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Pioneering aviator Amelia Earhart was a world-renowned figure and trailblazing female role model. Intrepid, free-spirited, and ambitious, she was famously the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic. There seemed to be almost nothing she could not accomplish in her chosen field—including the longest-ever around-the-world flight. She set out to make history. Instead, she flew into legend.
“Please know I am quite aware of the hazards.
I want to do it—because I want to do it. Women
must try to do things as men have tried. When they
fail, their failure must be but a challenge to others.”
Amelia Earhart
Aviator Amelia Earhart and her navigator Fred Noonan have been missing for more than eight decades. On July 2, 1937, they—and their airplane—vanished without a trace, just short of completing Amelia’s greatest achievement to date: circumnavigating the globe around the equator. Two years later, the United States government declared that their plane had crashed in the Pacific Ocean, killing them both on impact. However, their bodies have never been found. The mystery of their fate has inspired books, documentaries, TV shows, movies, songs, and even museums.
Amelia Earhart was born on July 24, 1897, in Atchison, a city tucked away in the northeast corner of Kansas, around 55 miles from Kansas City. Atchison is a quaint city often known as “Little Switzerland” owing to its rolling hills and valleys.11 The area is dotted with beautifully restored Victorian mansions and a trolley car, originating back to the Old Santa Fe Train Depot, that meanders through charming homes and historic sites. It was here on a bluff overlooking the Missouri River that, as a young woman, Amelia first felt the lure of the skies.
Amelia’s parents, Edwin and Amy, struggled financially, but always provided for Amelia and her younger sister, Muriel. When Amelia was about seven years old, the Earhart family visited the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair. There Amelia experienced her first-ever rollercoaster ride. Overjoyed by the sensation of speed and excitement, Amelia decided to build her very own rollercoaster in the backyard. It consisted simply of a wooden box that flew across wooden planks that had been greased with oil.22
When the pressures of providing for the family became too much for him, Edwin turned to alcohol. He closed the doors of his failing law office and took up employment at the Rock Island Railroad in Des Moines, Iowa. The plan was for Edwin and Amy to get settled in Iowa and find a place for the family to live. Until then, Amelia and Muriel would be staying with their grandparents in Atchison, where they enjoyed a secure upper-middle-class lifestyle, attending private school and frequently visiting the local library. At Christmas, Edwin and Amy would return to Atchison with gifts for their girls, including sleds and rifles, which at the time were almost exclusively gifts for boys. When Amelia was 11 years old, she and Muriel left Atchison to be with their parents in Des Moines, but often returned to their grandparents for long visits. In 1915, Amy and Edwin separated and Amelia attended six different high schools before finally graduating from Chicago’s Hyde Park High School.
As a young woman, Amelia developed a strong independent streak. She was convinced that women were just as capable as men in many areas that were traditionally considered “men’s work.” She firmly rejected the traditional roles society seemed to have reserved for women and collected magazine and newspaper clippings about inspirational women who had established themselves in positions that were typically held by men. She took work with the Red Cross as a nurse’s aide in the Spadina Military Hospital in Toronto during World War II, and briefly studied medicine at Columbia University. When Amelia turned 21, her father paid $10 for her to take a ride in an airplane during an air show in Long Beach, California. From that day forward, Amelia knew that her life’s ambition was to fly. She saved the $500 needed for aviation lessons, taking a number of small jobs, including as a photographer, truck driver, clerk, and stenographer.
As Amelia was nurturing her love for flying, women were taking the aviation industry by storm. Blanche Scott was the first American woman to pilot an airplane in 1910, and in 1912 she became the first woman to fly the English Channel. In 1911, Harriet Quimby became the first woman to earn a pilot’s license. On the day that Harriet died in 1912, Ruth Law flew her very first solo flight, and the following year she was the first woman to loop the loop. Amelia was greatly inspired by these pioneering women, but their achievements were continually overshadowed by those of male aviation heroes, such as Eddie Rickenbacker, Howard Hughes, and Charles Lindbergh, who dominated the media in the 1920s.
From the moment she took the controls, Amelia had her eyes set on the record books. Her impetuousness was evident when, after less than three hours of flying lessons, she spent all of her savings on a yellow Kinner Airster biplane that she called Canary.
In May 1923, Amelia became the 16th American woman to obtain a pilot’s license; the same year, she took her first shot at an aviation record, becoming the first woman to fly higher than 14,000 feet (4,267.2m). Following this feat, she continued to log time in Canary until she sold it in 1924.
While retaining her aviation dreams, Amelia’s strong desire to make a contribution to society led her to become a social worker at Denison House in Boston. She commuted there in style, behind the wheel of her yellow Kissel Speedster automobile. Denison House was a women-run institution that provided support to local residents, particularly the many new immigrants to Boston’s South Cove neighborhood. Amelia threw herself into the work with typical enthusiasm. Her considerable personal drive soon led to her organizing adult education programs, women’s clubs, and coaching girls’ basketball and fencing. She also put her flying skills to good use—in 1927, she dropped leaflets advertising a Denison House fundraiser over Boston and nearby Cambridge.
However, the following year would bring Amelia worldwide fame. In June, piloting a tri-motor Fokker F7 named Friendship with a small crew onboard, she became the first woman to fly across the Atlantic Ocean. When she landed in Burry Port, Wales, she had accomplished a goal that three women had died trying to accomplish that very year. People were inspired by her bravery and news of her feat spread across the world. On her return to the US, she was met with a grand parade. The following year, she became the first woman to fly solo across the United States in both directions.33
Amelia bettered these considerable achievements on May 22, 1932, by becoming the first woman to fly the Atlantic Ocean solo. She set out from Harbor Grace, Newfoundland, Canada, bound for Paris, France. She brought with her a toothbrush, a container of hot soup, an ice pack, and straws for three cans of tomato juice.
Owing to ice forming on the wings and mechanical issues, Amelia had to cut her flight short, landing in a field in Derry, Northern Ireland. Despite this, she had set a transatlantic speed record of 14 hours and 56 minutes. She followed this feat in January 1935, by becoming the first person to fly the Pacific solo, when she flew from Honolulu, Hawaii, to Oakland, California.
Amelia took to her newfound fame gracefully. She earned herself the nickname “Lady Lindy,” after her male aviation counterpart, Charles Lindbergh, although this was a name she wasn’t fond of. An inspiration to women everywhere, she hoped that her work and accomplishments would inspire other women to pursue their dreams. In 1931, she married the publishing heir George Palmer Putnam, but only on the understanding that she would lose none of her independence. In a 1935 parade in her hometown of Atchison, she told the crowd, “It is my fondest hope that women will become more interested, as pilots or passengers, or last but not least, let their men fly. Women have been labeled the greatest sales resistance in flying. They won’t go up and they won’t let their men go up. If mother says father will stay down, father stays down.” In Washington, she became the first woman to be awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross and National Geographic Society medals. “Her success expanded the powers of women, as well as men, to their ever-widening limits,” said President Herbert Hoover.44
The one feat left for Amelia to accomplish was an around-the-world flight and, in early 1935, this is what she set her sights on. “To me it can be, if successful, a happy adventure,” she said of her next challenge. “And perhaps there is a place in this prosaic world for the right kind of adventuring.” On her 38th birthday, the airplane she had selected for her global flight was delivered: a twin-engine Lockheed Electra monoplane. For the next five months, the aircraft was prepared with all the proper equipment that would be needed to tackle the almost 30,000-mile (48,280km) route around the world.
In January 1937, Amelia was ready to embark on her latest adventure. She would be assisted by navigator Fred Noonan, who was well-known in aviation circles, having worked as chief navigator for Pan American Airways. They set off from San Diego and arrived in Honolulu in a record-breaking time of 16 hours. From there, they had planned to fly more than 2,000 miles (3,219km) to Howland Island, a tiny speck of an island in the Pacific, and from Howland to the city of Lae in Papua New Guinea. However, as they attempted takeoff, the Lockheed Electra crashed. Uninjured, Amelia and Fred shipped the aircraft back to California for repairs, and in five months’ time they were ready to attempt the around-the-world trip once again. Due to different wind patterns in the summer months, they decided to reverse their route and fly in an easterly direction, circling the world at the Equator.
On July 2, 1937, Amelia and Fred took off in their heavily loaded twin-engine Lockheed Electra from Lae, Papua New Guinea. They were carrying 1,100 gallons of fuel for the 18-hour flight to Howland Island, where they would stop for refueling. It was the heaviest amount of fuel that they had ever carried, and the small aircraft was 50 percent overloaded. It was not even 10 a.m., but the blazing tropical sun was already beating down as they slowly rose above the Huon Gulf, skimming so close to the sea that water sprayed the wings. They had already flown 20,000 miles (32,187km) in the previous six weeks, and now only 7,000 miles (11,265km) of Pacific Ocean separated them from their destination of California, from where they had commenced their momentous journey. Once they landed, Amelia would be the first woman to have flown around the world.
Unbeknownst to the group of eager well-wishers who had gathered at Lae airfield that morning to wave Amelia and Fred goodbye, they would be the last people to ever see them.
Amelia had arranged a schedule with the airways radio operator at Lae, Harry Balfour. She was to transmit messages at 18 minutes past each hour and then Harry was to transmit his messages at 20 minutes past each hour. At 10:20am, 11:20am, and 12:20pm local time, Harry informed Amelia of strong headwinds, but received no response. The stronger the headwind, the faster an aircraft must fly, and the faster an aircraft must fly, the more fuel it burns. At 2:18pm, Harry finally received a radio transmission from Amelia. She said, “Height 7,000 feet, speed 140 knots.” She then said “Everything okay.” At 3:18pm local time, Amelia reported, “Position 4.33 south, 159.7 east—height 8,000 feet over cumulus clouds—wind 23 knots.” This meant that Amelia and Fred were still on course for Howland Island. They had stuck to their original route, but if excessive fuel consumption continued, they would arrive at Howland Island with little to no fuel remaining.55
Amelia and Fred now had to weigh whether to continue the flight or turn back. Darkness was fast approaching, and if they turned around, they risked crashing into the mountainous peaks of Bougainville Island between their location and Lae, which was also surrounded by mountains more than 12,000 feet (3,657m) high. With the airplane being overweight, if they lost an engine, it would be highly unlikely that they could maintain sufficient altitude to clear the mountains. Furthermore, by the time they approached Lae, it would be much too dark and dangerous to attempt to maneuver around the mountains. They thus resolved to push on to Howland Island. As they approached the Gilbert Islands, they transmitted a message to this effect. At this point, they were around four hours away from Howland Island.
At 6:15pm GCT, Amelia transmitted to the USCGC Itasca, a picket ship stationed at Howland Island, to provide air navigation and radio links to Amelia as she came in to land. She said, “Please take bearing on us and report in half hour. I will make noise in microphone—about 100 miles out.” She listened back for a reply but heard nothing other than noise and static, meaning that either the Itasca was not transmitting to her or her receiver was not receiving its signals. They continued en route and began their descent toward Howland Island at 6:33pm GCT. Fred had estimated it should take them ten minutes to arrive, but ten minutes passed and Howland Island was not yet in sight. Amelia transmitted once again, stating, “KHAQQ calling Itasca we must be on you but cannot see you, but gas is running low been unable to reach you by radio. We are flying at altitude 1,000 feet.” There was no reply. Moments later, Amelia informed the Itasca that they were circling back, believing that they had missed Howland Island. “We are on the line of position 157 dash 337. Will repeat this message. We will repeat this message on 6210KC. Wait listening on 6210. We are running north and south.”
After broadcasting this transmission, Amelia and Fred vanished from the skies forever.
Amelia was evidently aware of the dangers. She had written a letter to be released to the media if she were lost at sea: “Please know I am quite aware of the hazards. I want to do it—because I want to do it. Women must try to do things as men have tried. When they fail, their failure must be but a challenge to others.’’
As soon as it became apparent that Amelia Earhart had vanished, the US Navy put out an “all ships, all stations” bulletin. The authorities asked anybody with a radio to listen in to the frequencies that Amelia had been using on her flight: 3105 and 6210 kHz. President Franklin Roosevelt ordered a massive search, which involved planes from the aircraft carrier USS Lexington and flying boats from the battleship USS Colorado.
Amelia’s disappearance sparked the largest and most expensive air and sea search in American history, but to no avail. Amelia’s husband, George, subsequently embarked on his own search. Before the doomed flight, Amelia had written him a note: “I know that if I fail or if I am lost you will be blamed for allowing me to leave on this trip; the backers of the flight will be blamed and everyone connected with it. But it’s my responsibility and mine alone.”66 Two years after their disappearance, the United States government officially declared Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan dead in absentia.
Since their disappearance, theories have abounded from a number of competing researchers and internet sleuths who have dedicated much time, energy, and resources to one of aviation’s most perplexing mysteries.
In 2017, a black and white photograph surfaced that lent weight to the theory that Amelia and Fred had somehow survived. The photograph, which was aired on the History channel documentary “Amelia Earhart: The Lost Evidence,” depicted a group of people on a dock and, in the background, a woman with her back to the camera. Some have suggested that the woman in the photograph could be Amelia, and that another figure facing the camera may be Fred. The photograph is believed to have been taken on a dock on Jaluit Atoll in the then Japanese-held Marshall Islands in 1937. It was discovered by a retired federal agent in 2012 in the National Archives in College Park, Maryland.
“The hairline is the most distinctive characteristic. It’s a very sharp receding hairline. The nose is very prominent. It’s my feeling that this is very convincing evidence that this is probably Noonan,” said Kent Gibson, a forensic analyst who has studied the photograph. “When you pull out, and when you see the analysis that’s been done, I think it leaves no doubt to the viewers that that’s Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan,” agreed Shawn Henry, a former FBI executive director. According to retired government investigator Les Kinney, the image “clearly indicates that Earhart was captured by the Japanese.” However, the Japanese authorities claimed that they had no record of her ever being in custody.77
This wasn’t the first time that such a supposition had been put forward. The Marshall Islands theory had been around since the 1960s, when residents claimed that they had witnessed the aircraft land and seen Amelia and Fred in Japanese custody. In fact, so much weight was placed on this theory that trained dogs were sent to the island by The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery (TIGHAR) and the National Geographic Society to search for traces of Amelia. TIGHAR researchers came away from the island stating that there was no evidence she was ever there and that the woman in the photograph had hair that was much longer than Amelia’s.
Despite TIGHAR’s findings, it is this explanation for Amelia and Fred’s disappearance that Mike Campbell, author of Amelia Earhart: The Truth at Last, believes is the most plausible. Campbell stated that years of research led him to believe that Amelia and Fred were captured by the Japanese after being mistaken for American spies. According to the retired journalist, “Amelia Earhart: The Truth at Last dismantles and debunks the popular theories that Amelia’s Electra crashed and sank off Howland Island on July 2, 1937, or landed at Gardner Island, now Nikumaroro, where the suddenly helpless fliers died of starvation on an island teeming with food sources.”88
This theory divided the internet when it surfaced once again in 2017, garnering mixed reactions around the globe. Campbell’s claim was discredited by Tokyo-based military blogger Yota Yamano, who discovered the same image in the archives of the National Diet Library, the national library of Japan. The photograph formed part of a Japanese travelogue published in Palau in October 1935, two years before Amelia vanished.99
One of the most popular theories remains that Amelia and Fred landed near Nikumaroro Island, which is located in the Pacific Ocean, around 2,600 miles (4180km) north of New Zealand.
On September 23, 1940, a British party was exploring Kiribati’s Nikumaroro Island for habitation when British colonial officer Gerald Gallagher discovered buried human remains, including a skull and 13 other bones. D. W. Hoodless, a British doctor at the Central Medical School in Suva, Fiji, examined them and declared that they were those of a short and stocky man. The remains were quietly forgotten about before disappearing. Then in 1991, a fragment of aluminum patch was discovered in Nikumaroro by TIGHAR. According to TIGHAR, this fragment matched an aluminum patch that was unique to Amelia’s Lockheed Electra. At the beginning of her trip, the custom-made window had been removed from her aircraft and replaced by a modified aluminum patch. “Its dimensions, proportions, and pattern of rivets were dictated by the hole to be covered and the structure of the aircraft. The patch was as unique to her particular aircraft as a fingerprint is to an individual,” read a statement on its Earhart Project site.1010 Shortly thereafter, the researchers on Nikumaroro Island stumbled across fragments of an old shoe, which they suggested was a size 9 woman’s blucher oxford from the mid-1930s with a recently replaced heel and glass eyelets. Photographs of Amelia taken around ten days before her disappearance show her wearing similar shoes.
With this new discovery, TIGHAR began to focus heavily on Nikumaroro Island. In 1998, they announced that they had discovered the original British files on the earlier human remains that had been found on the island. These files recorded measurements of the human remains. According to forensic anthropologists Karen Burns and Richard Jantz, the shape of the bones “appears consistent with a female of Amelia’s height and ethnic origin.”1111
Almost a decade later, TIGHAR visited Nikumaroro Island once again. This time, they were assisted by four border collies—trained sniffer dogs. The dogs were all drawn toward the same area underneath a tree, leading TIGHAR to believe that Amelia and Fred had died at this spot 80 years earlier. In 2018, the human bones discovered on the island were reexamined by Richard Jantz from the University of Tennessee. He stated that, although it was originally believed that they belonged to a man, forensic osteology was not well developed in the early 20th century. Employing the computer program Fordisc—used by forensic anthropologists to compare estimates of bone lengths—he declared that the remains were those of a woman. His findings, published in the journal Forensic Anthropology, concluded that “the only documented person to whom they may belong is Amelia Earhart.”1212
The same year, TIGHAR declared that they had collected testimony from dozens of people who had allegedly heard broadcasts of Amelia and Fred pleading for help in the days after their disappearance. Testimony spanned from St. Petersburg, Florida, to Toronto, Canada. A teenage girl in St. Petersburg heard the desperate pleas: “Water’s high,” “Water’s knee deep—let me out,” and “Help us quick”; while a housewife in Toronto heard this highly disturbing cry: “We have taken in water . . . we can’t hold on much longer.”
This is what TIGHAR’s research revealed: “Scattered across North America and unknown to each other, each listener was astonished to suddenly hear Amelia Earhart pleading for help. They alerted family members, local authorities, or local newspapers. Some were investigated by government authorities and found to be believable. Others were dismissed at the time and only recognized many years later. Although few in number, the harmonic receptions provide an important glimpse into the desperate scene that played out on the reef at Gardner Island.”1313
Based on this testimony, TIGHAR speculated that Amelia and Fred had crash-landed just offshore from Nikumaroro. They had survived the crash and essentially become castaways on the island, spending the next few days sending out radio messages and pleas for help. According to Ric Gillespie, the Director of TIGHAR, they could only use the radio when the tide was so low that it wouldn’t flood the engine, limiting their access to the radio to just a few hours each night. He told the Washington Post that TIGHAR believed that Amelia and Fred died after becoming marooned on Nikumaroro, an island provided with coconuts, crabs, rodents, and birds, but lacking fresh water. This theory contradicts the official US Navy account, which claimed that the duo died after crashing into the Pacific Ocean just short of Howland Island, where they were scheduled to refuel.
In 2019, it appeared, for a moment, as though the mystery of Amelia and Fred’s fate might have finally been solved. Researchers from Project Blue Angel announced that they were investigating the wreckage of an aircraft off the coast of Papua New Guinea. “We’re still exploring to try to find out whose plane it is. We don’t want to jump ahead and assume that it’s Amelia’s, but everything that we’re seeing so far would tend to make us think it could be,” said William Snavely, the director of the project. Snavely first learned of the site in 2005 from a local corrections officer from Buka Island. Then in 2011 the local government official asked him to investigate the wreck and determine where the aircraft had come from. He discovered several characteristics of Amelia’s aircraft as well as a glass disc that may have been a light lens from the aircraft. “It has a rough shape and diameter that appears to be relatively consistent with lights that were on the plane back in the 1930s for Lockheed,” said Snavely.1414 The wreckage is located along the route that Amelia and Fred would have flown. Snavely believes that Amelia and Fred flew for around 12 hours before turning around due to low fuel.1515
Project Blue Angel is currently in the process of raising funds so that they can embark on future dives to the wreckage and attempt further investigation. On their website, they stress that there is no conclusive proof that the wreckage is Amelia Earhart’s aircraft.
Over the years, a number of somewhat fanciful theories have been put forward to explain Amelia Earhart’s mysterious disappearance. One is that Amelia was working as a secret agent for the US government, having been enlisted to spy on Japan—even though her flight path never came close to Japan itself. This theory derives from Amelia’s close relationship with Franklin D. Roosevelt and his wife, Eleanor. Another hypothesis is that Amelia Earhart was taken to Japan, where, as the infamous Tokyo Rose, she broadcasted anti-American propaganda to the world.
In their 1970 book Amelia Earhart Lives, Joe Klass and Joseph Gervais claimed that Amelia had survived the plane crash and then moved to New Jersey, where she changed her name to Irene Craigmile Bolam and worked as a banker. Irene completely denied the authors’ claim, stating: “I am not Amelia Earhart!” and describing the book as “a poorly documented hoax.”1616 National Geographic later hired a facial expert, who dismissed the theory that Amelia and Irene were the same person.
Perhaps the most plausible explanation is that Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan ran out of fuel, crashed in the Pacific, and died on impact, the ocean’s deep, dark waters concealing all evidence of the tragedy. “She ran out of gas and went down, no two ways about it,” said Sally Putnam Chapman, granddaughter of Amelia’s husband. “It was cloudy that day, she couldn’t see the island, she wasn’t sure where she was and went down.” However, this theory, too, has been met with disbelief by those who have difficulty accepting such an unromantic end to an American legend: “We have no evidence anywhere that she crashed into the ocean, even though that’s been the common narrative for so many years,” said former FBI Executive Assistant Director Shawn Henry. However, as Doris Rich, author of Amelia Earhart: A Biography once said: “Maybe the American public doesn’t want to lose the mystery. Maybe they’d rather keep it.”1717
The disappearance of Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan—considered by some the Holy Grail of aviation mysteries—has captured the imaginations of professional and amateur sleuths across the globe. And while Amelia certainly wasn’t the first female flyer, she captivated public attention like no other woman pilot before or since. Sadly, however, the mystery of her final flight has tended to overshadow her earlier accomplishments, and those of the pioneering women who went before her. With her disappearance, Amelia simultaneously became an icon and an elusive American legend. Nonetheless, her motto, “Women must try to do things as men have tried,” still inspires young women to pursue their dreams today.