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Quick answers
When did Amelia Earhart disappear?
On 2 July 1937, during the Lae, New Guinea, to Howland Island leg of an eastbound around-the-world attempt in Lockheed Electra NR16020, with navigator Fred Noonan.
What was the last radio message?
Itasca logged Earhart at about 08:43 Howland time saying she was on the line 157–337 and running on line. She reported they were flying up and down that line and could not see the island. Two-way contact was poor.
Who was Fred Noonan?
A professional navigator, formerly of Pan American’s Pacific routes, hired for the world flight after the March 1937 Hawaii crash. He was in the Electra on 2 July. He has not been found.
What is the official explanation?
Fuel exhaustion and a ditching in the sea near Howland Island after the island was missed. That is the Navy and Coast Guard working conclusion from 1937. It has not been confirmed by a located wreck.
What is the Nikumaroro theory?
A private research argument, associated with TIGHAR, that the Electra landed on Gardner Island (Nikumaroro) on the same sun line. Fragments and a lost 1940 bone find have been debated. No government has certified the island as the crash site.
Was Earhart captured by Japanese forces?
No document trail accepted by mainstream historians shows capture or imprisonment. The last radio minutes place the aircraft on a line through Howland, not in the Marshalls. The story persists in popular English; it is not the official file.
Investigation was first a fleet search, then a legal death, then decades of private archaeology.
It is described here as what agencies and later groups did after the fact, not as a guide to a forced landing.
Agencies
- United States Coast Guard (Itasca) — Radio and fuel ship at Howland; keeper of the last-hour log.
- United States Navy — Led the July 1937 search with surface ships and Lexington aircraft; produced the working ditching conclusion.
- California courts — Issued the 1939 legal death that closed Putnam’s estate problem.
- TIGHAR and later private teams — Island and sonar campaigns that keep the file in public English without an official identification.
What followed
- Talk the aircraft in
Itasca’s assigned job on the morning of 2 July. Frequency and bearing problems meant the job failed in public.
- Open a multi-ship search
Navy and Coast Guard units ran boxes around Howland and along possible sun-line extensions.
- Check reefs and flare reports
Sightings were flown. None became NR16020.
- Close the estate
The 1939 court date ended the missing-person legal limbo without a body.
- Reopen on islands
Late-century private work on Nikumaroro treated the 157–337 line as a path, not only as a local search.
- Scan deep water
Twenty-first-century sonar near Howland looks for the official ditching. Candidates have not been certified.
Turning points
- Loss of two-way radio — Once Earhart could not hear Itasca, Howland became a visual needle. The log still recorded her voice.
- The 157–337 line — A navigation sentence that later authorised both a near-Howland ditching and a Phoenix Islands argument.
- The 1939 legal death — The state’s end of the person-file. The wreck-file stayed open.
The investigation found a radio line and failed to find an aircraft.
Public-record encyclopedia. Not legal advice. Not a how-to. Graphic detail is withheld. Wars belong in a separate atlas.