June 1st, 1937, the living legend and so-called “Queen of the Air” Amelia Earhart
is met with raucous fanfare at Miami's municipal airport. She’s already become
the first woman to fly non-stop solo across the Atlantic, and now with her navigator,
Fred Noonan, she’s going to try and become the first woman to circumnavigate the globe.
She climbs into her twin-engine Lockheed Electra and looks to the side;
her husband is waving in the distance, with a look of joy and trepidation on his face.
As the media takes snaps and the crowd jostles to get a better look, she fastens down the hatch and
starts the engines. She signals to have the wheel chocks removed and minutes later the plane is in
the air. Next stop, San Juan, Puerto Rico, over a thousand miles away, and then the world beyond.
Except somewhere on her journey, she, her navigator, and every single part of that
plane disappeared. She got much farther than Puerto Rico; she almost fulfilled her dream,
but something happened. The question is, what? Her disappearance has become one of the great
unsolved mysteries of modern times. Was she captured by the Japanese?
Did she become a castaway and die a slow and painful death? Did she disappear on purpose,
change her name, and become someone else, or did she simply crash into the ocean,
for her plane and her body never to be seen again? Some of our younger viewers might now be thinking,
who was Amelia Earhart? Well, she was only the most famous female aviator of all time
who not only broke records but became an almost mythical figure. She was the inspiration for
movies and books; she was a trailblazer who defied expectations, who greatly impacted the equal
rights movement, and whose grit and daring earned the praise of the president and the public alike.
If she was taken captive, she would certainly have been a catch for her captors. But first,
let’s look at how she got into doing things the people of the times didn’t expect women to do.
She was born on July 24, 1897, to a fairly well-off family in the city of Atchison,
Kansas. Her mother was a great influence on her, telling Amelia and her younger
sister that they should not act like good little girls as their friends did. They
could do what they wanted, be who they wanted. As a child, she loved to explore, go rat-hunting
in the local town, and play a bit harder than other girls did, which got her the reputation
for being a bit of a tomboy. At age seven she took her first flight, a painful one at that.
She flew from the roof of a shed inside a wooden cart she and her uncle had made. Bruised and a
little bit broken, she got out of the box and said to her sister, “It's just like flying!”
Life had its up and downs, but throughout her teens, Earhart never faltered from the path of
wanting to do stuff only men seemed to do. One of those things was flying, but then World War One
got in the way. After seeing injured soldiers when she was visiting her sister in Toronto,
the 23-year signed up to volunteer at a hospital. A year later, in 1918, she was nursing people to
health who had come down with the Spanish Flu. She herself got pneumonia and other health problems,
which led to a lengthy stay in hospital and later at her sister’s home. What did she do
with her downtime? She read, and she read a lot, especially about mechanical engineering.
An audacious pilot was in the making. When she was better, she got the
opportunity of a lifetime when in California she came across the flying ace Frank Hawks.
He offered to give the young woman a ride in his aircraft, to which she said, yes, yes,
yes. She later said about that experience, “By the time I had got two or three hundred feet off
the ground. I knew I had to fly.” And by God, did she fly.
She trained. Ser cut her hair short so as not to attract too much attention from all
the male pilots. She even slept in her leather aviator jacket to make it look worn out like all
the men’s jackets. In short, she became a pilot and a good one at that. By the time she was 25,
she set a world record for flying at an altitude of 14,000 feet (4,300 meters). A year later,
she was given her pilot’s license, becoming only the 16th woman in the US to get one.
Ok, so in 1927, the world-famous Charles Lindbergh became the first person to fly solo
across the Atlantic. Earhart saw that and thought, “I want to do that.” But first, people wanted to
see a woman do the same trip as a passenger. The PR people started thinking about who would
make a suitable passenger and they came up with one Amelia Earhart. On June 17, 1928, at age 31,
she got in a plane with pilot Wilmer Stultz. Together they did the trip and Earhart now
found herself being something of a celebrity. But when they landed her face did not denote
much happiness. When asked how she felt she said, “I was just baggage, like a sack of
potatoes…maybe someday I'll try it alone.” We’ll fast-forward quite a few years now and
tell you that this woman became a household name. She got married, she promoted aviation,
especially for women, and she became the first woman to fly solo across North America and back,
among other records that she set. Then in 1932, she did exactly what
Mr. Lindbergh had done. She flew solo across the Atlantic. She set off from Newfoundland
in a Lockheed Vega 5B and 14 hours, 56 minutes later she landed in Ireland close to a farm. A
laborer on that farm ran up to her plane and asked had she come far, her response was,
“From America.” He was more than a bit surprised. It was after that she became even more of a
celebrity, even becoming a favorite of First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt. But there was one more mission
to accomplish. That was to become the first woman ever to circumnavigate the entire globe.
This is where things get dark. Suffice to say, back then this was some risky venture.
On March 17, 1937. She made her first attempt with navigator Fred Noonan and Harry Manning.
The latter was a skilled navigator but also a dab hand at operating a radio. As you’ll see,
Manning could possibly have ensured we wouldn’t be telling this story.
The trip didn’t go as planned. The flight left from Oakland,
California, and later landed in Honolulu, Hawaii. When it took off from there on its way to a small
island in the Pacific, things went wrong. Some people said on the take-off the tire had blown,
but others said there had been some pilot error. Whatever happened, the plane was in
a serious state of disrepair. It was over. For the second trip, and this is important,
Manning declined to go. He felt too many things had gone wrong the first time. This
judgment saved his life...well, possibly, if you believe Earhart and Noonan died.
They were now without a skilled radio operator. The two of them took off from Miami on June 1,
1937, and as you know, lots of people were there to wave them off. They sailed through
the first part of the journey, making stops in South America to refuel. They did the
same in Africa, in the Indian subcontinent and they also stopped in Southeast Asia.
When they arrived at Lae, New Guinea, on June 29, 1937, they’d already circumnavigated much of the
world. They’d traveled 22,000 miles (35,000 km) and only had another 7,000 miles (11,000 km) to
go over the Pacific. Their next stop would be Howland Island, a tiny place pretty much
smack in between Hawaii and Australia. The term “the middle of nowhere” couldn’t
be more suitable. Nonetheless, the US had built a small landing strip there and that’s whereEarhart
could refuel. The Japanese bombed the island a few years later, but that’s a story for another day.
Anyway, so Earhart and Noonan were in good spirits and ready to leave New Guinea.
Close to Howland island, a U.S. Coast Guard cutter called the Itasca was waiting to guide them down
safely onto the landing strip...The crew would be waiting a long time.
That day the skies were thick with clouds. It wasn’t a good day for flying. On the way,
they had radio transmission problems and it was known that they only had just enough fuel
to make the journey. At some point, the Itasca lost contact with the plane for the last time.
That was it. They were gone. For the next 80 plus years, people would be asking what happened
to that plane. Why was none of it ever found? It wasn’t as if an incredibly big search mission
wasn’t undertaken. We are talking about the most famous female pilot ever, a celebrity that was
known and loved by people in the US and beyond. So what are the facts we do know?
At one point during the journey, everything was going fine. Earhart communicated that she was
flying at an altitude of 10,000 feet, but she said the clouds were thick so she said she was going to
reduce her altitude. Two hours later, she reported that she was flying at an altitude of 7,000 feet.
We also know there were some problems with radio communication from the plane to the ship.
When Earhart was just 200 miles (320 km) away she radioed the ship and said get ready for us.
That ship was using something called a direction finder, which is a technology that uses radio to
direct a plane. Noonan by the way had earlier doubted how well this technology worked.
Basically, how it does work is two radio transmitters connect from two vehicles,
in this case, a ship and a plane. So, by doing this, they know how far away they are
from each other. What’s important, though, especially in this case, is that the ship
and plane are on the same radio frequency. It’s also said Earhart was not very familiar
with the direction-finding system. One thing for sure is, while she kept using the radio so her
plane could be detected by the ship, the ship itself at times couldn’t find the plane’s 3105
kHz frequency. The radio guy on the ship said later that he was “sitting there sweating blood
because I couldn't do a darn thing about it.” But, the plane was so close at that point. In
the last call they received from Earhart she said she thought they were only 100
miles (160 km) away. This is one of the last things she said on the radio:
“ITASCA WE MUST BE ON YOU BUT CANNOT SEE U BUT GAS IS RUNNING LOW BEEN UNABLE TO
REACH YOU BY RADIO WE ARE FLYING AT A 1000 FEET.” The next call also said that the plane was almost
at the island, but they weren’t sure of their position. Earhart couldn’t hear what the ship was
saying, so she requested for Morse Code. A message was sent and Earhart received it, but she said she
still wasn’t able to get a position on the island. There were more problems with the radio and then
there was silence, although, and this is important, claims were made that they
received a signal from the plane, possibly as it landed somewhere.
Some of those signals seemed to lead in the direction of a place called Gardner Island
(now Nikumaroro island), which wasn’t too far from Howland island. It’s thought they
could have also landed on other islands knowing that if they didn’t their fate was in the ocean.
Ok, so here are some interesting and later some outlandish theories.
A massive search operation ensued, with the U.S. Navy and Coast Guard for months going over
250,000 square miles of ocean, not to mention all the spots nearby where it was thought the
plane would have crashed. They found nothing. As you know, some radio signals pointed to the
possibility that the plane landed on Gardner Island. This place was uninhabited, although
humans had lived there in the past. The US Navy flew over the island and reported that there were
no signs of life, but was there a possibility that Earhart and Noonan had become real-life castaways?
This is what the report said after looking over the island, “Here signs of recent habitation
were clearly visible but repeated circling and zooming failed to elicit any answering wave from
possible inhabitants and it was finally taken for granted that none were there.”
But it also said this about a lagoon, “Given a chance, it is believed that
Miss Earhart could have landed her aircraft in this lagoon and swum or waded ashore.”
It was believed she wasn’t there. Then in 1940, the Brits landed on that island
and there they found a human skeleton. They were believed to be male bones, but unfortunately,
those bones were later lost. Still, precise measurements were made of the bones. That
crew also found a shoe and a sextant box, which is navigational equipment. One of the
officers said this about the bones, “The bones look more than four years old to me
but there seems to be a very slight chance that this may be remains of Amelia Earhart.”
Then in 1989, the “Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery” ended up on the island. After exploring
the place, it concluded that someone could have lived there. They analyzed the measurements of
the bones that were found there and concluded that they were from a European woman of the
same height as Earhart. Later, anthropologists from the University of Tennessee also analyzed
the measurements of the bones. In their statement, they wrote that the bones “have
more similarity to Earhart than to 99 percent of individuals in a large reference sample.”
This has also been questioned, not debunked, however. It’s been an ongoing argument for years.
It was later discovered that the sextant box is believed to have come from the USS Bushnell
that was in the area after Earhart went missing. In 2019, a bigger ocean exploration
took place and that didn’t find any of the missing wreckage of Earhart’s plane.
That’s the castaway theory. But what about the bones of Noonan, or what about the plane? It
would have had to have crashed in the ocean with only Earhart making it to the island.
That’s certainly a long shot. You should also know that as well as the US Navy doing searches,
Earhart’s husband sponsored searches of all the nearby islands and nothing was ever found.
What if they landed in the Japanese-held Marshall Islands?
The Japanese could have thought they were spies. The theory goes that this happened and
the Japanese tortured and killed them. It could be the reason that the plane was never found.
They could have possibly made it there with the fuel they had but only if they’d flown
directly there. That’s unlikely, but then there was a woman interviewed many years
later who said she’d seen Earhart and Noonan being executed by the Japanese.
In recent books, other Marshall Islanders were quoted as saying they saw the two
in the hands of the Japanese. Then in 2017, a documentary came
out called “Amelia Earhart: The Lost Evidence.” It talks about a photo that really exists that
shows two people that look at Earhart and Noonan on the islands. That photo has since been credited
to a Japanese travel guide that was published in October 1935, so it couldn’t have been them.
Ok, so what did happen to that plane? Well, there was the theory that Earhart
was a spy for Franklin D. Roosevelt. We know he liked her, but that theory was just a silly rumor.
Possibly the strangest theory is that Earhart and Noonan flew off together into the sunset
and disappeared on purpose. That theory goes that Earhart somehow survived the flight and
changed her name to Irene Craigmile Bolam. We don’t even know what happened to Noonan.
It’s proposed that she became a wealthy banker from New Jersey under that name. But why on
Earth would she have done that, is the question you might ask? Well, in 1965 a man called Joseph
Gervais was asked to speak at an event for retired pilots. One of Earhart’s friends introduced him
to Bolam, and when he met her, he said he knew right then that she was the real Amelia Earhart.
He started to research her past and still thought she was Earhart. Then, more research led to the
publication of the book, “Amelia Earhart Lives.” This led to a lawsuit, but people didn’t give
up. When Bolam died in 1982 a researcher asked to take fingerprints of her. This was denied.
Criminal forensic experts have since said the women weren’t the same, but that hasn’t stopped
more writers from saying this is not true. Bolam might have had an uncanny resemblance to Earhart
and even flown planes, but prior to Earhart going missing, Bolam had been married twice and had had
one kid. How could Earhart have lived two lives? We’d like to tell you what happened to Amelia
Earhart, but the fact is, she is likely going to be on the missing person’s list forevermore.
Now you need to watch, “Did Pan Am Flight 914 Really Land 37 Years Later.” Or, for a very
different kind of disaster story watch, “Plane Crash Leads To Unbelievable Survival Story.”