She was a woman who inspired other women to be more than just a wife and mother and broke many aviation records but her disappearance in 1937 remains one of the biggest mysteries in modern history.
Amelia Mary Earhart was born on July 24 1897 in Atchison, Kansas, to parents Samuel "Edwin" Stanton Earhart (1867 - 1930) and Amelia "Amy" (nee Otis, 1869 - 1962). She was born in her maternal grandfathers home, Alfred Gideon Otis (1827 - 1912) who was a former federal judge, the president of Atchison Savings Bank and a leading citizen in the community.
Amelia showed a strong wilful personality even as a child, leading her siblings on imaginary expeditions. Amy Earhart didn't believe in raising her daughters as nice little girls and that they could be as free as any man. Amy even made her daughters bloomers to wear so they could run around and play easier rather than be in constricting dresses, something her maternal grandmother disapproved of. This adventurous spirit has led many biographers to call Amelia a tomboy in her youth.
Amelia in 1904
Her father developed a problem with alcohol and lost his job which led to the family moving around a lot. Amelia dreamed of a successful career and kept a journal of newspaper clippings of women who had succeeded in male oriented fields. During the Spanish Flu pandemic in 1918 Amelia was working as a nurse but soon found herself infected, she had several minor operations to fix her sinus problems but they ultimately failed leaving her with lifelong problems with them.
Amelia had her first encounter with a plane at the Canadian National Exhibit in Toronto, Canada. A flying exhibition put on by a World War I ace fascinated Amelia and when the plane dived at Amelia and her friend, she stood her ground while her friend fled, she later stated, "I am sure he said to himself, watch me make them scamper". In Long Beach, California on December 28 1920, Amelia and her father visited an airfield where air racer Frank Hawks gave her a ride that cemented that Amelia would become a pilot, after this ride she knew she was meant to fly.
Amelia as a child
After working many jobs to scrape together enough money for flying lessons and a lot of hard work she finally became a registered pilot on May 15 1923, she was the 16th woman in the US to be issued one. After Charles Lindbergh's solo flight across the Atlantic in 1927, Amy Guest expressed interest in being the first woman to to fly or be flown across it but after deciding the trip was too risky she then suggested finding another woman, Amelia received a phone call one afternoon in April 1928 asking her if she would be that woman, to which she gladly agreed.
The trip went ahead with the team setting off from Trepassey Harbour, Newfoundland on June 17 1928 and landing at Pwll, South Wales, exactly 20 hours and 40 minutes later. As Amelia had no experience with this type of flying she did not do any of the piloting, she later expressed that she felt like baggage and like a sack of potatoes and expressed her desire to maybe do it alone herself one day.
Amelia's Pilot License
After the flight, Amelia found herself in the spotlight and admired by women who had previously only ever been encouraged to marry and have children, Amelia had really helped the changing thought that women could really be anything they wanted. Amelia had began a relationship with George P. Putnam and famously made him propose six times before agreeing, Amelia feared the constraints of marriage, afraid she would lose her independence. She famously gave George a letter on the day of their marriage that stated their marriage was to be a partnership with dual control, the letter said "I want you to understand I shall not hold you to any medieval code of faithfulness to me nor shall I consider myself bound to you similarly. I may have to keep some place where I can go to be myself, now and then, for I cannot guarantee to endure at all times the confinement of even an attractive cage." They married on February 7 1931 in Noank, Connecticut. Amelia was seen as very forward thinking on her views on marriage, she even refused to take her husbands name, stating she did not want to be called Mrs. Putham and even said for her husband to called Mr. Earhart. The two never had children but George had two sons from a previous marriage.
Amelia soon realised her dream as the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic. On May 20 1932, she set off on her journey of 14 hours and 56 minutes. This also fuelled the growing star that Amelia was even more.
Amelia and George
Amelia soon set her sights on another record, to fly around the world. Her plane was to be a Lockhead Electra 10E, it was top of the line technology and was publicised as a flying laboratory. She chose Captain Harry Manning as her navigator, he was not only a navigator but a pilot and a skilled radio operator who knew Morse Code. After George's concern over Harry's skills after a test that saw Harry off location by about 20 miles (there were poor weather conditions during the test and there is a standard of a 30 mile cut off for errors so Harry was within it) he was replaced by Fred Noonan. Fred was skilled in not only marine navigation but flight as well. The original plan was for Fred to navigate from Hawaii to Howland Island which was a difficult part of the journey with Harry then coming on to replace Fred for the trip to Australia and then Amelia to proceed on her own for the remainder of the flight.
Amelia and Harry Manning
On March 17 1937, during the first leg of the trip from Oakland, California to Honolulu, Hawaii there was a small crash which saw damage to the Electra. It was then that Harry Manning, feeling there had been too many problems with the flight, decided to pull out leaving Amelia and Fred by themselves and neither being a skilled radio operator. The flight set off again on June 1.
Now had come the most difficult portion of their flight to Howland Island on July 2 1937. At around 3pm, Amelia reported her altitude as 10,000 feet but they were reducing altitude due to thick clouds, she reported her altitude as 7000 feet at 5pm with her speed of 150 knots. Their last known position was near Nukumanu Islands. The US Coast Guard ship the Itasca waited for the Electra to guide Amelia to land safely on the small Howland Island.
The flight path for the journey
Here Amelia runs into trouble with radio communications as her and the ship are using different frequencies which leads to a mix up of 30 minutes. She sends out a message at 7.42am "We must be on you, but we cannot see you. Fuel is running low. Been unable to reach you by radio. We are flying at 1000 feet." the Itasca replies but there is no sign Amelia has heard, her last communication comes at 8.43am. The pair thought they were running along the north, south line but as Fred's chart of Howland was off by five nautical miles they were not where the Itasca was. Desperate, the ship released its oil burners in an attempt to signal the Electra but there was no sign the plane saw the signal.
Amelia and Fred Noonan
The Itasca realised they had lost contact and began an immediate search believing that the pair had ran out of fuel and perhaps had been forced to crash into the ocean where they would soon be in peril. Despite the effort of 66 aircrafts and nine ships (which cost an estimated $4 million) Amelia and Fred remained missing. On July 18 1937, the official search ended but George financed another private search not willing to give up on his wife but in October 1937 he had to accept that the chance of Amelia and Fred surviving were gone. On January 5 1939, Amelia was declared dead by the Superior Court in Los Angeles at the age of 41.
The Electra
Since her disappearance, theories have raged on. Let's go through them:
Theory One // Lost at Sea
After running low on fuel and in the wrong location Amelia was forced to land / crash into the ocean, the Electra apparently had some buoyancy but would have eventually sank leaving the two in the open water without food or water meaning they either drowned or succumbed to the elements.
Theory Two // Landed at Nikumaroro
Amelia landed the Electra on a remote island (Nikumaroro) 350 miles southeast of Howland Island and after no help came they both eventually died on the island. This theory has been supported by the discovery of improvised tools, bits of clothing, an aluminium panel and a piece of Plexiglass that fits with the window of an Electra. In May 2012, a jar of freckle cream was found along with a woman's compact mirror, both items were consistent for a woman of Amelia's age to carry and she was famous for her freckles, something she disliked. This theory only mentions Amelia, her and Fred were together and these signs only suggest she was on the island, what happened to Fred? Did he die during a crash landing which is why he wasn't on the island? Did the Electra crash land in the sea and the two had to swim to the island? Either way there is a strange lack of Fred in the island theory and of course he could have just been overlooked in investigations as he wasn't the celebrity that Amelia was but it curious that the only traces have been that of a female.
Theory Three // Captured by the Japanese
A photograph discovered by a retired federal agent in the National Archives that was taken by a spy on the Japanese controlled Jaluit Island sparked the theory that Amelia and Fred had indeed been rescued by the hostile Japanese on the island. A man and a woman who resemble the missing pair are thought to be in the photo, there is also a ship pulling an item that resembles the Electra. The ship, Koshu Maru, was in fact in the area that day and could have taken the two to Jaluit as prisoners before taking them to Saipan where they died in captivity or were executed. This theory has been largely panned as the photo has been found in a Japanese travel blog in 1935, two years before the flight.
The photo which people thought showed Amelia and Fred
There was also a theory that claimed the Electra was shot out of the sky by the Japanese but once again no evidence of this has ever been found. There have been rumours of the graves of Amelia and Fred as well near a former Japanese prison on Saipan. Amelia's family have expressed their belief that the Japanese are somehow involved, some claim there are unnamed witnesses who are Japanese soldiers and Saipan natives who hold information. One cousin claims the Electra was cut into scrap pieces and thrown into the ocean to explain why the plane has never been discovered. There were also rumours of Amelia being a spy or surviving and living out her life under another name but the woman who was thought to be Amelia was proven to not have anything to do with the aviator.
The ruins of the former prison on Saipan where Amelia and Fred were rumoured to have been held captive and then executed.
Over the years people have been desperate to solve what happened to Amelia and Fred so people have found clues that may lead to the answer everyone wants:
What has been found of the Electra?
In October 2014, researchers reported a find of an 19 inch by 23 inch scrap of metal on Nikumaroro's reef that they believe to be a part of the plane. Eric Bevington and Henry E. Maude took a photo of the shipwreck on Nikumaroro the SS Norwich City in October 1937 while walking around the island, they found no evidence of the Electra or the missing pair. In 2010, Jeff Clickman, an expert in image processing claimed a small portion of the photo showed what looked like a landing gear sticking out of the water, this remains debated as some say this lines up with the Electra but a 2019 search of the island suggested this object was some of the local rocks sticking out of the ocean.
Photo of the supposed landing gear, circled in red
Has there been any sign of the bodies of Amelia and Fred?
In July 2017, a team claimed to have found the spot where Amelia had died. In 1940, Gerald Gallagher, a British official, reported finding human bones under a ren tree, the man even speculated these to be Amelia's remains and sent off the bones for testing. Gallagher found a bottle, a shoe and a sextant box. These bones were apparently misplaced in Fiji after being examined and presumed lost. After this, many expeditions found evidence to back the theory of this being where Amelia and Fred landed, they included the remains of a campfire, a woman's compact mirror and freckle cream. The forensic bone sniffing dogs all reacted to the scent of human remains under a ren tree and the team sent samples back to a lab in Germany for further tests. It is not known the results of such testing.
The freckle cream found
In 2018, anthropologist Richard Jantz announced his results of his examination of the original forensics analysis done on the bones. The original came to the conclusion the bones were of a short, stocky European man but Jantz found that after analysing bone measurement data, studying photos of Amelia and her clothing measurements that "... Earhart is more similar to the Nikumaroro bones than 99 percent of individuals in a large reference sample, this strongly supports the decision that the Nikumaroro bones belonged to Amelia Earhart." National Geographic funded a search of the island in August 2019, the team was led by by famed explorer Robert Ballard who famously found the Titanic in 1985. Their search ultimately found no new evidence but they remained hopeful that further searches would uncover the truth. Experts are optimistic that they can identify Amelia's skull as her sinus operations left her with a drilled hole in the nasal cavity and her gap in her front teeth provide further visual identifying marks.
The skull that was found in storage and thought to be Amelia's
After searches in the research centre in Fiji, female bones were found that were thought to be the ones found on Nikumaroro. If any DNA testing is to be done on these bones to match them with Amelia's family it has not yet been announced. There have been no signs of Fred's remains, leaving the question of his fate a mystery too and the question of are Fred's remains inside the Electra which is why no sign of his remains have been found?
What about the radio signals?
In July 2018, TIGHAR Executive Director Richard Gillespie released a report analysing the radio distress signals sent by Amelia in the days after her disappearance. He theorised that the Electra landed on Nikumaroro reef, the only place large enough in the area to land, and after he analysed the tide patterns he found the distress signals corresponded to the reefs low tide, it was the only time Amelia could run the planes engine without flooding.
Amelia's distress signals were picked up by many far away from her, on July 4, two days after the crash, a resident of San Francisco heard "Still alive. Better hurry. Tell husband all right". Three days later, an Eastern Canadian resident heard "Can you read me? Can you read me? This is Amelia Earhart... please come in.". This is believed to be the last verifiable distress signal from her, once again these distress calls make no mention of Fred nor does he do any of the distress calls, could this be a sign that her companion had died by this point or was injured?
Amelia Earhart was a unique and fearless woman who succeeded in a time where many would not have wanted a woman to succeed. She set a standard for women everywhere that they could be more than just a wife and a mother and she continues to inspire to this day. What happened to Amelia and Fred is a mystery that we hope can be solved one day but for now we must continue to search all clues and areas in the hope that it leads us to the Electra and the missing aviators.