Alternative theories

TIGHAR believes that the Niku hypothesis is the theory that best fits all of the facts of the case as known to date. Others disagree. TIGHAR has made a good-faith effort to take other theories into consideration and see how well they fit the facts of the case.

Splashed-and-Sank

This is the most intuitively appealing and a very reasonable theory. The official verdict was that the plane had probably gone down at sea and sunk without a trace. The supposed distress calls were declared to be either misunderstandings or outright hoaxes.

"Commander Walter K. Thompson decided fairly early that Earhart must have run out of fuel and that she landed the aircraft at sea shortly after the 08:43 (20:13 GMT) transmission received by Itasca."

The splashed-and-sank theory is a hypothesis that can and has been tested. Some may think that it is an easy task because of the success of the Titanic expeditions. The Electra is much smaller than the Titanic and the search area is vastly larger. See "Titanic vs. Electra" for more details.

"The Race to Find Amelia" details three deep-water searches that took place or that were planned in the last twenty years.

Near Howland Island

Elgen Long assumes that Earhart ran out of gas very shortly after the last transmission, relatively near to Howland Island.

Nauticos has made at least two deep-sea searches within the zone that Long calculates to be the most like region to find the downed [[Electra|aircraft.]

After spying

There are a multitude of theories that Earhart and Noonan used the round-the-world flight as a cover story for spying on Japanese military installations in the Pacific en route to Howland Island.

The first version of this theory appeared in Flight for Freedom, a 1943 movie that showed a woman pilot and her navigator plunging into the ocean, sacrificing their lives in a noble attempt to glean valuable information about the Japanese military buildup in their Pacific territories.

Wayne Green claims to have learned in 1935 or 1936 about Earhart's plane being equipped for a spy mission over Truk.

Most of the "Captured by the Japanese" scenarios below are variants of this theory, although some may suppose that the Japanese captured Earhart and Noonan by accident and merely held them as prisoners of war on suspicion of spying.

Caught spying

Carol Lynn Dow is very critical of the things TIGHAR has found on Nikumaroro. Her novel apparently backs the "Japanese capture" hypothesis.

Died on Saipan

Paul L. Briand, Jr., theorized in Daughter of the Sky (New York: Duell, Sloan and Pearce, 1960) that Earhart flew to Saipan by mistake (a course error of 90 degrees) and was captured by the Japanese.

T.C. "Buddy" Brennan wrote Witness to the Execution: The Odyssey of Amelia Earhart (Renaissance House, 1988) was based on the recollections of an elderly lady on Saipan who claimed to have seen the woman flyer and the man flyer with a bandaged, injured head, and limping being brought to Saipan for imprisonment by the Japanese.

There are many other variations of the Saipan theory.

Died on Tinian

Two TIGHAR members helped to excavate an area on Tinian where a person claimed to have seen Earhart and Noonan buried. Many interesting things were found, but no human remains.

Died on any number of Pacific Islands

The Pacific islands are awash with stories about people seeing a woman who looked like Earhart being held captive in Japanese prisons and/or executed by the Japanese.

Moleski argues that any white woman held a sufficient length of time in a prisoner-of-war camp would come to resemble Earhart: slender (emaciated), with close-cropped hair, wearing prison garments. There may be a grain of truth about women prisoners-of-war, but no persuasive evidence has been presented that any of them are true.

If one of the "caught spying" stories is true, then all of the rest have to be cases of mistaken identity. It is inconceivable that all of the legends about Earhart suffering at the hands of the Japanese can be true--there are too many of them from too many sources for one person to have been the same victim in all of them.

Survived and came home

The unsigned Love to Mother letter fueled many theories about Earhart surviving captivity and returning to the United States in secret. Ron Bright has uncovered the full story of this enigmatic note.

Came home and hid in New Jersey

Colonel Rollin Reineck, USAF (ret.), thought he saw Earhart at a party, disguised as Irene Bolam. He developed this theory at length in Amelia Earhart Survived (The Paragon Agency Publishers, 2003). TIGHAR judges that there are many serious defects in his case, not the least among them the fact that Mrs. Bolam strenuously denied the allegation and won a judgment against Reineck in court.

David K. Bowman, Legerdemain: Deceit, Misdirection and Political Sleight of Hand in the Disappearance of Amelia Earhart: supports Reineck's theory with additional arguments.

"Amelia Earhart's Survival and Repatriation: Myth or Reality?" by Alex Mandel offers a trenchant rebuttal of Reineck's hypothesis.

Crashed elsewhere

In the Gilbert Islands

Ric Gillespie, 12 October 1998 Forum.

Earhart’s declared intention to turn back to the Gilbert Islands if she couldn’t find Howland supposedly comes from her friend Eugene Vidal.

Doris Rich (Amelia Earhart – A Biography) says: “Her plan, he (Vidal) said, was to hunt for Howland Island until she had four hours of fuel left, and then, if she had not located it, to turn back to the Gilbert Islands and land on a beach.” (page 273)

Rich says that this comes from “Box 19, page 97” in the “Vidal Collection 6013, American Heritage Center, University of Wyoming, Laramie, Wyoming.” ...

AE’s alleged statement is interesting. With four hours of gas at 130 kts (the Electra’s best economical cruising speed) she can cover 520 nm in still air. That could, in theory, get her to 5 of the 16 Gilbert Islands (Nikunau, Beru, Onotoa, Tamana or Arorae). The closest, Nikunau, is 450 nm from Howland. She can do that in 3 hours and 46 minutes and if her navigation is not dead on (having started from someplace where she doesn’t know where she is because she hasn’t found Howland) she has all of 14 minutes to find Nikunau. For any of the other four atolls the tolerance is much tighter.

This is a dumb plan, especially given the proximity of three closer alternative islands (Baker at 40 nm, McKean at 290 nm and Gardner at 350 nm) all close to a single, easily discernable navigational line (the 157 degree Line of Position).

(Incidentally, Dames’ wreck site is a hundred miles beyond where Earhart could have theoretically gone.)

The alleged comment may, however, provide some clue as to how much fuel Earhart planned to have in reserve after flying to and looking for Howland. We need to find out when it was that Earhart supposedly said this (it must have been between the first and second attempts) and when it was that Vidal recalled that she had said it. As far as I know, Earhart was on the West Coast the whole time between the two attempts until she flew to Miami. I wonder where Vidal was?

In the Phoenix Islands

Kanton Island

In 1998, a thirteen-person team investigated whether one of the Electra's engines had been helicoptered into Kanton (Canton) Island. No radial engine was found, though the dump was it was probably buried was located. Subsequent research among personnel who served on Kanton at the time and calculation of the fuel necessary to carry a radial engine from Nikumaroro to Kanton by helicopter ruled out the likelihood that the engine was from the Electra. In all likelihood, it was from an aircraft that crashed on Kanton itself.

Papua New Guinea

These theories are difficult to square with the known fuel load on board and the signal strength of the radio transmissions received by the Itasca on the morning of July 2.

On New Britain Island

David Billings believes that the Electra crashed on New Britain Island in Papua, New Guinea.

Matsungan Island, Bougainville

"Plane wreck believed to be Earhart found in Bougainville":

"The discovery of an aircraft wreck at the depth of 70 metres north-west of Buka in Bougainville may hold some answers to the 74-year mystery of the disappearance of world-famous aviatrix--Amelia Earhart.

"There are strong indications that the aircraft is a Lockheed Model 10 Electra which took off from Lae on July 2nd 1937 destined for Howland Island. The crash site is in direct alignment with Earhart’s flight path out of Lae, past north of Buka Island in a straight northeast direction to Howland."

Earhart Project Research Bulletin "Too True to Believe" dated March 9, 2011

Star Trekked

An episode of Star Trek supposed that Earhart and Noonan were abducted by aliens.

Remote viewing

Some groups disagree with the Niku hypothesis on the basis of remote viewing. Some practitioners of "remote viewing" call it "anomalous cognition." Since the ordinary bodily senses are not used in these exercises, it seems fair to classify the technique as an example of "Extra Sensory Perception or ESP."