It must also be asked: If Howland was the predetermined destination for Earhart and Noonan, then why did the USS Swan, on learning of the downed pilots, head immediately to Canton Island? Why was a search party sent ashore on Canton Island a short time later and not Howland Island? It should also be mentioned that another search vessel, the USS Colorado, directed its search toward the Phoenix group, specifically Canton Island.
If, as the U.S. government maintained, Earhart and Noonan went down in the ocean somewhere near Howland Island, why then did they bother themselves with searching locations that did not fit with their contention and their subsequent press releases? Were they aware that the Electra did not, in fact, go into the ocean where they claimed and were now involved in a panic search to recover the aircraft that had clearly been fitted with spy cameras before it was found by another government?
In 1822, the captain of a whaling vessel out of Nantucket named the little isle after himself, but Worth Island was known only to a few and largely ignored as hardly anyone visited the insignificant feature. In 1842, another whaling captain named Howland renamed it after himself. By this time, the area—known as part of the South Seas whale fishery region—was encountered more often by whaling vessels, and the name stuck.
A survey conducted in the early 1930s concluded that Jarvis Island held the best potential for an airfield. Jarvis Island was located three hundred miles east of Howland Island. On May 13, 1936, Roosevelt gave jurisdiction of Howland Island to the secretary of the interior. In November 1936 a cable was sent to Interior Department official Richard B. Black instructing him to construct a landing field at Jarvis Island.
On December 7, 1936, Black received notice from Washington to scrap the Jarvis Island plan and advised him that the proposed airfield was to be constructed on Howland Island. (It has been suggested by some researchers that the distance between Lae, New Guinea, and Jarvis Island exceeded the fuel capacity of Earhart’s Electra.) Because of governmental bureaucracy and weather delays, the construction of the airfield was not undertaken until February 5, 1937. The east-west landing strip was completed on March 4.
Until the construction activity was begun, Howland Island was unoccupied and rarely visited. In 1935, President Franklin D. Roosevelt, via the Bureau of Air Commerce, established an American presence on Howland, Jarvis, and Baker Islands in the Pacific. Roosevelt stated that they were to be colonized as the “American Equatorial Islands.” To that end, he initiated an order for a party of young men to establish a temporary colony on the island. This was accomplished during the spring of 1935. The group consisted of six Hawaiian and Chinese American youths (some accounts say four). They were graduates of the Kamehameha School for Boys of Honolulu, a private educational institution. The tiny community was named Itascatown. The name came from the Navy ship that carried these first residents to the island and subsequently delivered supplies and provisions. The colonizers shared their habitat with tens of thousands of seabirds, hermit crabs, and rats. Their assignment was to live on the island and construct landing strips for aircraft.
Using equipment provided by the U.S. Navy, the colonists bladed out three 150-foot-wide intersecting runways onto the surface of Howland Island. The landing strips ranged from 2,400 feet to 4,000 feet. The building of these airstrips was undertaken with the utmost secrecy and urgency. The system of runways was named Kamakaiwi Field.
Though Roosevelt had earlier given jurisdiction of Howland Island to the secretary of the interior, he eventually turned the responsibility of overseeing the construction of the airstrips to the Public Works Administration. Later, during World War II, the Japanese conducted an air attack on Howland Island, killing two of the colonists. A short time later, the survivors were evacuated.
Howland Island was indeed a strange choice as a stop for Earhart and Noonan. There is no source of fresh water on the island; any fresh water available to the pilots, or anyone else, would have to be supplied from elsewhere, that is, delivered by ship.
Military personnel occasionally posted at Howland Island to operate and maintain radios and direction-finder equipment reported on the tens of thousands of birds found there. The bird population consisted of frigates, albatrosses, boobies, and terns. The frigates and boobies were described as being the size of buzzards. The bird population was estimated to be thirty thousand to forty thousand or more.
This large population of birds on an island as small as Howland presented a significant problem for airplanes landing and taking off. Bird populations in much smaller numbers have created similar difficulties for takeoffs and landings elsewhere and have been responsible for a number of airplane crashes. Determining that this could be a significant problem, and before attempting any landings and takeoffs from Howland Island, the U.S. military attempted to disperse the birds using dynamite and machine guns, all to no avail.
Reputable and experienced pilots who are familiar with the considerable hazards of large bird populations near airfields have suggested that Howland Island was never intended as a destination for Earhart and Noonan, that it may have been set up as a diversion from the original plan. Given the proximity of Gardner Island a short distance to the south, an island with a proven landing strip, fresh water, and minimal interference from birds, as well as nearby Canton Island, one is left wondering why Howland Island was considered at all.
One must wonder, therefore, why landing strips were constructed on this seldom-used island. The strips did not exist until a short time prior to the beginning of Earhart’s proposed around-the-world flight. Eugene Vidal, then director of the Bureau of Air Commerce, a West Point graduate and a military flyer, was behind the construction of the airfield. Moreover, existing evidence reveals that, despite the presence of the landing strips, no aircraft ever landed there. All supplies were transported to the island by boat.
There is also some evidence that the geographical location of Howland Island had never been plotted accurately, and Earhart and Noonan quite possibly possessed locational information that was in error.
The question remains: Why was Howland Island publicized as a destination for Amelia Earhart? Could it have been a red herring? The selection of Howland Island represents another in a growing array of mysteries related to Earhart’s around-the-world flight. There would be many more.
• 21 •The Flight Path
Paul Rafford Jr. worked with the U.S. space program during the 1960s and 1970s as a communications expert as well as an astronaut recovery specialist. Prior to World War II, Rafford had been a radio operator for Pan American Airways. During the 1960s, Rafford grew fascinated with the Amelia Earhart disappearance and spent much of his spare time researching and studying the multiple aspects of it. Aware of the skills of Fred Noonan as a navigator as well as the degree of skills possessed by the aviatrix, Rafford developed an intense curiosity relative to how the two could have possibly become lost.
Over time, Rafford obtained documents pertaining to the Earhart flight and disappearance, among them the official report filed by Jim Collopy. Collopy’s account indicates that, based on his in-person observations regarding the preparation for the departure from Lae, New Guinea, Earhart “should have had several hours worth [of fuel] left when the Itasca’s radiomen last heard her voice, even though she thought she was running low.”
A historian named Dr. Francis X. Holbrook likewise accumulated a number of Earhart-related documents, including copies of radio message traffic as preparations were being made to depart Lae. Further, Holbrook interviewed a number of people who had heard Earhart’s transmissions after leaving Lae. Holbrook located Harry Balfour, the Guinea Airways radio operator who was with Earhart and Noonan on the day of the Lae departure and who communicated with the aviatrix during the first eight hours of her flight. He also located and interviewed T. H. Cude, who was director of police on Nauru Island in 1937. Cude maintained that he had heard Earhart’s transmissions as she approached Nauru, stating that she could see the lights on the island.
As R
afford pored over the documents and related materials, a curious fact emerged: Earhart had not followed the established and publicized direct route from Lae to Howland Island. With assistance from Balfour, claims Rafford, Earhart flew near Nauru Island, which was not located along the publicized route. Subsequent research by Rafford and others confirmed this to be the case. Employing information gleaned from correspondence between Balfour and Holbrook and applying information taken from interviews, Rafford was able to piece together what he claims was the actual last flight of Amelia Earhart.
Rafford learned that because of Fred Noonan’s problem with alcohol, he was not in a position to provide reliable help with the navigation. In fact, he claims, Earhart attempted to convince Balfour to take Noonan’s place during this last section of the flight. Balfour considered it but declined because of “a feeling of impending doom.”
Balfour arranged Earhart’s departure time such that she would arrive over a visual navigation fix he had chosen for her—the Nukumanu Islands, 750 miles east of Lae. From there she would travel to Nauru Island. On approaching Nauru, Earhart would be able to see the array of lights at the large phosphate mining operation there. After spotting the lights, she could orient her course toward Nauru. After Nauru, there would be no checkpoints to guide her toward Howland Island.
Between 10:30 and 11:30 GMT, Nauru Islanders sitting near their radios heard Earhart’s transmissions. When interviewed years later, they claimed that the aviatrix called several times, stating that she could see the lights of the island. At this point, she still had more than 1,100 miles to go to reach Howland Island.
Unable to locate Howland Island, according to author Loomis, Earhart had no choice but to follow the contingency plans she developed prior to leaving the United States: turn around and fly back to the Gilbert Islands and land on a stretch of beach. Loomis, employing analysis and conclusions developed by Rafford and others, determined that Earhart, presuming her location to be near Howland Island, set out on a course she believed would take them to the Gilbert Islands. Since they were so far north, however, they were headed directly for the Marshall Islands.
Author James Donahue advances the notion that Earhart, after passing Nauru Island, purposely changed her course toward the northeast in order to make a pass over the Marshall Islands. Following that, he hypothesizes that her plan was to then head for Howland Island.
Author Joe Klaas offers yet another perspective on Earhart’s flight path. Klaas was convinced that, as a result of the secret meetings with Bernard Baruch and General Westover, she could have flown the Electra on a photographic mission to the Truk Islands (today called Chuuk Lagoon), a major Japanese possession in the Pacific located about 1,200 miles northeast of New Guinea. With the “increased range and speed of the XC-35’s now supercharged engines, she could then have flown directly to Canton Island, breaking radio silence only after intercepting her announced course a couple of hundred miles west of Howland Island so that the direction-finders, if they had worked, would finally pick her up in the right direction.” On this course, according to Klaas, Earhart could have easily made photographs while passing over the Japanese airfields at Ponape, Kusaie, and Tarawa, all along a course toward Canton Island.
In support of Klaas’s theory, Robert Myers, who had monitored radio transmissions on a ham radio set during Earhart’s flight, reported that shortly after taking off from Lae, New Guinea, the aviatrix told Balfour that Noonan had handed her a sealed message. The message contained a set of instructions, according to Myers, ordering her to turn northeast toward Truk by way of the Admiralty Islands.
Myers’s transcriptions of the communications between Earhart and Balfour have the aviatrix telling the radio operator: “They should have told you! They should have told you about this! I am not sure if I want to do this! It is different. Who am I going to talk to? Who is going to give me the radio reports?”
The tone of Earhart’s message suggests that she had been kept in the dark regarding the actual route until that moment. During the transmissions, Earhart asked Balfour whether he had been aware of the secret instructions. He replied that he was not, that the only thing requested of him was to provide weather reports to her until she was four hundred miles from Lae.
The first person to advance the possibility that Earhart flew over Truk Atoll, as well as perhaps Kwajalein Atoll, was Captain George C. Carrington. Carrington published his findings in a book titled Amelia Earhart: What Really Happened at Howland Island, Unabridged Report IV. The publication contains a quantity of impressively researched material, including evidence of the participation of the U.S. government in the flight. Carrington, along with many others, argues that Earhart and Noonan came down in the Marshall Islands and were captured by the Japanese.
In 1983, a Freedom of Information Act–declassified O2 intelligence report revealed that, despite what was reported by the U.S. government, Amelia Earhart, on nearing Howland Island, transmitted a message stating that she was turning north. The O2 report stated that “Her signals became fainter as she continued to head north until they were no longer received.” The Marshall Islands were northwest of Howland Island.
Additional significant discoveries of Earhart-related information by a man named Carroll F. Harris were reported by author David K. Bowman. While on active duty with the U.S. Navy, Harris had been given an assignment to microfilm “highly sensitive files in the office of the Chief of Naval Operations.” Harris was forbidden to take notes while pursuing the task, but he remembered that the Earhart file “took up three-quarters of a file drawer” and covered, among other things, “details of the precautions to keep Earhart’s actual route from Lae to Howland [Island] secret. The files indicated that she was to take a different, longer flight path than her publicly announced one.”
Thus, it becomes clearer with each passing year that Amelia Earhart’s around-the-world flight was not entirely what the public assumed it was. It had far-reaching implications, all of which placed Earhart and Noonan in danger.
• 22 •What Happened to Amelia Earhart?
The overriding mystery of what became of Amelia Earhart is replete with subsets of a number of other mysteries relative to her flight around the world. It would be instructive to deal with the different stages of the mystery. An important early stage is related to the landing, or crash landing, of the Electra somewhere in the Pacific Ocean.
The U.S. government line on the incident via the U.S. Navy and Coast Guard is that Earhart and Noonan crashed into the sea somewhere east of Howland Island and sank, with the pilot and navigator perishing. Though “official,” this explanation has been rejected by a growing number of Earhart researchers over the years on the basis of evidence that has accumulated since the aviatrix disappeared. Other theories related to where Earhart and Noonan came down in the Pacific that have received attention include:
The Gardner Island theory
The New Britain Island theory
The Hull Island theory
The Sydney Island theory
The Saipan Island theory
The Mili Atoll theory
U.S. GOVERNMENT POSITION
The official position of the U.S. government, as initially voiced by the navy, is that Amelia Earhart and her copilot, Fred Noonan, “probably” ran out of fuel and crashed and sank within forty miles of Howland Island. At least one report cites the figure at 120 miles. Inserted into the government’s explanation are statements relating to the notion that strong headwinds and heavy weather in the area of Howland Island contributed to the disaster. This conclusion pertaining to the fate of the aviatrix was arrived at in spite of the fact that not a single shred of evidence exists to support it.
Heavy weather was invoked by the government on a number of occasions as a contributing factor relative to Earhart’s disappearance. Navy Lt. Warren W. Harvey was quoted as saying, “If Miss Earhart entered the storm, she hadn’t a chance.” According to researcher Rollin Reineck, the navy fabricated the existence of the storm, and t
he entire story pertaining to a serious weather problem was a “staged deception.” An examination of the meteorological reports from the University of Hawaii reveals that weather conditions at and near Howland Island during that time were quite suitable for flying and that Harvey’s descriptions of snow, sleet, and ice in the area were incorrect. He was either provided with this information to broadcast or ordered to manufacture it himself.
Despite what the U.S. government contends were serious visibility problems over Howland Island at the time Earhart disappeared, Leo G. Bellarts, who was the chief radioman on the U.S. Coast Guard cutter Itasca, said no such problems existed. Bellarts was quoted as saying, “As to the weather, there were puffy clouds to the northwest but plenty of blue in between them. Other than that, it was a very clear day.”
The government position is fraught with problems and errors and remains suspect. Evidence indicates that not only were there no severe storms in the region of Howland Island, the weather was, for the most part, clear.
If Earhart and Noonan had been anywhere near Howland Island, they likely would have spotted it with little difficulty. Noonan’s navigational skills were such that on several occasions in the past he was able to guide aircraft directly to Wake Island, another tiny island in the Pacific Ocean. For Noonan, Howland Island would not have presented a significant problem. Furthermore, smoke columns disseminated by the Itasca to assist in guidance could have been seen with no difficulty from forty miles away or more.
Following the loss of contact with the Electra, the Navy and Coast Guard immediately undertook a search throughout the waters around Howland Island and for hundreds of miles outward. Never was any evidence of a downed plane located: no plane, no oil slick, no crash debris, nothing. There exists no evidence that points to the notion that Earhart and Noonan were anywhere near Howland Island when they came down. Additional credible evidence indicates that the Electra was located seven years later hundreds of miles away on the Island of Saipan.
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