The Amelia Earhart Conspiracy
The Mysterious Disappearance of the Flying Legend
Amelia Earhart
Amelia Earhart
It’s arguably the most famous missing person case in history. Amelia Earhart was an icon of her time,
a celebrity adventurer, famous for her amazing feats of flying.
In 1937, tragedy struck. On an attempted round-the-world flight, her plane vanished without trace.
It was a sensational story. Some think she simply crashed and drowned, but the mystery of what happened
to her has still not been solved.
Some have claimed that she became a prisoner of war or, incredibly, that Earhart was a Government spy
and that she returned, after the war with a new name.
In the early 1930s, America was in the midst of The Great Depression. The country needed a shining
light, and it found it in the story of Amelia Earhart.
Earhart first came to public attention when she was just twenty-five. She set the woman’s altitude
record at 14,000 feet. She was also the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic, and the first ever
to fly solo from Hawaii to the US mainland.
Earhart blew away the stereotype of what women could hope to achieve. She hit the big-time when
she decided to take the last great challenge in aviation, to fly around the world following the equator.
Nick Forder an aviation historian comments “People had flown around the world previously, but no-one had
flown around the equator, so this was the last big prize”.
Nick Forder
Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan, left Oakland on the 17th of March 1937. For over a month
they had zigzagged back and forth over the equator covering 22,000 miles. With three quarters of their
journey behind them, triumph was within their grasp. But, on July 2nd the flight reached the longest and
most dangerous leg. Their destination was Howland Island, a speck of sand 2,500 miles away in the middle
of the Pacific. There, the plan was to refuel before completing the final two legs of the journey. But,
as they took off from Lae, New Guinea they had no idea the elements were against them.
Earhart had filled her plane’s fuel tanks to capacity, but seven hours into the flight, she reported
26mph head winds. Her plane was burning fuel faster than she’d planned, eating away at her reserve. The
US Coastguard ship, Itasca, was anchored off shore at Howland Island, with it’s radio operators on standby
to talk Earhart in.
Eighteen hours into the flight, Earhart had reached 200 miles from Howland Island. But, as well as
running low on fuel, she had another problem. She radioed the Itasca to take a bearing on her signal,
but she couldn’t hear their response. At this critical moment, navigator Fred Noonan was on his own. None
of the navigational aids available to Noonan were accurate enough to find a land mass as small as Howland
Island.
At 07:45AM, the Itasca logged a worrying call from Earhart; she was running low on fuel. Fifteen
minutes later she said she was circling, but, due to poor visibility, couldn’t see the island. Not
only was she flying blind, she couldn’t hear the radio responses and she had no idea if they could hear
her. At 08:43 the Itasca logged Earhart’s final call and all contact was lost.
Earhart’s family were well-off, but her childhood was an unsettled time. Her father was an alcoholic,
she was unpopular at school, and her parent’s relationship was deteriorating.
Earhart became only the 16th woman to be awarded a pilot’s licence and once she had it her adventurous
flying exploits transformed her into a national heroin. Earhart came from a time when women were expected
to know their place and it wasn’t in the cockpit of a plane. Even worse, she was taking risks that many
male pilots wouldn’t dream of.
Earhart’s husband was also crucial to her failure. In February 1932 she married the publishing mogul
George Putnam. Together they created a formidable PR machine that helped turn Amelia into a global
celebrity.
Ric Gillespie, an author and Earhart investigator observes “The real reason she flew around the
world, was for publicity. It’s the reason she did everything. Her husband was probably one of the
greatest promoters of the 20th century”.
But, some say her husband’s ambitions pushed her too far. They argue that she spent too much time
promoting her round-the-world flight and not enough time preparing for it.
Amelia and George
Ultimately, Earhart’s adventure ended when she failed to reach her refuelling stop in the middle of
the Pacific. But we still don’t know exactly what happened to her and, for some, this mystery has made
solving her case an obsession.
For 35 years, veteran pilot and navigator, Elgen Long has been dissecting the radio logs and fuel
calculations of Earhart’s final flight. He believes that soon after making her last call, she ran out
of fuel, tragically close to her target of Howland Island, and crashed into the sea.
Earhart’s altitude was only 1,000 feet meaning she would have to act fast to pull off an emergency
landing in the ocean.
Since 2002, millions of dollars have been spent searching for Earhart’s plane. By simulating her
final radio transmissions to the Itasca, radio experts have narrowed down the 2,000 square mile patch
of ocean off Howland Island. A deep-sea exploration company has been scanning the 17,000 foot depths
with sonar. So far they have searched a quarter of the area and found nothing.
Others disagree that she simply ran out of fuel. Far from dead, they are certain Amelia Earhart
survived. To begin with, they point out that she never radioed for help. After the crash, the US
Coastguard ship Itasca made an immediate search of the waters around Howland Island but didn’t find
any trace of wreckage.
This has opened the door to a raft of other theories. Ric Gillespie’s theory is that Amelia became
a castaway. He believes that after her last transmission to the Itasca, Earhart gave up on finding
Howland Island and flew on to another island where she set down on a shallow reef before making it
safely to a deserted atoll. Here, Earhart and her navigator waited to be rescued but eventually died
of thirst. Even though Earhart had reported that she was low on fuel, Gillespie believes this meant
she was down to her last few hours, not minutes.
He explains his supposition “She had 1,000 gallons of fuel when she left Lae, New Guinea. That
should get her 24 hours in the air, which means she had 5 hours of gas left. That’s a 20% reserve,
a standard for long-range flights”.
Gillespie believes the key to the Earhart mystery lies among the nearly 200 reports of SOS calls
heard in the days after her disappearance.
At first the US Navy and Coastguard took these calls seriously. For over two weeks, the Itasco
along with six navy ships and 64 aircraft chased down these leads across 260,000 square miles of the
Pacific without success. The navy dismissed every SOS call as a hoax, but to Gillespie this was
simply a way of saving themselves more work.
Gillespie acquired a map used by the navy in their search for Earhart. It charts the source of
what Pan American Airways radio operators believed to be Earhart’s transmissions after she’d
disappeared. They converge near Gardner Island, 300 miles south east of Howland. Gillespie thinks
it would have made perfect navigational sense for Earhart and Noonan to aim for Gardner Island, now
known as Nikumarora in the Phoenix Island chain.
Ric Gillespie
Gillespie’s team has undertaken 17 years of research and 8 archaeological expeditions. The evidence
they’ve found has convinced him that his theories are right. The first piece of evidence is a detailed
diagram of a human skeleton. The bones were found by accident when a British expedition visited Gardner
Island in 1940. The British examines and measured the bones. The measurements have been evaluated by
modern day forensic anthropologists. They judge them to be the bones of a white female who stood
between 5’6” and 5’8”. After the bones were examined by a British physician in Fiji they mysteriously
went missing. So there’s no proof that they belong to Amelia now.
Gillespie’s team also found scraps of metal they think may have come from Earhart’s plane. They
have also discovered the sole of a woman’s shoe dating back to the 1930’s. With each discovery, Gillespie
has been quick to claim that they’ve solved the mystery.
But closer investigation reveals that the evidence is far less credible. The shoe size is not a match
to Amelia’s shoe size. Gillespie has been forced to admit that none of his team’s evidence can be
conclusively linked to Earhart, although he remains convinced his theory is right.
Others believe in an even more sinister version of events. They believe Earhart and Noonan landed
on the Japanese-held Marshall Islands and were taken prisoners of war.
According to eye-witnesses in the Marshall Islands, Earhart made an emergency landing on the reef
near the Mili Atoll. She and Noonan were picked up by boat and taken ashore.
The Marshallese ambassador to The United Nations, Alfred Capelle, thinks the strength of the
eye-witness account is overwhelming. Capelle has interviewed many of the witnesses who claim to have
seen two American flyers in captivity. Perhaps the most detailed account comes from Bilimon Amran,
a medic, who was taken aboard a Japanese ship to treat the wounds of two rescued American flyers,
a man and a woman who was addressed as Amelia.
More eye-witness accounts place Earhart and Noonan in Garapan Prison on the island of Saipan during
World War II, and there may be proof.
In 1944, 7 years after Earhart went missing, US marines overcame the Japanese forces on Saipan. One
marine thinks he found crucial evidence during that mission which backs up the eye-witness accounts.
Robert Wallack believe he found Earhart’s personal documents in a safe on the bombed-out military base.
The documents, held in a briefcase, included Amelia’s passport and visas. If Wallack still had the
documents the evidence would be compelling, but he turned them over to an officer, never to be
seen again.
The only clues that remain are several questionable inscriptions found in the prison. If Earhart and
Noonan were held in Garapan Prison, the big question is ‘What happened to them?’
The eye-witness accounts of their demise are varied. Some say that they were beheaded, others that
Earhart died from dysentery and Noonan was shot. Wallack says he was shown to an unmarked grave site by
a Saipanese woman who saw a white woman and a man buried there. But it all falls short of physical proof.
Senior officers in the US Navy including Admiral Chester Nimitz were quoted by reporters to have
said the rumours of Earhart’s capture were true.
If the eye-witness accounts depicting Earhart as a POW are true it might explain the US Government’s
history of secrecy over the whole Earhart mystery.
Another explanation for the secrecy could have it’s basis in yet another theory. Some argue that it
was no accident that Earhart ended up in Japanese territory. They believe she was on a mission to help
the US Navy gather intelligence and her famous flight was the perfect cover. Spy theorists believe
Earhart was recruited shortly after an earlier round-the-world attempt had failed.
She had completed the first leg, flying from California to Hawaii. The second leg would take her
across the Pacific from Honolulu to Howland Island but on take-off her aircraft span out of control
and crashed. Earhart was lucky to get out alive. The theory is that while her plane was being repaired,
the US military arranged to meet her.
Colonel Rollin Reineck, a veteran navigator from the Pacific in World War II, has spent 30 years
scrutinising the Earhart mystery. He believes the US military offered to take over the logistics and
funding for Earhart’s second round-the-world attempt. But there were strings attached.
He believes she was instructed to ditch the plane at the Marshall Islands so that the navy could
come to her rescue, allowing them the opportunity to reconnoitre the islands.
Earhart made a surprising change to her flight plan which Reineck believes was instigated by the
US military. This time she would circumnavigate the globe flying east not west. This would mean
flying into the wind making her journey much harder. Flying east meant the spying mission taking place
near the end of her flight raising fewer suspicions. Earhart would deliberately get lost, maintain
radio silence, and make an emergency landing in the Marshall Islands. The US Navy search for her would
be the cover story for their ships and planes to do a reconnaissance of the Japanese territory. But
Reineck believes the mission went tragically wrong and Earhart was arrested as a spy.
What we do know is that just days after Earhart’s disappearance the United States officially
asked permission from Japan to search the Marshall Islands, but this was refused. Spy theorists
believe the Earhart plot came from the very top and was masterminded by none other than the US Navy’s
Commander in Chief, President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Irene Bolam
The final most controversial part of the theory lies with the fate of Earhart. Reineck is convinced
she survived the war and returned to the United States under the cover of a New Jersey housewife, using
the name Irene Bolam.
Irene Craigmile Bolam first hit the headlines in 1965 after a chance meeting with veteran pilot and
Earhart investigator Major Joe Gervais.
In 1970, Gervais and his partner, Joe Klaas, published their suspicions in the book ‘Amelia Earhart
Lives’. Bolam was enraged by the claims that she was Amelia Earhart and sued the authors for $1.5 million.
The case was settled out of court.
According to Klaas, Bolam could have got the $1.5 million if she had submitted her fingerprints
to prove her identity. When she died in 1982 it seemed the mystery surrounding her would never be resolved.
Now, Tod Swindell, a professional screenwriter and producer, has produced forensic photographic
work which he believes proves this theory true. “My conclusion on the forensic evidence is that the
woman identified as Irene Craigmile Bolam from 1945 until 1982 definitely was the former Amelia Earhart”.
Using photo overlay techniques, commonly used to identify corpses. Swindell has scrutinised the
facial details of Irene Bolam overlaid with photos of Amelia Earhart. He claims they appear to be a
perfect match, right down to the tear ducts.
The evidence seems persuasive, but not everyone is convinced. Amelia’s sister, Muriel Morrissey
has stated, emphatically, that Irene is not her sister.
Detective Kevin Richlin, a criminal investigator, made his own analysis and looks for dissimilarities
rather than like facial features. He determines that there are a number of such dissimilarities. Amelia
had a mole and freckles, Irene does not. The eyebrows and mouth line are different and he concludes that
these are not the same people.
Nick Forder continues to think that the simplest explanation is the most likely, that they ran out of
fuel and crashed. Elgen Long shares this view, but he also thinks there was a cover-up and that the real
conspiracy was to conceal a tragedy of errors.
Further Reading
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Finding Amelia -
Ric Gillespie |
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Amelia Earhart:
The Mystery Solved - Elgen Long |
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Amelia Earhart
Lives - Joe Klaas |
