Welcome to the world of “The Lost Flight of Amelia Earhart.” Never in the history of aviation has such an on going mystery captured the imagination of the public not only here in the United States but also the entire world. Beloved by all who knew her, she was a woman before her time. In the days before it was widely accepted that women could wear pants, Amelia Earhart wore pants. As ridiculous as it may sound today there was a time when it wasn’t socially acceptable for women to wear pants except in special circumstances. Amelia Earhart, in a leather flying jacket and pants with a scarf around her neck, was out to prove to the world that women could take the lead and do more than peel potatoes seated on a stool in the family kitchen. She was nothing short of an aviation daredevil, and she set records, world records that, in her day, the male echelons of society were sometimes hard pressed to match. Amelia Earhart was a competitor. Now, for the first time, the women of America and women around the world had someone who could challenge the stogy if not impish beliefs of what women were capable of performing. Even so the Earhart mystery has become, in reality, one of the greatest cover-ups in aviation history. Perhaps it was the Department of the Navy or the Marine Corps or the Coast Guard, it is hard to place the blame where it belongs. Nonetheless, it has happened, and it does exist even though we must grimace at the thought that a cover-up has been instigated on the American public.
Amelia Earhart, in her heroic exploits, won medals and accolades from all over the world. She was decorated with the Distinguished Flying Cross by the United States Congress, the Ribbon of the Knights of the Legion of Honor from the Republic of France, the Ribbon of the Order of Leopold from the Kingdom of Belgium, a Medal from the Lafayette Flying Corps of France, Decorations from the Kingdom of Romania; and medals and more medals from the Cities of Philadelphia, Chicago, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, the National Geographic Society, the City of Glendale, California, and a Medal of Honor from the City of New York. She was given the Keys to the Cities of Toledo, Ohio, Buffalo, New York City, Atlantic City, and Pittsburgh. By 1963 when Muriel, Amelia’s sister, kept the records there were thirty one memorials made to Amelia Earhart. Since then the numbers have continued to grow.1
The mystery of Amelia Earhart is as much alive today as it ever has been on the day of her disappearance. What happened to this famous flyer from the farmlands of Kansas? Did she crash and sink into the depths of the ocean? Did she turn back for the Gilbert Islands or the Marshall Islands? Was she on a spy mission? Did Earhart fly south for the Phoenix Islands and the Gardner atoll? Was she captured by the Japanese and executed as a prisoner of war? All these questions and more have stumped researchers for years.
More recently Hilary Swank announced she is making a feature film on Amelia Earhart. Since then it has made its debut in theaters across the land. It turned out to be along the same lines of what Diane Keaton and Susan Clark did for television several years ago. It has since passed under the bridges of time the same as the Clark and Keaton episodes. However, Ms. Swank believes it will win an Academy Award. Whatever it wins, I have forever felt that none of these type of films attack the real issues of what happened at Howland Island on July 2, 1937, and suffice to say what happened at Howland is truly the one question that is on the lips of anyone who has followed the Amelia Earhart story. It is in reality a travesty of justice that book authors and researchers have woven false explanations of the Earhart loss and forced their ideas on an innocent and unknowing public. There is reason to believe it has happened. Some of the work that has been done on the Earhart loss is indeed admirable, but then again the work is sadly lacking and this comment includes book authors and motion picture and TV producers. It happens to be true.
I will have to confess, it was the Earhart loss that fired my imagination. What would be your preference? Crash her in the ocean and down she goes to the bottom of the sea? How about she died on a deserted island eaten alive by giant crabs on the beach? How thrilling? I would expect to find stories such as those in the tabloids of the local supermarket. If I was going to create a book or a screenplay based on the Amelia Earhart story it had to have dramatic value, and it had to be related, as closely as I could make it, to what appears to be the actual chain of the known events. I want to tell you that I have a Private Pilot’s License with 500 hours flying time (which isn’t much compared to some of the veteran pilots). My flying came mostly from flying a Beech V-Tail Bonanza from Addison Airport, a suburb with a large commercial airport on the northern side of Dallas county. The F.A.A. classifies Bonanzas as high performance in the Utility Class. Indeed they are. Early in the history of the Vtails they were nicknamed the “Doctor Killers.” However, Beechcraft engineered a fix for V-tails, and the crash rate came down to a more manageable amount. Well, like Amelia Earhart, I was one of those ladies who likes to go out and motor around in the sky. Lucky for me before I wound up as the subject matter on the evening news, I decided to sell the airplane and live another day. More recently the price of 100-octane aviation gasoline has sky rocketed which grounded a lot of flying enthusiasts. It wasn’t as much fun any more.
It was the airplane background that I have that convinced me that the stories I was hearing about Amelia Earhart did not, simply stated, make any sense. I thought the vast majority of the theories had huge unexplained gaps in their arguments. The final proof is missing. There are no bodies we can point to at this date and say these are the remains of Amelia Earhart or her navigator Fred Noonan. However, there is a lot of suspicion which exists as to who did what on the island of Saipan after the war.2 Nothing has ever been found that can identify the missing airplane. Lockheed Electra NR 16020 has, for all practical purposes, disappeared completely off the face of the earth. It evidently was destroyed in World War II, but there are clues of Amelia’s crashed airplane appearing now at Mili Atoll, Marshall Islands. The Tighar group of researchers has, in recent days, made several claims they have found parts of the airplane; however, members of Lost Flight Group have tracked down the Tighar findings, and literally none of them have ever been verified by our group. This includes the sextant box, the plexiglas, the shoes (wrong size), the bones from the beach, the dados, the aircraft engine, the radio signals, literally all of the artifacts Tighar has presented. None of them have been traceable to the Earhart airplane. If you are internet oriented please look at the comprehensive arguments that have been presented at :
http://lostflight.net/new_page_14.htm
In the invasion of the Kwajelein Chain of the Marshall Islands in World War II, the island of Roi Namur yielded a briefcase in the ruins of the airport. The briefcase was embossed with “A.E.” in gold leaf. This account was written by Eugene Sims, writing for the Kwajelein Hourglass, a publication of the US Army. In Feb 1944, at the same Roi-Namur, three marines entered a Japanese barracks and found articles of women’s clothing and a room outfitted for a woman. One of the marines, W.B. Jackson, reported they found a suitcase containing feminine items and a bound locked book lettered “10 year Diary of Amelia Earhart.”3 Another Marine in World War II, Robert Wallack, vehemently tells the story of discovering a second Amelia Earhart briefcase locked in a safe on the island of Saipan. The second briefcase contained Earhart’s passport, aeronautical maps, receipts, and all the personal records of the 1937 round-the-world flight.4
It was indeed an amazing find, but, the same as the artifacts from the island of Roi Namur, they unfortunately disappeared into the arms of Naval officers and have never been heard from since. It would lead anyone to think some type of a cover-up was in process. Maybe there was or maybe I should say “is” instead of “was.”
The artifacts we desperately need from Roi-Namur and from Saipan have never surfaced. The only thing that exists is reports of what was found such as the findings at Roi-Namur and the Robert Wallack briefcase from Saipan. On the other hand, I must say it wasn’t just the missing briefcases, or the clothing, or the diary. The evidence that leads me on includes statements made by the late Admiral Chester Nimitz that Amelia Earhart went down in the Marshall Islands and was captured by the Japanese. How could anyone ignore such a statement from such a trust worthy source? It was not only the Chester Nimitz statement that fired my imagination it was also the mysterious transmissions received at Nauru Island.
The airplane did not crash at sea. If it had crashed at sea, none of the amazing post-loss messages (such as the Nauru intercept) would have been possible. We know that by the 24th hour of the flight, the airplane had to be down and down on dry land. If the airplane was in the water, particularly salt water, it would have shorted the battery circuits and the dynamotor (voltage booster). It was down. It had to be down, somewhere, but the question is where? A radio operator and a Mrs. Garcia, the wife of the Nauru Island Administrator, both heard Earhart calling on the 6210kcs. (48.31 Meters) frequency. The calls were increasingly loud (signal strength 3 on a scale of 1-5), but they were never able to understand what she was saying. It defies the imagination to think of feature films, television specials, and books that have been produced on the subject of Amelia Earhart that bypass the issues of what happened at Howland Island.
The Earhart airplane did not crash and sink at Howland Island
Waitt Industries recently finished a detailed underwater search for Amelia Earhart’s Electra in the vicinity of Howland Island. This search combined with the Nauticos search several years earlier proves beyond any question Earhart did not crash in the sea at Howland irrespective of the movie “Amelia” and the two TV specials several years ago. The Waitt Industries search was very thorough. This search also negates the Elgen Long book and the Susan Butler book which claim Earhart crashed and sank at Howland Island. They are obsolete. Ted Waitt, one of the co-founders of Gateway Computer, completed a search of the size of the state of Delaware in conjunction with Harbor Branch Oceanographic Instiutute and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. Using a REMUS 6000 Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUV). Waitt said, “Our AUVs were able to efficiently search a massive area and then re-acquire, re-image and clearly photograph very small targets including a pipe, a chain, rock formations, a metal drum and even a six-inch-wide cable well over three miles below the ocean’s surface. We’ve mapped geology no one has ever seen, and we now know far more about what lies beneath the waves in the North Pacific today than we did yesterday. This work will hopefully not only benefit explorers, but also oceanographers, geologists, biologists and others in the science community.” The mission covered 7,000 linear miles of ocean floor, generating a 2,200-square-mile mosaic, at an average depth of 5,200 meters. The initial search area was a 2,500-square-mile box covering the western shores off Howland Island. This search, combined with the failed underwater searches at Gardner Island (Nikumaroro) negates Amelia Earhart’s Electra crashing and sinking at sea. For the complete story on the Howland Island search, please see: www.LostFlight.net
The Amelia Earhart arguments fall into several categories:
1. Crashed and Sank … The easiest way to dispose of the Amelia Earhart loss is to take the crashed and sank route, especially if you are a member of the military and you don’t want sensitive government papers disturbed. The strongest voice of the crashed and sank group is Elgen Long whose book, “Amelia Earhart, The Mystery Solved,” mentioned above, proposed that Earhart crashed and sank in the vicinity of Howland Island. Certain areas of the Long book have been highly criticized by researchers such as Rollin Reineck who created an essay on the subject matter and claimed that Elgen Long did not present all of the known facts.5 The Waitt Industries search further negates the Elgen Long Book. It is obsolete.
2. The Nay-Sayers… These are the people (including researchers) who, for the most part, scoff at the prospects of a potential solution. They typically side with the crashed and sank crowd because it relieves them of the problem of making a decision.
3. Japanese Capture… The major advocate of the Japanese Capture theories has been the late CBS Radio Reporter, Fred Goerner. The Goerner collection at the Nimitz Museum of the Pacific War in Fredericksburg, Texas, is probably the most complete collection of Amelia Earhart research available anywhere in the world. Lost Flight is in the Japanese capture category. We believe Earhart turned westbound for the Gilbert Islands after the failure to locate Howland, failed in the attempt, and crashed in the outlying Marshall Islands instead. She and her navigator were subsequently taken a prisoner by the Japanese and were transported to the island of Saipan where they were executed.
4. Spy Mission and Conspiracy… Perhaps a poorly written book (in my opinion) entitled “The British Connection” started all the talk about spy missions. There is literally nothing that supports Amelia Earhart as being on a government sponsored spy mission. There were no infrared cameras in 1937. An over flight of the Marshall Islands would have taken place at night (inbound to Howland) leaving only the island of Truk as a possible area of interest. The flying time of the Earhart flight to the Howland area precludes a diversion to Truk for picture taking activities. The extra weight of cameras on board Earhart’s Electra at Lae, New Guinea, on take off would have clearly plunged the airplane into the sea. There is evidence that exist that Naval officers on board the Aircraft Carrier U.S.S. Lexington plotted every phase of her flight from forwarded reports. She was on-time and on-course the entire route. At a true airspeed of 130 knots (which was the advised airspeed furnished by Kelly Johnson at Lockheed), the airplane flew the entire route on a straight line basis. Lapsed time Lae, New Guinea, to the Howland area, 20 hours flying time over a course of 2200 nautical miles equals a ground speed of 110 knots. True airspeed of 130 knots less 110 knots ground speed equals a 20 knot average headwind the entire route. These figures, I believe, are indisputable. They cannot be challenged except for minor variations such as the time of arrival in the Howland area. There is no way humanly possible the airplane could have diverted to alternate targets such as Truk, Saipan, or the Marshall Islands on picture taking episodes enroute to Howland. The time, the distance, and the fuel on board the airplane do not allow for such exorbitant claims.
5. Nikumaroro (Gardner Island) … The Gardner Island episode is the favorite theme of Richard Gillespie and the Tighar group. The Tighars march only to the tune of Earhart turning south for the Phoenix Islands and crashing on what was probably a deserted island more than likely Nikumaroro. Thereafter, AE (Amelia Earhart) and FN (Fred Noonan) meet a bitter end and may have been eaten by giant crabs on somebody’s beach. Tighar has done some really creditable work on the Amelia Earhart mystery. However, since the Earhart loss, and before the Earhart loss, there has been such things as research expeditions, wrecked freighters, aircraft crashes, construction crews, a World War II Loran station, and a wide assortment of invasions of Gardner Island which have created in the process a vast array of junk that has been left behind on the Gardner atoll. If what they have found is as important as they make it out to be the problem that surfaces is where is the airplane? That is a question they can’t answer. The search that was made by the seaplanes of the Battleship U.S.S. Colorado also adds to the belief that Earhart and Noonan did not crash at Gardner Island. Two seaplanes flew up and down the length of Gardner and found nothing. If there were survivors they would have undoubtedly left written messages in the sand or arranged palm leafs on the beach in the form of a message, anything. As it was there was nothing… no SOS, no arrows pointing to the survivors, no pleas for help. The natives in that part of the world were known to be extremely friendly, and that, coupled with the fact survivors could have easily survived on coconut milk and crab meat until the search planes of the Colorado arrived, very nearly precludes a crash of the Earhart airplane at Gardner Island. More recently, Tighar expeditions to Gardner Island have ground down to what might be a stalemate as a result of the ravages of time and weather that have taken their toll on available evidence. The Tighar group has done a deep sea underwater search in the area of Gardner Island. The expedition called off their underwater search two days earlier than planned as a result of no credible findings and the hazards of underwater searching around reefs.
6. The Irene Bolam Encampment… The original stories of Amelia Earhart coming back from World War II as another person in the form of Irene Bolam were first originated by Major Joe Gervais, a retired U.S. Air Force Pilot. In conjunction with Joe Klaas, the two men authored a book, “Amelia Earhart Lives.” Several years later a second book was written by the late Col. Rollin Reineck “Amelia Earhart Survived” which covered the same basic theme, i.e. Amelia Earhart returned in secret to America after World War II and lived as another woman in the person of Irene Bolam. However, these books have never gained widespread acceptance as these stories may not be true.
7. The New Britain Episode… If there is one claim that raises an air of surprise it has to be the New Britain claims. My first impression was… SHE DID WHAT? A certain David Billings claims he found the wreckage of Earhart’s Electra deep in the jungles of the island of New Britain. To fully understand the implications of what is being said you must realize where New Britain is on the maps? New Britain is only 100 miles from Lae, New Guinea, the starting point. This is a physically impossible feat to perform. It would have meant an additional 18 hours of flying time after the airplane arrived in the Howland area. It is out of the question. The airplane was totally incapable of performing such a feat. It would have increased the gasoline load from 1100 gallons to about 1800 gallons. At six pounds to the gallon it would have added 4,200 additional pounds at takeoff. With such a heavy load, even if the storage space was available in the wing tanks or the auxiliary tanks, the airplane would have never lifted off the ground. As it was, the airplane came within inches of crashing. The propellers of Earhart’s Electra kicked up spray off the ocean for a solid mile after the takeoff. A few more pounds of weight would have sent the airplane into the ocean. It would have never lifted off the runway at Lae, New Guinea.
8. Martini Episodes… About two months ago a producer called me wanting information on Amelia Earhart. I referred him to Felix Girard at Allied Artists. Evidently, the director Phillip Noyce and a screenwriter by the name of Rich Martini were at one time promoting a low budget “B” movie based on Amelia Earhart’s airplane carrying aerial cameras at the takeoff point at Lae. The story included knowledge that the engines on the airplane had been changed to high powered supercharged behemoths (or whatever), supposedly indicating that George Putnam went looking for the remains of Amelia Earhart after the U.S. captured the island of Saipan in World War II. The premise was that Amelia Earhart had flown over the island of Truk on a spy mission taking pictures of the Japanese installations on the failed trip to Howland Island. The only part of the story that makes any sense is George Putnam on a mission to find his wife’s remains. Yes, that part of the story is believed to be true, and there are comments in this book in the Series of E-Mails. However, there isn’t any way of proving the rest of these spurious claims. Bill Prymak, former President of the Amelia Earhart society, wrote me:
“Bob Wemple [who allegedly installed the engines] is pure fantasy… worse than Gillespie [Tighar] with his landing on Nikumaroro and transmitting for six days including a 1.45 hour chat with Betty Klenck then disappearing without a trace of bodies or airplane. What and who gives Wemple 6 the skill and authority and the funds to install the super-dooper engines?”
“Ed Finn at Lae proved the engine change claim is crazy. This trash is for a Hollywood low budget ‘B’ fantasy movie.”
9. The Very Latest Episode… Just before the printing of Lost Flight a man from Phoenix, Arizona, suddenly showed up on our website and claimed his father was the one who found Amelia Earhart’s briefcase on the island of Saipan.7 The man stated he saw the briefcase which his father (a Navy Chief Petty Officer) kept in his sea chest until the year 1954. He had no pictures or photos of the briefcase, or the maps it contained, or (presumably) Amelia Earhart’s passport. The missing sea chest has long since disappeared. A fellow researcher eMailed: “The briefcase was taken by ONI agent James Nichols after it was delivered, according to two sources, to the secret message center on Saipan where Erskine Nabers worked as a code clerk. Robert Wallack had earlier handed it off to a naval officer on the beach at Saipan.” The Phoenix lead fell by the wayside. None of the information was considered to be reliable. For the latest updates and information, please keep checking our website www.ameliaearhartmovie.com for the continuing story of “The Lost Flight of Amelia Earhart.”
1 Courage Is the Price, Muriel Morrissey, McCormick Press, Pgs. 216-219
2 Addendum, Pg. ______________
3 Amelia Earhart: Lost Legend, Donald Wilson, Enigma Press, Pgs. 62-63
4 Addendum, Robert Wallack, Pg. _____________
5 Addendum, Rollin Reineck, Pg. _____________
6 Ron Bright, Series of E-Mails, __________
7 Addendum, Robert Wallack, Pg. ___________