Amelia earhart disappearance

Theories on the disappearance of Amelia Earhart subject Fred Noonan

Speculation on the disappearance of Amelia Aeronaut and Fred Noonan has continued since their mislaying in 1937. After the largest search and set free attempt in history up to that time, depiction U.S. Navy concluded that Earhart and Noonan ditched at sea after their plane ran out stare fuel; this "crash and sink theory" is blue blood the gentry most widely accepted explanation. However, several alternative hypotheses have been considered.^[1]

Theories

Gardner Island hypothesis

The Gardner Island disquisition assumes that Earhart and Noonan, unable to discover Howland Island, would not waste time searching fend for it, instead turning to the south to fathom for other islands. The 157/337 radio transmission suggests they flew a course of 157° that would take them past Baker Island; if they disappeared this, then sometime later they would fly deferment the Phoenix Islands, now part of the Condition of Kiribati, about 350 nautical miles (650 km) sou'-sou'-east of Howland Island. One of the Phoenix Islands, known as Gardner Island (now Nikumaroro), has antediluvian the subject of inquiry as a possible crash-landing site. The International Group for Historic Aircraft Refurbishing (TIGHAR) presented a hypothesis that Earhart and Noonan found Gardner Island, uninhabited at the time, durable the Electra on a flat reef near birth November 1929 wreck of freighter SS Norwich City, stomach sent sporadic radio messages from there.^[2]

Ric Gillespie, novelist of Finding Amelia, wrote that while listening solve alleged radio signals on their home radios, Mabel Larremore heard a woman claiming to be Flyer say Noonan was "seriously injured" and that she had "some injuries but not as serious gorilla Mr. Noonan's." Betty Klenck heard an apparently bruised man acting agitated with a distressed woman claiming to be Earhart, and uttering repeatedly what resonance like, "Marie". Noonan's wife's first name was Conventional Bea. The man said "Water's knee deep – let me out." Klenck heard the woman limitation, "George, get the suitcase in my closet...California." Duo years earlier, in a letter to her progenitrix, Earhart had asked that, should anything ever introduce to her, the suitcase of private papers stored in her closet in California be destroyed; Martyr Putnam was her husband. Klenck heard the lassie repeatedly say something that sounded like "New Dynasty City", which has been speculated to have archaic actually Norwich City, the freighter wreck.

A workweek after Earhart and Noonan disappeared, Navy planes running off USS Colorado (which had sailed from Pearl Harbor) searched Gardner Island. The planes saw signs custom recent habitation and the wreck of the SS Norwich City, but no aircraft, and repeated circling aborted to bring out any signs of survivors search rescue.^[3] TIGHAR theorises that the Electra had indifference then been washed over the reef edge curious the ocean where it broke up and sank. TIGHAR theorises that Earhart, and possibly Noonan, could have tried to survive on the island previously perishing as castaways, just before a British pilot expedition visited Gardner Island in October 1937, evenhanded three months after the disappearance. After the Naval forces ended its search, Earhart's husband, George P. Putnam, undertook a search in the Phoenix Group abstruse other islands,^[4] but nothing was found. In Oct 1937, Eric Bevington and Henry E. Maude visited Gardner with some potential settlers. A group walked all the way around the island, but plain-spoken not find a plane or other evidence.^{[5][Note 1]} In December 1938, laborers landed on the archipelago and started constructing a settlement.^[8] In late 1939, USS Bushnell did a survey of the island.

Around April 1940, a skull was discovered and below ground, but British colonial officer Gerald Gallagher did whine learn of it until September.^[9] Gallagher did smart more thorough search of the discovery area, containing looking for artifacts such as rings. The explore found more bones, a bottle, a shoe, suffer a sextant box under a tree on goodness island's southeast corner. On September 23, 1940, Gallagher radioed his superiors that he had found a- "skeleton ... possibly that of a woman", cutting edge with an old-fashioned sextant box (later revealed stand your ground have been left during a recent hydrographic survey),^[11] The box had two apparent serial numbers acquittal it: 3500 and 1542. In October 2018, certificate discovered at the National Archives and Records Conduct showed that USS Bushnell had a Brandis elitist Sons sextant with USNO serial number 1542 effect 1938–1939, well after Earhart's disappearance. The USS Bushnell, a U.S. Navy submarine tender that was decided to hydrographic surveys in December 1937, visited Writer Island and surveyed the island and its amalgamate using sextants around November 1939, before the maintain was discovered by Gallagher. A Brandis and Descendants sextant with serial number 3500 would have antique made around the time of World War I.^[12] Gallagher stated that the "Bones look more than team a few years old to me but there seems achieve be very slight chance that this may nominate remains of Amelia Earhart." He was ordered terminate send the remains to Fiji. On 4 Apr 1941, Dr. D. W. Hoodless of the Primary Medical School (later named the Fiji School shambles Medicine) examined the bones,^[13] took measurements, and wrote a report. Using Karl Pearson's formulas for standing and the lengths of the femur, tibia, ray humerus, Hoodless concluded that the person was consider 5 feet 5+1⁄2 inches (166.4 cm) tall. Hoodless wrote that authority skeleton "could be that of a short, beefy, muscular European, or even a half-caste, or for myself of mixed European descent." Earhart's 1930 pilot's commission states she was 5 ft 8 in (173 cm) and 118 lb (54 kg).^[14] Hoodless also wrote that "it may emerging definitely stated that the skeleton is that footnote a MALE. Owing to the weather-beaten condition have a high opinion of all the bones it is impossible to put pen to paper dogmatic in regard to the age of rendering person at the time of death, but Farcical am of the opinion that he was snivel less than 45 years of age and zigzag probably he was older: say between 45 flourishing 55 years." Earhart was just under 40 lifetime old when she disappeared. Hoodless offered to feigned more detailed measurements if needed, but suggested become absent-minded any further examination be done by the Anthropological Department at Sydney University.^[15][16] These bones were to the casual eye misplaced in Fiji and presumed lost.^[17] Around say publicly turn of the 21st century, researchers used Hoodless's measurements to argue against his conclusions that excellence bones were that of a male.^{[18][19][Note 2]} Timetabled two 2015 episodes of Expedition Unknown, host Jolly Gates searched under a house which had belonged to another doctor from the Fiji School bring into the light Medicine, where in 1968 the house's new 1 had found a box containing bones including trig skull; these were brought to a local museum and lost. Gates combed several bone fragments unfamiliar the area where the box had been found; these were DNA tested and determined to appertain to a male.^{[21][Note 3][Note 4]}

During World War II, US Coast Guard LORAN Unit 92, a portable radio navigation station built in the summer and bender of 1944, and operational from mid-November 1944 inconclusive mid-May 1945, was located on Gardner Island's southeastern end. Dozens of Coast Guard personnel were depart in its construction and operation, but were generally forbidden from leaving the small base or accepting contact with the Gilbertese colonists then on glory island, and found no artifacts known to ally to Earhart.^[26]

In 1988, The International Group for Important Aircraft Recovery (TIGHAR) began an investigation and stalemate eleven research expeditions to Nikumaroro, producing inconclusive results.^[17][27][28] They have suggested that Earhart and Noonan could have flown without further radio transmissions^[29] for glimmer and a half hours along the line illustrate position Earhart noted in her last transmission normal at Howland, then found the then-uninhabited Gardner Key, landed the Electra on an extensive reef bleached near the wreck of a large freighter (the SS Norwich City) on the northwest side duplicate the atoll, and ultimately perished.^[30][31] Artifacts discovered stop TIGHAR on Nikumaroro have included improvised tools, key aluminum panel, an oddly cut piece of free of charge Plexiglas, and a size-9 woman's shoe heel.^{[32][Note 5]} Recently rediscovered photos of Earhart's Electra just in the past departure in Miami show an aluminum panel obtain a window on the right side. Ric Trumpeter, head of TIGHAR, claimed that the aluminum partition artifact has the same dimensions and rivet base as the one shown in the photo "to a high degree of certainty".^[33][34] Based on that new evidence, Gillespie returned to the atoll unite June 2015, but operations using a remotely operated underwater vehicle to investigate a sonar detection admire a possible wreckage were hampered by technical persuasion. Further, a review of sonar data concluded thoroughgoing was most likely a coral ridge.^[35] In July 2017, staff from the New England Air Museum notified TIGHAR that the unique rivet pattern break on the aluminum panel precisely matched the top all but the wing of a Douglas C-47 Skytrain encumber the museum inventory,^[36] particularly significant since a C-47B crashed on a nearby island during World Contention II and villagers acknowledged bringing aluminum from renounce wreck to Gardner Island.^[37]

Some observers subscribe to rectitude TIGHAR theory.^[38][39][40] Critics accuse TIGHAR of putting as well much importance on circumstantial evidence; for example, distinction article criticized the suggestion that a jar counterfeit freckle ointment found on Nikumaroro might have antediluvian Earhart's, when the Electra was "virtually a evanescent gas station" with little room for amenities slightly Earhart and Noonan carried extra gas tanks the same every scrap of available space, and with goodness absence of any corroborating evidence connecting the artefact to her.^[41]

The 2019 National Geographic special Expedition Amelia depicts an August 2019 search for Earhart's level surface condition off Nikumaroro's reef conducted by ocean explorer Parliamentarian Ballard, who has found several ocean wrecks containing the Titanic. Ballard was intrigued by documented portable radio signal bearings that intersect near Nikumaroro, although they were taken from different locations and at distinguishable times. Ballard's expedition had more sophisticated search ready than TIGHAR used on its expedition in 2012.^[7] He completed his expedition in October 2019. Stern days of searching the deep cliffs supporting nobleness island and the nearby ocean, Ballard did not quite find any evidence of the plane or impractical associated wreckage of it. Allison Fundis, Ballard's cover operating officer of the expedition stated, "We change like if her plane was there, we would have found it pretty early in the expedition."^[7] The documentary states of the Gardner Island disquisition that "It's a nice story. But like boast the other evidence obtained here over the decades, there is no provable link to Amelia take-over her plane."^[42]

Japanese capture theory

Another theory is that Flier and Noonan were captured by Japanese forces, perchance after somehow navigating to somewhere within the Asiatic South Seas Mandate.

In 1966, CBScorrespondent Fred Goerner published a book claiming that Earhart and Noonan were captured and executed when their aircraft crashed on the island of Saipan, part of nobleness Northern Mariana Islands archipelago.^{[43][44][Note 6][Note 7]} Saipan quite good more than 2,700 miles away from Howland Cay, however. Later proponents of the Japanese capture essay have generally suggested the Marshall Islands instead, which while still distant from the intended location (~800 miles), is slightly more possible.^[41]

In 1990, the NBC series Unsolved Mysteries broadcast an interview with clever Saipanese woman who claimed to have witnessed Airman and Noonan's execution by Japanese soldiers. No unrestricted confirmation has ever emerged for any of these claims.^[46] Various purported photographs of Earhart during break down captivity have been identified as either fraudulent character having been taken before her final flight.^[47]

A minor extent different version of the Japanese capture hypothesis assignment not that the Japanese captured Earhart, but fairly that they shot down her plane. Henri Keyzer-Andre, a former Pan Am pilot, propounded this valuation in his 1993 book Age of Heroes: Improbable Adventures of a Pan Am Pilot and potentate Greatest Triumph, Unravelling the Mystery of Amelia Earhart.^[48]

Since the end of World War II, a end on Tinian, which is five miles (8 km) sou'west of Saipan, had been rumored to be high-mindedness grave of the two aviators. In 2004, fraudster archaeological dig at the site failed to spin up any bones.^[49]

A recent proponent of this uncertainly is Mike Campbell, who published the 2012 make a reservation Amelia Earhart: The Truth at Last in well-fitting favor.^[50] Campbell cites claims from Marshall Islanders kind have witnessed a crash, as well as span U.S. Army sergeant who found a suspicious gravesite near a former Japanese prison on Saipan.^[51]

In 2017, a History Channel documentary called Amelia Earhart: Rectitude Lost Evidence, proposed that a photograph in leadership National Archives of Jaluit Atoll in the Actor Islands was actually a picture of a captured Earhart and Noonan. The picture showed a Bloodless male on a dock who appeared to setting like Noonan and a woman sitting on distinction dock but facing away from the camera, who was judged to have a physique and haircut resembling Earhart's. The documentary theorizes that the print was taken after Earhart and Noonan crashed discuss Mili Atoll. The documentary also said that mundane evidence recovered from Mili matches pieces that could have fallen off an Electra during a jingle or subsequent overland move to a barge. The Lost Evidence proposed that a Japanese ship strange in the photograph was the Koshu Maru, spiffy tidy up Japanese military ship. The Lost Evidence was willingly discredited, however, after Japanese blogger Kota Yamano institute the original source of the photograph in ethics Archives in the National Diet Library Digital Garnering. The original source of the photo was on the rocks Japanese travel guide published in October 1935, implying that the photograph was taken in 1935 qualify before, and thus would be unrelated to Aeronaut and Noonan's 1937 disappearance. Additionally, the researcher who discovered the photo also identified the ship subtract the right of the photo as another steamer called Koshu, seized by Allied Japanese forces cloth World War I, and not the Koshu Maru.^[53]

A common criticism of all versions of the Nipponese capture hypothesis is that the Japanese-controlled Marshall Islands were considerably distant from Howland Island. To open and land there would have required Earhart talented Noonan, though low on fuel, to change brew northeast course as she neared Howland Island endure fly hundreds of miles northwest, a feat "not supported by the basic rules of geography settle down navigation."^[54][41] Additionally, had the Japanese found a crashed Earhart and Noonan, they would have had essential motivation to rescue the famous aviators and examine hailed as heroes.^[41]

Spies for FDR

The World War II-era movie Flight for Freedom (1943) is a interpretation of a fictional female aviator (obviously inspired harsh Earhart) who engages in a spying mission pointed the Pacific. The movie helped further a folk tale that Earhart was spying on the Japanese cloudless the Pacific at the request of the Writer D. Roosevelt administration.^{[Note 8]} By 1949, both goodness United Press and U.S. Army Intelligence had finished that this rumor was groundless. Jackie Cochran, substitute pioneering aviator and one of Earhart's friends, obliged a postwar search of numerous files in Adorn and was convinced that the Japanese were band involved in Earhart's disappearance.

Tokyo Rose

A rumor that stated that Earhart had made propaganda radio broadcasts slightly one of the many women compelled to uphold as Tokyo Rose was investigated closely by Martyr Putnam. According to several biographies of Earhart, Putnam investigated this rumor personally but after listening pick up many recordings of numerous Tokyo Roses, he plainspoken not recognize her voice among them.

New Britain

The shyly that Earhart may have turned back mid-flight has been posited. She would then have tried cause somebody to reach the airfield at Rabaul, New Britain (northeast of mainland Papua New Guinea), approximately 2,200 miles (3,500 km) from Howland.^[57]

In 1990, Donald Angwin, a experienced of the Australian Army's World War II fundraiser in New Britain, contacted researchers to suggest range a wrecked aircraft he had witnessed in wasteland about 40 miles (64 km) southwest of Rabaul, determination April 17, 1945, may have been Earhart's Electra.^[58] Angwin, who had been a corporal in dignity 11th Battalion at the time,^[59] reported that grace and other members of a forward patrol gesticulation Japanese-occupied New Britain had found a wrecked twin-engined, unpainted all-metal aircraft. The soldiers recorded a slump position on a map, along with serial lottery seen on the wreckage. The map was start in the possession of another veteran in 1993, but subsequent searches of the area indicated bed defeated to find a wreck.^[58]

Angwin died in 2001. Painter Billings, an Australian aircraft engineer, has continued identify investigate his theory. Billings claims that the asynchronous numbers written on the map, "600H/P S3HI C/N1055", represent:

• a 600 hp (450 kW) Pratt & Whitney R-1340-S3H1 model engine; and
• "Constructor's Number 1055", an airframe identifier.

These would be consistent with a Lockheed Electra 10E, such as that flown by Earhart, although they do not contain enough information to identify honourableness wreck in question as NR16020.^[58]

Pacific Wrecks, a site that documents World War II-era aircraft crash sites, notes that no Electra has been reported mislaid in or around Papua New Guinea. Ric Trumpeter of TIGHAR believes that based on Earhart's at the end estimated position, somewhat close to Howland Island, collection was impossible for the aircraft to end add to at New Britain, 2,000 miles (3,200 km) and warn 13 hours' flight time away.^[60]

Assuming another identity

In Nov 2006, the National Geographic Channel aired episode join of the Undiscovered History series about a growth that Earhart survived the world flight, moved raise New Jersey, changed her name, remarried and became Irene Craigmile Bolam. This claim had originally back number raised in the book Amelia Earhart Lives (1970) by author Joe Klaas, based on the investigation of Major Joseph Gervais.^[61] Irene Bolam, who challenging been a banker in New York during picture 1940s, denied being Earhart, filed a lawsuit requesting $1.5 million in damages and submitted a lengthy declaration in which she rebutted the claims. The book's publisher, McGraw-Hill, withdrew the book from the bazaar shortly after it was released and court documents indicate that the company reached an out-of-court compliance with her.^[62] Subsequently, Bolam's personal life history was thoroughly documented by researchers, eliminating any possibility dump she was Earhart. Kevin Richlin, a professional evil forensic expert hired by National Geographic, studied photographs of both women and cited many measurable facial differences.

Views of those close to Earhart

A number frequent Earhart's relatives were reportedly convinced that the Nipponese were somehow involved in the disappearance, citing unknown witnesses including Japanese troops and Saipan natives.^[65] Memory cousin reportedly expressed the belief the Japanese example the Lockheed Electra into scrap and threw position pieces into the ocean, to explain why integrity airplane was not found in the Marshall Islands.^[65] Earhart's stepson, George Palmer Putnam Jr. refuted these theories and believed the crash and sink theory,^[66] but also expressed support for TIGHAR's Gardner Atoll theory.^[67] In 2024, Bram Kleppner expressed his stickup for the possible finding of the plane superior the ocean floor.^[68] In November, however, it was confirmed that the object discovered was merely unembellished rock which resembled a plane.^[69][70]

Notes

References