July 2, 1937, Amelia Earhart Disappears

July 2, 1937, 80 years ago: Amelia Earhart disappears, along with her navigator, Fred Noonan, in her attempt to become the 1st woman to make an around-the-world flight.

Her plane was a Lockheed Electra 10E, with 2 propeller-driven engines, 1 on each side of the cockpit. And this around-the-world flight was not going to be a single nonstop flight. The technology simply wasn't available at the time. Her intended route was as follows:

* May 20, the 10th Anniversary of Charles Lindbergh's takeoff from Long Island, successfully becoming the 1st person to fly across the Atlantic Ocean, solo or otherwise: Oakland, California to the Los Angeles suburb of Burbank.

* May 21: Burbank to Tuscon, Arizona.

* May 22: Tucson to New Orleans.

* May 23: New Orleans to Miami. Then, a break, until...

* June 1: Miami to San Juan, Puerto Rico.

* June 2: San Juan, across the Caribbean Sea, to the South American continent, to Caripito, Venezuela.

* June 3: Caripito to Paramribo, Surinam.

* June 4: Paramaribo to Fortaleza, Braail.

* June 5: Fortaleza to Natal, Brazil. Then a day off. Then...

* June 7: Natal, across the Atlantic, to the African continent, to Saint-Louis, Senegal.

* June 8: Saint-Louis to Dakar Senegal. Then a day off. Then...

* June 10: Dakar to Gao, French Sudan (now Mali).

* June 11: Gao to Fort-Lamy, French Equatorial Africa (now N'Djamena, the capital of the independent nation of Chad).

* June 12: Fort-Lamy to El Fasher, Anglo-Egyptian Sudan (now just "Sudan").

* June 13: Two flights. First, El Fasher to Khartoum, Sudan. Then, Khartoum to Massawa, Italian East Africa (now Eritrea).

* June 14: Massawa to Assab, Italian East Africa (Eritrea).

* June 15: Assab, across the Red Sea and the Middle East into Asia, to Karachi, British India (now in Pakistan). Then a day off. Then... 

* June 17: Karachi to Calcutta, British India (now Kolkata, India).

* June 18: Kolkata to Akyab, Burma (now Sittwe, Myanmar).

* June 19: Sittwe to Rangoon, Burma (now Yangon, Myanmar).

* June 20: Two flights. First, Yangon to Bangkok, Siam (now Thailand). Then, Bangkok to Singapore, Straits Settlements (now the City of Singapore, the Republic of Singapore).

* June 21: Singapore to Bandoeng, Dutch East Indies (now Bandung, Indonesia). Then 3 days' rest. Then...

* June 25: She intended to fly from Bandung to Soerabaia, Dutch East Indies (now Surabaya, Indonesia), but had to return due to dysentery, and needed repairs on her plane.

* June 26: She tried again, this time making it from Bandung to Surabaya.

* June 27: Surabaya to Koepang, Dutch East Indies (now Kupang, Indonesia).

* June 28: Kupang to Darwin, on the north coast of Australia, where more repairs were made.

* June 29: Darwin to Lae, New Guinea (now Papua New Guinea).

There were 3 more legs of the trip, across the Pacific Ocean, to begin on July 2: Lae to Howland Island, then as now belonging to America, and at 2,223 miles the 2nd-longest leg; Howland to Honolulu; and the longest leg, 2,400 miles, but one Earhart had done before, Honolulu to Oakland, with the aim of arriving on the 4th of July to a big patriotic celebration.

The U.S. Coast Guard cruiser Itasca was at Howland, to provide assistance: Radio messages on where to turn to find the island, and when and how to land.

Shortly after 10:00 AM, local time on July 2, Earhart and Noonan took off from Lae. Earhart radioed reports in at 3:00 and 5:00 PM. The Electra crossed the International Date Line. But communication problems arose, partly due to the fact that Earhart and Noonan were using Greenwich Mean Time throughout their journey, and the Itasca was using a Naval time zone designation system, a predecessor of what's now called Zulu Time.

According to the Itasca's log, at 6:14 AM on July 2, Howland time, Earhart called in, saying she was about 200 miles from Howland. At 6:45, she said she was within 100 miles. But at 7:30, she said the Electra was running out of gas. At 7:42, Earhart told them, "We must be on you, but cannot see you. But gas is running low." At 7:58, she said she could not hear them. The ship sent her a Morse code signal. She said she received it, but could not determine its direction.

At 8:43, she said, "We are on the line 157 337. We will repeat this message. We will repeat this on 6210 kilocycles. Wait... We are running on line north and south." Itasca crewmembers said this suggested that Earhart and Noonan thought they were at Howland's charted position, but they were off by 5 miles. The ship used its boilers to generate smoke for them to see.

The Electra was never heard from again. The Itasca searched, and was soon joined by the battleship USS Colorado. More ships joined the search. On July 19, the search was abandoned.

Theories abound. The most common is that the plane simply crashed into the Ocean and sank to the bottom. Another suggests that, with the Empire of Japan already at war with the Republic of China, and flexing its aerial muscles, a Japanese plane or ship may have seen the Electra, thought it was a Chinese plane coming in to attack, and shot it down. Another theory is that the flight was actually a ruse for Earhart and Noonan to spy on Japanese airpower, and that the Japanese made no mistake at all when they shot the plane down.

Another theory is that the plane did reach an island, and Earhart and Noonan survived for as long as their could before their food and water ran out. Another theory is that Earhart and Noonan flew off together, to be a couple, away from prying eyes. Earhart was just short of her 40th birthday, and although she had been married since 1931 to publishing executive George Putnam, it was an open marriage. (Putnam lived on until 1950.) Noonan was 43 and had recently gotten married following an earlier divorce. Neither Earhart nor Noonan had any children.

Two modern TV shows, Star Trek: Voyager in 1995 (which embraced the spying-on-Japan theory) and DC's Legends of Tomorrow just a few weeks ago, have suggested that Earhart and Noonan were captured in midflight by aliens visiting Earth, and taken away.

Robert Ballard, the oceanographer who found the wrecks of the RMS Titanic, the Nazi battleship Bismarck, and John F. Kennedy's World War II command PT-109, now says he wants to launch an expedition to find the Electra. He is 79 years old, and is probably looking for "one last score."

Earhart had many distinctions to her aviation career: In 1928, the 1st woman to fly across the Atlantic Ocean; in 1931, the 1st woman to fly an autogyro, an early helicopter, and the 1st woman to cross the U.S. in one; in 1932, the 1st woman to fly across the Atlantic solo, thus becoming the 1st person to fly across the Atlantic twice, also the 1st woman to fly nonstop, coast-to-coast, across the U.S., all earning her the Distinguished Flying Cross; and in 1933, the 1st person of either gender to fly solo between Hawaii and the San Francisco Bay Area.

But she will forever be remembered not for the flights she completed, but the one she didn't.

The airstrip built for Earhart on Howland Island was never used. Eventually, vegetation overgrew it, so it, too, disappeared. Since the Island has no permanent residents, there was no one there to take care of the airstrip.

The actual first around-the-world flight was made by an 8-man crew of Americans, from March 17 to September 28, 1924, beginning and ending in Seattle, staying as close as possible to land (crossing the Atlantic by making stops in Greenland and Iceland, for example).