We have what appears to be a real-time transcription of what were believed at the time to be post-loss radio transmissions from Amelia Earhart. TIGHAR has made no judgment at this time about the possible authenticity of the transmissions.

A 15 year old girl, Betty Klenck, was living in St. Petersburg, Florida in the summer of 1937. One afternoon in July – the exact date is not known – at about 3 p.m. Betty was sitting on the floor in front of her family’s radio console. She liked to listen to music and kept a notebook in which she jotted the words to her favorite songs, made notes of current movies and drew pencil sketches of glamorous people. She also liked to listen to the “short wave.” Her father had erected a long wire antenna – perhaps 60 feet in length – across the back yard from the house to a pole near the street. Betty could routinely pick up stations all over the world.

This particular afternoon she was “cruising” across the dial in search of anything interesting when she came upon a woman’s voice, speaking in English and obviously quite upset. Betty listened for a while and was startled to hear the woman say, “This is Amelia Earhart. This is Amelia Earhart.”

Betty was always “crazy about airplanes” and was well aware of Earhart’s World Flight. Today, at 78, she can’t recall whether or not, on this particular day, she already knew that Earhart was missing but it was clear to her that Amelia was in trouble so Betty opened her notebook and started to make notes about what she was hearing. The words came too fast for her to get everything and often she would only write a word or two of what had been said. The signal faded in and out, sometimes stopped altogether for several minutes and at other times was quite distorted, but Betty tried her best to get down at least some of what was being said. If she wasn't sure about a word she would just write down what it sounded like to her.

Betty heard not only Amelia’s calls for help but also her comments to a man who was with her. Betty had the impression that the man had sustained a head injury and was delirious. She gathered that they had crashed on land but that there was also great concern about rising water. The man would alternately struggle with Amelia and try to get the microphone away from her or panic and try to get out of the airplane.

The transmissions continued to come in, off and on, for about three hours until 6:15 p.m. At 5:15 her father came home from work and Betty excitedly told him to come listen. After a few minutes her father ran next door to see if his neighbor could also hear it on his radio, but perhaps because his neighbor did not have a long antenna, nothing was heard on the neighbor’s set. Later that evening Betty’s father reported the event to the local Coast Guard station but he was told that the government had ships in the area and everything was under control. Betty kept her notebook and, over the years, occasionally tried to get someone to pay attention to her claims of having heard Amelia Earhart. A letter to Fred Goerner brought only a “not interested” response. She had given up thinking that anyone would ever believe her but a friend who had seen TIGHAR’s website sent us a very tentative message on her behalf. We were immediately struck by the prospect of an alleged contemporaneous document containing a real-time transcription of what had been heard.