Amelia Earhart’s Lockheed Electra 10E Special, NR16020, at Khartoum, Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, 13 June 1937. (Purdue University Libraries, Archives and Special Collections)
13 June 1937: Leg 15, El Fasher (Al-Fashir) to Khartoum, Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, 437 nautical miles (503 statute miles/809 kilometers).
“East of El Fasher our route crossed a cartographical blank space as large as an outstretched hand with not a contour line on it or a river or the name even of a ‘village of the sixth grade’. . . The first half is utterly flat, arid, uninhabited, and lacks landmarks altogether. . . Two hours in Khartoum! So . . . we refueled and paid our respects to the cordial British officials whose language sounded so very pleasant to our ears. That done, and our bill for 3 pounds 22s. landing fee settled, we were on our way again. . . .”
—Amelia Earhart
Great Circle route from El Fasher to Khartoum, Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, 437 nautical miles (503 statute miles/809 kilometers). (Great Circle Mapper)
Amelia Earhart’s Lockheed Electra 10E NR16020 at El Fasher, Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, 12 June 1937. (Purdue University Libraries, Archives and Special Collections)
12 June 1937: Leg 14. Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan fly the Lockheed Electra 10E Special, NR16020, from Fort-Lamy in French Equatorial Africa, to El Fasher, Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, a distance of 609 nautical miles (701 statute miles/1,129 kilometers). A leak in one of the Electra’s landing gear struts took several hours to deal with.
Because of the late start we made the objective of that day’s flight El Fasher, in Anglo-Egyptian Sudan. With a following wind we negotiated the journey to something over three hours. As expected, thanks to the day’s heat, which caught up to us, it was particularly bumpy flying, with a particularly desolate region below us.
—Amelia Earhart
Great Circle route from Fort-Lamy, French Equatorial Africa, to El-Fasher, Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, 609 nautical miles (701 statute miles/1,129 kilometers). (Great Circle Mapper)Amelia Earhart’s route for the first 12 days of her around-the-world flight, 9,866 nautical miles (11,354 statute miles/18,272 kilometers). (Great Circle Mapper)
Amelia Earhart’s Lockheed Electra 10E NR16020 in Africa. (Purdue University Libraries, Archives and Special Collections)
11 June 1937: Leg 13. Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan flew the Lockheed Electra 10E Special, NR16020, from Gao, French Sudan, to Fort-Lamy, French Equatorial Africa, a distance of 910 nautical miles (1,047 statute miles/1,685 kilometers), landing at 1:55 p.m. G.M.T.
“As usual, our arising at Gao was before dawn, a start made notable by a marvelous breakfast, whose chief d’oeuvre was a mushroom omelet supplemented with cups of fine French chocolate. Thence our revised route took us to Fort Lamy about a thousand miles away. On this day’s flying to Lamy and the next, we crossed stretches of country barren beyond words, a no-man’s land of eternal want, where the natives cling tenaciously to an existence almost incomprehensible to westerners. . . .”
—Amelia Earhart
Great Circle route from Gao, French Sudan, to Fort-Lamy, French Equatorial Africa, 910 nautical miles (1,047 statute miles/1,685 kilometers). Great Circle Mapper)
Amelia Earhart’s Lockheed Electra 10E Special, NR16020, at Gao, French Sudan (Purdue University Libraries, Archives and Special Collections)
10 June 1937: Leg 12. Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan flew their Lockheed Electra 10E Special, NR16020, from Dakar, French West Africa, to Gao, French Sudan, a distance of 1,016 nautical miles (1,169 miles/1,882 kilometers), in 7 hours, 55 minutes. They landed at 14:50 GMT. They informed local officials that they would remain over night and continue on their Around-the-World flight the following day.
“Weather reports at the Dakar air field were not altogether encouraging. There were barometric lows threatening tornadoes, or their local equivalent, in the Sudanese region through which our route lay. So, instead of going to Niamey as at first planned, on the advice of Colonel Tabera, I decided to shift the course slightly to the north, making our objective Gao on the upper reaches of the River Niger. Just before six o’clock we were in the air and seven hours and fifty minutes later came down at Gao in the French Sudan. . . Our course from the coast inland over the Senegal and Niger districts lay almost exactly due east. Loafing along at a trifle under 150 miles an hour, the 1,140 mile journey ended pleasantly in the early afternoon.”
—Amelia Earhart
Great Circle route from Dakar, Senegal, to Gao, Mali, 1,016 nautical miles (1,169 statute miles/1,882 kilometers) (Great Circle Mapper)
Reception for Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan at Dakar, French West Africa. (Purdue University Libraries, Archives and Special Collections)
8 June 1937: Leg 11. After landing at Saint-Louis, French West Africa, the previous evening, Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan reposition the Lockheed Electra 10E, NR16020, to Dakar, their intended destination. They lay over until 10 June for rest and maintenance on the airplane.
“On the morning of June 8 we flew the 163 miles from St. Louis. The chief reason I decided to lay over a day at Dakar instead of proceeding east was because my fuelmeter gave out two hours after we left Natal. The very efficient chief mechanic at Dakar discovered that a piece of the shaft was broken. While he worked on that – a difficult job to manage from a blueprint printed in English, which he did not understand, in an aeroplane he did not know – I had a forty-hour check of the engines, probably all they would need until we reached Karachi.”
—Amelia Earhart
Amelia Earhart’s Lockheed Electra 10E NR16020 being serviced at Dakar, French West Africa. (Purdue University Libraries, Archives and Special Collections)Straight line distance Saint-Louis to Dakar, French West Africa: 112.16 miles (180.5 kilometers). (Google Maps)
