Earhart: Facts and thoughts

Amelia Earhart’s story has attracted this blogger’s attention for more than fifty years. She was a pioneer aviator and a role model for many. Along the way, she served as a nurse for returning veterans who suffered serious wounds during World War I and wrote both poetry and books about her career. She was the first woman to be a passenger on a flight across the Atlantic Ocean and then soloed the same ocean a few years later. She was the first pilot of either gender to solo from Hawaii to California.

Her story is remarkable. It is probably unfair to Earhart that she is best remembered for disappearing in July of 1937 while attempting to fly around the world at approximately the equator. Earhart and navigator Fred Noonan were trying to land on tiny Howland Island to refuel and then continue to Hawaii. From there they were to fly home to California.

Earhart speaking at Penn Station in 1929.

Through the years there have been some legitimate attempts to determine what happened to Earhart and Noonan. There have also been some publicity seekers who use the disappearance for their own purposes. What there has never been is concrete evidence indicating how the final flight ended. That is not going to change here, unfortunately. But below is some of what is known and inarguable about the disappearance of Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan. After that is my guess.

1.     Earhart originally planned to fly westward around the world. The first leg covered the distance from California to Hawaii. The second leg would have taken Earhart and a crew of three men to Howland. The Hawaii-Howland distance is shorter than the New Guinea-Howland flight that Earhart and Noonan attempted. A takeoff accident wrecked Earhart’s Lockheed Electra 10-E in Hawaii. By the time the plane could be shipped to California and repaired, the time of year had changed and it was better to fly easterly.

2.     Howland Island is a tiny speck of a thing in the vast Pacific. It was hard to find in 1937 and hard to see from the air. It was also not at the spot Noonan was trying to navigate the fliers toward. Earhart’s chart coordinates were off by about five miles. They flew into the rising morning sun, making vision difficult, toward an empty spot of water. Howland was probably just slightly beyond sight when the Electra arrived in the area.

3.     Howland Island is slightly south and east of where Earhart and Noonan thought it was.

4.     The estimated distance from the Electra’s takeoff point at Lae, New Guinea to the inaccurate position of Howland was roughly 2,550 miles. The actual distance was roughly the same.

5.     Noonan’s navigating got them very close. Earhart’s radio signals were strength five, according to the radio operators aboard the Coast Guard cutter Itasca, which was anchored at Howland to support the Earhart/Noonan flight. Earhart’s second-to-last transmission was so strong that it slightly over modulated. Hearing it, some sailors rushed out of the radio room to look for the plane as it flew. It was very close to Howland Island at that time. Earhart’s final confirmed transmission was also strength five but did not over modulate, indicating that she was still close but as so close as she had been before.

A Lockheed Electra 10-A, the same model flown by Earhart and Noonan

during their 1937 flight. At the Pima County Air Museum in Arizona. This

is not Earhart's plane, just the same type of plane.

6.     As the skies were clear to the east, west and south at that time but cloudy to the north, it is possible to suppose that the Electra was north of Howland at that time. Had Earhart and Noonan been south of Howland, they might have seen Baker Island. Baker is just 42 miles from Howland. Had they seen Baker, the fliers probably would have been able to guess where they were.

7.     At the time of her final verified transmission, Earhart was concerned about running out of fuel. She said so herself. 

8.     Nikumaroro Island, formerly Gardner Island, is roughly four hundred miles from Howland. It strains credible thought to suppose that a plane dangerously low on fuel near Howland Island could fly the distance to the island now known as Nikumaroro.

9.     Gardner Island, as it was known in 1937, was and is part of the Phoenix Island chain. When the United States Navy conducted its long and expensive search for Earhart and Noonan, it sent planes to fly over Gardner. No credible evidence has ever been uncovered that Earhart and Noonan flew to and then died on Gardner.

10.  Books have been written about reports from residents of Saipan Island that a white woman and man were seen on Saipan in the late 1930s. Saipan was under Japanese control at that time. It has never been proved one way or another whether Earhart and Noonan died on Saipan.

11.  Earhart and Noonan arrived in the Howland area shortly after sunup. It might have been easier to see the tiny island had they arrived a little later in the day, but the arrival time was determined by the takeoff time. The plane was heavily loaded with fuel and needed favorable conditions to get off the ground at Lae and those conditions were at about 10 A.M., July 2, 1937. That take off time ay Lae forced the arrival time at Howland.

12.  One very obvious point: Today’s navigation methods are much more precise than those Noonan had to use in 1937.

The above is what is known about the flight. What can we deduce from all of that?

First, given the strength of her final radio signals, students of the mystery can work with the assumption that the Electra could not have flown to Saipan. The same can be deduced for Gardner Island. Both Saipan and Gardner are too distant for a plane flying in the skies near Howland and very low on fuel to reach.

Next, Earhart was probably north of Howland when she made her final transmissions and she was probably heading away from her intended destination at the time of her last one. Your Loyal Blogger also suspects, without any proof, that the Electra was also a little bit east of their target. It has been suggested that at the time of her final transmission, Earhart was flying a search pattern, but we can’t know that for sure.

Your Loyal Blogger postulates that Earhart’s plane would have arrived safely at Howland had it followed the original flight plan and flown westward. It would have been a shorter flight from Honolulu to Howland, with a larger and fresher crew. The flight from Howland to Lae, assuming the heavily-laden Electra was able to get off the runway at Howland, would not have been as stressful as going from Lae to Howland. New Guinea would have been a lot easier to find than tiny Howland, too. The accident at Honolulu played a large role in the disappearance.

The story that Earhart and Noonan were somehow captured by a Japanese fishing vessel and then transported to Saipan is impossible to ignore. Most versions of the story have Noonan beheaded on the island and Earhart succumbing to dysentery sometime later. Virtually every theory concerning the fate of the flight could end with the pair on Saipan. They could have crashed somewhere north of Howland, been plucked from the sea by any sort of boat and then hustled to Saipan. They could have miraculously re-fueled in mid-air and flown on to Gardner and crash landed there, only to be captured and taken to Saipan.

What do these facts tell us? What supposition makes the most sense? What happened to Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan?

The key for this observer is the strength of Earhart’s radio signals. That is the most important piece of evidence. She was very close to Howland at the end of her flight. The clouds reported by the Itasca to be north of the island prohibited Earhart from using a higher altitude to gain vision distance. She and Noonan couldn’t see far enough and the glare from the morning sun didn’t help, either. So they got close but not close enough to see Howland.

Earhart had to crash land the plane on the ocean surface and here was another problem. They needed every ounce of aviation gasoline they could carry in order to make it to Howland and that meant not bringing a life raft. If Earhart and Noonan were rescued from the sea by anyone, it had to happen immediately after the Electra exhausted its fuel and Earhart put the plane in the drink. YLB does not believe that such a rescue happened. The fliers succumbed to the waves.

Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan ran out of fuel before they could locate Howland Island and they crashed into the Pacific. They went down somewhere north of Howland.

Thanks for reading.