People go missing every single day. Some of these cases go unnoticed by the world, while others become the object of speculation. One of these such people was Amelia Earhart, the woman who wanted to fly around the world, just to prove that she–and any other person who had enough experience–could do it.

Amelia Earhart was the first woman to fly across the Atlantic, but she was the second as well. The first time, she was a mere passenger, but two years later she flew across the Atlantic again, this time acting as the pilot. The flight took her fifteen hours, starting from Newfoundland, Canada and ending in Londonderry, Northern Ireland. This was in 1932. It would only be a few more short years before she started her flight around the world, and subsequently went missing.

In March of 1937, Earhart made her decision. She would be the first woman to fly herself around the world. Her flight was to start in Hawaii, but she lost control of the flight once the plane was off the ground. The plane was sent off for repairs, and Earhart restarted her adventure in Miami some months later. It’s unknown why, but Earhart and her navigator Fred Noonan decided to leave behind communication and navigation devices that may have been useful in their flight. Some believe this may have been to make room for more fuel, but no one knows the real reason for this decision.

Their last confirmed touchdown was in Papua New Guinea. The flight took 21 days, and was about 22,000 miles into their 29,000 mile flight. Shortly after touchdown, the pair left again for Howland Island, a small island north of the equator in the Pacific Ocean. By this point, Earhart was reportedly feeling tired and sick, but she pushed on anyway. This was July 2nd, of 1937. Neither she, nor Noonan, were ever heard from again. This has led to many theories over the years about what may have happened to the pair, and what may have happened to Earhart’s plane, known by many as the Earhart Electra.

One theory is that Earhart was captured by the Japanese under the assumption that she was a spy, and that they then used her plane as a model for their fighter plane “The Zero”. A related theory is that Earhart was spying on the Japanese and was captured. At the time, these theories made sense, and there are some people who still believe these theories today and have expanded on them. A photo was found in the National Archives that supporters of this theory believe contains both Earhart and Noonan standing on Japanese docks.

In the photo is a short-haired woman in pants crouching beside a man with a hairline and a nose similar to Noonan’s. The photo is of poor quality and does not show Earhart’s face, nor are ‘Earhart’ and ‘Noonan’ anywhere near the camera. However, the photo still caused an uproar and was featured in a documentary from History Channel. The theorists who presented this idea claim that Earhart and Noonan were then held captive on Saipan until their deaths, despite the fact that in the photo, there seemed to have been no constraints and neither ‘Earhart’ nor ‘Noonan’ seemed in anyway bothered by their current situation in the photo.

Natives claim that they saw a plane crash before Earhart and Noonan was taken away. Ms. Josephine Blanco Akiyama, who lived on Saipan as a child when this would have taken place, claims that the other natives were talking about a woman flyer at the time.

Another Saipanese woman claimed that she saw Earhart’s death. She was allegedly blindfolded, led to a pit, and then shot. There is no mention of Noonan. When asked for the location of the grave, the woman claimed that it was underneath the largest tree on the island. Upon this spot being excavated, no remains were found. Only a piece of fabric that some believe may have been the blindfold around Earharts eyes. However, this theory has not been proven by the United States, and the Japanese authorities deny that they ever had Earhart or Noonan in their custody.

Another theory is that Earhart secretly came back into the U.S. and lived out the rest of her life under the name Irene Bolam nee Craigmile. It has been reported that Earhart was friends with a woman of the same name in the 1930’s, shortly before her death, but some believe that they were always the same person, or that perhaps Earhart assumed Bolam’s identity upon her return to the US. Her method of getting back to the US is rather predictable. She was taken by the Japanese, of course, and then returned discreetly.

Supporters of this theory claim that Bolam and Earhart look too similar to be coincidence, especially considering the fact that the two women knew each other. A photo was taken of Bolam at age 74 and a photo of Earhart digitally aged up to 75 were placed side by side, but many of the similarities stem from Earhart being placed in similar clothing and jewelry and given the same hair color. There are facial similarities as well, but there are too many differences to be dismissed, such as teeth gaps, lip shape, and a mole that Amelia had but Bolam didn’t.

The original theorist, Joseph Gervais wrote a book on the subject in the early 1970’s called Amelia Earhart Lives! The book’s evidence solely consists of anecdotes and Gervais pointing out time after time the similarities between the two women. Bolam promptly refuted the claims and sued for $1,500,000. She won the case, and when Gervais and McGraw-Hill, his publishing company, appealed the action, they were once again beaten down. Bolam died in 1982, but the rumor still persists.

The last theory claims that Earhart and Noonan ran out of gas. Depending on who you ask, they could have crashed right off the coast of Papua New Guinea, on or near Nikumaroro Island, or somewhere in the Pacific Ocean.

The two most popular locations however, are off the coast of Papua New Guinea and on Nikumaroro Island. When this would have taken place, a young boy on Papua New Guinea claimed that he saw a plane crash before being taken under the waves. His parents ignored him, and thus this rumor went unexplored for years. Recently, however, a plane crash was found by the diving group Project Blue Angel. They say that there are parts of the plane that are consistent with Earhart’s Lockheed Electra. While the plane itself wasn’t exactly uncommon, the modifications that Earhart and Noonan had made to the plane were. In 1995, a man went free diving for sponges and verified the account, claiming that he had seen wreckage under the water.

When Project Blue Angel went down to Papua New Guinea to explore, they talked to the sponge diver. They gave him five distinct characteristics of the plane, and the sponge diver went back down to check out the wreckage. Upon his return, he confirmed that the characteristics were present. In August of 2018, Project Blue Angel went down themselves and found a glass disc that could have been one of the lights on the Electra. They have since sent it off to see if it had once belonged to a Lockheed Electra.

This isn’t the only possibility however. A large abundance of evidence–some of it circumstantial–has been collected by TIGHAR, the International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery. This group claims that Earhart crashed on Nikumaroro Island, or as it was known at the time, Gardner Island which is just 350 miles Southeast of Howland Island. The most significant piece of evidence that may prove this is the skeleton that was found on the island in 1940. The skeleton was identified as a European male, and unfortunately the bones have been lost since then. Using newer technology and techniques though, it has been proven that this theory may have been incorrect.

In that time period, the bones would have been identified using the 1899 model of identifying bones, meaning that it may have been inaccurate. Using measurements taken by calculating photos, and figuring out Earhart’s recorded height and weight via her pilot’s license, it has been revealed that these bones are so similar to Earhart’s bones that the likelihood that it’s not her is monumentally small.

In addition, there have been items found on the island that could prove that Earhart and Noonan were there at one point. Among these are the soles of women’s shoes, one found with the bones and subsequently lost, and the other sole found more recently. In addition to these, things that have been found on the island includes a patch of metal that is believed by TIGHAR to have been a piece of metal that had been used to patch up the tail area of Earhart’s Lockheed Electra. In 1944, a water catchment was found, made entirely out of things that Earhart and Noonan were known to have owned and that would have reasonably been on the Electra.

If this wasn’t enough, there are also 57 credible transmissions that had been received that people believe may have been from Earhart and Noonan, 50 of which were received by the military. The transmissions lasted for six days before dying off, presumably as the plane was washed away or as Noonan and/or Earhart was too weak to carry on with the transmissions.

The radio that they would have used to contact the outside world for help was located on the plane, and thus they would have only been able to call for help when the tide was low enough for the engine to be capable of powering the radio. This was realized by TIGHAR after systematically going through every credible source that reported hearing Earhart’s pleads for help, and the time that each one was received at. Most of these transmissions were received in the first three days of the crash.

The most credible and informative transmission was received by Betty Klenck, who was just 15 years old at the time of the crash. According to Klenck, the quality of what she was hearing was poor and cut out several times, but due to the fact that she wrote down what she was hearing and when she was hearing it, her experience is much different than those of the other sources.

Although much of what was said was fuzzy or nonsensical, most of the transmission consisted of messages such as “This is Amelia Earhart,” “help me,” “waters high,” and “can you hear me?” There was also evidence that Noonan was delirious, as he kept trying to get the microphone away from Earhart and attempting to leave the plane, which would have been very hot and uncomfortable to sit in.

There were other people who heard similar things, but all of these reports stopped after six days, implying that the plane’s radio was deemed unusable, they were no longer able to get to the plane, or they were no longer in any condition to attempt the journey.

Despite all of the evidence, it is still not known for certain what became of Earhart and Noonan, or what caused their crash that day. The only way to be certain of what may have became of them is to find the crash site or find DNA that proves where their final resting place lies. Amelia Earhart may not have succeeded in her flight around the world, but she still made history.

More Information
https://pioneersofflight.si.edu/content/amelia-earhart-solos-atlantic
https://www.livescience.com/64637-possible-amelia-earhart-plane-wreck-found.html
https://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-amelia-earhart-found-20180309-story.html
https://www.nytimes.com/1970/11/11/archives/new-earhart-book-called-nonsense.html
http://www.americaslibrary.gov/aa/earhart/aa_earhart_last_2.html
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/amelia-earhart-may-have-survived-crash-landing-never-seen-photo-n779591
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/amelia-earhart-died-80-years-ago-conspiracy-theories-about-her-n955081
https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2018/03/08/591950171/new-research-claims-bones-found-80-years-ago-on-pacific-atoll-likely-amelia-earh
http://tighar.org/Projects/Earhart/Archives/Books/BookReviews/earhartsurvive.html
https://www.history.com/news/researchers-identify-fragment-of-amelia-earharts-plane
https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/193213-finding-amelia-earhart-how-modern-forensics-finally-plotted-a-course-to-gardner-island
https://mysteriousuniverse.org/2018/07/distress-calls-from-amelia-earhart-week-after-crash-appear-to-be-real/
http://tighar.org/Projects/Earhart/Archives/Research/ResearchPapers/Brandenburg/PostLossSignals/PostLossRadioAnalysis/PostLostRadioAnalysis.pdf