With a tilted head and arms clasped behind her back, Amelia Earhart smiled for the camera.
Earhart visited Cal Poly June 25, 1936, with famous stunt pilot Paul Mantz. She took a photo in front of the aeronautical department with Mantz, some students and Marty Martinson, the aeronautical department head at the time.
71 years later
More than seven decades after her historic visit, mechanical engineering professor Glen Thorncroft began research on the story behind the photo.
“I was trying to figure out how this obscure moment fits into her life and Cal Poly’s history,” Thorncroft said. “But now we’ve gone and maybe just rewritten a footnote of history.”
Earhart came to check out Cal Poly’s aeronautical department and the rebuilding process of two Boeing P-12 planes — pursuit airplanes used by the U.S. Army.
But Thorncroft said he suspects she actually came for her first test flight in a Lockheed Electra Model 10, the plane she would eventually try to fly around the world in.
“The photo of Earhart with Mantz, Martinson and some students is fairly well-known,” Thorncroft said. “It’s where it all started.”
Someone asked, “I wonder where on campus this photo was taken?” and that was enough to set Thorncroft on his search to find out why Earhart came here, he said.
Thorncroft first contacted Rex Wolf, a drafting technician in the facilities planning department, to ask for help to identify the spot of the photo, he said.
“By taking the old map and superimposing it on the new map, and knowing where that spot should have been, Wolf nailed it to probably within 10 feet,” Thorncroft said.
Today, the spot Earhart and her hosts stood is approximately in front of the west corridor of the Frank E. Pilling Building.
Thorncroft said he would like to get a plaque and footprints spray-painted in the spot of the initial photo. He is raising money for a memorial for this piece of Cal Poly’s history, and would like to get the spot included on campus tours, he said.
“I want to commemorate this spot, because I don’t want to lose track of our history,” Thorncroft said.
The search begins
First, Thorncroft said he found out where the initial picture was taken, but as he kept digging, he became more interested in why she came to Cal Poly too.
Russ Cummings, emeritus faculty of the aerospace engineering department, helped Thorncroft with newsletters containing alumni memories that recall Earhart’s visit.
“According to Howard Wilson, Ben Shirley, Dave Hoover, Louis Barr and Roy Moungovan the people are (from left to right): M.C. “Marty” Martinson, Paul Mantz, Phil Jensen, Amelia Earhart and Harley Smith,” the 1996 newsletter said.
In the same newsletter, alumnus Dave Hoover wrote that he was the photographer of the picture and several others that were taken in the summer of 1936.
“I also had a photo of Amelia Earhart and Marty Martinson at the cabin door of her Lockheed Electra,” Hoover wrote.
After visiting Cal Poly archives, Thorncroft found the second picture of Earhart and Martinson in Clark Field — an old airstrip three and a half miles from the Cal Poly campus.
Vega or Electra?
Hoover said she flew to the airstrip in her Lockheed Electra, but Ben Shirley, another alumnus, claimed she flew her Lockheed Vega.
“Whether she flew her Lockheed Vega or Lockheed Electra would bring new meaning to her visit,” Thorncroft said. “If she flew her Electra, this could mean that her visit was part of the preparation for her attempt to fly around the world.”
Thorncroft showed the photo of Earhart with the airplane in Clark Field to Chuck Keezer, a volunteer at the Estrella Warbirds Museum and aircraft enthusiast.
The question was whether the plane in the second photo was her Lockheed Vega or Lockheed Electra Model 10.
Earhart normally flew a Lockheed Vega for her trips, but flew the Lockheed Electra Model 10 for her attempt to fly around the world, Keezer said. The Electra Model 10 had a twin-engine system and could fly longer ranges, and was more suitable for her trip.
“Every airplane that’s made gets an airworthiness certificate, and her Lockheed Electra Model 10 didn’t get one until July 19, 1936,” Keezer said. “So if this was her Lockheed Electra, she got her plane before everyone thinks she did.”
Many things point to the possibility that the plane she flew was her Lockheed Electra Model 10, he said.
“As she was landing the plane down in Clark Field here in San Luis Obispo, she clipped a fence,” Keezer said. “She practically lived in that Lockheed Vega, so I find it highly unlikely that she would have clipped a fence flying in a plane she knew so well.”
The picture with Earhart and the plane shows a horizontal bar in the rectangular window of the back of the plane, which Keezer said is an indicator of what sort of plane she was flying at the time of the trip.
“When they delivered every Lockheed Electra Model 10, each had some type of stiffener or bar to secure each window,” Keezer said.
The bar in the back window suggested the plane was an Electra.
If she flew her Electra, this would further prove their suspicion that she was test flying the Electra for her trip around the world.
“I’m leaning toward the fact that she got her plane early, somehow, maybe the fact that she was good enough for Lockheed,” Keezer said. “My guess is that she came here to get some expertise with Mantz as her flying mentor.”
Keezer and Thorncroft said they are not sure if she flew her Electra or maybe even borrowed one to fly to San Luis Obispo, but they believe this was her first step in preparing for her final trip.
First drafts of history
Thorncroft combed through Tribune articles from that time and finally found one from the day of her visit.
In the newspaper article, Earhart told reporters she was not yet planning her next trip.
But Susan Butler, historian, said she suspects Earhart had been planning her trip around the world by the summer of 1936. So she lied to the reporters, Thorncroft said.
“We’re still trying to solve this mystery of why she actually came to visit Cal Poly, and whether or not the plane she flew was her Electra or not,” Thorncroft said.
Maybe he will never know which plane Earhart flew or what her real reason for visiting was, but it’s still interesting that she visited Cal Poly and the university could offer her some hospitality, Thorncroft said.
Thorncroft continues to research her visit, and is working toward raising funds for the plaque and commemoration.
“It’s still kind of a cool snap shot of where she was in her career, where Cal Poly was, and it’s a neat story about where we came from,” Thorncroft said. “Because if we realize where we came from, we realize what a great school this is and has been for years.”
This article was written by Meghan Legg.