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She went on to win the hearts of millions and became a household word for her record-breaking flights across the oceans and continents.
    This was to have been her last long-distance attempt before marrying a girlhood sweetheart who was a neighboring rancher in Australia. After mastering the air, the luster had strangely worn off and she was looking forward to settling down and raising a family. She had also found what so many others had experienced in the pioneering days of aviation; there was glory but few paying jobs for pilots.
    She had almost canceled the flight, but stubbornly persisted in seeing it through. And now the aviation world waited for word of her rescue with a hope that faded as the days wore on.
    Kitty remained unconscious until dawn the next morning. The sun was beginning to scorch the desert when she struggled from the depths of blackness and focused her eyes on the splintered stub of the propeller. Her vision came blurred. She tried to shake her head to clear the fog and gasped from the pain that stabbed her head. Gently, she touched her forehead. The skin was unbroken but a large knot rose along the hairline. She checked for other injuries and discovered the cracked ankle that had swollen inside her flying boot and the twisted knee.
    She unbuckled her safety harness, pushed open the cabin door, and carefully climbed from the plane. Limping a few paces, Kitty sank slowly onto the sand and took stock.
    Fortunately, there had been no fire, but the faithful Fairchild would never fly again. The engine, three of its cylinders cracked on impact with the ravine slope, was bent upward on a crazy angle. The wings were amazingly intact as was the airframe, but the undercarriage had been mashed flat with the wheels bent outward.
    So much for making repairs and continuing on. Her next problem was to determine her location. She had no idea where she had come down. She judged she had fallen in what they called in Australia a billabong, a dry streambed that is filled seasonally. Only the sand in this one probably hadn’t seen water in a hundred years. The sandstorm had died, but the walls of the small gorge where she lay were a good 20 feet high, and she could not see the landscape beyond. Better she didn’t. It was colorless, desolate, and ugly beyond description.
    She felt a sudden thirst, and the thought of water reminded her of her canteen. She hopped back to the cabin door on one leg, leaned in, and pulled it from under the seat. Its capacity was only half a gallon, and it was less than two thirds full. Kitty realized she’d be lucky if it lasted her more than two or three days and dared not take more than a few sips at a time.
    She decided she had to make an attempt at reaching a village or the motor track. It was suicide to stay near the ship. Unless an aircraft flew directly overhead, the Fairchild could not be seen. Still shaky, she stretched out under the shade of the plane and resigned herself to her predicament.
    Kitty was soon to discover the incredible contrast of temperatures in the Sahara. During the day, the air climbed to 120 degrees F (49 degrees C) and dropped to 39 degrees F (4 degrees C) at night. The agonizing cold of the night was as torturous as the daytime heat. After suffering twelve hours of burning sun, she scrapped out a burrow in the sand and crawled into it. Then she huddled in a ball, shivering and sleeping fitfully until dawn.
    In the early morning of the second day, before the sun began to beat down, she felt strong enough to launch her preparations to abandon the airplane. She fashioned herself a crutch from a wing strut and made a crude umbrella from the wing fabric. Using a small set of tools, she removed the compass from the instrument panel. Despite her injuries, Kitty was determined to strike out for the motor track. She felt she had no alternative.
    Feeling better now for having a plan, Kitty took her logbook and began writing the first page of what was to be the account of her