Amelia Earhart’s Last Flight

(a monograph)

Captain Sylvester M. Shelton

USNR (Ret.)

Copyright 2023

Captain Sylvester M. Shelton, USNR (Ret.)

No part of this manuscript may be reproduced or utilized in any form or means or storage without written permission from the publisher

Lamplight Press Post Office Box 82516

Austin, TX 78708

ISBN: 979-8-218-29009-2

Library of Congress Control Number

2023918528

Printed in the United States of America

By Lightning Press

Dedication

I dedicate this monograph to all the researchers, authors, pundits, and explorers who have devoted a part of their lives to uncovering the truth behind the disappearance of Amelia Earhart.

Acknowledgments

I’m indebted to many people for their help in preparation of this manuscript. In general, this includes all the Amelia Earhart communities who have researched, puzzled, explored, speculated, and written about her final flight. Others, in particular, whom I thank:

Danielle H. Acee, Author’s Assistant, for her skills in publishing this monograph;

Douglas Brown for his insightful cover art;

Michael Cox for his adept rendering of the images;

Tracy Grimm and Neil Harmeyer, Purdue University Libraries’ Archives and Special Collections, for their patience and resourcefulness in fetching the Earhart papers;

Jeanette Littleton for her keen-eye editing

Robin Black for her comprehensive formatting; and

Sherry Smith, for her skillful development of the Index.

Author’s Notes

This monograph focuses on Earhart’s flight from Lae, New Guinea, to Howland Island in the Central Pacific on 2 July 1937.

The Coast Guard cutter Itasca was stationed at Howland to act as plane guard and to facilitate communications.

I’ve used the following protocols:

Names. I spell the names of geographic entities as they were in 1937.

Spelling. I use the Wade-Giles spelling for the Chinese names, which was current at the time.

Title/Rank. I use the rank or rate of military personnel as they were held in 1937, or at the time during which they are named or quoted.

Time. I express all time in local times and in aviation parlance.

For example,

11:00 AM = 1100 hours

5:15 PM = 1715 hours

Noon = 1200 hours

Midnight = 2400 hours

5 minutes after midnight = 0005 hours

Greenwich Mean Time (GMT). This is the mean solar time reckoned from midnight at the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, London—located at 0 degrees, 00 minutes, 00 seconds latitude.

For example, 1000 hours Lae, New Guinea, local time equals 2400 hours, or midnight, Greenwich Mean Time.

Alternate names for GMT: Greenwich Central Time (GCT) Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) Greenwich Civil Time (GCT)

Zulu Time. In aviation and military parlance, Greenwich Mean Time is dubbed “Zulu” time (Z).

Distances. I express distances in nautical miles (nm), the standard unit of distance in air and ocean travel.

One nautical mile equals one minute of latitude at the equator— about 6,076 feet.

Or one nautical mile equals 1.15 statute miles. A statute mile is the unit of measure for land distances.

One statute mile equals 5,280 feet.

And one statute mile equals 0.869 nautical miles.

Speed. I’ve expressed speed in knots (nautical miles/hour).

Radio Frequencies. I’ve used kilocycles rather than megahertz because that name was current at the time.

Photographic Gallery. At the first mention of a key person or object, I’ve posted a superscript numeral following that person’s or object’s name to note that there is an image of that person or object in the Photographic Gallery (Appendix 1). The numeral indicates the position of the image in the numbered gallery.

Line of Position (LOP). We do not know the precise time that radio operators aboard the Coast Guard cutter Itasca received Earhart’s line of position broadcast—the last Earhart message received and recorded in the Itasca’s radio log.

Earhart broadcast this message: “We are on the line 157°/337°. . .

We are running on line North and South. Listening.”

The Itasca’s radio log was modified about the time Earhart’s message was received. Nonetheless, Captain Laurance Safford, USN, concluded that Earhart’s broadcast was between 0844 and 0846 hours Howland time (Safford, p. 143).

Ric Gillespie agrees with this time range and suggests that she broadcast at 0845 hours as scheduled (Gillespie, p. 99).Accordingly, throughout this monograph, I’ll use 0845 hours.

Introduction

Over the years, a gaggle of pundits have posited numerous scenarios to explain Amelia Earhart’s1 mysterious disappearance in the Central Pacific during her groundbreaking 1937 around-the-world flight in her Lockheed Electra, Model 10E Special aircraft.2 In this monograph, I’ve reviewed the publications that present a range of scenarios, notwithstanding their rationale.

It was 2 July 1937, and Amelia Earhart was piloting her modified Lockheed Electra en route from Lae, New Guinea, to Howland Island,3 2,230 nautical miles distant, over open ocean for a refueling stop. Her navigator was Frederick J. “Fred” Noonan.4 Next on her schedule was a landing in Hawaii, followed by her scheduled landing on 4 July 1937 in Oakland, California, for a gala reception.

The aviators and the Electra vanished before reaching Howland Island on the morning of 2 July 1937. (The flyers had crossed the International Date Line during the night.) Where the aviatrix disappeared and what happened are the two key questions that are unanswerable with the information we have today. Their fate is unknown.

Goal. I’ll review the facts surrounding Earhart’s disappearance on her last flight—from Lae, New Guinea to somewhere near Howland Island.6

Nonsense Scenarios. I’ve read numerous cockamamie theories about Earhart’s disappearance. Following are four of the most bizarre:

Captured by the Japanese inside their Bamboo Curtain, Earhart became the sex slave of Japanese Emperor Michinomiya Hirohito.8

Captured, Earhart became a Japanese citizen and helped plan the attack on Pearl Harbor.

Earhart was on a secret reconnaissance mission, the Japanese captured her, and she became one of the women broadcasters known as Tokyo Rose.9

Earhart, unable to locate Howland Island, reversed course and crashed in the jungle of New Britain10—5,200 nautical miles to the west.

CHAPTER 1

Building a Career

Amelia Earhart, the famous aviatrix, was born in Atchison, Kansas, on 24 July 1897. She had auburn hair and light blue eyes, stood five feet eight inches, and had a slim build. She married the publisher, adventurer, author, and promoter George Palmer Putnam11 on 7 February 1931 with the understanding that it would be an open marriage—an agreement she utilized to some measure.

By the mid-1930s, Earhart was an aviation pioneer and celebrated aviatrix—an American icon. Her aviation exploits dominated the media. Radio stations across the United States told of her setting new aviation records and broadcast her speeches; we saw our American idol in the Movietone newsreels12 and read the headlines about her exploits in our daily newspapers. For example:

Earhart was the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic (20/21 May 1932).

She broke the women’s transcontinental speed record from Los Angeles to Newark (7/8 July 1933).

Earhart was the first person to fly solo from Honolulu to Oakland (11/12 January 1935).

She joined the Aeronautical Engineering Department at Purdue University13 as a visiting faculty member (May 1935). Purdue alumni and others contributed funds for her to purchase a new Lockheed Electra, model 10A, dubbed Purdue University’s flying laboratory, “to garner aviation’s unknown secrets.”

Pilot and flight accident investigator Ric Gillespie,14 who has researched extensively the Earhart saga, notes, “Earhart’s piloting skills were average at best, but good looks, good luck, genuine courage . . . and George Putnam, [who had a] genius for promotion and media manipulation, had made her one of America’s most famous and admired women” (Gillespie, p. 32).

Amelia Earhart and Purdue University. In the autumn of 1935, Purdue University President Edward C. Elliott15 invited Amelia Earhart to serve as a visiting faculty member. Her duties included working both as a counselor for women’s studies and a technical advisor in the Department of Aeronautical Engineering. Earhart’s job title was Consultant for Careers for Women. Her salary was $2,000 per semester (about $36,000 in 2022 dollars). She was scheduled to spend two weeks each semester at the university.

I’ve reviewed the Amelia Earhart papers held in the Purdue University Archives and Special Collections and found numerous references to Earhart’s schedule and consulting activities. I can con- firm that Earhart spent parts of one semester at Purdue University in 1935 and another in 1936. I cannot verify that she completed additional visits.

Samples of her activities on the Purdue campus include the following:

Frequent meetings with Purdue administrators, executives, department heads, and senior faculty.

Luncheons with the Association of Women’s Club, other associations, and faculty.

Informal meetings with women undergraduate students, graduate students, electrical engineering faculty, engineering students, and other members of the Purdue community.

An invitation to a formal dance (no record to confirm whether she attended).

Numerous requests for her to attend, speak at, and socialize with members of various associations, schools, Girl Scout troops, and so forth in the West Lafayette environs.

The Purdue documents include the following observations:

Earhart “coached” young women about careers.

The famous aviatrix was inspiring hundreds of Purdue students to pursue their dreams and careers.

Earhart lectured on topics from aerial navigation to partnership in marriage to the practical applications of a university education.5

To engender empathy with female students and share her personal experiences, Earhart stayed in the woman’s dormitory and ate with the students in their dining room. “The female students were eager to sit at her table.”

Comments. While Purdue’s archives reveal some information about Earhart’s activities during her time at the university, several unanswered questions remain:

How much technical advice did Earhart contribute to the Aeronautical Engineering Department?

How skillful was the aviatrix Earhart in aerial navigation? How adept was Earhart in radio communications?

I would suggest that lectured ought to read discussed.

For years, I’ve also wondered about the relationship between George Putnam, Amelia Earhart, and Purdue University. Why did President Elliott invite Amelia Earhart to join the faculty? I’ve researched numerous documents and found a plethora of correspondence between Earhart, Putnam, and Elliott. None posited a definitive reason for her appointment.

Perhaps the answer lies in Earhart biographer Paul Briand’s Daughter of the Sky: The Story of Amelia Earhart.

Briand writes, “In 1934 the New York Herald Tribune16 held its annual conference; the topic was ‘Women and the Changing World.’ Amelia Earhart was a guest speaker. In attendance was Dr. Edward

C. Elliott. Elliott nodded in agreement with Earhart’s comments. Such a woman, he decided, who believed in young people, belongs on a college faculty” (Briand, p. 109).

I wonder if Briand’s narrative is reasonably accurate. Based on my understanding of the characters involved and the facts in evidence, I would speculate that Briand is correct. Throughout Earhart and Putnam’s marriage during the Great Depression in the 1930s, they were perennially short of funds. Therefore, Putnam needed the prestige, recognition, and funding of Purdue University, with its note- worthy Aeronautical Engineering Department, to endorse and finance Earhart’s flying adventures. I suspect that the duplicitous George P. Putnam inveigled the naive academic leader Elliott with nostrums of glory for Purdue University.

Amelia Earhart and the Roosevelts. Franklin D. Roosevelt17 won the 1932 presidential election, and his wife, Eleanor,18 invited the Putnams to his inauguration as the thirty-second president on 4 March 1933. Shortly afterward, the couple spent a night in the White House.19 Sometime in 1936, Eleanor Roosevelt invited Earhart and Putnam to dinner at the Roosevelt’s home, dubbed Springwood, in Hyde Park, New York.20 The couples became good friends (Gillespie, pp. 2–6).

Still associated with Purdue, Earhart was busily engaged in flying; giving lectures nationwide; hawking her clothing and luggage lines; writing newspaper and magazine articles; hobnobbing with Eleanor Roosevelt in the White House, and hosting the First Lady on flights in the Electra around Washington, DC; partying with socialites in New York and California; planning her around-the-world flight; and working with other female aviators to form The Ninety-Nines,21 an association of female aviators. Her personal and professional life was creating the environment that suffused Earhart’s most famous flight.

To download the eBook: https://www.amazon.com/Amelia-Earharts-Flight-Martin-Shelton-ebook/dp/B0CVNK8D2V/ref=monarch_sidesheet_title