Amelia Earhart has been missing for more than 85 years, and despite numerous theories about what happened to her, we are still no closer to finding out the truth about what happened to her.
American aviator, writer, and women’s rights advocate Amelia Earhart. She was the first female pilot to cross the Atlantic on her own. People around the world are still intrigued by the mystery surrounding her disappearance in 1937 while attempting to fly around the world.
On July 24, 1897, she was born in Atchison, Kansas. She visited her sister in Toronto over the Christmas holiday in 1917, and while she was there, a pilot flew his plane very close to her at an aviation expo.
I think that little red aero plane said something to me as it swished by, she later remarked.
Earhart went to an air show in Long Beach, California, in December 1920. Her life was changed by a quick flight of only ten minutes. I knew I had to fly by the time I was two or three hundred feet in the air, she recalled. Six months after she started taking flying lessons, she bought her first aircraft, a used, bright-yellow biplane she named The Canary. In October 1922, she quickly set the global record for female pilots in terms of altitude (14,000 feet).
However, after her parents separated in 1924, Earhart was compelled to sell The Canary due to her family’s financial difficulties.
She eventually settled in Boston and began working there when she unexpectedly received a call in April 1928 asking if she would like to become the first woman to fly across the Atlantic. She accepted the offer right away.
Despite being listed as a co-pilot, Amelia was ultimately denied permission to fly. Earhart nevertheless rose to fame in aviation. She was given the nickname “Lady Lindy” by the media, and George P. Putnam, who had previously written several stories about Charles Lindbergh, decided to make Amelia Earhart’s story his next big hit. During appearances, lectures, and other promotional activities, Earhart and Putnam collaborated closely and their friendship grew.
Putnam and Earhart got married in 1931, following Putnam’s divorce. Earhart made her mark in a variety of fields, including magazines, airline management, and women’s fashion. However, flying has always been her true passion. She achieved an altitude record of 18,415 feet and was elected president of The Ninety-Nines, a group devoted to women in aviation.
Earhart and Putnam planned Earhart’s solo flight across the Atlantic for a while in secret. This would be the flight’s second solo passenger and first female passenger. Five years to the day after Lindbergh’s illustrious flight, on May 20, 1932, she departed Harbor Grace, Newfoundland, for Paris.
The flight was immediately hampered by bad weather, dense clouds, and ice on the wings. Earhart landed in Londonderry, Ireland because she was aware that she would not make it to Paris. Earhart claimed, “After frightening the cows in the neighborhood, I pulled up in a farmer’s back yard.” Earhart became a global hero and received numerous awards for her 15-hour flight. She established seven women’s aviation speed and distance records between 1930 and 1935. I have a feeling that there is only about one more good flight left in my system, Earhart said as she approached her 40th birthday. She hoped it would be a round-the-world trip. Being the first woman to do it was important to her.
Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan, took off from Miami on June 1st, 1937, amid much fanfare. They started their 29,000-mile journey eastward. They arrived in Lae, New Guinea, after a 29-day journey. Over the Pacific, the remaining 7,000 miles would be travelled. The plan called for landing on Howland Island, which is 2,556 miles from Lae and situated halfway between Hawaii and Australia. Howland Island was a challenging place to land because it was only 1.5 miles long and half a mile wide. On Howland Island, radio contact was made with the U.S. Coast Guard ship Itasca as part of special navigational precautions. Earhart and Noonan took off from Lae at 10 a.m. Early on, they had issues with cloudy skies and rain showers.
Other experts contend that their maps may have been inaccurate, while some witnesses claimed that the radio antenna may have been damaged. They were unable to connect with the Itasca or land on Howland Island in time as they got closer. The U.S. Navy Radio in Honolulu received one of Amelia Earhart’s final transmissions, which was garbled Morse code reading “281 north Howland – call KHAQQ – beyond north… won’t hold with us much longer… above water… shut off.” At 8:43 a.m., Earhart sent the following message: “We are running north and south.”
Rescue personnel started searching the area for the renowned aviator and her navigator, Fred Noonan, within hours. The largest and most expensive air and sea search in American history was conducted by the U.S. Navy and Coast Guard. When their efforts were unsuccessful, Earhart’s spouse of six years, George Putnam, funded his own search but also came up empty. A living legend had disappeared without a trace. The U.S. government concluded in an official report that the two experienced pilots ran out of fuel, crashed into the water, and sank because they were unable to find Howland Island, where they were headed. On January 5, 1939, Earhart was declared legally dead. However, the reason and location of her plane’s crash remain a mystery.
Numerous theories have been proposed in the eight decades since Amelia Earhart vanished, some of which are supported by scientific data and others by less credible evidence. Because of her close friendship with Franklin D. Roosevelt and his wife, Eleanor, some theorists, for example, think that Amelia Earhart was actually a secret agent working for the United States government. They assert that either Earhart and Noonan landed on one of the Japanese-occupied islands in the Pacific and were captured, or that the plane intentionally deviated from its course before crashing in order to spy on those islands.
Another theory proposes that Earhart changed her name, arrived back in the country without incident, and lived out her days in obscurity. Another widely accepted theory holds that Earhart and Noonan landed on Nikumaroro, a remote island in the South Pacific that was known as Gardner Island at the time of their disappearance. The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery (TIGHAR ) is Earhart Project is devoted to looking into the Nikumaroro theory.
Since 1989, the group has been searching the island for artefacts and has amassed a collection that includes tools made from scrap materials, pieces of shoes, and aeroplane debris that is consistent with Earhart’s Electra. They have also learned that a British colonial officer discovered a castaway’s remains on Nikumaroro several years after Amelia Earhart vanished. The bones were lost after being sent to Fiji for analysis. The team made some intriguing potential discoveries during the TIGHAR expedition in 2010. They found three pieces of a pocketknife, shells that had been cut open, pieces of a glass cosmetic jar, and bits of makeup while foraging in an area where they had previously found signs of a campfire.
The most recent potential piece of information regarding Earhart’s disappearance came earlier this year when a History Channel documentary made public a recently discovered photograph from the US National Archives showing a number of hazy figures. According to investigators, the image shows Amelia Earhart, her navigator Fred Noonan, and her aircraft on the Marshall Islands after they vanished.
The theory, which is elaborated upon in the documentary, contends that Earhart and Noonan were captured by the Japanese after they crashed near the Marshall Islands, some 1,000 miles from their intended destination of Howland Island.
However, other Earhart investigators have rejected that theory, and it is still mystery what actually happened to Noonan and Earhart.
Four border collies with special training to find the scent of human bones were brought to Nikumaroro earlier this year as part of TIGHAR’s most recent expedition to the atoll, but again without success.