What Happened to Amelia Earhart?
The Unexplained Disappearance of Famous American Aviator and Author
Oct 15, 2009
Earhart was nothing less than a superstar in the aviation world. She had flown across the Atlantic Ocean twice. The first time was in June, 1928 and the second in May, 1932. The latter trip was a solo journey and for that she was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross by the U.S. Congress. Her many other accolades included helping to form the Ninety Nines, an exclusively female aviation club and successfully completing a transcontinental flight in August, 1932. Less than a year later she broke her own speed record doing the same trip.
These were respectable achievements and they catapulted Earhart to international stardom. However, the one thing that made her famous more than anything else was her disappearance. Here is her story.
Amelia Earhart's Early Life
She was born in 1897 and took her first airplane ride in 1920. In the early '20s Earhart was taught to fly by Neta Snook, the first woman to graduate from the Curtiss School of Aviation. Over a period of six months she had saved enough money to buy a second hand airplane, a yellow Kinner Airster, an open cockpit, single engine biplane.
In 1922 she set a new women's altitude record of 14,000 feet (4,300 metres). In the following year she obtained her pilot's license, only the sixteenth American woman to do so. She was quoted as saying, "By the time I had got two or three hundred feet off the ground, I knew I had to fly."
Earhart was making a name for herself. In 1935 she became the first person to fly from the Hawaiian Islands to the U.S. mainland. She joined Purdue University as a career consultant and it was the purchase of a twin-engine Lockheed Electra, through the university, that allowed Earhart to accomplish her dream – circumnavigating the globe by air.
Amelia Earhart's Last Flight
The date was June 1st, 1937 and this was to be the record setting flight of Earhart's life. She took off from Miami, Florida with her chief navigator, Fred Noonan. They flew to Puerto Rico, then down to Brazil and then across the Atlantic to the West African coast. From there it was across the barren Sahara desert on a direct route to Asia.
In Asia Earhart stopped in Calcutta, Rangoon and Bangkok. She then travelled to Lae, New Guinea. As it turns out this was the last place where she was seen alive.
Howland Island
The next leg of her trip was to fly to Howland Island, a mere dot on the Pacific chart measuring a half mile wide and less than two miles long. It was uninhabited and twenty feet above sea level at its highest point, not an easy place to see by any means. At midnight GMT on July 2nd Earhart took off for Howland, 2,556 miles to the east.
This was her last transmission received by the U.S. Coast Guard cutter Itasca:
We are on the line of position 157 dash 337. Will repeat this message. We will repeat this message on 6210 KC. Wait listening on 6210. We are running north and south.
After that there was only silence. She never landed on Howland Island.
Explaining Amelia Earhart's Disappearance
Several theories, plausible and otherwise have attempted to shed light on this bizarre incident ever since Earhart's plane vanished. One theory is that the plane ran out of fuel and crashed in the Pacific. It has also been said that perhaps she and Noonan had landed in the Marshall Islands, which at that time were under Japanese control, and later executed as spies on Saipan. Given that tensions were mounting between the U.S. and Japan before World War II, it's possible this is what happened to both of them.
Her last message seemed to indicate she was going back and forth trying to locate Howland Island, but failed to say if she was following a compass heading or a sun line. A massive search ensued, involving three thousand people, over one hundred ships and ten planes.
Nothing was found.
References:
Lost Explorers: Adventurers who disappeared off the face of the Earth by Ed Wright, Murdoch Books 2008
Eyewitness: The Amelia Earhart Incident by Thomas E. Devine, Primer Publishing 1987
Amelia Earhart Enigma: Three Groups with three theories probe Pacific by Donna McGuire, The Kansas City Star August 31, 2001
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