Amelia Earhart in 1937 with the plane she attempted to fly around the world, a Lockheed Electra 10E Special

Alamy Stock Photo

STANDARDS

Common Core: RH.6-8.1, RH.6-8.2, RH.6-8.4, RH.6-8.7, WHST.6-8.4, RI.6-8.1, RI.6-8.2, RI.6-8.4, RI.6-8.7, W.6-8.4, SL.6-8.1

NCSS: Time, Continuity, and Change • People, Places, and Environments • Individual Development and Identity • Science, Technology, and Society

GEOGRAPHY

The Search for Amelia Earhart

The pioneering pilot was about to finish a record-setting flight 85 years ago when she suddenly disappeared. What happened?

September 2022

by Brooke Ross

On July 2, 1937, Amelia Earhart was on her way to soaring into history. The world-famous pilot from Kansas was about three-fourths through the most daring mission of her career: to become the first woman to fly around the world. But something went wrong after she took to the skies that day. Earhart’s plane vanished over the Pacific Ocean, and she was never heard from again.

Decades later, people are still trying to figure out why.

The Mystery of Amelia Earhart

Watch a video about Amelia Earhart’s mysterious disappearance during her 1937 around-the-world flight attempt.

Navigating the Journey

Few aviators in the 1930s were women, so Earhart was a huge celebrity. In 1932, she became the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean. Three years later, she became the first pilot—male or female—to fly alone from Hawaii to California.

In the spring of 1937, she and navigator Fred Noonan took off from Oakland, California, aboard a twin-engine plane. Earhart was trying to circle the globe flying eastward. As she flew, they used navigational tools to stay on course. Reporting their coordinates using latitude and longitude allowed flight controllers on the ground to track their location (see sidebar, below).

Lost at Sea

Topical Press Agency/Getty Images

Earhart and Noonan in June 1937 in Brazil, one of the early stops on their historic journey

On the morning of July 2, 1937, Earhart and Noonan took off from Lae, Papua New Guinea. They were headed to Howland Island, a tiny 2-mile-long dot of land 2,500 miles away.

About 800 miles into the journey, Earhart gave their latitude and longitude position of 4°S, 160°E. They were right on track.

But as the flight wore on, the sky grew overcast. Earhart and Noonan couldn’t find Howland Island. After nearly 24 hours in the air, the plane was running out of fuel. Earhart sent urgent radio messages to a U.S. Coast Guard ship anchored near the island, but without latitude and longitude. Her final message was received at 8:45 a.m. on July 3.

Almost immediately, U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt ordered a rescue effort. For the next two weeks, U.S. ships and planes covered 250,000 square miles looking for Earhart and Noonan. There was no sign of them.

The Search Continues

Over the years, people have come up with several theories about what happened. Most experts believe the plane went down in the Pacific Ocean, and Earhart and Noonan drowned.

Some others think the pair flew off course and crash-landed on an island called Nikumaroro (nik-uh-muhr-OHR-oh). Days after the plane disappeared, radio operators in the Pacific reported hearing distress calls coming from near the tiny island, which was uninhabited. Over the decades, several artifacts have also been found there, including scraps of metal most likely from a plane.

Still, both Nikumaroro and waters near Howland Island have been searched using everything from trained dogs to deep-sea robots.

No human remains linked to Earhart or Noonan have ever been found.

The mystery may never be solved, says Dorothy Cochrane, an aviation expert at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C. People can still learn a lot from Earhart’s bravery, though, she adds.

“I hope we find her someday,” Cochrane told reporters. “But . . . what is important to me is her legacy.”