Wheeler Army Airfield the first transpacific flight from California in 1927; the great Dole Air Race from California to Hawaii; the first transpacific flight from the U.S. to Australia in 1928, and the first Hawaii-to-Mainland solo flight in 1935 by Amelia Earhart. Ms. Earhart visited Wheeler Field in 1935 in her Lockheed Vega and in 1937 in her Lockheed Model 10 Electra. Kingsford Smith, in his plane, the "Southern Cross", also used the airfield on his historic flights across the Pacific. By 1940, Wheeler Field had evolved into a primary base for Army Air Corps pursuit (i.e., "fighter") aircraft such as the P-40
Amelia Earhart (miniseries) 1921, young Earhart (Susan Clark) has her first training flight, with female flight instructor, Neta Snook (Susan Oliver). That same year she buys her first aircraft, a Kinner "Canary" with the blessing of her father(Charles Aidman) who has become a chronic alcoholic. In 1924, she and her mother (Jane Wyatt) drive from coast to coast, Los Angeles to Boston, in an open roadster, arguing some of the way. In Boston Earhart has an off-and-on relationship with a young man and later goes to work in a children's orphanage. What little money she saves subsidizes her flying. In 1928, while in