DID YOU KNOW?
Amelia sitting in the cockpit prior to take off
Amelia Earhart with her husband
George Pamer Putnam
The route of the plane
Anyway, to help with navigation, two brightly lit U.S. ships were stationed to mark the route. Earhart was also in intermittent radio contact with the Itasca, a U.S. Coast Guard cutter near Howland. Late in the journey, Earhart radioed that the plane was running out of fuel. About an hour later she announced, “We are running north and south.” That was the last transmission received by the Itasca. The plane was believed to have gone down some 100 miles from the island, and an extensive search was undertaken to find Earhart and Noonan.
However, on July 19, 1937, the operation was called off, and the pair was declared lost at sea. Throughout the trip, Earhart had sent her husband various materials, including letter and diary entries, and these were published in Last Flight (1937). Earhart’s mysterious disappearance captured the public’s imagination and generated numerous theories and claims. A competing theory argues that when they failed to reach Howland Island, Earhart, and Noonan were forced to land in the Japanese-held Marshall Islands. According to this theory, the Japanese captured Earhart and Noonan and took them to the island of Saipan, some 1,450 miles south of Tokyo, where they tortured them as presumed spies for the U.S. government. They later died in custody (possibly by execution).
She then departed from Honolulu on January 11, and after 17 hours and 7 minutes, landed in Oakland the following day. Later that year she became the first person to fly solo from Los Angeles to Mexico City. In 1937 Earhart set out to fly around the world, with Fred Noonan as her navigator, in a twin-engine Lockheed Electra. On June 1 the duo began their 29,000-mile journey, departing from Miami and heading east.
Now, over the following weeks they made various refueling stops before reaching Lae, New Guinea, on June 29. At that point, Earhart and Noonan had traveled some 22,000 miles. They departed on July 2, headed for Howland Island, approximately 2,600 miles away.