Assembled and presented for the first time anywhere are literally thousands of historical documents which tell the true story of the events leading up to and following the disappearance of Amelia Mary Earhart and Frederick Joseph Noonan on the morning of July 2, 1937. Every message is here, corrected for time zone and presented chronologically. Instructional sections explain the procedures, call signs and radio shorthand notations used in 1937, enabling the researcher to read and understand the messages just as they were sent. The best source of information about the events surrounding the final flight of Amelia Earhart and the search that followed are the logs kept by the radiomen aboard the Coast Guard cutter Itasca , the Coast Guard radio operator on Howland Island, and by Pan American Airways direction-finding stations on Midway, Wake and Oahu. Each log entry is reproduced, and presented chronologically.
Instructional sections explain procedures, call signs and terminology.
For ease of use, the content of each message is presented in both the original format and in plain English. Also included is a detailed reconstruction of the 24 hour flight of the PBY dispatched from Pearl Harbor to Howland Island but forced to turn back due to weather. Here too are the movements of USS Ontario , stationed midway along Earhart's route from Lae to Howland. This section contains weather information compiled from the bridge logs of all the ships involved in the support of Earhart's flight and in the search which followed its disappearance. Future volumes will include complete copies of the official search reports, the entire Bureau of Air Commerce file on Lockheed NR16020, and much, much more.