Amelia Earhart and her navigator Fred Noonan took off from Lae, New Guinea, on July 2, 1937, for tiny Howland Island, more than 2,500 miles away. They never arrived.

The costliest search in U.S. history up to that time found no trace of them or of the plane. This file goes through what is documented: what Earhart and Noonan planned, the Itasca’s radio log, and the Navy and Coast Guard search report.

The U.S. government concluded the plane crashed at sea when its fuel ran out. The film tests that conclusion, and the alternatives, from capture by the Japanese to survival as castaways on Nikumaroro, against the radio log, the distress calls reported in the days that followed, and how far the remaining fuel could have carried the Electra. What is proven and what is still open are kept apart.

Case file
(0:00) The morning of July 2, 1937
(1:20) Amelia Earhart’s global route and the Pacific challenge
(4:26) Flight preparation and the two experts aboard
(8:25) The Itasca at Howland Island and Earhart’s last radio calls
(12:48) The radio falls silent — search begins
(13:47) Days of searching: every piece of evidence
(16:23) The official report and wave of new theories
(18:45) Findings and clues on Nikumaroro
(21:50) The reef and why the plane wasn't found
(23:37) Fuel calculations: how close did they come?

About the host
The man at the desk is an AI-generated presenter, not a real person. His voice, which narrates the film, is synthetic, and the score and sound effects were made with AI too. Apart from the host, what you see is real: archival film, photographs and documents, including the Itasca radio log and the Navy–Coast Guard search report, plus present-day photographs and satellite images of Howland Island and Nikumaroro.

Records and images
Newsreels and films via the Internet Archive — “Yesterday’s Newsreel”, “Woman Speaks” (1945) and Castle Films’ “The News Parade” (1937), plus Pathé News (1937), “Historic Flights and Events from the Metropolitan Oakland International Airport” and “Look to Lockheed for Leadership” (1940) from the Prelinger Archives; photographs, documents and newspaper clippings via the National Archives, the Smithsonian and Wikimedia Commons.
CC-licensed pictures from Wikimedia Commons, cropped and desaturated for this film:
• Amelia Earhart, George P. Putman and Paul Mantz — Los Angeles Times, CC BY 4.0
• Amelia Earhart in Hawaii pre take off on first around the… — JRdxbcmc, CC BY-SA 4.0
• Amelia Earhart's plane after crashing on the first around… — JRdxbcmc, CC BY-SA 4.0
• Nikumaroro Atoll — P Minton, from Ikonos image (04-2001), CC BY 2.0
• Nikumaroro (2025-09-08-10-21-33 UMBRA-10) — Umbra Lab, Inc., CC BY 4.0
• Howland Island Stepping Stones — Joann94024 at English Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0
• Birds in bushes in Howland Island — joann94024, CC BY-SA 3.0
• Earhart Light — Joann94024 at English Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0
• Howland Itascatown — Joann94024 at English Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0

Crash at sea near Howland, or castaways on Nikumaroro: which way does the evidence lean for you?

Next case file: Amelia Earhart and the 1940 Bones: What the British File Shows
Amelia Earhart and the 1940 Bones: What th...
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