Amelia Earhart: Nikumaroro Hypothesis

Amelia Earhart and her navigator Fred Noonan departed Lae New Guinea the morning of July 2, 1937, in Lockheed Electra Model 10E.  They were flying to a refueling stop at Howland Island prior to arriving in Hawaii and onward to California to complete their around-the-world flight.  Roughly twenty hours into the flight to Howland Island, with between three and four hours of fuel remaining, Earhart and Noonan have been unable to make visual or two-way radio contact with the Coast Guard stationed at Howland. They cannot locate the island so they proceed southeastward on a course of 157 degrees to locate an island to land on in the Phoenix Group.  Shortly before noon, they land successfully at low tide on the reef-flat at Gardner Island, now known as Nikumaroro Island.  The land north of the shipwrecked S.S. Norwich City which ran aground there in 1929.

The U.S. Navy dispatches ships from Hawaii to search the area including the Phoenix Group. The evening of the day they land, the aircraft’s radio is used to send distress calls.  By a week later, rough seas and surf on the reef force Earhart and Noonan to abandon the aircraft which is now obscured from view at high tide.  They seek shelter from the sun in the dense bush inland and come upon a cache of provisions left behind by the rescuers of the Norwich City survivors eight years earlier.  When search planes from the Navy’s USS Colorado are heard overhead on the morning of July 9th, Earhart and Noonan are unable to reach the open beach in time to be seen.  If anything of the airplane was visible through the surf, its proximity to the Norwich City leads the searchers to dismiss it as debris from the shipwreck.

Literally marooned on a desert island, Earhart and Noonan survive for a time but eventually succumb to any of a number of possible causes including injury and infection, food poisoning (some local fish are highly toxic), or simply thirst. Earhart dies at a small makeshift campsite on the island’s southeastern side. Noonan’s fate is less clear.  The airplane on the reef is destroyed by surf action and the debris is scattered along the shoreline and into the lagoon.

Credit: www.tighar.org and Ric Gillespie.

Also see the Buka and Hull Hypotheses.