Pioneer pilot’s call for help was in vain
She was the national heroine who brought rare joy and then a wave of grief to Depression-era America when her pioneering aviation feats ended in a still unsolved mystery.
Since Amelia Earhart vanished over the Pacific on July 2, 1937, four months into an attempted circumnavigation of the globe, conspiracy theories have swirled about what happened to her and her navigator, Fred Noonan.
Now nearly eight decades after their disappearance, compelling evidence has emerged that suggests that she survived for days longer than previously thought and died a castaway on a remote South Pacific atoll. The findings are the result of more than 25 years of research by the International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery which has been comb- ing the island of Nikumaroro for clues since 1989.
Ric Gillespie, co-founder of the group, said that from the moment Earhart’s Lockheed Electra was last seen on radar on July 2 to July 6 there were more than 100 transmissions from her calling for help, which were picked up as far as Texas and Melbourne.
‘‘People started hearing radio distress calls from the airplane and they were verified,’’ he said.
Earhart became the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic in 1932. Nearing 40 and seeking one final challenge, she set out to become the first woman to fly around the world. She and Noonan left Miami on June 1, 1937. On July 2 they set out for Howland Island, a dot of land southwest of Honolulu. The US Coast Guard cutter Itasca, their radio contact, struggled to communicate because of faint or static-interrupted transmissions. Earhart was last heard of flying at 375 metres and low on fuel.
A big rescue operation was launched and George Putnam, Earhart’s husband of six years, bankrolled his own search. Earhart was declared legally dead on January 5, 1939, and the US government concluded she had run out of fuel and crashed at sea.
Gillespie made it his life’s work to prove they made it to Nikumaroro, about 650km southeast of Howland Island. His group has found improvised tools, shoe remains and aircraft wreckage, as well as pieces of a pocket knife, makeup and bone fragments. Gillespie said that credible radio operators recognised Earhart’s weak voice in a message about six hours after she went missing. She said she was injured but not as badly as Noonan. A Texas housewife also heard her pleas on shortwave radio. In Florida a radio listener grabbed a notebook and began to transcribe a ‘‘very confusing’’ distress call that may have referenced a shipwreck on the island.
For Gillespie it adds up to proof that his theory is the right one. ‘‘She’s out there calling for help’’, he said.
No-one came.