Date: 1937
Location: Pacific Ocean
The Conspirators: The Japanese military
The Victims: Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan
History tells us that pioneering aviator Amelia Earhart perished at sea along with her navigator Fred Noonan when attempting to be the first female pilot to fly around the world in 1937. Some conspiracy theorists, however, reject this fact, and embrace one of several alternate fates for Earhart. Among the most popular alternate beliefs is that she was captured by the Japanese and held prisoner for espionage. Most theorists do not claim to know Earhart’s ultimate fate, but usually believe that she was eventually killed by her captors. Others cling to a different history in which Earhart flew to a remote island where she crashed safely and lived for a time as a castaway.
Amelia Earhart ran out of fuel in the immediate vicinity of her intended refueling stop while flying a search pattern.
At the time of her disappearance, Amelia Earhart was one of the most famous people in the world, and arguably the single most famous woman. Her round-the-world flight caused a media circus at every stop. So when it ended prematurely in tragedy, wild stories were proposed almost immediately.
Earhart and Noonan were on the third-to-last leg of their round-the-world flight in 1937. They were flying from Lae in Papua New Guinea to an island called Howland, a small, bleak atoll with nothing on it but an airstrip, which was used by the United States as a refueling point. From there they planned to go to Honolulu, refuel again, then complete their trip by flying to Oakland, California. A US Coast Guard cutter, the Itasca, regularly serviced the airstrip at Howland Island and would stand by to provide a radio direction-finding beam to incoming planes, including the one piloted by Earhart and Noonan. As history shows, Earhart and Noonan failed to reach Howland, disappearing somewhere in the immediate vicinity. And that’s when all the conspiracy theories and alternate histories began to appear.
Many ships were involved in the search for Earhart, not only US Navy ships, but also ships of the Japanese navy and fishing boats as well. Earhart’s fame was such that anyone in the area with a boat sped to the region to help. Some conspiracy theorists believe that one of the Japanese boats, either civilian or military, found Earhart and Noonan at sea and rescued them. But rather than turn them over to the Americans, they were taken prisoner, perhaps charged with espionage, and brought to the Japanese island of Saipan where they were held prisoner. There are many stories from Saipan about her captivity there, including from people who claim to have seen her. Some in Saipan promote this story to draw tourism; there is even a plan to erect a statue of Earhart there.
There are other theories too. National Geographic and the Discovery Channel have taken sides with a group called TIGHAR (The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery) who claim that Earhart and Noonan, hopelessly lost and out of fuel, decided to abandon their search for Howland and fly 400 nautical miles directly out to sea in hopes of reaching an island called Nikumaroro. TIGHAR has cited an old discovery of a partial skeleton plus a number of pieces of litter that they claim have no reasonable explanation other than Earhart having survived on the island for a time as a castaway.
It seems that just about everyone with an idea for a sensationalized TV show or book has come up with some radical false history for Earhart’s final flight and disappearance. The “captured by the Japanese” theory is one that Japanese historians find deeply offensive, as there were no hostilities between the nations at the time, and no known reason why the Japanese would have done such a thing. Indeed, Earhart’s fame was such that she was well known in Japan as well, and they eagerly participated in the search for her.
If, as some theorists claim, the Japanese took her captive to use as propaganda against the United States, then keeping her captivity a secret would have defeated the whole purpose. Also, all of the evidence that Earhart was brought to Saipan is anecdotal. The History Channel explores the possibility that it might be true in the documentary Amelia Earhart: The Lost Evidence, citing a single photograph many claim is Earhart seen from behind in the distance, sitting on a dock at a port called Jaluit, presumably being allowed ashore to stretch her legs on the way to Saipan. The photo also appears in a 1935 picture book published in Japan, so it clearly cannot be relevant. And if it’s not relevant, that whole part of the theory goes up in smoke.
When it comes to the theory of Earhart and Noonan reaching the island of Nikumaroro, that’s easily debunked as well. The pair had no reliable navigation vector and no remaining fuel. TIGHAR claims that this strategy was successful since they found a few scraps of bones and litter. However, Nikumaroro had been inhabited by hundreds of littering people for a century both before and after the time of Earhart’s flight, so their claims that these bits of trash could only be explained by Earhart’s life as a castaway are unlikely.
Earhart’s disappearance is often characterized as an “unsolved mystery,” but the final fate of Earhart and Noonan is actually known beyond any reasonable doubt. The first thing to understand is that aviation in the Pacific Ocean was not nearly as primitive as many theorists seem to believe. At the time of her flight, Pan Am Clipper flying boats were already making scheduled passenger flights across the ocean. US Navy aircraft carriers had been flying in the area for years, and naval aviators had flown just about everywhere. The island Earhart was targeting, Howland, was a heavily used refueling stop for airplanes. In context of the state of aviation over the Pacific in the late 1930s, there was really nothing unusual or especially risky about Earhart’s flight.
In addition, the Itasca was highly experienced at guiding planes into Howland and refueling them. In fact, the Itasca had to temporarily leave the search for Earhart to return to Howland to refuel another plane that was coming in from Hawaii. Also, the Itasca’s radio operators kept meticulous logs of what transmissions were received, and Earhart and Noonan told them their direction and their signal strength (indicating the distance) over the radio. The pair had properly navigated to the island, relying both on the Itasca’s direction-finding beam, and on Noonan’s expertise with the E6B flight computer. The problem was that they arrived slightly ahead of schedule, and passed over Howland (or nearby) just at sunrise with the sun’s glare directly in their eyes, which caused them to miss seeing the island. Once the error was discovered, they advised the Itasca that they were in the immediate vicinity and were flying a search pattern. They kept the Itasca advised of their diminishing fuel levels, and continued with the search pattern until they ran out and ditched at sea. As we know, the search was unsuccessful.
That is tragic but unsurprising, given the vast size of the search area. The boundaries of the area where the plane went down were determined by the Itasca’s radio technicians and verified by other Navy and Coast Guard experts. It was a pie slice north-northeast of Howland with its sides at 337° and 45°, its minimum distance at 40 nautical miles, and its maximum distance at 200 nautical miles. This area covers 30,000 square miles, which made the search close to hopeless. All of this information, and its supporting data, is freely available from the National Archives in the Navy’s ninety-six-page report.