Fateful Final Flight
Earhart’s achievements in aviation had
already made her an international house-
hold name when, in 1937, she set out to
become the first woman to fly around the
world, a grueling 29,000-mile eastbound
journey that roughly followed the Equator.
A failed attempt in March damaged her
plane, but after repairs, she and her nav-
igator, Fred Noonan, departed from Oak-
land, California, on May 21.
After 22,000 miles, 40 days, and more
than 20 stops, they arrived in Lae, on the
eastern coast of Papua New Guinea. On
the morning of July 2, Earhart and Noonan
began what was expected to be the hard-
est leg of their trip: to Howland Island,
a 1.5-mile-long coral atoll in the central
Pacific Ocean. More than 2,500 miles of
ocean stretched between Lae and the re-
mote spit of land that was
their next stop to refuel.O
n July 2, 1937, Amelia Ear-
hart flew toward Howland
Island, one of the last stops
on her attempt to circum-
navigate the globe. Nearing
the tiny Pacific atoll, she radioed the Itas-
ca, a United States Coast Guard cutter
anchored off Howland’s coast, to ask it
to guide her onto land with radio signals.
“KHAQQ (the Lockheed Electra 10E’s
call sign) calling Itasca: We must be on
you but cannot see you ... gas is running
low ... been unable to reach you by radio
... we are flying at 1,000 feet.”
Earhart’s last confirmed message in-
dicated that she was flying on a north-
west-to-southeast navigational line that
bisected the island, but she did not indi-
cate in which direction she was heading.
After that communication at 8:43 a.m.,
radio contact was lost, and no one knows
what happened next.The Mystery
of Amelia Earhart’s
Last Flight
The aviator was nearing the end of her round-the-world
flight when her plane vanished over the Pacific in July 1937.
More than eight decades later, the mystery of her
disappearance—and the quest to solve it—still survive.RECORD-BREAKER
DMTRI KESSEL /LIFE/GETTY IMAGESFLYING CROSS GRANTED TO AMELIA EARHART BY THE U.S. CONGRESSENIGMASAS WELL AS being the first woman to complete record-breaking
solo flights, Earhart was also the first woman to receive the
Distinguished Flying Cross, awarded to her in 1932 for “heroism or
extraordinary achievement while participating in an aerial flight.”
A co-founder of the all-female aviators’ club the Ninety-Nines,
Earhart strove to open up aviation to as many women as possible.