NEED TO KNOW
- Amelia Earheart was the first woman to fly alone across the Atlantic Ocean and had aspirations to be the first to fly around the world
- However, she never finished her journey after her plane failed to land in the Pacific island where it was set to refuel
- No one has found Earheart’s body or the remains of her plane since it disappeared, leaving mystery around the event nearly 90 years later
Amelia Earhart left a timeless legacy in life and in death.
After falling in love with aviation at a young age, Earhart went on to receive numerous accolades for her piloting feats across the United States in the years to follow. It was in 1932, however, that she made trailblazing history and became the first woman to fly alone across the Atlantic.
Soon after, Earhart swiftly set her eyes on her next big adventure, and, in 1937, she set out to become the first woman to fly around the world. Embarking on the trip alongside her navigator, Fred Noonan, Earhart started the difficult journey in June that year.
However, while circumstances were smooth-sailing at the start, things quickly took a somber turn on July 2, 1937.
After a number of technical difficulties, including a malfunctioning radio system, Earhart and Noonan never made their landing on an island where they were expected to refuel their aircraft and disappeared near the pitstop.
“It’s one of the greatest mysteries of the 20th century,” Dorothy Cochrane, curator of general aviation at the National Air and Space Museum in the Smithsonian Institute, explained in a 2007 editorial for the museum’s magazine.
She continued, “She was the best-known American woman pilot in the world and she just disappeared off the face of the Earth.”
So what happened to Amelia Earhart? Here’s everything to know about the legendary aviator’s last flight and what has been unearthed since.
What happened to Amelia Earhart?
Earhart began her famed voyage around the world on June 1, 1937, with Noonan by her side.
The pair boarded a twin-engine Lockheed Electra and began their publicized journey by departing from Miami. Following a few refueling stops eastward, they landed in Lae, New Guinea, almost a month later on June 29, having completed 22,000 miles out of their anticipated 29,000-mile journey.
On July 2, they recommenced their journey and headed toward Howland Island, a tiny destination in the Pacific Ocean, to refuel. Earhart and Noonan were expected to fly around 2,600 miles to reach the spot, subsequently arriving the morning of the next day, however, it was notoriously difficult to locate, according to Britannica.
In an attempt to ease their navigation, a U.S. Coast Guard cutter named Itasca was stationed near Howland and was in radio contact with Earhart. While her calls with the Itasca began as routine reports, Earhart’s status updates gradually became more of a cause for concern as she pointed out unfavorable weather conditions like cloudy skies, and more pressingly, that the plane was running out of fuel.
To complicate matters, the signal between Earhart’s plane and the Itasca was troubled, and the last transmission the cutter received from Earhart heard her saying, “We are running north and south,” while also indicating what compass coordinates they were flying by.
However, the plane never arrived, and an extensive search operation — the biggest by the U.S. Navy and Coast Guard in American history up to that point — looking for Earhart and Noonan ensued. Around two weeks later, on July 19, the search efforts were called off, and the pair were declared lost at sea.
Were Earhart and Noonan declared dead?
A year and a half after the search operations, Noonan and Earhart were both declared dead in absentia on Jan. 5, 1939.
The term indicates that someone is legally declared deceased, despite the lack of direct proof of their death.
What is the leading theory on Earhart’s disappearance?
Following an investigation into the aircraft’s disappearance, the U.S. government concluded that Earhart’s plane ran out of fuel and crashed into the Pacific Ocean, per Britannica.
This is also the prevailing theory in general by experts and researchers on what happened to Earhart, despite her plane never being found and the circumstances of what happened after the crash remaining unclear.
Tom Crouch, the senior curator of aeronautics at the National Air and Space Museum, said in the 2007 editorial that it’s likely that Earhart’s plane is resting at the bottom of the ocean with some of her belongings, like her leather jacket, surviving the environment.
“The notion of seeing images of Amelia’s leather jacket 18,000 feet down [disturbs] me,” Crouch said.
He noted that the Titanic, which came to rest at 13,000 feet in the Atlantic Ocean, had a host of artifacts that remained relatively intact, meaning that along with her jacket, Earhart’s shoes and teeth have also likely survived as well.
“I want to know where she is, but there’s something uncomfortable about finding out,” Crouch added. “I’m convinced that the mystery is part of what keeps us interested. In part, we remember her because she’s our favorite missing person.”
What do other theories suggest about Earhart’s disappearance?
In light of the mystery shrouding Earhart’s disappearance, several other theories besides fuel depletion have emerged in hopes of finding an answer.
One theory, according to Britannica, suggests that Earhart and Noonan were taken captive by Japanese forces after encroaching upon Japanese-occupied islands. Another more popular theory assumes that Earhart and Noonan continued flying south after not finding Howland and crash-landed on Gardner Island, now known as Nikumaroro Island, in the western Pacific Ocean.
The hypothesis has been largely supported by the findings of Richard Jantz, an anthropology researcher, per the BBC. In 2018, he re-examined seven bone measurements, initially studied in 1940 by physician DW Hoodless, and found that they were more similar to Earhart’s than 99% of individuals from a large reference sample.
However, no direct link between Earhart, like her plane or a perfectly matched DNA sample, has ever been found on Nikumaroro.
Have people continued to search for Earhart and her aircraft?
Over the years, several expeditions trying to find Earhart’s plane have ultimately failed.
Although these search efforts date back to 1937, a more recent inquiry into Earhart’s plane occurred in 2024. Deep Sea Vision, a company that specializes in unmanned underwater vehicles, released a sonar image in January 2024 of what they said appeared to be Earhart’s Lockheed Electra aircraft, according to CBS.
The researchers surveyed over 5,200 square miles of the Pacific’s ocean floor to capture the image, but several months later, they found that the potential aircraft was actually a rock formation.
What legacy did Amelia Earhart leave behind?
Earhart left as much of a legacy on land as she did in the sky.
A champion of women’s rights, Earhart was a member of the National Woman’s Party and was one of the earliest supporters of the Equal Rights Amendment. In 1929, she helped establish the Ninety-Nines, an organization for female pilots, and became their first president.
During a 2012 State Department event honoring Earhart’s legacy, former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton touched upon her continued impact in inspiring people to pursue their wildest dreams, regardless of gender.
“There was this woman, Amelia Earhart, who, when it was really hard, decided she was going to break all kinds of limits — social limits, gravity limits, distance limits,” Clinton said at the time. “Nobody was there to tell Amelia Earhart she couldn’t do what she chose to do.”
“She gave people hope and she inspired them to dream bigger and bolder,” Clinton continued. “When she took off on that historic journey, she carried the aspirations of our entire country with her.”
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