officially began there June 1.
• The planned loop: 28,595 miles in 32 legs. Flown: about 24,285 miles to the vicinity of Howland. Remaining, never flown: Howland → Honolulu → Oakland.

Legs flown (departure dates, statute miles)

#	From → To	Date	Mi
1–4	Oakland → Burbank → Tucson → New Orleans → Miami	May 20–23	2,700
5	Miami → San Juan	Jun 1	1,033
6	San Juan → Caripito	Jun 2	750
7	Caripito → Paramaribo	Jun 3	667
8	Paramaribo → Fortaleza	Jun 4	1,200
9	Fortaleza → Natal	Jun 6	268
10	Natal → St. Louis (unscheduled)	Jun 7	1,961
11	St. Louis → Dakar	Jun 8	103
12	Dakar → Gao	Jun 10	1,130
13	Gao → Fort Lamy	Jun 11	989
14	Fort Lamy → El Fasher	Jun 12	700
15–16	El Fasher → Khartoum → Massawa	Jun 13	951
17	Massawa → Assab	Jun 14	300
18	Assab → Karachi	Jun 15	1,600
19	Karachi → Calcutta	Jun 17	1,390
20	Calcutta → Akyab	Jun 18	335
21	Akyab → Rangoon (unscheduled)	Jun 19	306
22–23	Rangoon → Bangkok → Singapore	Jun 20	1,204
24	Singapore → Bandoeng	Jun 21	560
25–26	Bandoeng ⇄ Soerabaja (unscheduled)	Jun 24–25	710
27	Bandoeng → Koepang	Jun 27	1,165
28	Koepang → Port Darwin	Jun 28	500
29	Port Darwin → Lae	Jun 29	1,207
30	Lae → Howland (never arrived)	Jul 2	2,556

Place names are as used in 1937; each stop's popup gives today's name. Leg mileages are TIGHAR's figures; other sources differ for some legs (e.g. Assab → Karachi is given as 1,600 to ~1,920 mi). Route lines are drawn as great circles between airfields, not as the actual tracks flown.

Sources

• TIGHAR, Amelia Earhart's World Flight (leg table, dates, mileages, layover notes): tighar.org
• TIGHAR, Flight Planning (first westbound attempt; eastward plan announced May 30): tighar.org/wiki
• Bryan R. Swopes, This Day in Aviation (day-by-day leg entries quoting Earhart's Last Flight; Purdue University Libraries archive photos): thisdayinaviation.com, Assab → Karachi
• Encyclopaedia Britannica, Amelia Earhart (29,000-mi plan, ~22,000 mi flown to Lae, search ended July 19): britannica.com
• U.S. National Archives, Radio Log of the Last Communications of Amelia Earhart, USCGC Itasca (8:43 a.m. "157 337" message): archives.gov
• Smithsonian Air & Space, "They Couldn't Stop Amelia Earhart" (British restrictions on flying over Arabia; nonstop Assab → Karachi): smithsonianmag.com
• Amelia Earhart, Last Flight (G. P. Putnam, ed., 1937): her diary and dispatches from the flight.

Map styling: a parchment wash over a label-free light basemap, a hand-drawn graticule, and annotations set in period "placard" style.