12. Earhart again transited the Atlantic Ocean as a pilot
After working their way through several airborne legs down the coast of South America, Earhart and Noonan crossed the Atlantic from Natal, Brazil to Saint-Louis, Senegal arriving on June 7. On June 13, they arrived in Khartoum, Sudan. Four days later they arrived in then Calcutta (Kolkata) British India. One week later, again after several overnight stops, found the Electra in Singapore. The following day they arrived in the Dutch East Indies, where delays were encountered due to monsoon rains, and Earhart’s coming down with dysentery. On June 28 they arrived in Darwin, Australia. While there, in order to save room and weight, the parachutes and raft they had theretofore carried were abandoned.
At Darwin, technicians repaired problems with the direction finder aboard the aircraft, reported by Noonan. The next leg of the flight, to Lae, on the island of New Guinea, featured a distance of 1,012 miles. They arrived safely on June 29, 1937. From Lae, the longest single leg of the flight, 2,556 miles, loomed, the destination being Howland Island. After Howland, a 1,900-mile jaunt remained to Honolulu, followed by another 2,400 miles to Oakland. Upon arrival at Lae, Earhart and Noonan had completed approximately 22,000 miles of the proposed journey, over a course of 40 days, mostly without incident.
