Amelia

by Nancy Nahra

  Earhart stopped in Lae, New Guinea, before going on to tiny Howland Island in the middle of the Pacific. She risked running into the monsoon season, and the 2,256-mile flight from Lae would be the longest hop of the whole trip. Even more difficult, Howland Island was just a tiny speck in the vast Pacific, a half-mile wide and a mile-and-a-half long. It lay some 1,532 miles southwest of Honolulu. Noonan would need every ounce of his skill to find it. And to make the task still harder - though no one knew it at the time - the island’s position on the charts was about five nautical miles from its actual location.

  Elaborate arrangements were in place to help Noonan. The Coast Guard cutter Itasca was to meet Earhart’s plane with supplies when she arrived at Howland Island, and the press reported colorful details about the “surveying and marking [of] three runways and attempts to scare away thousands of birds” to prepare for the landing.

  The Itasca’s radio would help Earhart and Noonan pinpoint their location and find the island. Two other American ships were also nearby, and, as Earhart’s plane neared, they were to burn every light they had, marking the way to the island just as French ships had marked the way from South America to Africa. The Itasca also fired up its oil-powered boilers to generate smoke as a visual signal. But if Earhart saw any of this, she gave no sign.

  When Earhart and Noonan had arrived at Lae, they had 22,000 miles behind them, more than two-thirds of the itinerary. They expected the next leg to be tricky, if not downright dangerous, because it was so long and the island so hard to see. But they were also worn out after all that flying and, understandably, in a hurry to beat the weather – or so people later surmised. In their haste or exhaustion before taking off from Lae on July 1, they failed to communicate all the details of the radio frequencies they would be using and making sure their radio could handle them. That was a fatal mistake.

  At first, there was hope that Earhart and Noonan might be found. Ruth Elder, who survived a crash in the Azores after a fuel line broke during an attempted flight to Paris, gave hope to newspaper readers: “I feel in my heart that Amelia will be rescued. I know exactly how she feels, floating around some place in the Pacific, the sun beating down on her as she prays that a ship is somewhere nearby. It was only an hour before we were rescued, but it seemed like ages.”

  Some reacted to the news with shock, at a loss for the words to express disbelief. Life conveyed the disbelief and awe felt by many: “The cold fact was that her flight, despite the scientific equipment also aboard her flying laboratory, was undertaken as a stunt – the kind of dangerous stunt of which the Federal Government now strongly disapproves. But this was of small importance to Earhart.”

  Walter Lippmann, a political commentator, spoke for many in his poetic reaction to Earhart’s loss: “The best things of mankind are as useless as Amelia’s adventure. Such persons . . . prove that man is no mere creature of his habits, no mere automaton, no mere cog in the collective machine but that in the dust of which he is made there is also fire, lighted now and then by great winds from the sky.”

  A Catalog of Possibilities

  Theories abounded in the aftermath. It was suggested that the direction-finding loop antenna on the Electra was new technology and Earhart may not have understood it, or maybe the antenna, which was mounted underneath the fuselage, got damaged in takeoff. Or perhaps communications with the Itasca were planned using different time systems set half an hour apart - Earhart on Greenwich Civil Time and Itasca using a naval-zone system. Others theorized that the radio simply malfunctioned because of the technical problems Earhart had described to Putnam. We will never know. What was clear afterwards was that Earhart’s plane was sending signals with no problem, and they were getting through. But her radio wasn’t hearing the answers.

  A revised weather forecast was predicting rain and dense cloud cover off Howland Island, but the forecast never reached Earhart, leaving her surprised when the plane ran into stormy weather. Relying on celestial navigation, Noonan had found their way before when details were lacking, but the cloud cover near the island kept him from seeing the sky while Earhart kept sending out questions, interrupted by static, and getting no answers back. She asked the Itasca to take bearings on her location and tell her where she was. At 7:42 a.m. on July 2, the Itasca heard Earhart strong and clear: “We must be on you, but cannot see you. Fuel is running low. Been unable to reach you by radio. We are flying at 1,000 feet.”

  The Itasca tried repeatedly to reply but couldn’t get through. At 7:58, Earhart asked again for a voice signal on a specified frequency so she could take a radio bearing. Her message came in strongly, indicating the plane was very close. Unable to transmit voice at the frequency Earhart wanted, the Itasca sent a signal in Morse code. Earhart said she could hear it, but couldn’t determine from which direction it came. At 8:43, she sent technical details about her course and the frequency that she was trying to use. A few minutes later she said: “We are running north and south.” That was her last message.

  Somewhere off the coast of Howland Island, the plane disappeared. Earhart’s welcome party immediately turned into the most extensive air and sea search ever undertaken. Despite a massive and systematic U.S. government-subsidized effort to locate the plane, its crew, or any clue as to what had happened, no trace was found – no floating debris whatsoever. Seventeen days and $4 million later, after scouring an area of 250,000 square miles of ocean and islands, the government declared an end.

  George Putnam had been waiting in Oakland for a call, a message, information of any kind. After the search was officially called off, he offered a sizable reward to anyone who could “definitely clear up the mystery.” Over the decades, a great deal of information has turned up, but none of it has proved definitive. So the mystery remains.

  A Dizziness of Theories

  Theories have multiplied ever since Earhart and Noonan were lost. The absence of floating wreckage fed the belief that the Electra landed on an island or shallow reef, a theory encouraged by reports of weak signals heard on Earhart’s last radio frequency after her disappearance. Some of these reports were hoaxes; others seemed possible since many people around the world were trying to send signals to the plane on that frequency. But confusion was inevitable.

  In the years since 1937, the fields of aeronautics and oceanography have advanced dramatically. Technological breakthroughs such as radar and sonar have recently led to the acceleration of digital technologies, enabling dizzying manipulation of massive quantities of data now easily stored and readily accessible. Not surprisingly, investigators have applied these advances to the still stubborn puzzle of Earhart’s disappearance.

  Of the many proposed explanations for her disappearance, some have generated considerable support and credibility. Each has its own valid points and vulnerabilities. All - plausible as any one might be - share the same frustrating lack of physical evidence.

  A Crash with No Survivors

  Adherents to the belief that Earhart’s plane crashed in the Pacific start with the radio messages that she sent to the ship waiting for her. The radio logs of Itasca have preserved these words, the only primary evidence available to any investigator. That information makes it possible to deduce that she was low on gas.

  Using details such as the fuel capacity of her Lockheed Electra and the distance she is known to have flown at the time of the messages, it is possible to estimate where she was and where she likely crashed. This line of reasoning suggests that she never reached any island.

  Using that theory, investigators expect to find some kind of debris somewhere near the island. A photograph taken in 1937, now known as the Bevington Photo, has long been suspected as coming from Earhart’s plane. But the problem of how to prove its authenticity still vexes experts. As recently as the summer of 2012, specialists from the U.S. State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research presented the results they found by applying computer imaging techniques to the original photograph.

  The imperfect quality of
the original Bevin photograph limits what can be identified readily. But with a schematic model, forensic imaging specialists can explain and point out a similarity between part of the plane’s landing gear and a portion of the hazy image in the photo. Blueprints from the aircraft manufacturer have limited use, however, because they cannot show modifications that may have been made for specific purposes, such as a round-the-world flight.

  More than once during her flight, Earhart took pains to eliminate any element that would add to her plane’s weight. One structural feature that had possibly been recovered, known as a dado, appeared to match debris that had been found. But, by definition, a dado could not be confirmed as part of her aircraft because it is considered an optional extra, part of the plane’s furnishings rather than part of its structure. Tempting as the hypothesis of a crash may appear, since it is the simplest, material proof is lacking.

  Survivors Who Left Evidence

  A tiny atoll, now called Nikumaroro and part of the nation of Kiribatu, remains a prime focus of the search. Tantalizing clues include a skeleton variously analyzed by anthropologists as that of a man or a European woman, bronze bearings, a zipper pull, possibly from a flight suit, a fragment of clear plastic curved to match the contours of the Electra’s cockpit window, and most recently, a jar of 1930s’ vintage freckle cream. A recent attempt to find some of those artifacts proved fruitless: They could not be found again in the same part of the island.

  A member of the TIGHAR group asserted that Earhart did survive and likely did what any survivor would do. According to one hypothesis, she tried to use her radio to ask for help and also to let the world know where she was. In an imaginative use of data, one scientist explained the failure of her radio signals by tracking fluctuations in the water level near the island. This theory holds that Earhart kept sending signals for a few days, and then lost the plane because of changes in tides and surf. With impressive precision, the calculations took into account variations in sea level from specific places of the island’s reef at particular times of day.

  Using new techniques and instruments, this same research group found a correlation between water levels and times when radio transmissions would have been lost.

  Survivors Taken Prisoner

  A radically different theory, and the one that palpably captures the mood of international relations in the years following 1937, looks to Japanese treachery to explain Earhart and Noonan’s fate.

  Career Air Force officer, Vincent V. Loomis, has written about his memories of what he saw in the 1950s while following his task group as part of nuclear tests known as Operation Ivy. In the Marshall Islands, the group was charged with helping the local population to set up large colored panels that were to function as markers. Viewed from the air, a sequence of particular colors could be used to help a pilot identify which island he was seeing. The significance of the islands came from their remoteness: Their distance away from population centers, guaranteed, it was hoped, that when imminent H-Bomb tests took place, damage and loss of life would be minimal.

  Loomis, concentrating on carrying out his immediate task, noted in passing that he saw an abandoned airplane covered with vegetation and coral near the beach. At the time, he was on a tiny island ten miles or so from the Ujae Atoll. One of his colleagues said it was Amelia’s plane, but Loomis wasn’t especially interested. The same day, someone else in his group found a shoe on the beach, so nondescript he couldn’t tell whether it belonged to a man or a woman. He remembered it because finding it there, in 1952, seemed odd.

  Three decades later, appreciating the significance of what he witnessed, Loomis wrote a book with Jeffrey L. Ethell that included an account of his efforts to confirm his discovery by investigating what the Japanese claimed to know. Using documents that he considers proof of dishonesty on the part of Japanese diplomats and officials, Loomis constructs an account of Noonan and Earhart’s capture and imprisonment. His account reads like an espionage thriller and ends with his conclusion that, “Amelia and Fred Noonan were the first prisoners of war and casualties in a conflict yet to come.”

  The repeated accusations aimed at Japanese officials limits Loomis’ credibility while reminding readers of the mood of the United States during World War II. He claims, for example, that Earhart may have seen some Japanese military preparations in the Marshall Islands while publicly Japan was claiming to occupy those islands only for fishing, trade, and cultural reasons. What she had seen, in other words, put her in danger. She could not be allowed to report that information to the United States government.

  Some hint of neutrality would have made Loomis’ claims more plausible. Instead, the reader finds judgments and editorializing that undercut his conclusions. Immediately after his assertion about “the conflict yet to come,” Loomis adds: “No one in Japan has ever stepped forward with reliable information on what happened from their point of view, but that is not surprising, since the Japanese have yet to admit a violation of international law prior to World War II. The illegal use of the mandated islands for military purposes is strongly denied to this day.”

  No Crash Ever

  Even more fanciful than the account of Earhart and Noonan as Japanese prisoners is the hypothesis that Earhart survived and reappeared in New Jersey with a new identity.

  In 1970, Joe Klaas wrote Amelia Lives! published by McGraw-Hill. In it, he claimed that Irene Bolam, a wealthy resident of New Jersey, was actually Earhart. Asserting that national security made secrecy necessary to protect the repatriated former prisoner of the Japanese, the book instantly created problems for Klass. Mrs. Bolam sued both him and McGraw-Hill, which pulled the books from store shelves. When Mrs. Bolam died in New Jersey in 1982, the story might have ended and been forgotten. But believers who survived tried to keep the legend in the public eye.

  Its revival started with a misidentification.

  Retired Air Force colonel Rollin Reineck met Bolam at a Long Island social event in 1965. The medals she wore reminded him of the ones that Earhart had worn, he said. But anyone who looked closely could have said that both the medals in question were round – that was the end of their similarity. But Reineck spun that observation into his own belief that not only were the medals similar, so were the women’s faces.

  Nearly a generation later, after the advent of computers, Colonel Reineck looked at a mocked-up image of Amelia in her seventies, produced by imaging techniques. According to him, the Earhart image looked surprising similar to a photograph of Mrs. Bolam at age seventy-four. Other Earhart researchers saw the same two images and disagreed. It was difficult to explain how it happened that Earhart had a pronounced gap between her front teeth, for example, whereas Mrs. Bolam had none. Convinced and insisting that they were the same person, Reineck wrote a book about his theory in 2003, a generation after the ill-fated Klass account.

  “Goodby - and Good Luck to You!”

  While all material traces of Earhart’s last flight have disappeared, her achievements remain. On both her first and second flights across the Atlantic, she wore the same watch. That was the watch she gave Gordon Selfridge. After Earhart disappeared in 1937, Selfridge presented the watch to Fay Gillis Wells, a charter member of The Ninety-Nines, who kept it at home in Washington, D.C. Wells said that Selfridge made the gift his present to her in 1963 when they were working on the ceremony surrounding the introduction of the Amelia Earhart commemorative stamp.

  Later, as part of efforts to honor Earhart’s memory in her girlhood home, Wells served as a founding organizer of the Forest of Friendship. To raise funds for that effort, she sold the watch at auction. Fortunately, the winning bidder was Joan Kerwin, director of the Ninety-Nines and member for thirty-nine years.

  In a gesture that fittingly enhanced Earhart’s legacy, Kerwin presented the watch to astronaut Shannon Walker at Ellington Field, Houston.

  In a gesture of appreciation for Earhart’s achievement, everyone in its chain of provenance hoped the National Aeronautics and Space Administration
would include the timepiece in a space flight. Carrying Earhart’s hopes higher than the aviatrix had ever flown, Walker took the watch with her on a mission in the spring of 2010. The timepiece arrived with Walker at the International Space Station aboard the Soyuz TMA-19 spacecraft on June 17, 2010, eighty-two years to the day after Earhart’s first trans-Atlantic flight. It returned from space and can now be seen in Oklahoma City, displayed at the Ninety-Nines’ Museum.

  Part of the story belongs to Earhart’s legacy at least as much as the watch: having a woman, an astrophysicist and flight engineer of the mission, as custodian of the timepiece. Nowhere is Walker referred to as a woman pilot or mentioned in any way except as a scientist and expert on space flight. That achievement puts Earhart’s influence in the stars.

  Before leaving on several of her epic flights, Earhart knew that she might not return. Out of consideration for the people who loved her, she left letters to help them through the grief her loss would bring. To her father, on the eve of her solo Atlantic crossing, she wrote these words. Let them end this story of her life.

  Dearest Dad:

  Hooray for the last grand adventure! I wish I had won, but it was worthwhile, anyway. You know that. I have no faith we’ll meet anywhere again, but I wish we might.

  Anyway, good-by and good luck to you.

  Susan Butler, East to the Dawn: The Life of Amelia Earhart (New York, New York: Da Cappo Press, 2009).

  Amelia Earhart, 20 Hours, 40 Mins.: Our Flight in the Friendship (New York, New York: Putnam’s, 1928).