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70th anniversary
of disappearance of American aviator Amelia Earhart
In Lae, Morobe province of PNG some
70 years ago one of the most adored of the long- distance aviators
of the 1930s was Amelia Earhart Putnam, the greatest of all woman
pilots, and wife of wealthy American publisher George Putnam
visited Lae on June 30 1937 and took off from here on July 2, 1937
on the longest stretch of her record to be around-the-world
flight.
She landed her Lockheed Electra at Lae with her navigator, Fred
Noonan and had already flown 22 000 miles in forty days. Ahead lay
the final 7000 miles of the great flight to tiny Howland Island
southwest of Hawaii then onto Honolulu and back home to Oakland,
California.
But they never made the journey back home as Earhart and Noonan
disappeared over the Pacific without a trace and were never found.
She radioed she was running low on fuel.
Her Lockheed Electra was last heard from about 100 miles from the
tiny Pacific atoll, Howland Island on July 2, 1937, 8 hours after
taking off from Lae. President Roosevelt authorized an immediate
search.
This sparked world attention as the biggest air search in the
history of the United States Navy began, involving 3000 men, 102
aircrafts, a battleship, an aircraft carrier, four destroyers and
other vessels.
The ships combed 151 000 square miles of the Pacific, aided by
Japanese naval aircraft. No trace of the missing fliers, or their
Lockheed, was found.
Over the years, the disappearance of Amelia Earhart has spawned
almost as many conspiracy theories as the Lindbergh Kidnapping and
the Kennedy Assassination.
She achieved a number of aviation records:
the first woman to fly across the Atlantic, in 1928
the second person to fly solo across the Atlantic, in 1932
the first person to solo from Hawaii to California, in 1935
Guided by her publicist and husband, George Putnam, she made
headlines in the era when aviation gripped the public’s
imagination.
Her Last Flight
In 1937 Amelia Earhart attempted an around-the-world flight.
Flying a custom-built Lockheed Model 10E Electra, equipped with
extra-large gas tanks, she would follow a ‘close to the Equator’
route, thus going one better than Wiley Post’s northern,
mid-latitude route. In her first effort, in March of 1937, she
flew west, but a crash in Hawaii abruptly ended that trip.
Starting on May 21, from Oakland, California, in the repaired
Lockheed Electra, she and her navigator, Fed Noonan, stayed over
land as much as possible. Their route took them to Miami, then to
Natal, Brazil, for the shortest possible hop over the Atlantic.
They touched down in Senegal, West Africa; then eastward across
the Sahara to Khartoum, following the Arabian Peninsula to
Karachi, (then part of India). From India they flew to Rangoon,
Bangkok, and the Dutch East Indies. After a stop in Darwin,
Australia, they continued eastward to Lae, New Guinea, arriving
there on June 29.
Her next destination was Howland Island, 2200 miles away, the
longest over-water leg of the trip. To aid in radio
communications, the U.S. Coat Guard cutter Itasca was stationed
off Howland Island. The Lockheed Electra took off from Lae at 0:00
- Greenwich Mean Time. Eight hours later she called in to Lae for
the last time. At 19:30, Itasca received the following:
“KHAQQ calling Itasca. We must be on you but cannot see you...gas
is running low...”
An hour later, the last message came in:
“We are in a line position of 157’- 337. Will report on 6210
kilocycles. Wait,listen on 6210 kilocycles. We are running North
and South.”
Ironically Amelia Earhart has become more famous for disappearing
than for her many real aviation achievements.
It sparked a whole cottage industry of conspiracy theorists and
“researchers.” There are two main themes to these ideas. One, her
around-the-world flight was a cover for a spy mission,
commissioned by President Roosevelt to determine what the Japanese
were up to in the Pacific. Two, she and Fred Noonan weren’t simply
swallowed up by the vast Pacific Ocean, but were captured by the
Japanese. Obviously these two main themes work well in
combination.
No evidence has ever been found to support either one of these
ideas.
The mystery of the disappearance of Amelia Earhart remains one of
Americas greatest unsolved mysteries which has never been solved
to the satisfaction of the thousands of researchers, writers and
filmmakers who have created what has virtually become an Amelia
Earhart industry over the past now seventy years.
The official position of the US Government has been that Ms
Earhart and Noonan went down with their plane.
World attention was focused on Lae and particularly the old Lae
airport in 1937 it was recorded in aviation history and continues
today as Lae was the last port of call for this courageous and
famous pioneer American Aviator.
Old Lae residents used to recall entertaining the couple in the
good times Hotel Cecil now the site of Asiawe village the night
before their departure, and then seeing them off the next morning.
The plane was so overloaded with its eight tones of fuel that it
was still barely clearing the waves as it disappeared from sight,
flying east along the Huon Gulf coast on its way to Howland
Island, 4600 kilometres to the north. On such occasions Lae-ites
no matter what class or social position, felt they were part of
history.
Numerous expeditions searched for her underwater remains hoping to
find her twin -engine Lockheed Electra airplane over even to
recent years as 2001 to 2002 with two US expeditions headed to the
islands of the western Pacific.
The US based Amelia Earhart Society has also sponsored
intermittent visits to Marshall Islands, where some believe she
crashed while spying on Japanese forces for the US government.
This kind of interest has been going on since the 1960s, except
now its being magnified by the media with two or three expeditions
still going on while awaiting funds to continue on.
In Lae, the Amelia Earhart Memorial Garden and plaque dedicated to
the memory of this pioneer aviator now stands at the Independence
Park opposite the former Lae airport.
Over the years the Morobe Tourism Bureau has been working with
organizations like the Rotary Club of Lae, the US Embassy, US-
based Amelia Earhart Society, and the Morobe Provincial Government
to upgrade and relocate the memorial to a proper site along with
the Morobe Museum and Culture Centre..
 
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