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Exploration1 June – 2 July 1937

Earhart’s Round-the-World Flight and Disappearance

Earhart and her navigator Noonan set out to fly around the world near the equator and covered nearly 30,000 of the 40,000 km — but on 2 July 1937, searching for Howland Island, they vanished over the Pacific.

Earhart in front of the Lockheed Electra 10E of her last flight (1937)
Earhart in front of the Lockheed Electra 10E of her last flight (1937)

Smithsonian Institution · Public domain · Source

In 1937 Earhart set out to circle the globe by the longest route, close to the equator. A first, westward attempt in March ended when the plane was wrecked on take-off in Hawaii; on 1 June she started again, eastward, from Miami. With the navigator Fred Noonan she crossed South America, the South Atlantic, Africa, India, Southeast Asia and Australia, reaching Lae in New Guinea on 29 June. What remained was some 11,000 km across the Pacific.

On 2 July the Electra left Lae to find Howland, a tiny coral island 4,100 km away. The Coast Guard cutter Itasca, waiting off the island, heard radio calls that fuel was running low, but the plane never appeared. The US Navy and Coast Guard searched a vast stretch of ocean for sixteen days and found nothing. Most believe the plane ran out of fuel and went down at sea; others think it landed on Nikumaroro to the south-east and its crew died there — neither has been proven.

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The map in 1937

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States and rulers at the time
United States — President Franklin D. Roosevelt
Places
Lae, New Guinea, Howland Island, Nikumaroro (Gardner Island)

People

  • Amelia Earhart1897 – 1937

    key figure · American aviator, the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic (1932), who vanished over the Pacific in 1937 while flying around the world near the equator

  • Fred Noonan1893 – 1937

    participant · American navigator who helped pioneer Pan American’s Pacific routes and vanished with Earhart on her 1937 round-the-world flight

Before and after

Earlier
1937 Opening of the Golden Gate Bridge
Later
1939 The Einstein–Szilard Letter

Themes that include this event

  • Amelia Earhart1897 – 1937

    From her first ride in an aeroplane to the first solo Atlantic flight by a woman and her disappearance over the Pacific on a flight around the world — the life of an aviator who widened the paths of the sky