Welcome to mystery month on the blog! I am going to spend the month looking into some of my favorite mysteries from across the ages. Settle in and let me introduce you to the Mystery of Amelia Earhart.
I am going to admit, right at the beginning, I am not a pilot or a navigator. I am not an Amelia Earhart expert, other than taking a curious interest in what happened. I am not a historian and I am confident I could spend years combing through the available resources on this topic. This is my general opinion, questions I have, and the things I discovered in my readings.
I am also going to say that I firmly believe that there are things that governments don’t tell their citizens. It may be a point of national security or just to prevent fear and panic, and I am good with that overall. I didn’t tell my son everything when he was growing up, some things I held back because he wouldn’t understand or couldn’t process. I understand how a government would withhold some things. I am not implying information was withheld, but I feel it safe to assume that the general public was not told exactly everything that happened in 1937.
The Life of Amelia Earhart
I am going to start with the ground that is safe to tread, the facts that are not likely to be disputed.
Charles Lindberg made his solo flight across the Atlantic in May 1927. After that interest grew for a woman to make the accomplishment and Earhart made the flight on June 1928, as a passenger. However, the desire to become the first woman to fly it alone grew and on May 22, 1932, she left Newfoundland and made the 12 hour trip to land in a small village in Northern Ireland. Mission Accomplished.
Earhart also held the title for the first woman to fly across the Atlantic and the Pacific with her flight from Oakland, California to Honolulu, Hawaii. In the years between 1930- 1935, Amelia set seven distance and speed records for women pilots. The flight around the world was coming.
In March 1937, the flight to circumnavigate the globe, around the equator, began. The flight started from Oakland but stopped in Honolulu for repairs. When taking off from Hawaii, the plane had issues that lead to the trip being delayed and significant repairs needed.
Everything was set for a restart in June of 1937 but changing weather patterns meant the route was now changed. Rather than flying from California to Australia, India, Africa to California, the trip would be done going east from Florida to Central and South America, turning east for Africa, crossing the Indian Ocean and pausing in Lae, New Guinea. The trip had been 22,000 miles with only 7,000 miles to go over the Pacific Ocean.
Earhart and Fred Noonan, her navigator, took off from Lae on July 2, 1937, heading east to Howland Island, a tiny island only 1 and 1/4 mile long and just over a 1/4 of a mile wide. The United States Coast Guard had a vessel, Itasca, ready to provide radio communications and navigation assistance to the island.
Several different sources state that there were radio issues between Earhart’s plane and the Itasca. There were delays in transmissions, transmissions without replies, and no clear contact between the ship and plane. They never made it to the island.
The last communication and even this was marked questionable, was sent on July 2, 1937, at 8:43 am.
So What Happened to Earhart and Noonan?
There are several theories about what could have happened, two of them are highly debated.
- Earhart and Noonan were off course and with low fuel, crashed and sunk in the Pacific.
- They missed Howland but landed on another island nearby, uninhabited Nikumaroro, about 350 miles southeast of Howland. Some evidence has been found to indicate a plane was there but nothing conclusive that it was Earhart’s plane. They would have died on the island as castaways.
- One theory suggests they landed on the Marshall Islands and were picked up, taken captive by the Japanese and brought to Saipan where they died as spies.
- Finally, after WWII Earhart was returned to the US and lived out her life in New Jersey, married and involved in finance, under a new name and identity.
The last two theories are ones that were the most debated and the most interesting. I went down the rabbit hole and if you are curious enough, I would recommend the trip.
The Island of Saipan
One blog I read, earharttruth.wordpress.com, gave very detailed accounts of what could have happened. His writing is extensive and quite detailed.
According to the author’s research, he believes that Earhart and Noonan were too far north to hit Howland and instead landed on the Marshall Islands. Eyewitness accounts from island natives place both Earhart and Noonan on Saipan. Mrs. Josephine Blanco Akiyama says that she saw Earhart and Noonan crash on Saipan in the summer of 1937 and that they were executed a few days later. The images below are from this site.
Story appeared in San Mateo Times on July 16, 1960 
Story appeared in San Mateo Times “Family Weekly” magizine on July 3, 1960
A former U.S Army sergeant, Thomas Devine, said that he was shown the graves of two white people who fell from the sky while he was serving there in 1944.
Were Earhart and Noonan killed by the Japanese and it was covered up by the powers in charge?
Amelia Earhart becomes Irene Craigmile Bolam
This theory I found highly interesting and there is another very extensive website, irene-amelia.com, that was also highly detailed on this topic.
This theory states that Earhart made it back to the US after the war and assumed the identity of Irene Craigmile Bolam. The interesting part of this theory is that Irene Craigmile Bolam did exist and actually knew Earhart in the 1930s. Research shows that there were three people who identified as Irene, Earhart’s 1930s friend, a 1940s surrogate mother, and a post-war Irene. There is less pictorial evidence of the earlier Irene’s, photos of poor quality and then something strange happens. According to this blogger, the post-war Irene does not at all resemble the earlier photographs. Below are images that explain this from the irene-amelia site.
Facial recognition was used and proves, according to the blogger, that Irene used to be Amelia Earhart and lived out of the public eye in New Jersey.
In Conclusion…
Both sides of the theories I spent the most time are were 100% convinced of their truth and accuracy. Both sides had compelling arguments about the why’s and how’s of what happened. I personally think it is a bit far-fetched that Earhart lived out her days under a new name, but the photos are interesting.
The piece that leaves me unsettled is what happened to Fred Noonan? If they did get captured by the Japanese, he was executed with Earhart. Ok. But what happens to him if she becomes Irene? What was his fate? Did her fame and notoriety save her and doom him? I don’t know for sure.
There is was an expedition in August 2019 led by Robert Ballard, the man who discovered the Titanic, to Nikumaroro to search for the plane and evidence of Earhart and Noonan. The expedition has the backing of National Geographic and they will air a documentary of the search and findings later this year. The only thing the site I read agreed on what that the expedition will fail, the plane and crew were never there.
Travel down the rabbit hole and dig into this for yourself. The sites are very informative, well researched and highly focused on their points of view.
What do you think happened? Did I miss looking into something? Is there a theory that you are in favor of? Let me know in the comments.
Till next time,
Kimberly