Facts and Fiction in the Search for Amelia Earhart

The mystery of Amelia Earhart’s disappearance somewhere over the Pacific Ocean in July 1937 during her around-the-world flight attempt captured American imagination. Interest persists to the present day.

How the U.S. Government Searched for Earhart

Immediately following Earhart’s disappearance, the United States government put forth an extraordinary attempt to find Earhart. The search went on for 16 days and involved nine vessels, 4,000 crew, and 66 aircraft, costing more than $4 million (over $88 million dollars today). All of this was to no avail.  

They “searched an area of the Pacific roughly the size of Texas without turning up a clue,” explained curator Tom Crouch. “Radio operators in the United States and across the Pacific reported receiving everything from surefire messages from Earhart to strange sounds that could have been from her. Authorities dismissed the flurry of reports as either wishful thinking or cruel hoaxes.” Eventually, Earhart was declared legally dead on January 5, 1939. 

Those wishful thoughts and cruel hoaxes were a harbinger of things to come. Almost immediately after Earhart’s disappearance, stories about Earhart’s whereabouts began to pop up.  

How Pop Culture Helped Continue Interest in Earhart

Interest in Earhart’s disappearance has been kept in the forefront of Americans’ minds through popular culture. Earhart’s husband, George Putnam, hoped someone would produce his idea for a film about Earhart to be called Lady with Wings: The Story of My Wife, Amelia Earhart.  

However, when there were no takers, and with the Earhart estate in poor financial condition, Putnam  approved a film that that contained some resemblances to Earhart’s life, for which the Earhart estate received $7,500. The film was eventually produced by RKO in 1943, titled Flight for Freedom. Rosalind Russell starred as a woman aviator, Tonie Carter, who wanted to fly around the world. Fred MacMurray, as Randy Britton, was a hotshot pilot who accompanies Carter as navigator. 

Flight for Freedom helped continue interested in what happened to Earhart and her navigator Fred Noonan. Earhart’s story has since been retold in novels, plays, films, television (including an episode of Star Trek), music, and more. With each retelling, interest grows.  

How Private Searchers Have Continued to Look

Private individuals and groups have continued the search for Earhart for decades. In recent years, several groups searched in the vicinity of Howland Island, Earhart's destination after her departure from Lae, New Guinea. Combining detailed, factual analysis with oceanographic engineering, Nauticos made three unsuccessful expeditions since 2002 but continues refining its search areas. In 2024, Deep Sea Vision was hopeful they’d found Earhart’s plane on sonar imagery. Alas, it was a rock formation. 

Theories Continue Online

Interest in Earhart’s disappearance is especially alive and well online. Speculations cover a wide range, including the following: 

• The theory she crashed on other Pacific islands
• The idea that the flight had been a secret spy mission
• The belief that Earhart was captured by the Japanese and had reappeared as “Tokyo Rose,” the women who broadcast pro-Japanese propaganda to American troops in the Pacific during World War II
• That Earhart had assumed another identity and was living in New Jersey 

What This Means for Earhart’s Legacy

“By vanishing she became legendary,” stated Doris Rich, one of Earhart’s biographers. “Nothing she might have said or done, no scheme George Palmer Putnam might have designed, could so enhance Earhart’s renown as the mystery of her disappearance. ” Her disappearance seems to have overtaken her life’s accomplishments as an aviator and advocate for women’s rights. Susan Ware, author of  Still Missing: Amelia Earhart and the Search for Modern Feminism, points out that “with all the mythology surrounding Amelia Earhart’s last flight in 1937, it is hard to assess her career separately from the ongoing mystery of her disappearance.”  

This blog was adapted from it’s original version, written by Dominick Pisano and published with the title "The Legend of Amelia Earhart’s Disappearance" in 2010. In 2025, Dorothy Cochrane and Amelia Grabowski updated the blog. You can read the original version via Internet Archive.