Hey, 42 here. The fear of flying is one of
the most common phobias in the world.
As many as 40% of people may suffer from a
mild form of flight related anxiety,
or aerophobia as it's imaginatively called,
whilst up to 5% of the population have been cursed
with a crippling fear of flying that in many cases
prevents them from ever travelling by air.
But as far as phobias go,
it isn't the most rational.
As you're probably well aware,
air travel is one of the safest ways to get
around,
far safer than almost all other forms of transport that
most of us take on a daily or weekly basis
without ever thinking about it.
In the year after the September the 11th attacks in
New York,
many Americans understandably avoided flying for quite a while,
instead choosing to travel by car where possible.
But ironically enough, one study calculated that over
1500 Americans died in traffic accidents as a result.
That's more than the number of people who died in
commercial plane crashes in the whole of
2002 worldwide. And here's the thing.
We see aerophobia as a largely irrational fear because flying
is so safe.
But that hasn't always been the case.
And in the very early days of aviation,
getting into the cockpit of an aeroplane
really did mean taking your life into your own hands.
Several of the most famous aviation pioneers in history lost
their lives inside their beloved planes.
Otto Lilienfal died after breaking his neck in a glider
crash and John Alcock lost his life in a flying
accident
fewer than six months after becoming the first person to
fly solo non-stop across the Atlantic.
But of all the pilots to have met their end,
indulging in their greatest passion,
one name stands out above all of us,
Amelia Earhart. And the reason for that is simple.
To this day, more than 80 years after she was
last seen alive,
nobody knows exactly what happens to her.
It's no exaggeration to say that her disappearance in the
summer of
1937 remains one of the biggest mysteries in modern human
history.
Before seemingly vanishing off the face of the planet,
Amelia Earhart was a bona fide international celebrity.
She set dozens of aviation records,
perhaps the most famous of which was becoming the first
woman to fly solo across the Atlantic.
But she was famous for more than just her flying
credentials.
Amelia Earhart represented a new kind of woman.
She was a trouser wearing,
adventure seeking badass who showed the people of a very
different era to our own that,
contrary to popular belief, there was an overlap in the
has boobs goes on an adventures Venn diagram.
So Amelia Earhart was a pioneer in more ways than
one,
but it's safe to say
her transformation from popular aviatrix into a legend of almost
mythical proportions
is at least partly down to the great and enduring
mystery
that surrounds her disappearance. In the July of
1937, Earhart was nearing the end of her most ambitious
project yet,
an attempt to circumnavigate the globe
in her trusty Lockheed Electra
alongside her navigator, Fred Noonan.
Earhart had already been on the road,
or should that be in the air,
for some 40 days, and the pair had clocked up
well over
20,000 miles in the process.
All that stood between them and another remarkable record were
two more refuelling stops.
Well, that and about 6 1/2 thousand miles of ocean.
Now, seeing as you're watching this video,
I'm going to take the liberty of assuming that you,
like me, are a citizen of planet Earth.
Which means you'll be all too familiar with arguably our
home's most striking interior design feature,
the Pacific Ocean. This frankly ridiculous body of water covers
more than
30% of our planet's surface.
That's more than all of the land on Earth combines.
At its widest point, you could fit 5 moons side
by side.
Across it, five bloody moons.
There are parts of the Pacific Ocean so remote that
if you were mad enough to ever go there,
there's a good chance that astronauts on the International Space
Station would be your nearest human companions.
Seriously. I tell you all,
partly because I literally can't help myself when it comes
to useless facts,
and partly to give you a sense of the absurd
challenge facing Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan
as they took off from Papua New Guinea on the
2nd of July
1937 and chartered a course smack into the middle of
the biggest nothing our planet has to offer.
Their destination was Howland Island,
a tiny spit of land just a mile and a
half long and a good 2 1/2 thousand miles away.
There, they would stop and refuel before flying on to
Hawaii and finally California for their homecoming and eternal glory.
Now, it's important to remember that this was a time
before GPS existed.
In fact, it was a time before almost any of
the handy things you might find on a modern aircraft
had been invented
outside of wings and an engine.
Which meant the only way Earhart and Noonan could find
Howland Island.
The proverbial needle in a haystack,
if ever there was one,
was to rely on Noonan's knowledge of celestial navigation.
Luckily, waiting for the Electra just off Howland Island was
the ETASCA,
a U.S. Coast Guard vessel equipped with radio gear
capable of guiding the Electra towards the island once it
got close enough,
using a technique called Radio direction finding.
Unfortunately, thanks to a combination of misunderstandings and good old
fashioned crappy planning,
the gear on board the Electra wasn't compatible with that
on the Itasca,
meaning A2 way connection couldn't be established and radio direction
finding was impossible.
Or to put it another way,
the Electra was flying blind.
That's something Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan
slowly began to realise about 20 hours into their flight,
when they were singularly unable to contact the Itasca,
their lifeline. They knew Howland Island must be close,
Noonan was an expert navigator,
after all. But actually finding the damn thing,
particularly with heavy cloud cover,
was next to impossible. And all the while,
the electric's fuel gauge slowly ticked down towards 0.
And that's pretty much where Amelia Earhart,
Fred Noonan, and their Lockheed Electra soared out of the
history books and straight into legend.
The question that's fascinated generation after generation ever since is
simple.
What happens next? From what I've told you so far,
the disappearance of Amelia Earhart probably sounds like an open
and shut case.
The Electra ran out of fuel in the middle of
the Pacific Ocean,
somewhere in the vicinity of Howland Island,
and both the aeroplane and its inhabitants disappeared beneath the
waves.
But it turns out things aren't quite so straightforward after
all.
The Electra was equipped for extremely long range flight.
It was basically an airborne petrol station with every spare
inch packed with reserved fuel and you have to wonder,
as Earhart and Noonan watched that fuel slowly being depleted,
if they would have eventually reached a decision point.
Continue searching for Howland Islands in the knowledge that failing
to find it meant certain death
or try their luck somewhere else.
In the days after contact was lost with the Electra,
radio stations all over the Pacific
as well as amateur radio enthusiasts
reported picking up distress signals from the plane,
something that could only have been possible had it gone
down on land.
For these and other reasons,
plenty of people have theorised that the Elektra did not
ditch into the ocean near Howland Island
and instead landed safely somewhere else.
But that being the case,
why were Earhart and Noonan never found?
Literally hundreds of theories have come and gone over the
years,
but three have proven the most popular.
The 1st is that deciding Howland Island was a bust,
the Elektra struck out northwest,
eventually crash landing on the Japanese occupied Marshall Islands,
where Earhart and Noonan were promptly taken prisoner and executed.
Admittedly, exactly what motive the Japanese had for wanting a
world famous aviator and her navigator dead
is a little shaky to say the least,
as is the idea some have put forward that Erhart
was spying on the Japanese for the American government.
Having said that, several Marshall Islanders reported having seen a
plane crash in the area at the time,
and some claimed to have seen Erhart being held in
a prison camp.
Others even came forward to say they'd witnessed her execution.
The Japanese capture theory gained some serious momentum in
2017 when The History Channel uncovered a photo taken in
Jalua to toll part of the Marshall Islands that appeared
to show Earhart,
Noonan, and possibly even the Electra in the background being
towed by a Japanese ship.
Now it should be pointed out that the fact they
appear to be chilling on a dock here
does seem to somewhat undermine their status as soon to
be executed prisoners of the Japanese,
but it turns out there was actually a slightly bigger
problem with this image.
It was taken in 1935,
around two years before the pair actually went missing.
Aside from the fact no hard evidence has ever been
uncovered that conclusively links the Elektra or her crew to
this particular theory,
there's also around 1000 miles of open ocean between Howland
Islands and the Marshall Islands,
so all things considered we can probably discount this one.
The Electra would have had to have flown for almost
10 hours to reach the Marshall Islands from her last
known position,
which doesn't seem credible considering we know they were low
on fuel in the vicinity of Howland Island.
The second theory is that the Elektra instead flew S
to Gardner Island,
which today is called Nikumaroro and is in the Republic
of Kiribati.
According to this theory, the Elektra landed safely,
though Fred Noonan was badly injured.
Earhart, and possibly Noonan too,
then survived on the island for an unknown period of
time as castaways before succumbing to either the elements,
the lack of fresh water,
the limited food supply, or,
if you prefer your theories with a side of disturbing
fries,
the local population of giant coconut crabs.
There are a few intriguing tidbits pointing the search in
this direction,
not least of which is that the last known directional
coordinates sent by the Elektra
would have taken the aircraft right by Gardner Island,
and many of the radio signals picked up by enthusiasts
in the days after the craft went missing
were triangulated to almost exactly that spot.
The idea the Electra made it to Gardener Island was
considered plausible at the time of the disappearance,
so much so that U.S.
Navy planes flew over it a week later to search
for Earhart and Noonan.
The wrecky didn't turn up any crashed aeroplanes,
but the pilots did note signs of recent habitation on
the island,
which is extremely interesting since Gardner Island had been uninhabited
for several decades at the time.
Unfortunately, the reconnaissance team weren't aware of that crucial detail
at the time,
and having not spotted the Elektra,
the search continued elsewhere. A few years later,
the bones of an apparent castaway were found on the
island by a bunch of British colonists who apparently hadn't
got the memo that colonising wasn't really the done thing
anymore. Considering the location, the human remains were immediately connected
with Amelia Earhart,
but scientific examination at the time concluded they were most
likely the bones of a man.
Assuming the remains were no longer of interest,
they were packed into a box and forgotten about.
Which is really rather annoying because some scientists today believe
they could well have been
Amelia's and that with modern techniques they could have proven
her fate once and for all.
Though admittedly that claim is still highly controversial and hotly
debated by many.
There certainly seems to be enough evidence to keep the
Gardner Island theory alive.
But again here we hit a bit of a snag.
You see over the years a dozen expeditions have combed
the island and the waters around it
looking for evidence that the Electra came down here.
And whilst a few interesting artefacts have been recovered,
for example an aluminium panel similar to those found on
the Electra,
and the heel of a woman's shoe that resembles those
merely are used to wear,
none of these pieces of evidence constitutes proof.
Not only that, but despite extensive searches for the Electra
itself,
including one led by Robert Ballard,
the man who found the wreck of the Titanic,
no trace of it has ever been found.
The truth is, for now,
neither the Japanese capture hypothesis nor the Gardener Island theory
is entirely compelling,
and that's probably why the simplest theory of them all
remains the most likely,
the crash and sink hypothesis.
Unable to find Howland Island for the reasons we've already
covered,
Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan crashed into the Pacific Ocean,
and the Elektra quickly sank beneath the waves,
never to be seen again.
Whether the crew survived the crash is unknown,
but adrift in the endless expanse of the ocean,
5,000,000 people, five moons, it's safe to say their status
on landing is pretty much irrelevant.
Of course, there's currently no conclusive evidence to support this
theory either,
but since it doesn't require any leaps of imagination or
suspensions of logic,
it probably remains the safest bet.
Sure, it doesn't explain all those radio signals supposedly picked
up from the Elektra in the days after she went
missing,
but it's difficult to know for sure what people were
really tuning into.
There were hundreds of stations around the Pacific trying to
get hold of the Elektra at the time,
and it's possible that all the confusion led to false
reports the aeroplane was broadcasting a distress signal.
It's tantalising to think that Amelia
Earhart's plane must be out there somewhere more than 80
years after it met its end.
That right now fish are chasing each other through its
silent cockpit
as it lies in wait on the ocean floor.
If the Elektra is down there in the waters around
Howland Island,
it's probably only a matter of time before we find
it.
There are still lots of places we haven't looked.
Did I mention the Pacific is big?
And there are plenty of people who remain desperate to
find one of
America's great lost heroes. Who knows?
Perhaps one day soon, the
Elektra's final resting place will be disturbed
as a shaft of light from a remote operated vehicle
cuts through the darkness.
But for now, the vanishing of Amelia Earhart remains one
of the greatest mysteries in recent history.
Thanks for watching.
Check out my new podcast Random Interesting Facts,
available on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts,
and anywhere else you get your podcasts link in the
description below.
Thanks.