I do so much research for each book in The Treasure Chest series and discover so many cool facts that I can’t fit into every book. Here are some of my favorites from my research for The Treasure Chest, No. 8: Amelia Earhart: Lady Lindy. Enjoy!
There are so many things that I’m excited about in book eight! First, there is Amelia Earhart herself. I read a biography of her when I was in second grade and became fascinated not only with her accomplishments but also with the mystery surrounding her disappearance. Since I first read about her when I was seven, there has been some progress on perhaps uncovering that mystery.
WHAT HAPPENED TO AMELIA EARHART?
There are many theories about what happened to Amelia Earhart. Some people believe that she simply crashed into the Pacific Ocean on that long-ago night and died as a result of that crash. This theory is known as the “crash and sink” theory: her plane crashed and sank into the ocean.
Others have a theory that her flight was an elaborate scheme by President Franklin D. Roosevelt to have her spy on the Japanese. The problem with this theory is that not only did she not go anywhere near Japan, but her mission was hardly a secret. In fact, it was one of the most publicized events of the century!
In 1943, during World War II, several Allied airmen reported seeing Earhart working as a nurse on Guadalcanal. The person they saw probably was Merle Farland, a nurse from New Zealand, who was said to resemble the lost pilot. Many of those airmen suffered delusions brought on by malaria and other diseases, which might have fueled their belief that Amelia Earhart was their nurse.
An Australian army corporal on patrol in the jungle on the island of New Britain near Papua New Guinea in 1943 found a Pratt & Whitney aircraft engine. Earhart’s plane did have a Pratt & Whitney engine, as did many planes during that time. However, Earhart had radioed that she was running out of fuel near Howland Island, so she could not have flown another 2,000 miles to New Britain.
A 1970 book claimed that Earhart survived crashing in the Pacific and was taken as a prisoner of war by the Japanese. Later, the book continued, Americans discovered her and repatriated her to New Jersey where she lived under an assumed name as Irene Bolom. However, when the real Irene Bolom read the book, she denied this, sued the author, and won.
Another rumor circulated that Amelia Earhart had been captured by the Japanese. But this one claimed she was broadcasting over the radio as one of about a dozen English-speaking women collectively known as “Tokyo Rose,” who spread propaganda to disrupt the morale of the Allied troops. George Putnam investigated this rumor at the time and listened to dozens of Tokyo Rose broadcasts. He determined that none of the women was his Amelia Earhart.
Immediately after Earhart and Noonan’s disappearance, the United States Navy and Earhart’s mother expressed belief the flight had ended in the Phoenix Islands, about 350 miles southeast of Howland Island. In 1988, the International Group for Historical Aircraft Recovery, (TIGHAR), began an investigation of the Earhart/Noonan disappearance and since then has sent ten expeditions to the tiny coral atoll of Nikumaroro in the Phoenix Islands. They have suggested that Earhart and Noonan may have flown without further radio transmissions for two and a half hours along the line of position Earhart noted in her last transmission received at Howland, arrived at then-uninhabited Gardner Island (now Nikumaroro), landed on an extensive reef flat near the wreck of a large freighter, the SS Norwich City, and lived as castaways until they ultimately perished.
TIGHAR’s research has produced a range of documented archaeological and anecdotal evidence supporting this hypothesis. For example, in 1940, a British colonial officer and licensed pilot named Gerald Gardiner, radioed his superiors to inform them that he had found a skeleton that was possibly a woman, along with an old-fashioned sextant box under a tree on the island’s southeast corner. He was ordered to send the remains to Fiji, where British authorities took detailed measurements of the bones and concluded they were from a male about 5 feet 5 inches tall. However, in 1998 an analysis of the data by forensic anthropologists indicated the skeleton had belonged to a “tall white female of northern European ancestry,” a description that fits Earhart. Unfortunately, the bones were misplaced in Fiji and have not been found.