Amelia Earhart: Across the Atlantic | 100th Episode, Amelia’s Final Flight | 3
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From Wondery, I'm Cassie DePeckel, and this is Against the Odds. Over the last two episodes, we've told the story of Amelia Earhart and the flights that propelled her to international fame. Earhart's 1932 solo flight from Newfoundland to Northern Ireland made her the first woman to fly nonstop across the Atlantic.

But that's not where her story ends. Earhart continued to set flying records and then set her sights on flying around the world. Today, we'll be joined by author Chris Williamson to talk about Earhart's final flight. His podcast, Chasing Earhart, explores the mystery of her disappearance and her legacy.

But before we welcome Chris, we have something special planned. Today is officially the 100th episode of Against the Odds. And to mark the occasion, I want to bring on my fellow Against the Odds host, Mike Corey, for a little chat. Hey, Mike. Hey, and here we are, I think for the second time together on the same podcast. Really?

Right, right. It's been a little too long. Yeah, and we've done a hundred episodes, if you can imagine. Crazy, crazy. And in true Against the Odds fashion, you're always on the go and on some crazy adventure. So where are you joining us from today, Mike? Right now, I'm in Playa del Carmen, about an hour south of Cancun. And out my window, there's an airport. So you might hear airplane noises because I'm actually trying to do my skydiving lessons. Wow. Wow.

Well, it's so hard to believe that this is the 100th episode of Against the Odds. I'm curious, what do you love most about the stories we get to tell on this show?

I think for myself and maybe for you too, I've heard a lot about some of these stories, maybe just a whisper in the wind or on a different podcast or on the news. But you never really get to hear all the details until it comes across our table. And then we dive in two, three, four episodes and then usually interview someone who was there or was very closely involved with it. And you hear all of these little nuances that are even more incredible, right?

I think maybe the interesting thing about the podcast is that we all have our own survival stories. Some are greater than others, but they're all very intense in our lives.

And with that, we can get lessons and thoughts and just an overall view of how humans can persevere when faced with great odds. And there's always lessons for me and hopefully our listeners and for you too when we hear the stories. Yeah, I feel the same way. Some of these stories educate me and also touch me in a different way and affect me in a different way. I love the Ada Blackjack story, just telling that one. I hadn't heard of it before, but a woman and her cat.

I mean, I personally could relate to that so much just by having a cat, obviously not surviving in the tundra for that amount of time and back then. And I also loved Jessica Buchanan's story, Kidnapped in the Desert. That kind of

hit home for me as well. You know, being in Somalia alone as a woman and focusing on, you know, humanitarian efforts and kind of being in the same age bracket as well. So those are some of my favorites. But Mike, what was your favorite story that we've covered on the show? I was trying to think about which one impacted me the most.

I think for me, it's got to be USS Indianapolis disaster at sea. I spend a lot of time in the water. I'm a dive master and I really love marine biology. It's what I went to university for. And I love the ocean. And also, it might be surprising to some people, I love sharks. They're such...

incredible creatures. For example, we're so scared of sharks and sharks maybe kill five or six people a year around the world, but we kill 100 million sharks a year. So sharks really aren't that dangerous of an animal. But in this series arc, it is the worst shark attack in human history. There was 12,000 people on the boat, 900 fell in the water, and only about 300 were saved and 600 or so got eaten by sharks. If you can imagine those numbers.

So the thing I loved about that story is it just kept on unfolding. And spoiler alert, if you haven't listened to it already, that boat was the one that ended World War II and had a mysterious cargo. You find out in the final episode, it was actually Fat Man and Little Boy, the two nukes that ended World War II. So that story just unfolded into something that was quite spectacular and quite, I mean, a lot of emotions, terrible, but at the same time, it was a lot of fun.

At the same time, what a story, you know? Yeah. And after hearing so many of these stories, do the situations people get into still surprise you? Surprise me. I'm always just consistently surprised by how incredible our species is, honestly, and how people in general think they can't accomplish very much until they have to accomplish everything.

And then, wow, can we rise to the occasion? Yeah, I completely agree. And I feel like you never know when one of these survival situations is going to happen. You could just be thrown into it randomly and just be completely, you know, taken aback by it. Just go for your regular hike or trip and just suddenly fall into this survival situation. Well, also, I think that by listening to these stories, you can hear how different choices panned out and then maybe we can make better decisions.

which is really important for you and I because we both do quite a bit of adventuring beyond the show. And after this little break, we're going to come back and talk a bit more about it. In our fast-paced, screen-filled world, it can be all too easy to lose that sense of imagination and wonder. If you're looking for new ways to ignite your creativity and open your mind to fresh perspectives, then let Audible be your guide. Whether you listen to stories, motivation, or any genre you love,

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Okay, Cassie, we're back. And this series that we've been listening to is about Amelia Earhart. And I think it's fitting that you share with our listeners that you actually won the Amelia Earhart Pioneering Achievement Award back in 2017.

Tell us about it. So the Amelia Earhart Pioneering Achievement Award is essentially given to someone whose life and career exemplifies the spirit of Amelia Earhart. And I was really taken aback when they had reached out to me and nominated me for that award because I thought, well, I haven't done anything that great like Amelia Earhart.

But a lot of people thought my expedition around the world was really impactful, especially for women. And I essentially broke two Guinness World Records for traveling to every country in the world, every sovereign nation, 193 countries in the fastest time. And I was also the fastest person to do that back in 2017. And it was such an honor to receive that award and be in Atchison, Kansas, and surrounded by so many people who love Amelia Earhart.

as much as I do. I would imagine the logistics were just a giant puzzle. And well, you know, some countries like Mexico and Italy, great, easy. But then like Libya, Afghanistan, Yemen, some of these are like North Korea, blah,

Like it gets very difficult even just to get accepted to go in, you know? Right, right. It was. I mean, there was one point where the Turkmenistan visa was so hard to get and, you know, got denied. I had to try again. I thought this might be my breaking point where I'm not going to be able to finish this expedition. So I actually considered swimming across from like Iraqis

Iran and just like trying to like do whatever I could to get there. But some, yeah, the logistical challenges were really, really tough. There was also the fact that I was doing this completely alone, just traveling solo and needing to navigate this journey

huge trip around the world. And that was really hard as well. Well, listen, you mentioned a bit about some of the struggles of traveling around the world and getting the record for the fastest. And actually, I had heard that you were scared of flying. And so that must have been a bit of an obstacle for you.

It was. Yeah, it was really, really hard, specifically flying over water. So what I did to try to overcome that in preparation for my trip around the world, one of my friends has his private pilot's license. And so we would just fly out Santa Barbara and just fly out in a little Cessna over the water over and over again. And so I could feel more comfortable and try to overcome that fear. And also, I just started to educate myself on the mechanics of flying and started studying for my

my own private pilot's license, even though it's something... Just like Amelia Earhart, right? Right, right. So was she someone you were familiar with growing up or someone you looked up to?

Yeah, I loved Amelia Earhart. She's definitely a huge inspiration for me. And I think a lot of women as well, overcoming boundaries as a woman in a male-driven world. All of the things that she was able to overcome and even having a rival who she had to kind of connect with and also learn from as well. She was super inspiring for me for my trip around the world. And I guess after the past episode, what was the biggest draw? What are the big lessons that you think some of our female listeners can take away from the series arc?

I think something that's super important is how she just continued to persevere. She inspired herself to do this solo flight, and she didn't stop. She just kept going. She kept educating herself. She wanted to prove people wrong about solo female travel when it came to flying. And she wanted to just leave a positive legacy behind and inspire others and just to do something against the grain, against the norm.

is something that I was super inspired by. And there's really, it's a really big importance when everyone says you can't do something or there's no other examples of it. When someone goes and does it, then everyone can follow, right? There has to be a trailblazer. And without a trailblazer, then the path doesn't usually get blazed. Right, exactly. Someone has to be the one to break the glass ceiling. And she was able to inspire women for decades and decades to come. Okay, Mike, now let me turn the tables on you.

As we mentioned before, you are an explorer yourself. You have your YouTube channel, Fearless and Far, and your show, Uncharted Adventure, for the Weather Channel. So I'm curious, where do you feel like you've really pushed your boundaries during your travels? Is

Is there one journey that stands out to you in particular that you can tell us about? Yeah, so it all started for me with a biology degree. I just really loved animals and nature, so I pursued biology in school. And then from there, started to travel to see a lot of the animals that I loved, and then brought a video camera along.

But since we're getting deep and intimate here, let's go deep and intimate. So what it really started with was a phobia of public speaking. And it might sound crazy now, considering we've got this podcast and I've got a TV show on the Weather Channel in the USA. It's one hour. It's all just me. And I've got the YouTube channel, all this guy who had a phobia of public speaking.

So fearless and far comes from the idea that I learned through travel that fearlessness is not a state of enlightenment where you just don't feel fear anymore. Fearlessness is a choice in a moment that you feel fear and you choose to act anyway. And so the people we say are fearless, they still feel fear, but they just choose to act. And so with that, it's been the mantra of my travels for the past 10 years, 10 years of traveling fearlessly.

without a home, following the adventure, recording this podcast on the road. I've recorded it in tents. I've recorded it in Airbnb bathrooms. The funny thing is when I was recording USS Indianapolis and I was in Turkey, it was the middle of the night. I was in an Airbnb with shared rooms.

And I had to yell, shark, shark at 2 a.m. And I'm sure they thought I was crazy. Oh, my God. But this is funny that some of the stories behind the podcast. But yeah, so I've got lots of adventures. One in particular that just happened a couple weeks ago as I was in Belize. And there's these caves. There are limestone caves. And inside, the Mayans made sacrifices to their rain god, Chak.

And a lot of those sacrifices, especially in the later years of the Mayan Empire, as it was crumbling around 900 AD, were human sacrifices. And so you can go in there and you can see humans like skulls and remains of these victims.

And then some of them have become calcified. So they're crystallized skulls. So you can find crystal skulls two hours deep in the caves of Belize. And that was a fun one. That was just recent. Wow. What's one thing you've learned from spending time with people from another culture that has really impacted you? I guess we think that we're here and they're over in Asia or Middle East or pick a place, Africa. And everyone's so different. But after spending 12 years traveling the world,

I've realized that it's not true. Yeah, you can have a hard time communicating in some countries, for example, if you don't speak the language. But I always think about it this way. If there was some lost person in your neighborhood in rural North America, they're wandering around with a map, they don't speak the language, are you going to be angry at them? Are you going to help them? You'd be like, oh, hell, come on, come have dinner. I'll show you how to get around, where you're looking for, I'll take you there. That's how the whole world works. And

I think we have this backwards idea of tourist-friendly countries and tourist-unfriendly countries. And maybe you can agree with me, but these tourist-unfriendly countries, they're some of the friendliest in the world. You go there and everyone is just so excited to talk to you and help you and they want to show you their food and their shop. And the most unfriendly, air quote, countries are the most friendly. People are kind, right? They're not out to get you, despite what you see on the news often.

Right, right. And people tend to be scared by the media, what the media shows from these countries. But yeah, at the end of the day, everyone's just a human trying to survive, trying to, you know, have a roof over their head and a hot meal in front of them and someone who loves them. And I think it's just on a human level, that's really important, something we can all connect to when it comes to travel. In watching your YouTube channel, I've also seen you eat some pretty exotic foods. What's one thing you've eaten that you didn't expect to like but was really good?

One that I think is a cool story that happened last year was I was in the depths of the Democratic Republic of Congo, and I was out hunting with this local tribe. And these guys, that's how they get all their food. They hunt. And so we're walking through a river trying to look for some kind of small rodent or really whatever we could find.

And a two meter long green mamba bum rushes us out of a hole in the side of the bank. And everyone jumps back. One guy has a machete. He clanged it on the head of the green mamba. It was shocked and ran off in the woods. And I was like, whoa, thank God that's over. No, they chased it and they caught it. And then we ate the green mamba for dinner. So we're eating a venomous snake.

And so far, I mean, it was last year, so I'm probably in the clear now. But I didn't really think about eating animals like that until it was served to me. And I really didn't have a choice. Did it taste good? I don't know. Didn't taste as bad as some other things. Well, I am glad that you clarified it was a snake because here I was thinking it was some green, slimy animal. So, yeah. Green mampa. I had no idea. Well, I'm not recommending you go eat snake, but I'm saying if you're served one, don't worry about it too much. Right, right.

So I said I look to Amelia Earhart for inspiration. Who do you look to for inspiration on your expeditions? Is there a hero or a role model who stands out? Like I told you, I always loved nature. And to this day, I'm still obsessed with it. And so growing up, my biggest inspirations were David Attenborough, Bill Nye the Science Guy, and the fictional Miss Frizzle from The Magic School Bus. And I promised to be some kind of mold of those three.

I mean, maybe I'm something like that if David Attenborough had tattoos, but nor do I have red frizzy hair or wear a lab coat. But I like to keep the same enthusiasm and energy about the world and science in most things I do. I love that. Well, Mike, it was so much fun talking with you. Thanks for taking the time out of your travels. Yeah. And also, it's been great working with you as well, Cassie. We have so many more stories to tell. And over and over again, I'm personally inspired by these stories and I'm hoping our listeners are as well.

I couldn't agree more. Here's to a hundred more episodes. Absolutely. After the break, we'll have my conversation with author Chris Williamson about Amelia Earhart's mysterious final flight.

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Head over to Symbiotica.com and use code ODDS for 20% off and free shipping on your subscription order. In our series, we describe the transatlantic flights that made Amelia Earhart famous. Five years after becoming the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic, Earhart launched an even more daring feat, attempting to become the first woman to fly around the world.

She took off from Oakland, California and headed east, hopscotching a route along the equator. On July 2nd, 1937, Earhart headed out from New Guinea for one of the final legs of her journey. She planned to refuel on Howland Island, a tiny speck in the Pacific, but couldn't find it. She radioed to nearby ships that her gas was running low.

There were two more brief transmissions, and then Amelia Earhart and her navigator Fred Noonan disappeared. My guest, Chris Williamson, is a podcaster whose Chasing Earhart series explores Earhart the aviator, the mystery of her disappearance, and her legacy. He's also the author of Rabbit Hole, The Vanishing of Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan.

Chris Williamson, welcome to Against the Odds. Thank you so much. It's an honor to be here. When did your fascination with Amelia Earhart begin, and what is it about her that fascinates you? For me, it really began young, as it tends to do for most people that are invested in the case. You know, I started in third grade with really what would become the first of many History Day projects. I just kept coming back to Earhart no matter where I was in my life. So it really was just me going back to the well again and again.

The second part of that question is tricky because everybody comes to Earhart for different reasons. If I could sum up tightly, I might say that for all she accomplished, Earhart would end up becoming this very polarizing historical figure. You know, here's a woman who at the time of her disappearance is the most famous person on the face of the earth leading up to July of 37. She was multifaceted. She thrived in breaking ground and she was really comfortable with playing all aspects of the game as it was sort of unfolding around her.

And aviation was a jumping off point for her, but it really was only the beginning. So if you think about all of that, and at the very end of her life, add in the most convoluted ending for someone that you could possibly imagine, and you've got probably multiple answers to why people continue to be so drawn to this figure from so long ago. Let's pick up after Earhart's 1932 solo flight. How did those transatlantic flights change her life?

Yeah, well, at the time of the transatlantic flight in 32, obviously Earhart was already very well known. She'd, of course, flown across the Atlantic once before in 28, but she really wasn't internally happy with the role she played in that flight. I think she had

Grand ideas, certainly. She wanted to make sure that when she did it again this time, there would be no excuses and no doubt. And this is something that, you know, we'll see repeat itself again and again throughout her career. So she's always chasing down her own greatness. She's trying to conquer challenges that she'd set for herself with each flight she took.

And after she completes the solo trip in 32, her fame just dials up to 11. So she was a well-loved figure before. Now she's become the biggest story in aviation. So when her future husband, George Putnam, was on the hunt for a female aviator, as you know, he wasn't just looking for a face. He wanted his Lady Lindy. And it's really after that transatlantic flight in 32 that she really cements that moniker, although she hated it personally. And I think she saw the public admiration as,

as sort of this double-edged sword, because on the one hand, she's aware of it enough that she knows she can use it to try to accomplish some of her larger goals. But on the flip side of that, you know, it's just another layer to fame that she probably preferred to leave out in a perfect world. And that transatlantic flight just made her a superstar. It changed everything for her from that point on. And aside from her love of flying, what were Earhart's passions?

Well, the one thing that really sticks out really is just the forwarding of women in STEM. So remember, Earhart was a rock star of STEM before we ever had the acronym. So if you really want to know about Earhart's passions, anybody who's looking into this can just look at her very brief time at Purdue. So they brought her in as a counselor in careers for women, I think is the exact term. And she would basically step into classrooms and talk to classrooms full of women and men, of course.

about sort of women's natural role, basically evolving from what women were thought of at that point to what they could become. You don't have to just get a general degree. You can get a degree in engineering. You can be an aviator. You can be a mathematician. You can get into aerospace potentially and all that. She really looked at Purdue as the back half of her career. So it would have been sort of a natural evolution, I think.

Many times, Earhart's on record saying that the 37 World Flight would be her swan song for long-distance stunt flying. So she was ready to move on, and I think it was evident in not only what her Lockheed Electra's nickname would end up being, the Flying Laboratory, but it was evident in what she would be doing on that flight, taking water and land samples from around the globe back to Purdue, laboratories for testing, analyzing all that jazz stuff.

The idea of being on the cutting edge in so many areas really sort of ignited, you know, her passions and took them to another level. So she loved to write. She loved to lecture. She was a designer. She was a writer for Cosmopolitan. You know,

She really believed that if women wanted to be thought of as equals, they would have to be aggressive in seeking that out. And they'd have to take the necessary actions until there could be no other outcome. So it's really interesting to see sort of all of her passions like writing and speaking and designing and flying, of course, really all helped to propel her overall goal, which was always getting women out onto center stage. And whatever she'd get into, it was always going to be with that end goal in mind. Love that. Yeah.

Walk us up to the decision to fly around the globe in 1937 as the world was gearing up for war. Why did she want to do this trip?

Yeah, that's a great question. The flight was being made for many reasons, really. The first is what I sort of alluded to a little bit earlier, which was that she really wanted to cap her career off by leaving no doubt that she was the greatest pilot ever. Now, notice I didn't say female pilot. I said pilot. Now, that's maybe the most selfish reason she probably wanted to make the flight. But the second reason was because she was

I think self-aware enough to know that if she was successful in completing the flight, it would set her and her husband up forever. She knew that after the flight was behind her, she could spend the back half of her career pushing for everything she wanted in the front part of her career, really using her name and her success as collateral. You know, I did this. You can do it too. There's nothing special about me per se. All women can do this. And she was going to leave no doubt. And how did she prepare for it?

So it really begins by putting the best people in the world around her. So she knew she'd need a flight crew. She knew that what she was going to do was risky and it was going to be important to her that she completed it. So right away, she knew that fuel would be the biggest concern facing the world flight. And so they begin preparing contingencies for that right out of the gate. So she has

a special configuration on her Lockheed Electra 10E when it comes to fuel tanks for long distance hops, as they call them, over big pieces of land and even bigger pieces of ocean. And she came into contact with Fred Noonan, who would, of course, go down in history beside Earhart. So it was a selection of convenience and great timing because Noonan had just left Pan Am shortly before being asked to do this.

And if Earhart was looking at the world flight as a setup for the back half of her career, then that must count double for Noonan, who was really looking at this really as a way to set up a navigation school once he returned. And it's sad and it adds to the tragedy. He was recently remarried and he was looking for a way to...

cement his own legacy and then provide a good life for his new wife and perhaps future children. So all that setup, including meeting Paul Mance, who was an engineer and became Earhart's sort of go-to guy, that was all part of what went into the setup of the world flight and kicking it off initially, leaving from Oakland to Hawaii. Was there a section of that route that Earhart was most concerned about? Oh, yeah, there really was. So there's really only one section of the world flight

That really ever concerned her. And I think you might know where I'm going with this. Earhart was quoted a couple of times leading up to the world flight and during stops as well during the flight that if they were ever going to have a problem, it was going to be during the stretch from Hawaii to Howland Island. And remember, originally they were flying east to west. So Howland was going to come early on in the flight. And that was done on purpose. Part of that pre-planning we talked about.

So they could put more time into planning. They'd be prepared for any inclement weather conditions. And, you know, more importantly than that, I think they'd be as fresh as possible mentally and physically to tackle that section of the flight. And of course, things don't always go as we plan them. And there were circumstances beyond their control or maybe not that changed everything for the world flight. Yeah.

You talked a bit about navigation, but what exactly were Earhart and Noonan working with? A little bit of everything. Radar wasn't in play yet. Earhart navigated by landmarks. So when she'd perform these flights, she'd look for major landmarks from the sky to help ensure that she was going to go in the right direction or she was going in the right direction rather.

And you know, what's really wild about that is at night on known flights, she'd navigate by bonfire, which was, I mean, I almost fell out of my chair the first time I heard that. Now, of course, Fred Noonan's a huge factor here. If you're going to do a flight of that magnitude, that's the guy you want to have aboard the flight with you. He was an expert in celestial navigation. What's,

essentially uses the location of stars and sort of other celestial marks to allow them to determine where they are on the surface of the Earth. Newton used something called a sextant, which is it's like a tool that used to measure the optical angle between two objects. Basically a very finite way of determining something called a line of position, which really comes into play when it comes to the ending of the story.

There were some problems early on, and even a false start due to a crash in Hawaii. What were some of the challenges Earhart faced on this expedition?

Yeah, this entire flight and really all of the given theories have to boil down to one single question. Did they have enough fuel to dot, dot, dot, right? That's really it. Did they have enough fuel? What you're talking about regarding the crash in Hawaii is something known as a ground loop. That's the type of crash that she performed in Hawaii. This all goes down in the early morning of March 20th, I believe, of 1937. And it's a turning point, maybe a fate sealer. So she taxis the plane out onto the runway on Luke Field.

and she lines it up and she gives a little bit of power to the engines and

The engines start to veer and, you know, the electric kind of moves to the right. So she tries to make a correction, but I think she overcorrects it. And because it had rained the night before, the ground's extra slick and she just loses control of the plane. What impact did this crash have on her flight around the world? Yeah, the main thing is it changed directions. So instead of hitting Howland Island first, right after Hawaii, it was actually going to flip that and put Howland on the very tail end of the world flight, which was the most

physically demanding part of the flight. And changing directions in the flight obviously also changed the timing of the flight and when she was going to be leaving for the world flight, which also brought into play potential headwinds and inclement weather conditions that they may not have anticipated in a part of the world at the time of year that they weren't planning on flying in. After the break, we'll talk more about Amelia Earhart's final flight and disappearance.

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Yeah. And this is something that she did for every major flight, really. So, you know, for being a creative writer, she kept most of her personal notes pretty short and straight. Usually they consisted of a brief reason for writing, you know, there's a little news on what she's doing. And then her final words, should she, she used to call it cracking up.

So her final words, should she crack up, she would tell people what to do with her belongings. And she would usually make some sort of vague reference to faith. I think there was one to her father that was shared with me recently. Oh, I don't think we're going to see each other again on the other side, but it's a nice thought or something of that nature and just have a nice life. Wow.

So Earhart and Fred Noonan, her navigator, were in Ley, New Guinea, in early July of 1937. Paint us a picture of the kind of shape Amelia Earhart was in as she started that next leg of her journey.

A couple of days prior to takeoff from Leigh, it gets really interesting because she sends a telegram to her husband informing him that they'd be delayed for takeoff due to what she called personnel unfitness. And she doesn't elaborate beyond that. She wasn't a gossiper, but there are a lot of people that believe she was referring directly to Fred Noonan, who may or may not have been a little inebriated the night prior to her sending that telegram.

Mentally, I'm sure she was beat. This was at the end of the trip. There was maximum pressure on her at this point. So it was sort of an interesting position for her to be in. What do we know about what happened on July 2nd, 1937, the day she and Noonan disappeared? So here's what we know for sure. Earhart and Noonan take off from Leigh on the morning of July 2nd, and approximately 20 hours later is when they reappear, supposedly near Howland Island, but they're never seen.

So this is where the disappearing act sort of happens. This is 2,556 miles from the starting position in lay. It's a long flight. So, uh,

So this is sort of where it gets very interesting because history tells us that the aircraft had about 1100 gallons of fuel on board. The U.S. Coast Guard had stationed one of their cutters called the Itasca near Howland Island, and it was there to really do what it normally did, which is, you know, assist planes. And it was there to assist Earhart and Noonan in their landing. And it was doing a lot of things to assist them. They were using a homing signal.

to help her rely less on the celestial navigation aspects of the flight. They were communicating to her via radio. They were even using a direction finder for Earhart's voice. And if all else failed, they sort of just

you know, fire the ship's boilers and create smoke as a visual aid. It's very possible that what happened, the end result was sort of the sum of a lot of little things that went wrong. So the main issue was that with all the contingencies in place, Earhart was never able to make two-way radio communication with the Itasca. So if you combine that with the idea that they may not have been properly planning for the unanticipated headwinds that sort of caused them to burn a lot more fuel than they originally thought and the direction change, the time of year that we kind of alluded to earlier, uh,

Erhart made several very well-known call outs. We must be on you, but cannot see you. Gas is running low, unable to reach you by radio, all that stuff. And then, of course, the big one, which gives us a line of position. Now we are on the line 157337 running north and south. We will repeat this message on 6210. And then her final word that everybody agrees on is the word wait.

So it gets more desperate sort of as the situation goes on. At one point, she asked the Itasca to send voice signals so she can take a bearing on them. But the Itasca can't send voice signals at the frequency that she was asking for them. So they send Morse code instead. Erharda Noonan couldn't read Morse. So she was never able to make an educated guess.

And within an hour, I think of her last known voice message. The Itasca on that 157337 line is searching for any side of them in the water. And then, of course, within three days, the U.S. Navy got involved. Then it became this massive search in the middle of the Great Depression. And going on 86 years later, we're still searching. Oh, my God. Yeah. Wow. Bree.

briefly, what are the main theories about Earhart's disappearance? There are really four main theories here. Crash and sink is the baseline. It's just like she said. She ran out of gas somewhere in the immediate vicinity of Howland Island, and the plane either went down right away or it went down in an area that was sort of out of sight for the Itasca. What we don't know here is whether or not the plane floated for a time on the surface of the water before going down, which would

make the search area much larger. Castaway states that she and Noonan continued on the line 157337, so on that same line she was saying, until they sort of happened upon an island called Nika Maroro, which was called Gardner at the time. And they make an executive decision to put the plane down on a coral atoll there, which was partially submerged at high tide.

Earhart puts the plane down there. She spends some time over the course of several days sending out what have become known as post-loss radio signals. So she does this until the tide takes the plane over the atoll for good, and she lives out her days as a castaway for weeks, months. We don't know how long. So that's castaway.

Japanese capture, that's a big one. The idea is really evolving, but essentially Erhard and Noonan are able to make it to the Marshall Islands, which is about 900 miles away from Howland. And it's there that they're taken prisoner and they're kept for an unknown amount of time. It's really hard to pick sort of the most horrific ending of all of these, but here...

she either dies of dysentery alone in a jail cell or she gets executed and kicked into a shallow grave somewhere in the marshals or maybe even Saipan. Lastly, we have something really interesting going on off the shores of Buka that may be the singular explanation or something else entirely, which is Project Blue Angels investigation. And they actually have a plane there that happens to match many of the characteristics of the Electra, but it's wrapped in about a four foot coral shell and one of the most

demanding nautical environments on the face of the earth, it's only about 100 feet down, which is remarkable when you think about everything that's gone into crash and sink and 18,000 foot searches and all that. That team posits sort of that the plane sits in an area that was never searched after they went down and that it got there because Earhart and Noonan sort of made the decision to turn around to the nearest available runway, which happened to be Buka. So that's Buka. And those are the four main theories. Why do you think it's been so hard to figure out what happened? Yeah.

That's the toughest question to answer. Um,

I think part of the reason that it's been so hard has to do with how we've sort of been handling the search in general. So we have all these camps and they all have vastly different endings and evidence and people supporting them. But I think over the years, the will to be the one to sort of solve the Holy Grail of historical mystery and make no mistake, that's what this is. It's maybe clouded some of the potential progress that really could have been made over 85 years. I think we're getting in our own way with this and there needs to be more

cross-theory work on the case in order to sort of crack it in any way. This is a puzzle, and we really need to start sort of sharing the pieces we do have so we can create a clearer image. And maybe it will never get there. It may be too far gone. But I really think that's the main reason why we haven't figured out what happened on July 2nd of 1937.

This is actually our 100th episode of Against the Odds. We've covered so many incredible adventures and stories on the show, but you've done 99 episodes for Chasing Earhart, just about Amelia Earhart. What is it about this mystery that you can't let go of? Knowing what I know and knowing what her reach is and all that she stood for,

I find it troubling that we can't tell the end of this woman's story. You know, the idea that the disappearance is now starting to sort of outweigh her legacy is something that I personally have a big problem with because I've seen her legacy firsthand. My ultimate goal here is to kill the mystery. It's the reason that I keep going with this. Ultimately, mystery aside, what do you think her legacy is?

I'll tell you what really strikes me when it comes to her legacy. There's a museum in Atchison, Kansas, her hometown. There's a bedroom upstairs overlooking the bluffs that belong to Amelia for a time when she was growing up there. And in the bedroom, they display letters that are written to Earhart in modern times by children from all over. I asked the curator at the time, Lou Foudray, about them. And she said they keep a few of them on display in the room. And I'm like,

A few. And she says, oh yeah, we've got a ton of them. The more come every year. There are hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of those letters. Children are drawn to this woman. 86 years after she vanished into thin air. Cassie, you're an Amelia Earhart Pioneer Achievement Award winner. Earhart has her own hall of fame with new inductees every year. How many historical figures can we say that about?

There's a story that one of our guests in the book, his name was Burl Burlingame, and he was a historian at the Pearl Harbor Aviation Museum in Hawaii.

And he tells me a story about a colleague that he knew who had met Earhart when she was a little girl. Now, in the middle of a publicity trip to Hawaii with reporters all over her, Earhart stops what she's doing. She crouches down. She talks to that little girl, has a conversation with her, and she leaves her by telling her that she could be anything she ever wanted to be. That's the one part of this whole thing that's crystal clear. And that's the legacy right there. Well, Chris Williamson, thank you so much for joining us today on Against the Odds. It's been my pleasure.

On our next season, when a luxury cruise ship catches fire in the Gulf of Alaska, over 500 passengers and crew are forced to abandon ship in rough, frigid seas. Saving all of them will push rescue workers from the U.S. and Canadian Coast Guards to their limits. This is the final episode of our series about Amelia Earhart and our 100th episode of Against the Odds. Thanks to my fellow host, Mike Corey, for joining today.

To learn more about this story, we recommend Rabbit Hole, The Vanishing of Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan by Chris Williamson. I'm your host, Cassie DePeckel. This episode was produced by Peter Arcuni and Polly Stryker. Our interview episode producer is Peter Arcuni. Our audio engineer is Sergio Enriquez. Our series producers are Matt Olmos, Alita Rosansky, and Emily Frost. Our senior managing producer is Tanja Thigpen.

Matt Gant is our managing producer. Our senior producer is Andy Herman. Our executive producers are Jenny Lauer-Beckman, Stephanie Jens, and Marshall Louis. For Wondery...

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