Amelia Earhart began her famous flight around the world on May 20, 1937. Departing from Oakland, California, in her Lockheed Electra, she traveled east across the United States. Her flight path took her south to South America, across the Atlantic Ocean to Africa, over Asia, and to Australia.
On July 2, 1937, she left Lae, New Guinea. There were only three more stops to make. She would land at Howland Island to refuel before proceeding to Honolulu, Hawaii, and then back to Oakland.
Out of a total of 28,595 miles, she ended up completing more than 24,000 miles, or 85 percent, of her journey. She was close to the finish line. But she never made it to Howland Island.
Competing Theories
What happened? The most commonly accepted explanation is that Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan, ran out of fuel and crashed somewhere in the central Pacific Ocean. Other theories, however, suggest that she didn’t die at all. Eyewitnesses say that a nurse matching Earhart’s physical description popped up a few years later on Guadalcanal.Another story goes that she made her way back to the United States and lived out her days under an assumed identity.
The Japanese Capture Hypothesis
The most provocative theory about Earhart’s whereabouts asserts that the Japanese captured her during an espionage mission ordered by President Franklin D. Roosevelt. This was the assertion of journalist Adela Rogers St. Johns in her 1974 book “Some Are Born Great.” According to St. Johns, Earhart’s around-the-world flight was just a cover story to discover how far along the Japanese were in their plans to attack Pearl Harbor.
St. Johns met with Earhart only a few minutes before she left Oakland on her final flight. “Don’t worry about me,” Earhart told St. Johns. It was the last thing she said before taking off.
St. Johns was a friend of Earhart’s. Knowing her as she did, she considered the statement strange. “I knew this couldn’t be just another flight,” St. Johns wrote. She thought Earhart seemed to be telling her, “This one is different, but always remember: I know what I’m doing.”
St. Johns’ suspicions were confirmed when a Marine officer later showed her “secret files of the United States Navy.” She claimed to have seen the orders from President Roosevelt “with my own eyes.” St. Johns also claimed that the Navy has kept these files under lock and key.
A counterargument to this hypothesis is that Earhart was too high-profile to ever carry out such a mission successfully. Her around-the-world flight was widely broadcasted, and the public was tracking her every move. Everywhere she landed journalists were greeting her. Earhart’s celebrity status would have jeopardized the secrecy that a spy mission required.
But is the Japanese capture theory so unbelievable? Earhart’s great contemporary, the author and aviator Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, suffered a fatal crash several years after Earhart. He was on a reconnaissance mission over German-occupied France. His fame was no detriment to his spying.
President Roosevelt, a friend of Earhart’s, denied ever sending her on such a mission. It is a fact that politicians cover up government secrets all the time, and some “conspiracy theories” end up being conspiracy facts in hindsight.
Numerous Eyewitness Accounts
Other firsthand observers support St. Johns’s Japanese capture theory. A New York Times article dated July 2, 1960 reported that, according to eyewitness accounts, Earthart and Noonan were taken prisoner on the island of Saipan. Natives of the island claimed seeing the famous pilot being held captive there before she was, apparently, executed.Thomas E. Devine, a U.S. Army postal sergeant, says he witnessed Earhart’s Electra being burned on Saipan in July 1944, following the capture of the island by American forces. He argues the plane was destroyed on the orders of the U.S. Secretary of the Navy.
Also during this time, a Marine, Pvt. Robert E. Wallack, discovered a locked safe in one of Saipan’s administrative buildings. Inside it was a “brown leather attaché case” containing maps, permits, and reports related to Earhart’s final flight. Wallack turned the case over to a naval officer.
Critics of this hypothesis point out that Saipan is geographically remote from Earhart’s intended destination of Howland Island. How would she have gotten there? One theory is that Earhart and Noonan crash-landed in the Marshall Islands and were later transported to Saipan. Scraps of metal discovered on the Milli Atoll may offer a clue. The corroded metal could be part of Earhart’s landing gear that broke off during the crash.
Since the Japanese never made an official report of their capture, and the American Navy has supposedly covered theirs up, these eyewitness accounts are all we have to go on. While far from being proof, the sheer number of independent eyewitnesses make the hypothesis difficult to dismiss outright.
The Castaway Hypothesis
Another theory is that Earhart and Noonan overshot Howland Island and landed on the Nikumaroro Atoll, formerly Gardner Island. Although the island is uninhabited, a partial human skeleton was discovered there, along with a sextant box, skincare products, and a shoe matching Earhart’s size.While the whereabouts of the bones are unknown, some of their measurements were recorded. Using a computer program, forensic anthropologists at the University of Tennessee compared the bone measurements to Earhart’s known measurements. That included her height, shoe size, tailoring measurements. The program computed that the bones were more similar to Earhart than to 99 percent of other individuals.
Among the skincare products were five fragments of a small glass jar. When reconstructed, it matched the size and shape of “Dr. Berry’s Freckle Ointment,” a brand dating from the 1930s. Earhart had freckles and disliked them. While the translucent glass the jar is made of doesn’t match the opaque glass in other samples of that brand, the jar’s interior contained traces of mercury, the active ingredient in the freckle ointment.
Final Comments
On each stage of her final flight, Earhart sent her letters, diary entries, and charts to her husband, G.P. Putnam. “When I go,” said Earhart in her book “Last Flight,” “I’d like best to go in my plane. Quickly.”Hopefully she got her wish. It’s painful to imagine Earhart awaiting execution in a prison camp or dying of thirst on a desert island.
All things being equal, the simplest explanation tends to be the correct one. That’s what Occam’s Razor suggests, anyway. Running out of fuel remains the most likely scenario, and it’s hard to dismiss the bone measurements and freckle cream.
But the human mind will always be attracted to mystery. Simple explanations don’t capture the imagination like an exciting theory about undertaking a spy mission. Until Earhart’s physical bones are recovered for DNA analysis (likely never), conjectures will continue to swirl.
