Three-quarters of the globe behind them, Amelia Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan, now had only the Pacific Ocean left to cross. They took off midmorning from Lae, Papua New Guinea, on July 1, 1937, bound for Howland Island, an 8,200-foot-long, paramecium-shaped speck halfway to Honolulu. A runway had been carved out on the uninhabited island for their use. Fuel awaited them, and the US Coast Guard cutter Itasca stood by with radio-direction-finding equipment. Earhart would navigate by pilotage and dead reckoning until nightfall; they would then rely on Noonan’s celestial navigation until the sun rose an hour before their anticipated arrival. Thereafter, Earhart would dead-reckon again.
Amelia Earhart’s Final Flight
Key Takeaways:
- Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan likely ran out of fuel and crashed near Howland Island, with their actual flight duration being significantly shorter (20-21 hours) than the commonly believed 24 hours.
- A 1999 Caltech study attributed this reduced range to factors like less dense fuel from tropical temperatures, unconsidered altitude effects on specific fuel consumption, and a persistent 26 mph headwind that increased the effective distance.
- The flight's failure was further compounded by difficulties with radio communication, navigational limitations due to lack of proper equipment (e.g., astrodome), and the extremely small, low-lying nature of the target island.
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