Coast Guard History
Frequently Asked Questions
What was the Coast Guard’s role in the search for Amelia Earhart?
On 2 July 1937 at 0000 GMT (Greenwich Mean Time) Amelia Earhart and her navigator, Fred J. Noonan departed Lae, New Guinea for the next leg of her 29,000 mile around- the-world flight. The intended destination of this leg was tiny Howland Island, an atoll approximately 20 feet high, a few miles long, and 2,556 miles distant. Their last positive position report and sighting were over the Nukumanu Islands (about 800 miles into the flight). While engaged in a routine cruise to deliver food, water, and other supplies to US Department of the Interior personnel on Baker, Jarvis, and Howland Islands, the Coast Guard cutter Itasca was ordered to remain in the vicinity to serve as a radio beacon for Earhart’s flight to Howland.
Earhart and Noonan, however, had little practical knowledge of radio navigation. The frequencies Earhart was using were not well suited to direction finding and the reception quality of her transmissions was poor. Furthermore, she left behind the lower-frequency reception and transmission equipment that might have enabled Itasca to locate her. As a result, contact was lost after six hours of frustrating attempts at two-way communication.
A coordinated search led by the aircraft carrier Lexington and including Itasca found no physical evidence of either flyer or their plane. While the fate of Earhart and Noonan has been the subject of great speculation for the past sixty years, these claims remain unsubstantiated. Modern analysis indicates that after passing over Nukumanu, Earhart began to vector off course, unwittingly heading for a point approximately 100 miles NNW of Howland Island. A few hours before their estimated arrival Noonan calculated a sun Line, but without a successful, radio-frequency range calculation, a precise fix on their location was impossible. Researchers generally believe that the plane ran out of fuel and that Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan perished at sea.