Amelia Earhart’s Ill-Fated Flight

Serena Lee • May 31, 2025

Introduction

Undoubtedly, Amelia Earhart is one of the most well-known names in history. Celebrated as a pioneer in aviation and an advocate for women’s rights, Earhart has the admiration of millions. Although her strength, courage, determination, and hard work for women’s rights is praiseworthy, her many mistakes and errors are often overlooked or forgotten, which leads to the misconception that Earhart was an extremely talented pilot. In reality, she was not very talented, if talented at all. She did not die due to untimely misfortunes; her death was feasibly avoidable.

Earhart’s Life

Amelia Earhart born on July 24, 1897 in Atchison, Kansas to an affluent mother and a lawyer father. Her family encountered financial difficulties as Earhart’s grandparents died and her father started being an alcoholic. Despite this, Earhart was able to attend junior college and became a nurse’s aide in World War I. After the war, Earhart attended Columbia University for a premed program, but had to leave due to her parents’ insistence that she live with them in California. Earhart went on her first ever plane flight in 1920, then started to take flying lessons, bought a plane, earned her license, and the rest is history.

Over the years, her fame grew as she broke records and made significant contributions in aviation. She advocated for women to not be constrained by societal norms and launched a fashion line that sold activewear for women.

In 1937, Earhart decided that she would fly around the world; a very ambitious and dangerous plan that would lead to her death. Due to various circumstances and issues, it could be said that her trip was doomed from the start. Here is why.

Proficiency Issues

Earhart had many instances of botched landings and clumsy flights. In 1929, Earhart ran off the end of the runway while landing the plane, which damaged the propeller. When she participated in a race in Cleveland, she encountered issues while landing again. The plane repeatedly bounced against the runway and almost ground-looped (flipped over). In 1937, when Earhart was leaving Hawaii for the first leg of her journey to circumnavigate the world, she actually did end up ground-looping the plane, and the journey was canceled since the aircraft required “extensive” rebuilding from the damage.

Not only had she not trained for enough line, leading to clumsy mistakes, Earhart’s technical skill also needed work: for one, she tended to use differential throttles to steer when she should’ve been using a rudder. The throttles change how much energy the engines produce, which is fine for steering if the aircraft is not going at high speeds; however, once the plane is in the air or is in the process of landing, the throttles are not as reliable or efficient, so a rudder should be used. By using the engines, as Earhart would do, it would be easy to lose control and damage the aircraft during landing, which is most likely what happened with Earhart the multiple times she crashed.

Navigation Issues

In Earhart’s time, aviation technology was not very developed. The machinery was often new and not very reliable. Therefore, usually at least one person would specifically be a navigator for the crew, especially for long-distance flights and military flights. Amelia Earhart originally chose Fred Noonan and Harry Manning to be her navigators for her mission to circumnavigate the globe, but dropped Manning before she could actually go on her journey. Unfortunately for her, Manning was a “celebrated maritime navigator and had the radio skills that both Earhart and Noonan lacked” (Connor) and Noonan had previously been fired from his job at Pan American airlines for “alcoholism” (Beckford). This isn’t to say that Noonan wasn’t skilled; he just wasn’t as good as Manning. Although the majority believe that Noonan had not been drinking before his last flight with Earhart, it still speaks volumes on the nature of his character.

Earhart was also offered advice by Philip Van Horn Weems, the “world’s leading expert in navigational techniques for aviators,” (Kahn) who suggested that it would be greatly beneficial for her to become more proficient in the skill of navigation and to learn Morse Code. She did not listen, and to make matters worse, the plane that she flew was poorly designed for good navigation. The Lockheed Model 10 Electra she used did not have a rooftop hatch or a viewing port that would allow for a clear look at the sun, stars, and other celestial bodies, which was necessary for Noonan to conduct his calculations. The plane was only designed to fly a few thousand kilometers, which barely allowed her to reach her destination, so any unnecessary equipment was removed, including insulation and antennas. The loss of insulation made the noise of the engine so loud that verbal communication between Earthart and Noonan was impossible; yet another obstacle that made communication difficult.

Noonan relied on a strategy called dead reckoning, meaning that he would use a compass to point the plane to the right direction, modify based on the wind, then determine the time it would take to reach the destination. But using this strategy, if they didn’t see the island at the time they were supposed to see the island, they wouldn’t know if they were too north or too south of the island. So, Noonan purposefully chose a point that was north or south of Howland Island. They would fly to that spot and turn either south or north respectively to find the actual destination. (Refer to 6:23 if a visual is needed.) In itself, this strategy can be imprecise, as Noonan had calculated a slightly inaccurate path for Earhart before.

Even more importantly, Earhart and Noonan had been radioed about stronger headwinds than they were originally told about 20 minutes after they took off, but this message went unacknowledged. Most likely, they did not receive this message at all, which would’ve thrown off Noonan’s calculations by a great deal.

None of Earhart’s equipment was very advanced, except for the Bendix direction finding radio. However, Earhart had issues with the radio since she was inexperienced with using that specific kind of radio and it had “mechanical unreliability” (Connor) and was “experimental” (Gray). Earhart also did not understand the relationship between wavelengths and frequencies nor how to convert from one to the other, so she would send signals on the wrong frequencies and be unable to receive critical messages.

Due to the difficulty of the trip, three US Coast Guard ships were positioned along her flight path to help guide her: Ontario halfway to Howland Island, Itasca at Howland Island, and Swan halfway from Howland Island to Hawaii. In theory, this should’ve been a great help and it should’ve been a strongly reliable manner of assistance. However, as with many aspects of the journey, things did not proceed as planned. The day before takeoff, Earhart realized that the Ontario couldn’t receive high frequency signals, meaning that she couldn’t use voice communication with the ship. So, Earhart sent a telegram to the ship, asking them to broadcast the letter N in Morse code for 10 minutes after each hour so Earhart could use a loop antenna and sense antenna to find the ship. Unfortunately, the telegram did not reach the ship in time, so Ontario never ended up sending Earhart any signals.

As Earhart continued on, Itasca was able to receive messages from Earhart. However, confusion arose as she requested for them to take a bearing of her position, as the original assumption was that Earhart would be the one to take a bearing. The crew of the Itasca “ did not believe themselves to be intimately involved in either the planning or execution” (Hancock 20), which could’ve been a factor in the decreased efficiency of communication.

To make matters worse, Earhart was using a radio frequency that was way too high. At her frequency, the emitted waves would bounce off the ionosphere then reflect and scatter into the ocean, making it seem like the waves were coming from everywhere. This made it impossible to take an accurate bearing of Earhart’s location. In addition, the Itasca did not have the ability to transmit voice messages on Earhart’s frequency; they could only send Morse code messages, and neither Earhart nor Noonan were proficient in Morse code. An hour later, at 6:45pm local time, Earhart asked them a second time to take a bearing and report back to her half an hour later.

This is where another crucial problem arose. Earhart was using Greenwich Civil Time, but Itasca was using GCT -11.5 hours, which was half an hour ahead of Earhart. On top of that, Howland Island wasn’t using either of those times; it was using Hawaii Time (GCT -10.5 hours). When Earhart sent the message, her clock showed 6:15pm. At the same time, when Itasca received the message, their clocks showed 6:45pm. It is assumed that when Earhart asked a second time for the ship to take a bearing, she’d said “on the half hour” instead of “in half an hour,” implying that she wanted to be receiving a message from the ship at 6:30pm. But for Itasca, “on the half hour” would’ve meant 7:30pm, obviously a completely different time. Making sure the timing of the messages was accurate was a crucial component because Earhart could only use one antenna at a time, and the same antenna was used for sending and receiving messages, meaning that if Earhart and the ship sent messages at the same time, they would both block each other out and the message wouldn’t be received.

Itasca requested for Earhart to switch from 3105 kilohertz to 500 kilohertz, as the ship couldn’t take a proper bearing of her when her frequency was so high. However, it wasn’t possible for Earhart to use the 500 kilohertz frequency as she had removed the antenna that allowed her to use lower frequencies. Basically, Earhart could not send a frequency that Itasca could use.

There was a way out, however; Earhart could find the location of Itasca if she could receive the ship’s messages using her loop antenna on the frequency the Itasca told her to use. When Earhart asked an expert what frequency she should use, they suggested she use 750, implying 750 meters/400 kilohertz. But Earhart misunderstood this suggestion, as she told Itasca to use 7500 kilohertz, which was clearly not a suitable frequency. Nonetheless, Earhart did tell the ship to inform her if her frequency was unsuitable, which the ship did not do. This was due to another misunderstanding, as the ship’s crew believed Earhart was referring to the suitability of the ship’s equipment, not her plane’s equipment.

Meanwhile, on Howland Island, the radio direction finder had almost no battery left, meaning that the radiomen didn’t receive any of Earhart’s messages and were not able to help her. Respite arrived when Itasca sent the Morse code letter A to Earhart and she was actually able to receive these messages. However, this minor success was overshadowed by the fact that the high frequency caused the ship’s radio waves to bounce and scatter in every direction, creating inaccurate and false bearings.

Earhart was just as lost as if she had no communication at all.

Finding the Island

The path that Earhart chose was also a poor choice. Due to the limitations of her plane, the geography of the area, and the political circumstances of the area, she could only choose to refuel on Howland Island. Howland Island is a tiny island in the middle of the southwestern area of the Pacific. It is over 1,600 miles away from Honolulu and basically in the middle of nowhere. It has a cucumber shape and an area of around 1 square mile. In perspective, Central Park would have about 130% of the area of Howland Island. The point being, Howland Island was extremely small and it would’ve been near impossible to find it unless the navigator was very competent and had very accurate tools.

Mother Nature

On top of all that, Earhart suffered from insect bites and sunburns, as well as being overworked and exhausted. In the 30 days before the flight where she died, she had flown her plane in 21 of those days, leading to fatigue, decreased concentration, and a lapse in cognitive ability. Not to mention, the flight itself had already been very draining and this specific leg of the trip was the most lengthy and the most grueling.

Personal Accountability

Often, Earhart demonstrated pure irresponsibility. She had her aircraft modified, which meant that the aircraft would only be allowed to carry the flight crew. However, Earhart and her advisor would often violate this restriction.

Earhart would also lie about why issues with her plane would happen. Instead of admitting to her mistake of landing at the wrong speed, she said that “something had gone wrong with the stabilizers.” When she crashed a plane on takeoff, she told the newspapers that there was a blown tire, but U.S. Army officers found no evidence of this in their investigation.

Her husband, who was also her publicist, would work to cover up Earhart’s mishaps, leading to the illusion that Earhart was an experienced professional.

Conclusion

Earhart does deserve credit as an admirable figure in her work for women’s rights and gender equality, as well as allowing more women to pursue a dream in aviation. However, her tragic death