Amelia Earhart and navigator Fred Noonan left Lae, New Guinea, on 2 July 1937, flying to Howland Island, 4,120 km (2,560 miles) away in the Pacific. It was the longest leg of their around-the-world flight, and the most dangerous because it was at the limit of the plane’s range with a full load of fuel. Also, Noonan’s navigation would need to be accurate if they were to not overshoot the tiny island.
Earhart and Noonan flew west to east, the same direction as the world turns. Therefore, the middle part of their flight was in darkness, before they flew into the dawn and watched the sun rise as they got closer to Howland Island. Because they had crossed the International Date Line during the night, they approached Howland Island on the morning of 2 July, the same day on which they had left New Guinea.
After a series of errors (detailed in Part Three), Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan were never seen again.
The Search for Amelia Earhart
The US Coast Guard Cutter Itsaca was waiting at Howland Island to refuel Amelia Earhart’s plane. At 7.42 a.m. on the morning Earhart and Noonan were expected, the Itsaca received a message from Earhart. ‘We must be on you but cannot see you. Gas is running low.’
The radio signal was so strong that crew members of the Itsaca believed Earhart and Noonan must be very overhead, so they rushed on deck to look for the plane. But they could see nothing. An hour later, the Itsaca received another message. ‘We are on the line 157 – 337. We are circling but cannot hear you.’ This message was followed by single word, ‘Wait.’
After that, nothing was heard from Amelia Earhart or Fred Noonan again.
The non-arrival of the plane immediately triggered one of the biggest sea searches in American history. The Itsaca began searching immediately. The US Navy despatched a Catalina Flying Boat from Hawaii, 2500 km (1600 miles) away, but bad weather forced the plane to return to Hawaii. The navy battleship, USS Colorado was despatched to Howland Island and joined the Itsaca in searching for the missing flyers. The Colorado carried three seaplanes, which searched from the air. A week later, the aircraft carrier USS Lexington also joined the search. The Lexington carried sixty-three aircraft which thoroughly searched a wide area. No sign of Earhart or Noonan was found.
On 19 July 1937, seventeen days after they went missing, Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan were declared missing at sea and the search was called off. Since then, there have been many searches, and theories about what happened to them.
Some of the theories are bizarre. For example, one story suggests that Amelia Earhart turned around and flew back to New Guinea, then secretly returned to America where she lived out her life. Other theories are more credible.
Amelia Earhart had radioed, ‘We are on the line 157 – 337.’ People interpret this to mean she was flying along that grid compass bearing. That is, the pair were flying on the grid compass line 157 degrees (SSE) and 337 (NNW). They were flying back and forth, 23 degrees off a north-south line, looking for Howland Island.
This radio message has led people to look for evidence that they may have landed on other islands to the north or south of Howland Island—or at least crashed in the water and managed to reach another island.
Amelia Earhart and the Marshall Islands
A leading theory is the Marshall Islands Theory. The Marshall Islands are 1500 km (930 miles) northwest of Howland Island and, in 1937, were occupied by Japan, which was spreading its influence in the Pacific. The theory suggests the Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan were off course and flying to the north of Howland Island. When they began their north-south flights in an attempt to locate Howland Island, they actually flew further northwest and arrived at the Marshall Islands. After they landed (the theory suggests) they were taken prisoners by the Japanese.
In 1937, the United States was well aware of the Japanese expansionist plans and also aware that war in the Pacific could eventuate. The Marshall Island Theory suggests the US government were listening in on the Japanese when they captured Earhart and Noonan, but did not intercede because they did not want the Japanese to know that the US had broken the Japanese codes. Years later an undated photograph was found. Some people believe it shows Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan alive in the Marshall Islands. The photograph shows a man and a woman at a dock on Jaluit Atoll, which is in the Marshall Islands Group. The Marshall Islands Theory claims the photograph shows Amelia Earhart sitting on the dock with her back to the camera.
As many ‘experts’ have discredited the photograph as ‘experts’ have claimed it shows Earhart.
The other leading ‘island theory’ is that Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan flew south along a 157 compass bearing and landed at Nikumaroro. In 1937, Nikumaroro was uninhabited, but controlled by the British and named Gardner Island. Nikumaroro is an atoll 7.5 km (4.7 miles) long and 2.5 (1.6 miles) wide. At low tide a long flat sandy beach would make an ideal landing field. Nikumaroro is located on a bearing of approximately 157 degrees, 640 km (400 miles) from Howland Island.
In 1940 (three years after Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan disappeared) the British established a colony on Nikumaroro in an attempt to prevent the Japanese from doing the same. One of the colonists discovered the skeleton of a female, along with a female’s shoe. The bones were judged to have been there for about four years. The colonist suggested in a report that the skeleton might be that of Amelia Earhart. The bones were sent to the colonial headquarters in Fiji.
Amelia Earhart on Nikumaroro
As a small atoll created by a volcano, the sides of Nikumaroro are very steep and the surrounding waters very deep. People searching for Amelia Earhart suggested that she and Fred Noonan may have reached Nikumaroro, landed on the beach and survived on the island for a few months. With rising and falling tides, their plane would have been washed off the beach and slid down the side of the extinct volcano into deep water.
In 2019, famed maritime archaeologist, Robert Ballard (who discovered the Titanic) along with a team of experts and supported by National Geographic, led an expedition to Nikumaroro. Archaeologists and anthropologists scoured the island for signs someone had survived on it for a short time. Nothing of significance was found. Various deepwater equipment was used to search for the plane, but again nothing was found. Other members of the team went to Fiji to examine the skeleton found in 1940 and take samples for DNA testing. But when the bones had been received in 1940, they had been put with others. In 2019, it was impossible to identify with exact certainty which bones were the ones found on Nikumaroro.
Both island theories, along with the many less credible theories, ignore important and obvious information. Firstly, if Fred Noonan was using nothing but a compass and a stop watch, he would have got them very close to Howland Island.
The last radio signals from Amelia Earhart that were received by the Itsaca were strong. They had to be close when, at 7.42 a.m., Amelia Earhart sent the message, ‘We must be on you but cannot see you. Gas is running low.’
It was an hour before the next message when Amelia Earhart said they were on ‘157 – 337’. It has been assumed that she flying back and forth on that line, looking for Howland. But she also says, ‘We are circling but cannot see you.’ So, if she was circling (which would be the obvious thing to do) she would not be flying back and forth in a straight line.
Nor would she have headed off on a compass bearing, hoping to find Nikumaroro, 640 km away. Nor would she have headed for the Marshall Islands 1500 km away. An hour earlier she had said, ‘Gas is running low.’ By the time she sent the final message, her fuel must have been close to exhausted. She would not have gone off searching for a remote uninhabited island. She believed she was close to the Itsaca. She would have stayed in the area, circling, until the plane ran out of fuel.
But the greatest mystery—and the one rarely talked about—is why did she even attempt to fly to Howland Island in the first place? Why did she not land at the Gilbert Islands?
The Gilbert Islands (today known as Kiribati) were a British colony in 1937. They were occupied and offered a series of possible landing fields. They had radio stations and everything Amelia Earhart needed to refuel. Critically, they were halfway between Lae and Hawaii. Amelia Earhart would not have had to fly the extra 1,150 km (700 miles) to tiny Howland and exhaust her plane’s fuel supply. The Gilbert Islands stretched across her flightpath. There’s no way any navigator could have missed them.
The only possible reason that Amelia Earhart did not land and refuel at the Gilbert Islands is that her husband, George Putnam, would have considered it better publicity to make the more dangerous flight to where an American ship waited, rather than the flight that many aviators were already making, to land at a British colony. Putnam had manipulated Amelia Earhart’s career from the beginning. He had driven her to increasingly risky flights and an exhausting workload for many years, purely for his own profit and reputation.
The most likely possibility is that he persuaded her to continue to Howland Island where, on 2 July 1937, she flew in circles until she ran out of fuel and crashed into the sea.
But stories of bones found on deserted islands, or people being taken prisoner and secret government plots, make interesting stories and many books and documentaries have been written about the Amelia Earhart mystery. If, in the weeks after she disappeared, the wreckage of the plane and hers and Fred Noonan’s bodies had been found, then her story would have been forgotten, or at least not mythologised to the extent that it has been.
Howland Island, like Nikumaroro, was once a volcano. It rises steeply from the seabed. The surrounding ocean is very deep. If, as seems likely, Earhart and Noonan were circling near the island when they ran out of fuel, they would have crashed in waters between four and six kilometres deep.
In January 2024, a company called Deep Sea Vision, shared images on social media and claimed they had found Amelia Earhart’s plane in water five kilometres deep. The images were captured using side scan sonar. The images show an outline of what might possibly be a plane. They could also show any number of undersea formations or sunken objects. Whether or not Amelia Earhart’s plane, and the final resting place of herself and Fred Noonan, has been found, remains to the be seen. Conducting a search and verifying the claims at that depth will be expensive and problematic.
jeffmaynard.net
