Amelia Earhart
The Mystery Solved
Chapter One
Tragedy Near Howland Island
Friday morning, July 2, 1937, Lae, New Guinea. It was not yet ten o'clock, but the tropical sun already beat down
unmercifully on the twin-engine Lockheed Electra. Inside the closed cockpit, Amelia Earhart and her navigator, Fred
Noonan, could feel the heat build as they taxied away from the Guinea Airways hangar.
The heavily loaded plane lumbered slowly across the grassy airfield toward the far northwest corner. Soon they would
take off southeastward toward the shoreline, to take advantage of a light breeze blowing off the water. When they
reached the jungle growth at the end of the field, Earhart swung the plane around to line up with the runway for
departure. Only 3,000 feet long, the grass runway ended abruptly where a bluff dropped off to meet the shark-infested
waters of the Huon Gulf.
Earhart was preparing to take off with the heaviest load of fuel she had ever carried. She and Noonan had flown 20,000
miles in the previous six weeks. Now only 7,000 miles of Pacific Ocean separated them from their starting point in
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