“We are using every possible means to establish contact with you.
If you hear this broadcast, please come in on 3,105 kilocycles. Use
key if possible, otherwise, voice transmission. If you hear this
broadcast, turn carrier [a steady key transmission] for one minute
so we can tune you in, then turn carrier on and off four times,
then listen for our acknowledgment.”
All attempts by the ships and planes were in vain. After exploring an
area of 161,000 square miles, nothing was found of the Electra, the
life raft, Amelia Earhart, or Fred Noonan.
Newspapers and radio stations across the country told the story of
the disappearance and the search. Americans could not believe that
Amelia Earhart was missing, and would not believe that she was dead.
Everything about the story was too sudden, too tragic.
False signals and false reports now began to give spark to a despairing
hope. On one of the ships two lookouts and an officer of the deck had
seen a distinct green flare on the northern horizon. It was known that
AE’s rubber raft had emergency flares. The _Itasca_ steamed north and
east to investigate; at the same time it asked AE on the radio if she
were sending up flares, and if she were, to send up another one. A few
seconds later another green light appeared at a bearing of 75°. It was
seen by twenty-five witnesses.
The _Itasca_ now checked with other ships in the area to find out if
they had seen the flares. The replies were all in the negative; the
signals, they cautioned, were probably heat lightning.
Howland Island then reported flares to the northeast. The men on the
island immediately set flame to three drums of gasoline, hoping that
the fire would serve as an unmistakable beacon. The Swan reported more
lights but thought that they were meteors.
Because of the position, appearance, and timing of the lights, the
_Itasca_ seriously thought that they were flares; but because of the
other dissenting reports, it was now decided that the lights were
merely a meteoric shower.
There were all kinds of radio reports. Amateur and professional radio
operators from Honolulu; from up and down the west coast of Los
Angeles, San Francisco, and Seattle; from across the Rocky Mountains
in Cheyenne; and from as far inland as Cincinnati, now reported hearing
SOS signals from Amelia Earhart.
If Amelia had landed on an island or reef, and were using her radio, it
was possible that her signals had skip-waved back and forth and forward
between ionosphere and ocean across thousands of miles. Yet, if there
were SOS signals, they were not heard in the Pacific by the official
radio operators on any of the assigned Navy and Coast Guard ships,
or on any of the shore stations from the Gilbert Islands through the
Hawaiian Islands to San Francisco Radio on the West Coast.
In exploring the Gilbert Islands, the _Itasca_ sent a party ashore to
Tarawa, to confer with the senior British administrator of the islands.
He had been informed of the Earhart search, and was surprised that
neither the station at Tarawa nor the one at Beru had been notified
about the flight before it began from Lae. Both stations, although they
heard no Electra transmissions, could have helped, for Amelia’s course
had lain just 20 miles south of Arorae, the most southern island of the
Gilbert group.
The concentration of the search to the northwest had been based on
a very careful analysis of the evidence. The weather conditions at
the end of the flight were a clear blue sky to the south and east of
Howland but heavy cloud banks about fifty miles north and west of
Howland.
The _Itasca_ had laid a heavy smoke screen for two hours on the morning
of July 2; it would have been visible to AE, flying at an altitude of
1,000 feet, for more than forty miles from the south and east, but only
twenty miles from the north and west.
Evidently, judging from her reports, Amelia had been flying earlier
during the night at a high altitude and above a thick overcast of
clouds. Her signal strength, if direct and not the result of skip
waves, indicated a maximum distance of 250 miles from Howland and not
nearer to the island than 30 miles. Such was the conclusion of the
_Itasca_.
All available land areas were searched and hundreds of thousands of
miles of sea area. On July 19, 1937, the Navy released the _Itasca_
from any further search; the cutter’s mission was completed.
Back in California George Palmer Putnam had called on Jacqueline
Cochran. He remembered Amelia’s having told him about her friend’s
strange and marvelous powers at extrasensory perception. He was very
excited when he came into Miss Cochran’s Los Angeles apartment. He
begged her to help him locate Amelia.
Miss Cochran told GP where the plane had gone down: that it had ditched
in the ocean, that Fred Noonan had fractured his skull against the
bulkhead, that Amelia was alive, and that the plane was floating on the
water. She named the _Itasca_ as a ship that was in the area although
she had never heard the name before; and she named a Japanese fishing
vessel in the same location. She told GP to get ships and planes into
the area immediately to begin the search.
For two days Jacqueline Cochran followed the course of the drifting
Electra. Ships and planes searched the area of her insight, but to no
avail. Miss Cochran was racked with disappointment. If her ability were
worth anything, she reasoned, it should have been able to locate and
save her friend. Giving up, Jacqueline Cochran went to the cathedral in
Los Angeles and lit candles for the repose of Amelia’s soul. She never
tried her powers at ESP again.
Amelia had unquestionably disappeared. At best, her attitude toward
her radio plans for the flight was casual; at worst, a combination of
poor coordination, faulty radio receiver, and imperfect navigation
instruments, had sent plane, pilot, and navigator to a watery grave.
The search over, rumors now began to abound and multiply about what had
_really_ happened to Amelia Earhart and her navigator Fred Noonan.
Each would cause Noonan’s wife and Amelia’s husband and mother untold
hours of anguish and false hope.
8. _The Fog of Rumors_
The first great rumor, which had gained widespread acceptance, was that
Amelia and Fred were prisoners of the Japanese. They had flown over
islands in the Japanese mandate which were being illegally fortified,
the plane had been shot down by anti-aircraft guns, the pilot and
navigator had been taken and held as spies.
This Japanese-prisoner story still persists after more than twenty
years, largely because of a movie released in the early forties, while
World War II was at its highest pitch and anti-Japanese feeling at
white heat. The film, _Flight for Freedom_, starring Rosalind Russell
and Fred MacMurray, told the story of a famous American woman flier,
“Tonie Carter,” who had been asked by the United States Navy to “get
lost” in the South Pacific (actually, to remain in hiding at Howland
Island), so that Navy planes could take photographs of illegal Japanese
fortifications while “looking” for her.
In the movie, Tonie Carter’s navigator was an old beau, “Randy
Britton,” to whom she had once been engaged. This gave rise to another
rumor: Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan were in love, and decided to find
a lonely Pacific island where they could live out their idyllic love
“happily ever after.” Incensed by the broad allusions of the film,
George Palmer Putnam filed suit. The movie company settled out of court.
The scenario writers for _Flight for Freedom_ were not alone, however,
in their belief. Aboard the U.S.S. _Colorado_ while it was conducting
its search for the missing fliers were Dr. M. L. Brittain of Georgia
Tech, and other university presidents, who were guests of the
battleship on a Pacific cruise.
There was the possibility, Dr. Brittain later suggested, that Amelia
was a prisoner of the Japanese, even as late as 1944, and that one day
soon she would be liberated by the advancing United States Marines.
“We got the definite feeling,” Dr. Brittain was quoted as saying, “that
Miss Earhart had some sort of understanding with government officials
that the last part of her voyage around the world would be over some
Japanese islands, probably the Marshalls.”
Amelia’s mother, Amy Otis Earhart, has long maintained that her
daughter was on a secret government mission and that she was captured
by the Japanese. This is Mrs. Earhart’s belief although she has no
official basis for it.
The Navy Department at the end of World War II was compelled to make a
final official announcement about AE’s disappearance. Amelia Earhart
had not been sent on a naval cloak-and-dagger operation. Her plane had
not been shot out of the skies by Japanese gunfire. She had not been
captured, held as a prisoner, or shot as a spy.
Nevertheless, despite official and unofficial beliefs and statements to
the contrary, rumors still flourished.
There was the story of the Japanese fishing boat. After United
States forces had invaded the Marshall Islands--north and west of
Howland--Lieutenants Eugene T. Bogan and James Toole were quoted as
saying that this story was told to them by a missionary-trained native
named Elieu:
“Ajima, a jap trader, said three and a half years ago that an
American woman pilot came down between Jaluit and Ailinglapalap
Atolls [southeastern Marshall Islands] and was picked up by a
Japanese fishing-boat crew. She was taken to Japan.”
In July of 1944, during the invasion of Saipan, in the Mariana
Islands--far north and west of Howland Island--the Marines found in an
abandoned Japanese barracks a photograph album filled with snapshots
of Amelia Earhart in her flying clothes. It is known that AE carried
a camera with her on the world flight but not that she was carrying a
photograph album filled with pictures of herself.
Dr. Brittain, the same who had been on the searching _Colorado_, was
queried in 1944 about the Saipan pictures. He felt that there was a
definite connection between the album and the disappearance of the
Earhart plane.
Of all the pieces of “evidence” in the stories about the disappearance,
the most extraordinary was a piece of wood. It was a fragment of a
fence post, with several nail holes in it and with one end badly
charred. The piece of wood was found in July, 1942, by Robert D.
Weishaupt while he was on beach duty with the Coast Artillery at
Baranof Island, Alaska. Weishaupt noticed the burned piece of fence
post as it washed in and out from the shore. It looked as if it had
some writing on it. He waded in and picked it out of the water.
On one side was printed:
TO MY HUSBAND--I HAVE
CRASHED 250 MLLS FROM HAWAII--N.W.
OUR MOTOR WENT INTO FLAMES--SHARKS
ABOUT ME.
A.E.
and on the other side, simply:
MRS. A.E.
Whoever wrote on the piece of wood and set it adrift on the water
perpetrated a cruel hoax. It is extremely unlikely that AE could have
crashed 250 miles northwest of Hawaii; the Electra did not have enough
fuel to fly another 2,000 miles beyond Howland. And if Amelia had
written such a desperate message, on wood suddenly provided in the
middle of the Pacific, she would have addressed the message, not “TO MY
HUSBAND,” but, rather, to GPP, her husband’s well-known initials; and
she would have signed her initials on the reverse side, not “Mrs. A.E.”
but AE, because she was not Mrs. Amelia Earhart.
For the rest of his life George Palmer Putnam was a man haunted and
hunted by people who claimed that they had mystic powers and that they
could put him in contact with his wife.
Eighteen months after her disappearance Amelia was declared legally
dead, and GP married again. He went to live in the mountains away from
the crowds, and during the war he joined the Air Force.
9. _The Light of Fact: A Mystery Solved?_
Two additional events, however, separate in time and both involving
Amelia Earhart--but heretofore never interrelated--do fit together into
a logical and revealing pattern. All the pieces of the puzzle are not
available, but there are enough of them to form a discernible picture.
At the end of World War II Jacqueline Cochran, then head of the WASPS,
the famous organization of women ferry pilots, was asked by General Hap
Arnold to go to Tokyo and investigate the role that Japanese women had
played in aviation during the war. While she was in Imperial Air Force
Headquarters Miss Cochran noticed that there were numerous files on
American aviation notables--and many files on Amelia Earhart.
These documents since that time have mysteriously disappeared. They
are not in the official custody of the United States Government, or
any of its departments, services, or agencies; nor do they seem to be
in the possession of the Japanese Government. (All captured documents,
those of historical importance having been copied on microfilm, have
been returned to Tokyo. No AE files were discovered among the captured
materials.) Nevertheless, these files seem to indicate that the
Japanese had more than a normal interest in Amelia Earhart, because of
another event that happened, curiously, again in the Marianas. This new
evidence has never before been made public.
At the end of the war on the island of Saipan a Navy dentist worked
with his assistant, a native girl named Josephine Blanco. It was 1946.
Dr. Casimir R. Sheft, now practicing in New Jersey, was taking a break
between appointments and talking with a fellow dentist. During the
conversation Dr. Sheft casually mentioned the disappearance of Amelia
Earhart and speculated about whether the famous flier could have ended
her flight in the Marianas, and possibly near Saipan, for he had
read somewhere that the Marines had found AE’s flight log during the
invasion (actually, it had been the photograph album). Suddenly his
dental assistant, Josephine, broke in: She had seen an American woman
flier many years ago--nine or ten--on Saipan, when she was a little
girl. The American woman wore khaki clothes and had her hair cut like a
man....
Josephine Blanco, now Mrs. Maximo Akiyama, and living in California
with her husband and their young son, was witness to an incident which
is as incredible as it is enlightening.
In the summer of 1937 Josephine was riding her bicycle toward Tanapag
Harbor. She was taking her Japanese brother-in-law, J. Y. Matsumoto,
his lunch, and was hurrying along because it was nearly twelve o’clock.
That summer she had just finished Japanese grammar school, where she
had gone for the last five years, ever since she was seven years old.
In March she had celebrated her eleventh birthday, and now she could
begin Catholic school. She was looking forward to studying with the
Spanish missionary sisters. Father Tadzio had hoped that someday
Josephine, too, like some of the other Chamorro native girls in the
Marianas, would answer God’s call and become a native sister.
Josephine had a special pass to the Japanese military area near the
harbor. Not even Japanese civilians were admitted to the area unless
they carried the proper credentials. The young girl rode up to the
gate, stopped her bicycle, and presented her pass. The guard allowed
her into the restricted area.
On the way to meet her brother-in-law, Josephine heard an airplane
flying overhead. She looked up and saw a silver two-engined plane. The
plane seemed to be in trouble, for it came down low, headed out into
the harbor, and belly-landed on the water.
It was not until she met her brother-in-law that Josephine discovered
who it was that had crash-landed in the harbor.
“The American woman,” everyone was saying, greatly excited. “Come and
see the American woman.” Josephine and her brother-in-law joined the
knot of people who gathered to watch.
She saw the American woman standing next to a tall man wearing a
short-sleeved sports shirt, and was surprised because the woman was not
dressed as a woman usually dressed. Instead of a dress, the American
woman wore a man’s shirt and trousers; and instead of long hair, she
wore her hair cut short, like a man. The faces of the man and woman
were white and drawn, as if they were sick.
The American woman who looked like a man and the tall man with her were
led away by the Japanese soldiers. The fliers were taken to a clearing
in the woods. Shots rang out. The soldiers returned alone.
Mrs. Akiyama has affirmed, after identifying a photograph of Amelia
Earhart and Fred Noonan taken on the world flight, that the couple was
unquestionably the same man and woman she and her brother-in-law had
seen on Saipan: the clothes were different, but the woman’s haircut was
unmistakable.
Josephine Blanco’s story, which is basically the same one she told Dr.
Sheft in Saipan, is most probably true. It is extremely unlikely this
native girl could have invented her story. If she had, then for what
purpose? If for profit or gain, she had, for more than ten years after
the American invasion, the opportunity to capitalize on her sensational
news.
As an eleven-year-old girl, Josephine of course had no idea of the
significance of what she had seen other than it was indeed an American
woman she had seen. Dr. Sheft has never doubted her story, and for many
years he has hoped that a thorough reexamination of the facts would be
made. They were.
Amelia Earhart could have ended her flight around the world at Saipan.
If she were indeed headed for Howland Island, however, she somehow made
an error of about 100° in reading her compass.
It means that all during the night of July 2, beginning after sundown
at 5:55 P.M., Fred Noonan was not able to get a fix from the stars to
determine his position. And if, after fourteen hours out from Lae, he
looked down and saw a chain of islands, he would have determined that
he was on course and over the Gilbert Islands; but if AE had turned
north while he was napping, and he had still awakened in time to see
islands, they would have been, not the Gilberts as he might have
thought, but the Caroline Islands--exactly the same distance away but
in the wrong direction.
By somehow departing from her course, and making the tremendous error
of steering north and west instead of east--as she had done once before
on the world flight, when she had turned north to St. Louis instead of
south to Dakar, overriding Fred’s directions, after the flight across
the South Atlantic--AE would have found herself after twenty hours
of flying time somewhere along the chain of islands that marks the
Marianas.
Her last report, at 8:45 A.M., gave her line of position as 157-337.
The Navy’s search satisfied judgments that the line was not a radio
line, for the areas northwest and southeast from Howland were
thoroughly investigated. One hundred fifty-seven-337, therefore, was
undoubtedly a sun line.
Near Howland, at position 01° 00’ North Latitude and 177° 20’ West
Longitude, on July 3, 1937, the bearing of the sun was 66° from the
north point at 7:00 A.M., Howland time. The sun line, therefore, would
have been 156-336.
Near Saipan, at position 13° 00’ North Latitude and 153° 00’ East
Longitude, at 5:00 A.M., Saipan time, the sun was 64° from the north
point. A sun line there would have been 154-334.
If Noonan had thought he was close to Howland when he shot his last
sun line, his geographical point of reference--used for computing and
plotting his observation--would obviously have been close to Howland.
If he had actually been close to Saipan, however, the relative position
of the sun would still have been almost the same: 64° from the north
point near Saipan, as opposed to 66° from the north point near Howland.
But his observation, when computed and plotted on his chart, would have
shown him to be the same number of miles from his geographical point of
reference.
An experienced navigator with trust in his abilities such as Noonan
would have tended to believe that either his observations or his
computations were somehow wrong. He would not have thought, at least
immediately, that he was some 2,600 miles off course. If AE had been
pressing him for a position to radio to the _Itasca_, he might have, in
agonies of doubt, merely given her the line of position, which he could
be sure of, but _not_ the geographical point of reference, because
he could now no longer determine that point with certainty. This
possibility would explain the irregularity of Amelia having transmitted
the line of position without the necessary point of reference.
On the basis of these determinations, therefore, there is strong
support for believing in Josephine Blanco’s story.
The Navy gave Amelia until about noon before she would go down. It was
at noontime that Josephine saw the two-motored plane ditch in Tanapag
Harbor.
The Navy’s final conclusion was that Amelia had ended her flight
somewhere north and west. Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan were seen by
two eyewitnesses north and west of Howland on Saipan. At that time of
the year the American woman and her tall male companion could have been
none other than AE and Fred Noonan.
In 1937 on Saipan, according to Maximo and Josephine Akiyama, the
Japanese military did not hesitate to kill anyone, Japanese civilian
or Chamorro native, whom they suspected of spying on their illegal
fortifications.
Japanese officialdom maintaining an enigmatic silence (the Japanese
Embassy in Washington knows nothing of the Earhart case, nor does Dr.
John Young of Georgetown University, who examined captured Japanese
documents for the American Government) concerning the disappearance of
the two fliers, it may be idle to speculate upon the final fate of Fred
Noonan and Amelia Earhart. The evidence, however, justifies at least
one tenable conclusion.
When Josephine Blanco saw the twin-engined silver plane, Amelia and
Fred had been flying for twenty-six consecutive hours and for 4,000
futile miles. The sight of the island that was Saipan must have cheered
the fliers with renewed hope for safety and for life itself.
When they survived the crash landing in Tanapag Harbor only to be taken
into custody as spies, their joy must have turned to inexplicable
bitterness: they had been saved not for life, but for death before a
Japanese firing squad.
For Amelia, who once had said to her husband, “I don’t want to go; but
when I do, I’d like to go in my plane--quickly,” the last word of her
wish must have struck her now with sudden and ironic force.
Yet, as she had so often before, Amelia Earhart must have met this
challenge with stubborn self-control and resolute courage. For here at
last was her unmistakable, but irrefutable, fate.
_RECORD FLIGHTS_
_AWARDS AND DECORATIONS_
_BIBLIOGRAPHY_
_A NOTE ABOUT SOURCES_
_ACKNOWLEDGMENTS_
_RECORD FLIGHTS_
1928, June 17: The first woman to fly across the Atlantic as a
passenger; with Wilmer Stultz pilot and Lou Gordon mechanic; in
the pontoon-equipped Fokker trimotor airplane; from Trepassey,
Newfoundland, to Burryport, Wales; time: 20 hours and 40
minutes.
1929, August 24: Third place in the first Women’s Air Derby Race;
from Santa Monica, California, to Cleveland, Ohio.
1930, July 6: Women’s speed record; three-kilometer course; at 181.18
mph.
1931, April 8: World’s altitude record for autogiros; at 18,451 feet;
in Pitcairn autogiro.
1932, May 20–21: First woman to fly solo across the Atlantic; from
Harbor Grace, Newfoundland, to Londonderry, Ireland; time: 14
hours and 56 minutes.
1932, August 24–25: Women’s non-stop transcontinental speed record;
from Los Angeles, California, to Newark, New Jersey; 2,447.8
miles; time: 19 hours and 5 minutes.
1933, July 7–8: Broke her own transcontinental speed record of
the year before; in her Lockheed Vega; from Los Angeles,
California, to Newark, New Jersey; time: 17 hours, 7 minutes,
and 30 seconds.
1935, January 11–12: First to fly solo from Honolulu, Hawaii, to
Oakland, California; in her Lockheed Vega; 2,408 miles; time:
18 hours and 16 minutes.
1935, April 19–20: First to fly solo from Los Angeles, California, to
Mexico City, Mexico; in her Lockheed Vega; time: 13 hours and
23 minutes.
1935, May 8: Solo flight from Mexico City to Newark, New Jersey;
time: 14 hours and 19 minutes.