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Amelia Earhart Made History in a Plane She Called Her ‘Little Red Bus.’ Here’s How It Became a Revered Museum Artifact and Hallowed Symbol

From Smithsonian Magazine (https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/amelia-earhart-made-history-in-a-plane-she-called-her-little-red-bus-heres-how-it-became-a-revered-museum-artifact-and-hallowed-symbol-180987062/)

Amelia Earhart’s red Lockheed 5B Vega wasn’t just a plane. It was the vessel that turned her into a legend.

On May 20, 1932, exactly five years after Charles Lindbergh’s historic solo flight to Paris, Earhart lifted off from Harbour Grace, Newfoundland, and crossed the Atlantic alone. The date was no accident. Her husband of a year, the recently divorced book publisher George Palmer Putnam, understood the power of symmetry and spectacle. A landing in Paris would certainly keep up the legacy of “Lady Lindy,” a popular nickname comparing Earhart to Lindbergh, that he’d shaped for her through the right haircut and planted press stories.

That didn’t happen. For a stretch, no one even knew where she was. And Earhart, who had hoped to land in Paris like Lindbergh, instead came down in a cow pasture in Northern Ireland—icing and mechanical trouble (and, with no mythologizing, a documented defect of navigational skill) had forced her off course. But it didn’t matter. It was a feat. She became the second person to cross the Atlantic solo, and once he knew she was alive, Putnam sprang into triumph mode. Earhart had become a hero again in a bright-red aircraft she affectionately called her “Little Red Bus.”

The Vega, introduced in 1927 by the newly reorganized Lockheed Aircraft Company, was sleek, fast and built for distance. Designed by Jack Northrop and Gerard Vultee, it helped usher in a new era of high-speed, long-distance flight; it featured a spruce monocoque fuselage and a cantilever wing that eliminated external bracing to reduce drag. Pilots chasing speed records prized the Vega for its aerodynamic grace—a machine that looked as fast as it flew.

After a nighttime crash in 1931, the Vega was returned to Lockheed’s Burbank facility for a full overhaul including a powerful Wasp engine, additional fuel tanks and upgraded navigation tools. Soon the improved Vega was ready for long-haul flights, and in it, Earhart would make history.

It was via Putnam that Amelia Earhart, then only a flirtation and his obsession, first became famous in 1928 as the woman who had bravely crossed the Atlantic—but she didn’t fly the plane. She sat in the back, a symbolic passenger with no controls and barely a view. The press adored her anyway. A Putnam book deal followed, the perfect follow-up to Lindbergh’s 1927 autobiography “We,” named after what he called himself and his plane traveling together.

On July 28, the Vega that thrilled the world in 1932 returned to public view at the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum. Reinstalled in the newly reimagined “Barron Hilton Pioneers of Flight” gallery, the aircraft, freshly conserved, is lit to mimic the golden glow of late-afternoon airfield light, when shadows stretch and adventure seems possible. The gallery’s redesign is part of a sweeping $360 million overhaul, a seven-year effort to reimagine how flight’s great stories are told.

This time, Earhart’s scarlet Vega will share space with Lindbergh’s plane, the Spirit of St. Louis, which has been relocated from the former “Milestones of Flight” gallery. Their new proximity invites a quiet meditation on celebrity, risk and the singular allure of firsts.

Dorothy Cochrane, a storied aviation curator at the museum who joined the Smithsonian in 1977, has watched generations gravitate to Earhart’s plane. “It’s always been incredibly popular,” she says. “People came just to see it. When it left for renovations in 2018, visitors really missed it.” She adds that those long renovations addressed structural concerns inside the museum’s marble-clad building, constructed in the 1970s without anticipating its eventual crowds. By 2015, the building needed major reinforcement. The overhaul made that possible.

While out of view, the Vega underwent conservation at the museum’s Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in Chantilly, Virginia. It required no major repairs. Conservators cleaned every surface by hand with gentle materials. The red paint, untouched since the aircraft arrived in 1966, remained rich and true. While I was researching my newly released book on Earhart and her husband, The Aviator and the Showman, I was fortunate to glimpse the plane from observation windows at the center looking down at a scene both quiet and exacting, like watching history being carefully reawakened.

But how did the plane even get into Smithsonian hands? Its journey to Washington began in Philadelphia.

On December 17, 1933 the Franklin Institute presented Earhart’s Vega in its new Hall of Aviation, and the pioneering pilot Orville Wright attended the ceremony. The plane was suspended midair, as if frozen in ascent after the institute paid $7,600 for the honor, nearly $200,000 in today’s dollars. Earhart and Putnam needed the cash, and Putnam did some wheeling and dealing to find a buyer, soon turning a record-setting aircraft into a cultural relic.

The Franklin Institute transferred the aircraft to the Smithsonian in 1966. It has remained one of the museum’s most beloved objects.

In 1979, James Harrington, the institute’s director of exhibits, sent Lockheed a bold letter asking if the company might reimburse the original cost of the plane. At first, Lockheed declined. But then-president Lawrence Kitchen reversed the decision, writing that Lockheed couldn’t afford not to reciprocate. The company sent a $7,600 check. It was a modest gesture, but one that underscored the Vega’s evolving status as more than just hardware. It was now an American artifact.

While the Vega never inspired the merchandising frenzy surrounding Lindbergh’s Spirit of St. Louis, it quietly took root in the culture. Its profile appeared on posters, on plates and in aviation magazines. For many girls, a photo of Earhart beside the Vega was their first glimpse of a woman in command of the sky. Several companies have issued model kits of Earhart’s red Lockheed Vega over the years, including a detailed metal display version by Metal Earth.

But there is a curious asterisk to this part of the story: As the original plane returns to Washington, another red Vega waits in relative obscurity.

In the 1970s, a model builder named Jack Hill created a scaled replica of Earhart’s Vega, with a wingspan of 41 inches. It was commissioned by Kay Brick, a leader in the Ninety-Nines, the pioneering women pilots’ organization co-founded by Earhart. The model became one of many unusual model planes of the Protestant chapel at New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport, part of the Tri-Faith Plaza designed by Edgar Tafel, a student of Frank Lloyd Wright. The plaza, set on a scenic lagoon, featured three separate buildings for the Jewish, Catholic and Protestant passengers and staff.

Inside the Arts and Crafts-inspired Protestant chapel, the red Vega model was suspended among other model aircraft, echoing the votive ships once hung in Scandinavian coastal churches. It was a symbol of safe passage and aviation’s spiritual dimensions. For a decade, it hung there in quiet tribute.

The chapel complex was torn down in 1989, after the runway and terminal expansion were underway. The reflecting pool where the three houses of worship stood was filled in and replaced by a parking lot. In their place rose a single modern interfaith complex for passengers and staff. In my Earhart files—collected over five years—I kept photos of old clippings of the three impressive buildings and a black-and-white newspaper photo of the many votive planes hanging near the altar.

At the tail end of my research in late 2024, I visited the Aviation Hall of Fame and Museum of New Jersey in Teterboro. After photographing more archives, I was kindly given a tour of the small museum by its director, Ralph Villecca. As he walked ahead in another gallery, I happened to glance up and froze.

Hanging from the ceiling, faded and dust-caked but unmistakable, was the old red votive Vega that once hung at Kennedy. I was sure. I pulled up my archival photos on my phone to check the tail number, NR-7952. It matched. Even Villecca was taken aback. “We always knew it was a Vega,” he marveled. “But we didn’t know it was that Vega.”

Recovered by members of the Ninety-Nines, the model quietly kept watch. Unlike its sibling at the Smithsonian, it was never designed for grandeur. Yet it has held its power. It remains what it was intended to be: a votive object, a gesture of thanks, a promise suspended in midair.

Together, these two red planes tell a larger story. One was meant for spectacle. One was made for reverence. One will now gleam again beneath modern museum lights. The other keeps vigil above an off-the-beaten-path museum’s gallery floor. But both reveal the same legacy. Amelia Earhart’s place in history is not just about a single flight. It is about persistence, endurance and those who protect memory when the noise dies down.

She disappeared in 1937 while trying to fly around the world. She would never see the Vega again. But the country hasn’t stopped looking up.