Transport: Lost Earhart

“SOS KHAQQ! SOS KHAQ^! SOS KHAQQ!”

When these spoken signals came weakly to a powerful amateur radio set near Los Angeles one morning last week there was great excitement. Declared Operator Walter McMenamy: “It was Miss Earhart all right! I know her voice very well!”

Set on making a round-the-world flight, the world’s No. 1 aviatrix cracked up in Hawaii in her first try three months ago. With her Lockheed Electro, patched up, she took off in the opposite direction June 1 with Fred Noonan, onetime ace navigator for Pan American Airways,* flew leisurely to South America, Africa, India, Australia with a minimum of newspaper or public interest. July 1 they left Lae, New Guinea for the “worst section”—the 2,550 miles of open ocean to tiny Rowland Island, where no plane had ever been. With typical stunt flyer’s negligence, Miss Earhart did not bother to reveal her position along the way. The Coast Guard cutter Itasca at Howland heard from her about once an hour. Her final message said she had only half-an-hour’s gas left, could not see land. She still gave no position and the Itasca’s direction finder could not get a bearing because she had failed to adjust her radio to its frequency.

When it became apparent that the plane was down, the Itasca steamed hopelessly to the search without any idea where to look. Experts believed that the plane would float a long time if undamaged in landing and if the weather was good. But a Navy flying boat that set out from Hawaii was turned back by a severe, freakish ice storm. Then came the first faint radio signals, which soon were reported by amateurs in Cincinnati, Wyoming, San Francisco and Seattle, by the British cruiser Achilles in the South Pacific, by Pan American Airways in Hawaii. Though all that could be distinguished was a faint voice saying “SOS KHAQQ!” (the plane’s call letters) over & over, and there was no indication whether the plane was on land or sea, south or north of Howland, the greatest rescue expedition in flying history speedily got under way at huge expense. From Hawaii at forced draft steamed the battleship Colorado, from San Diego four destroyers and the aircraft carrier Lexington with 72 planes, from Japan vessels of the Japanese fishing fleet. At week’s end no one knew whether Miss Earhart was another Kingsford-Smith, who was lost forever in the Bay of Bengal, or another Ellsworth, who was found snug and happy in Antarctica after a two-month search which gave him more dramatic publicity than he had ever before received.

In Oakland, Calif., Miss Earhart’s publicity-minded husband, George Palmer Putnam, went to comfort Mrs. Beatrice Noonan. Said he: “I have a hunch they are sitting somewhere on a coral island. . . . Fred’s probably out sitting on a rock now catching their dinner with those fishing lines they had aboard. There’ll be driftwood to make a fire. . . .” When this failed to cheer Mrs. Noonan, Mr. Putnam snapped: “It’s this way. Bee. One of two things have happened. Either they were killed outright—and that must come to all of us sooner or later—or they are alive and will be picked up. Keep your chin up. Bee.” Mrs. Noonan presently collapsed.

*Fred Noonan was navigator on Pan American’s first survey flights across the Pacific. This week Pan American and Imperial Airways made first survey flights across the Atlantic.