The Search for Amelia Earhart Author:Fred Goerner What happened to Amelia Earhart? Was she simply lost at sea? Was she captured by the Japanese? Was she a spy? — For almost thirty years doubt has surronded the mystery of this famous aviatrix and her navigator, Fred Noonan. A fascinated world followed her glove-circling flight in 1937, from California to Brazil, Africa, India and New Guinea. Then... more », on the longest over-water leg, from New Guinea to tiny Howland Island, the courageous pair vanished without a trace - the result was oneof te most intriguing and widely reported news stories of the twentieth century.
The search for Amelia Earhart has a "detective-story" quality in its account of the author's exhaustive pursuit of the truth behind the mystery - his intensive digging into each suspicious circumstance surrounding the disappearance, painstaking sifting of fact and rumor, cross-checking of testimony, following-up of the hundreds of new leads,and his unrelenting pounding at a wall of silence and suspicion surrounding certain official sources.
Fred Goerner's story begins with the fliers themselves - their motivations, frustrations and accomplishments, and the known details of their tragic last hop. Then Mr. Goerner takes up his own quest, which began with a trip to the Mariana Islands in the western Pacific. In the beginning he naively thought the search might end with this trip, but as he pursued the mystery it eventually involved years of work and four trips to the Pacific Islands.
Fred Goerner interviewed scores of people who had bits of information, including island natives, ex-G.I.'s, Generals, Admirals, and Washington officials. Some of the leads were productive and some were unproductive. Some of the people who came forward as news of the project was release nationally proffered details that alone had meant little, but became vital clues when added to the developing pattern. Slowly the evidence mounted and gradually it pointed to a clear and astounding story.