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Speaker 1: All right, stop and think about the guts it would

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Speaker 1: take to hop in a rickety twin engine airplane with

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Speaker 1: just one wingman an attempt to make an around the

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Speaker 1: world flight. That was Amelia Earhart back in nineteen thirty seven.

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Speaker 1: Of course, her plane went down in the Pacific Ocean

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Speaker 1: after leaving New Guinea and heading toward tiny Howland Island

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Speaker 1: to refuel. But no trace of her, her navigator, or

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Speaker 1: the plane has ever been found until now. Maybe I'm

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Speaker 1: Patty Steele. There've been a gazillion theories, but America's most

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Speaker 1: fascinating missing person may be missing no longer. That's next

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Speaker 1: on the backstory. We're back with the backstory. Amelia Earhart

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Speaker 1: wasn't just a pilot. She was a superstar feminist icon

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Speaker 1: after becoming the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic.

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Speaker 1: That trip in nineteen thirty two made her a global

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Speaker 1: icon of courage and determination and a symbol for women

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Speaker 1: everywhere of being able to chief whatever they dreamed. Where

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Speaker 1: did it all start? Well, Amelia was born in Kansas

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Speaker 1: in eighteen ninety seven. Of course, that was a time

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Speaker 1: when there were no airplanes. She was an unconventional kid

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Speaker 1: for those days. Briefly going to college, playing basketball taking

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Speaker 1: classes in car repair, but it was December of nineteen

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Speaker 1: twenty when she fell in love with airplanes. She was

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Speaker 1: twenty three years old when she took a ten minute

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Speaker 1: ride in one in California. She was hooked, and she

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Speaker 1: started working various jobs in order to afford flying lessons.

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Speaker 1: Pretty quickly, she bought herself a used open air bright

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Speaker 1: yellow biplane that she called the Canary. By nineteen twenty eight,

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Speaker 1: she became the first woman to fly across the Atlantic,

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Speaker 1: although she shared that flight with some male pilots. Then,

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Speaker 1: in nineteen thirty two, she made the first female piloted

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Speaker 1: solo flight across the Atlantic. But Amelia was hyper focused

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Speaker 1: on attempting and around the world world flight. In nineteen

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Speaker 1: thirty six, she took delivery of a Lockheed Electra, a

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Speaker 1: twin engine aluminum plane with a state of the art

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Speaker 1: radio system and extra fuel tank so she could fly

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Speaker 1: up to forty five hundred miles without refueling. Now it's

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Speaker 1: March of nineteen thirty seven and Amelia makes her first

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Speaker 1: attempt to fly around the world, going east to west,

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Speaker 1: but after a stopover in Hawaii, she takes off with

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Speaker 1: her navigator, Fred Noonan on board, and immediately before they

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Speaker 1: even get into the sky, the plane crashes. They're fine,

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Speaker 1: but the trip is postponed until May for repairs to

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Speaker 1: the plane. Finally they're ready May twentieth, nineteen thirty seven.

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Speaker 1: They take off from Oakland, California, and head southeast to

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Speaker 1: several countries in South America, then across the Atlantic to

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Speaker 1: Africa onto Asia. A stop in Australia then came. July second,

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Speaker 1: nineteen thirty seven. Amelia and Fred took off from Lay,

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Speaker 1: New Guinea, headed for tiny Howland Island in the Pacific.

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Speaker 1: But somewhere over all that endless blue water, they simply

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Speaker 1: vanished without a trace. That was almost eighty seven years ago,

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Speaker 1: and it's a mystery that has captivated the world ever since.

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Speaker 1: So what exactly happened? Well, lots of opinions there. First

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Speaker 1: the crash and sink theory. It was that they simply

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Speaker 1: ran out of fuel and plunged into the ocean. That's

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Speaker 1: actually a pretty likely scenario. In fact, it is supported

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Speaker 1: by some modern searches. In twenty eighteen, a group called

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Speaker 1: Project Blue Angel began their search, assuming that Amelia might

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Speaker 1: have turned around when she realized she was low on fuel.

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Speaker 1: In fact, an elderly man on a small island said

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Speaker 1: that as a little boy he saw a plane crash

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Speaker 1: on the shore and burst into flames. It was eventually

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Speaker 1: pulled into the ocean by the waves without anybody investigating it. First.

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Speaker 1: Decades later, Project Blue Angel located the plane, but after

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Speaker 1: raising a little bit of the wreckage, they just couldn't

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Speaker 1: make a definitive id. There are some ridiculous theories, like

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Speaker 1: those who believed she'd been captured by aliens, and those

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Speaker 1: who were convinced Amelia had wanted to escape the Spotlight,

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Speaker 1: had survived, changed her identity, and was living in New Jersey.

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Speaker 1: What then, there's the spy theory, the suggestion she was

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Speaker 1: on a secret mission to gather intelligence for the US

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Speaker 1: on Japanese military bases in the Pacific and may have

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Speaker 1: been captured and even executed. Now some believe Amelia and

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Speaker 1: Fred made an emergency landing on an uninhabited island and

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Speaker 1: survived there for a while. There were artifacts found on

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Speaker 1: that island, from makeshift tools to a piece of plexiglass

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Speaker 1: that could have been from her airplane, and even an

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Speaker 1: assortment of nineteen thirties cosmetics like a powder compact and

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Speaker 1: skin care products like a type of freckle fade cream Amelia,

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Speaker 1: who'd inker freckles, could well have used. And human bones

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Speaker 1: were found on the island back in nineteen forty and

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Speaker 1: first believed to be from a male, but the measurements

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Speaker 1: now show they were definitely female and a ninety nine

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Speaker 1: percent match to Amelia's frame. Problem is the bones themselves

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Speaker 1: have been lost. But now there's some fascinating new info.

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Speaker 1: High text sonar images were captured and recently released. They

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Speaker 1: seemed to show a plane shaped object resting sixteen thousand

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Speaker 1: feet down on the ocean floor, less than one hundred

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Speaker 1: miles from Holland Island, her destination before she disappeared. Next,

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Speaker 1: the folks who discovered the object hoped to go back

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Speaker 1: with deep sea cameras to get a better look. If

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Speaker 1: it looks like Amelia's plane, they hoped to raise it,

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Speaker 1: but again, sixteen thousand feet that's lower than where the

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Speaker 1: Titanic is. Amelia Earhart had an ironic quote. She said,

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Speaker 1: women must pay for everything They do get more glory

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Speaker 1: than men for comparable feats, but also women get more

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Speaker 1: notoriety than men when they crash. Wow, If sixteen thousand

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Speaker 1: feet under the sea is where she wound up after

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Speaker 1: a twenty two thousand mile journey, less than five thousand

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Speaker 1: miles short of her goal and not in New Jersey,

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Speaker 1: we may never know exactly how that happened, but we

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Speaker 1: know her ambition and tenacity gave us something even more

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Speaker 1: valuable inspiration. As Amelia said, the most effective way to

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Speaker 1: do it is to do it. Do you have a

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Speaker 1: story you'd like me to take a peek into and share?

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Speaker 1: Just DM me on Facebook at Patty Steele or on

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Speaker 1: Instagram at Real Patty Steele. I'm Patty Steele. The Backstory

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Speaker 1: is a production of iHeartMedia, Premier Networks, the Elvis Duran Group,

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Speaker 1: and Steel Trap Productions. Our producer is Doug Fraser. Our

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Speaker 1: writer Jake Kushner. We have new episodes every Tuesday and Friday.

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Speaker 1: Feel free to reach out to me with comments and

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Speaker 1: even story suggestions on Instagram at Real Patty Steele and

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Speaker 1: on Facebook at Patty Steele. Thanks for listening to the

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Speaker 1: Backstory with Patty Steele. The pieces of history you didn't

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Speaker 1: know you needed to know