A team of 17 from the Archaeological Legacy Institute and Purdue Research Foundation at Purdue University is preparing for the journey that might finally answer the question: What happened to Amelia Earhart? And the unlikely source of the evidence is Apple Maps.
In 2020, Apple Maps, a navigation app available on iPhones and other Apple devices, captured an image near Nikumaroro Island in the Pacific Ocean with an object underwater that could be shaped like an airplane. Thinking this could be Amelia Earhart’s Lockheed Model 10-E Electra, the group assembled to investigate the area. But Nikumaroro Island is just one place where people think Amelia Earhart might have ended up when she disappeared with navigator Fred Noonan on July 2, 1937.
Who was Amelia Earhart?
Amelia Mary Earhart was born on July 24, 1897 in Atchison, Kansas. Although she was the daughter of a lawyer and granddaughter of a judge, Amelia was not a prim and proper little girl. She loved to play outside and get messy. In fact, she and her sister Muriel often wore pants, which was not at all common for girls at the time. She was also a bit of a daredevil, building a roller coaster in her back yard. So it just made sense when she got a little older that she begged her parents to pay for her to take flying lessons.
In 1928, Amelia became the first woman to fly across the Atlantic Ocean…kind of. She wasn’t piloting the plane but was a passenger. She wasn’t happy just being a passenger, though, so in 1932, she became the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic. That same year, she was the first woman to fly solo across the United States. Along the way, she helped found the Ninety-Nines, an organization of women pilots that is still active today! But in 1937, she attempted her biggest record yet. Amelia wanted to be the first woman to fly solo around the world.
The last journey
Amelia and her navigator, Fred Noonan, had been traveling for about a month when they took off from Lae, New Guinea bound for Howland Island about 2,500 miles away. They stayed in contact by radio with a U.S. Coast Guard ship near the island, but at some point, she lost contact and was never heard from again. The U.S. Navy and Coast Guard conducted a 16-day search over 262,000 square miles of ocean, but Amelia, Fred and their plane were nowhere to be found. Over the years, several theories have emerged about their fate.
The crashed-and-sank theory
“The most common belief..is that Amelia simply didn’t find Howland Island, crashed and sank,” said Sterling Falk, the archivist at the Amelia Earhart Hangar Museum in Atchison, Kansas. One of Amelia’s last radio messages had been that she was low on fuel, so this theory is a pretty likely one, but her plane has never been found.
The “turned around” theory
According to some people Amelia had spoken to before her journey, she planned for a detour if she didn’t think she could land safely on Howland Island.
“She had said, ‘hey, if I need to, I can turn around. There’s gonna be some islands that I’ve already flown over. I can just go back if I don’t feel confident,’” Falk said.
The captured and held captive theories
There are two similar theories that Amelia and Fred were taken prisoner by an enemy. In 1937 when the two disappeared, the world was on the verge of war, and Japan was a major player. Some (including Amelia’s own mother) believed Amelia became a victim of Japanese forces.
“The idea that’s presented there is, World War II is right around the corner. Amelia gets caught flying in some Japanese airspace,” Falk said. “Some believe that she got shot down, crashed and sank then, or she landed on an island and…ended up getting picked up and held on a small island called Saipan, where she would eventually die.”
The new name theory
Falk thinks this theory is the least likely, calling it “the greatest magic trick of all time.” The story here is that Amelia and Fred landed on a secret island, pretended to disappear and then secretly came back to the United States where they assumed new identities and went on living.
“Where would they get the gas? How could they fly straight to the United States? That’s like a 4,000-mile flight which in those days was crazy, at least for her small plane,” Falk said. “She was also a very recognizable person. So surely people would be like, ‘Are you Amelia Earhart?’”
The castaway theory
This is the theory that researchers are currently investigating. Nikumaroro Island (formerly called Gardner Island) is not far from Amelia’s route. It’s uninhabited, but it could be possible that Amelia and Fred crashed nearby and lived on the island for awhile. In fact, bones found on the island in 1940 might very well have belonged to Amelia, but they’ve since been lost, so we’ll never have proof.
We’ll be watching to find out if the investigators learn anything, and we’ll definitely post any updates here and talk about them on an upcoming episode. In the meantime, listen to our conversation with Sterling Falk on YouTube or your favorite podcast app.