Amelia Earhart standing in front of her Lockheed Electra

Vanished Pioneer: Amelia Earhart

Welcome to Weird Wednesday! Today we’re once again discussing someone famous for vanishing, which is a pretty weird thing to think about: to be known for being nowhere. Buckle those seatbelts, my friends, because we’re about to take off.

Amelia Earhart was a pioneering aviator, and the first woman to make a nonstop solo flight across the Atlantic. Born in 1897, she began flight lessons in 1920, with a female teacher, Neta Snook. Earhart’s achievements alone would make her a legend. But unfortunately, she is most famous for her last flight, during which she and her navigator Fred Noonan disappeared.

Earhart was attempting to be the first female pilot to fly around the world. She and Noonan left on  July 2, 1937, from Papua New Guinea, heading for the uninhabited Pacific island Howland. It should have been a 20-hour flight in their twin-engine Lockheed Electra.

There was no GPS in 1937, so Earhart would need assistance finding the tiny Howland Island, only 6500 feet long. A US Coast Guard ship positioned near Howland would act as guide. Late in the flight and low on fuel, Earhart was able to send strong voice transmissions to the ship, indicating she was in the right area. However, she could not hear their return transmissions due to a technical issue, so they had to use Morse code. Attempts to use radio direction-finding also failed.

Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan never found Howland Island. They disappeared somewhere over the Pacific. And that is where Earhart’s life entered its unexpected second act, one which is still playing out long after her death.

So where is Amelia Earhart? The obvious answer is that she and Noonan ran out of fuel after failing to find Howland Island and crashed into the Pacific Ocean. There were technical problems on what would be a difficult flight to navigate under the best of circumstances. Pioneers are, by definition, doing new and sometimes dangerous things.

But nobody likes that answer. Amelia Earhart was a celebrity. It seemed impossible that she could vanish, that her story would not have an ending. People are attracted by mysteries because they want them solved.

So what are the other theories? Obviously, they all posit the plane finding ground somewhere other than Howland.

The main candidate is Gardner Island (now Nikumaroro), which was then uninhabited. Supposed radio communications picked up in the hours after the vanishing by home radio operators in the U.S., Canada, and the central Pacific seemed to come from Gardner. This theory posits that Earhart and Noonan were injured in the crash, and unable to survive as castaways. Their airplane was quickly swept into the sea. However, bones and artifacts found on Nikumaroro over the years have never been definitively linked to Earhart or Noonan, and their plane has not been found in surrounding waters.

There is also a theory that Earhart and Noonan landed safely (or crashed) on Saipan, and were captured by the Japanese—or that their plane was simply shot down by the Japanese, perhaps because Earhart and Noonan were secretly spying on them. There are supposedly eyewitnesses to the capture. However, there is no evidence of spying, and neither action would likely have been taken by Japan at the time, historians say. Plus, Saipan was most likely out of reach for a plane so low on fuel.

Another theory posits that Earhart turned back early and crash-landed in the jungle of New Britain, an island northeast of Papua New Guinea. A similar airplane may or may not have been found there. But because Earhart was clearly near the Coast Guard ship waiting for her at Howland Island, it’s extremely unlikely she ended up back near where she started.

An even wilder theory suggests Earhart faked her disappearance and reemerged as a woman in New Jersey named Irene Craigmile Bolam. Ms. Bolam was unamused by this theory, to the tune of an out-of-court settlement with the publisher of a book on the subject.

So the most likely answer is the least satisfying: there was no wild last act to Amelia Earhart’s journey. She and Fred Noonan crashed into the sea somewhere near Howland and their plane will likely never be found. It’s a sad and unworthy ending to such an exciting life, which is why no one wants to accept it.

And now for some high-flying writing prompts!

• Past tense. Ok, we’re going to start with time travel, because of course we are. Say your character wants to solve the mystery and finds a way to go back in time and insert themselves into the story. But where do they go? The Coast Guard ship? Howland Island? Gardener Island? The open Pacific Ocean? How about the airfield in Papua New Guinea before the flight left? Do they take any modern equipment with them that can help figure out what went wrong? And then of course, you have all the usual time travel questions: how do they remain undetected in the past, and are they tempted to change history and save Amelia Earhart?

• Sabotage. No theory actually posits sabotage of Amelia Earhart’s plane, but you could have a story where that’s the cause of disappearance. Sabotage of the fuel, the engine, or the communications gear could doom the flight. Who would perform this, when, and why? How do they benefit from the disappearance of a famous aviator? Or were they after her navigator the whole time?

• Aliens. So what if Earhart’s plane landed not on another island, but another planet? That’s right, we’re talking alien abduction! Maybe the aliens want to show a couple of talented humans how to navigate the stars. Or maybe Earhart and Noonan witness a strange craft in the sky, and perhaps even give chase. Or the plane could be downed by accident after being caught in the wake turbulence of a massive flying saucer.

Amelia Earhart

• You can’t get there from here. What if Amelia Earhart’s plane is finally found—but in a place it absolutely could not be? Like Kansas or the North Pole? The answer could be technology or magic, teleportation, migratory monsters, wormholes—or a very elaborate hoax involving duplicate planes and aviators and a grand conspiracy.

Thanks for spending your Weird Wednesday here. Wherever your journey takes you, I hope you arrive safely.

Sources & further reading:

Amelia Earhart: National Women’s History Museum

Amelia Earhart: National Air and Space Museum

The Earhart Project: The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery (TIGHAR)

Amelia Earhart: Wikipedia

Speculation on the disappearance of Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan: Wikipedia