Earhart's Plane Found?!

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Would be good to finally know the truth whichever way.

As Mike said, alot of famous people do try and escape it all in one way or another, so wouldn't be surprised if that were proven true - nor would I be surprised if her plane was found at the bottom of the ocean.
 
Fred Nonan has been given a lot of flack over he years and has always stood in Eahart's shadow. Fred was born in Cook County Illinois not far from me so I've always felt that he had gotten the short-end of the stick. A bit about Fred:
At the age of 17, Noonan shipped out of Seattle as an ordinary seaman on a British sailing ship. During his career he sailed around Cape Horn seven times, with three of those times being under sail. Rising steadily through the rating system by receiving excellent performance reviews, he reached officer status. As an officer on ammunition ships during WWI, he served on three ships that were sunk from under him by U-boats. After the war, Noonan continued in the Merchant Marine serving a total of 22 years.
In the late 1920s he learned to fly and by 1930 he had received a "limited commercial pilot's license" In following year as a Merchant Mariner, he was awarded his Master rating, any ocean," Qualifying him to return to sea as a ship's Captain. However he remained with aviation and by the early 1930s, had accepted a position with Pan American World Airways as a navigation instructor in Miami and an airport manager in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Once again, rising through the ranks he eventually became the inspector for all of the company's airports.
In March 1935, Noonan was the navigator on the first Pan Am Sikorsky S-42 clipper at San Francisco Bay. In April he navigated the historic round-trip China Clipper flight between San Francisco and Honolulu Noonan was also responsible for mapping all Pan Am's clipper routes across the Pacific Ocean. In 1937 he felt he had risen through the ranks as far as he could as a navigator, and decided to starting a navigation school.
Enter Earhart and her proposed flight. The world was already crisscrossed by commercial airline routes (many of which Noonan himself had first navigated and mapped), so nothing new or important was expected from this flight. In fact it was mostly an adventurous publicity stunt for Earhart to gather public attention for her next book. Noonan was also attracted to this project because Earhart's mass market fame would almost certainly generate considerable publicity, which in turn might reasonably be expected to attract attention to him and the navigation school that he hoped to establish when they returned.
 
GrauGeist said:
And Noonan being a world-class navigator, wasn't going to screw up that easily, which casts more mystery into thier fate.
Click to expand...

Actually the day of their disappearance (which happens to be 76 years ago today) Noonan got them close enough to Howland Island where she (Earhart) should have been able to find Howland Island. The USS Itasca picked up strong radio transmissions from Earhart indicating that she was close to the ship (and Howland Island).

From Wiki;

"During Earhart and Noonan's approach to Howland Island the Itasca received strong and clear voice transmissions from Earhart identifying as KHAQQ but she apparently was unable to hear voice transmissions from the ship. At 7:42 am on July 2, Earhart radioed "We must be on you, but cannot see you—but gas is running low. Have been unable to reach you by radio. We are flying at 1,000 feet." Her 7:58 am transmission said she couldn't hear the Itasca and asked them to send voice signals so she could try to take a radio bearing (this transmission was reported by the Itasca as the loudest possible signal, indicating Earhart and Noonan were in the immediate area). They couldn't send voice at the frequency she asked for, so Morse code signals were sent instead. Earhart acknowledged receiving these but said she was unable to determine their direction."

More....

"Through a series of misunderstandings or errors (the details of which are still controversial), the final approach to Howland Island using radio navigation was not successful. Fred Noonan had earlier written about problems affecting the accuracy of radio direction finding in navigation. Some sources have noted Earhart's apparent lack of understanding of her Bendix direction-finding loop antenna, which at the time was very new technology. Another cited cause of possible confusion was that the Itasca and Earhart planned their communication schedule using time systems set a half hour apart (with Earhart using Greenwich Civil Time (GCT) and the Itasca under a Naval time zone designation system).

Motion picture evidence from Lae suggests that an antenna mounted underneath the fuselage may have been torn off from the fuel-heavy Electra during taxi or takeoff from Lae's turf runway, though no antenna was reported found at Lae. Don Dwiggins, in his biography of Paul Mantz (who assisted Earhart and Noonan in their flight planning), noted that the aviators had cut off their long-wire antenna, due to the annoyance of having to crank it back into the aircraft after each use."

My last swipe at this - several years ago I did some research on this and I think I found the closest Japanese garrison to Howland island was something like 800 miles away.

In 1937 the USAAC just took delivery of the first YB-17s and that summer used them in training exercises. A year later B-17s intercepted the ocean liner Rex in the Atlantic. If anyone really needed intelligence on the Japanese in this part of the world in 1937, several B-17s could have been flown there at altitudes where they would not have even been suspected. This nonsense about Earhart being a spy or captured by the Japanese is clearly squashed with just a little research.

OK, I'm off my soapbox...
 
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Yes, the radio or lack of radio communication was the problem.
All the stuff about AE spying makes no sense. By the time she would have been over any appreciable Japanese "target", it would have been dark out. And what about fuel to get back?
And all the stuff about landing on Gardner Island, makes little sense also.
My thinking is, when unable to radio or sight Howland, she either started a search pattern for Howland, and or turned back for the Gilberts.
 
The whole spying thing doesn't wash with me. 007 aside, a spy wants to be inconspicuous. A world famous woman pilot with all the planet hanging on her every move is hardly the ideal snooper.
 
It has always, to me anyway, been a question of Fred. All of the so called theories have always centered around Earhart with never a word about Fred's fate. Was he killed, die of exposure, etc. Radio hams had always claimed they'd heard distress signals from the pair but again possible BS for publicity.
The British official who had found female bones and a sextant on Gardner Island had always been an intriguing story:
Some months ago working party on Gardner discovered human skull - this was buried and I only recently heard about it. Thorough search has now produced more bones (including lower jaw) part of a shoe a bottle and a sextant box. It would appear that (a) Skeleton is possibly that of a woman,
(b) Shoe was a womans and probably size 10,
(c) Sextant box has two numbers on it 3500 ( stencilled ) and 1542– sextant being old fashioned and probably painted over with black enamel. Bones look more than four years old to me but there seems to be very slight chance that this may be remains of Amelia Earhardt. If United States authorities find that above evidence fits into general description, perhaps they could supply some dental information as many teeth are intact. Am holding latest finds for present but have not exhumed skull. There is no local indication that this discovery is related to wreck of the "Norwich City". Gallagher.
 
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