National Geographic History - July 2019

After hours of flight, during their final

approach to Howland, Earhart radioed the

Itasca. The ship was receiving her trans-

missions—at one point the signal was so

strong that the ship’s radio operator ran to

the deck to search the skies for Earhart’s

plane—but the signals the ship returned

did not reach Earhart and Noonan, who

were flying unguided above the clouds.

The Electra never made it to Howland

Island, and a massive search failed to find

any sign of the missing aviator and her

plane. Two weeks later, the United States

declared Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan

lost at sea. The U.S. government’s official

position is that the Electra, unable to es-

tablish radio contact with the Itasca, ran

out of fuel and crashed into the ocean.

ENIGMAS

A 2017 History Channel

documentary claimed to

have found proof of a theory

that Earhart and Noonan

landed near the Japanese-

controlled Marshall Islands

and were taken hostage,

ultimately dying in a prison

on Saipan. Using facial

recognition and other tests

on a blurry photo of people

on a dock in Jaluit Atoll, one

of the Marshall Islands, they

concluded that the aviator

and her navigator were two

of the people pictured. But

a Japanese history blogger

found the same photo in

a 1935 book in Japan’s

national library, quickly

debunking the theory that

the image could have been

taken after Earhart’s 1937

disappearance.

PICTURING

AMELIA

In Search of Amelia

Several expeditions in the past 15 years

have tried to locate the plane’s wreckage.

By studying Earhart’s final radio transmis-

sions and calculating what is known about

the Electra’s fuel supply, researchers have

narrowed their search to a 630-square-

mile area of ocean. Some believe that Ear-

hart and Noonan flew north, toward the

Marshall Islands, where they crashed and

were captured by Japan, who controlled

that area. Eyewitnesses claimed to have

seen Earhart in a prison camp on Saipan,

but physical evidence supporting their

testimony is scarce.

SOLO FEATS

ERIC LONG/SMITHSONIAN NATIONAL AIR AND SPACE MUSEUM

AMELIA EARHART’S LOCKHEED VEGA

EARHART made two of her history-making flights in the single-

engine Lockheed 5B Vega. Nicknaming it her “Little Red Bus” or

“Old Bessie, the Fire Horse,” Earhart was at the controls in May

1932 when she became the first woman to fly solo across the

Atlantic. That summer, she became the first woman to fly

solo nonstop across the U.S. from California to New Jersey,

where she was welcomed by a huge crowd.

PHOTOGRAPHED, ON JALUIT ATOLL, THE

MARSHALL ISLANDS, THIS COUPLE IS BELIEVED BY

SOME TO BE EARHART AND NOONAN IN 1937. THE

IMAGE HAS SINCE BEEN DATED TO 1935.

AMELIA EARHART IN THE COCKPIT

OF HER LOCKHEED ELECTRA BEFORE IT

VANISHED IN 1937

GETTY IMAGES

U.S.

NAT

ION

AL^ A

RCH

IVES

12 JULY/AUGUST 2019