Fred Noonan

Frederick Joseph Noonan (born April 4, 1893 – disappeared July 2, 1937, declared dead June 20, 1938) was an American flight navigator, sea captain and aviation pioneer, who first charted many commercial airline routes across the Pacific Ocean during the 1930s. As the flight navigator for famed aviator Amelia Earhart in their pioneering attempt at circumnavigating the globe, they disappeared somewhere over the central Pacific Ocean on July 2, 1937.

Early life
Fred Noonan was born on April 4, 1893 in Cook County, Illinois, to Joseph T. Noonan (born Lincolnville, Maine, in 1861) and Catherine Egan (born London, England), both of Irish descent. Noonan's mother died when he was four, and three years later a census report lists his father as living alone in a Chicago boarding house. Relatives or family friends were likely looking after Noonan. In his own words, Noonan "left school in summer of 1905 and went to Seattle, Washington," where he was a seaman at an early age, serving in a succession of merchant ships and steadily advancing in his ratings and certifications.

Maritime career
At the age of 17, Noonan shipped out of Seattle as an ordinary seaman on a British sailing bark, the Crompton. Between 1910 and 1915, Noonan worked on over a dozen ships, rising to the ratings of quartermaster and bosun's mate. During World War I, Noonan lived in New York and served aboard several American and British ships in the merchant marine, though he was never in the U.S. Navy. He continued working on merchant ships throughout the war. Serving as an officer on ammunition ships, his harrowing wartime service included being on three vessels that were sunk from under him by U-boats. After the war, Noonan continued in the Merchant Marine and achieved a measure of prominence as a ship's officer. In 1926, the U.S. Shipping Board awarded Noonan his license as "master of steamers of any gross tonnage." His maritime career was characterized by steadily increasing ratings and "good" (typically the highest) work performance reviews. His career moving ahead, 34 year old Noonan married Josephine Sullivan in 1927 in Jackson, Mississippi. After a honeymoon in Cuba, they settled in New Orleans, where Fred worked for the Mississippi Shipping Company as chief mate on SS Carplaka.

Navigator for Pan Am
Following a distinguished 22-year career at sea, which included sailing around Cape Horn seven times (three times under sail), Noonan contemplated a new career direction. After learning to fly in the late 1920s, he received a "limited commercial pilot's license" in 1930, on which he listed his occupation as "aviator." In the following year, he was awarded marine license #121190, "Class Master, any ocean," the qualifications of a merchant ship's captain. During the early 1930s, he worked for Pan American World Airways as a navigation instructor in Miami and an airport manager in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, eventually assuming the duties of inspector for all of the company's airports. Adapting his maritime navigational expertise to aviation, Fred was instrumental in developing techniques for the company's nascent Pacific Division.

In March 1935, Noonan and his wife movied to Oakland, California, and for the rest of that year, Noonan served as navigating officer on the survey flights that pioneered commercial air service across the Pacific. He was the navigator on the first Pan Am Sikorsky S-42 clipper at San Francisco Bay. In April he navigated the historic round-trip China Clipper flight between San Francisco and Honolulu, piloted by Ed Musick (who was featured on the cover of Time magazine that year), its course set by Noonan. Noonan was subsequently responsible for mapping Pan Am's clipper routes across the Pacific Ocean, participating in many flights to Midway Island, Wake Island, Guam, the Philippines, and Hong Kong. He made at least twenty-one flights for Pan American in 1936, including numerous, often lengthy, test hops and five round-trip Pacific crossings to Manila. His last flight with the airline-a sixteen-day marathon as navigator of the "Philippine Clipper"- concluded on December 7, 1936. In addition to more modern navigational tools, Noonan as a licensed sea captain was known for carrying a ship's sextant on these flights. Sometime later that month he left the company. In a 1939 book by Pan Ann pilot William Grooch, who reported something of a rebellion among the airline's flight crews following the trip, Noonan said, "We've lived on promises for a year. I'm through." and resigned immediately.

1937 was a year of transition for Fred Noonan, whose reputation as an expert navigator, along with his role in the development of commercial airline navigation, had already earned him a place in aviation history. The tall, very thin, dark auburn-haired and blue-eyed 43-year-old held maritime ratings and a pilot's license and was also a celebrated aerial navigator living in Los Angeles. He resigned from Pan Am because he felt he had risen through the ranks as far as he could as a navigator, and he had an interest in starting a navigation school. On March 3, Noonan's attorney filed divorce papers for his wife Josephine in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico. Around this time Noonan was also involved in a serious automobile accident. He fell in love with Mary Beatrice Martinelli (née Passadori), herself a divorcee with no children, who ran a beauty salon in Oakland, California. References in his own correspondence make it clear that Noonan enjoyed an occasional drink, and it is possible that he sometimes overindulged but there is no contemporary evidence Noonan was an alcoholic or was fired by Pan American for drinking, although decades later, a few writers and others made some hearsay claims that he was.

Earhart world flight and disappearance
Amelia Earhart met Noonan through mutual connections in the Los Angeles aviation community and chose him to serve as her navigator on her World Flight in the Lockheed Electra 10E that she had purchased with funds donated by Purdue University. She planned to circumnavigate the globe at equatorial latitudes. Although this aircraft was of an advanced type for its time, and was dubbed a "flying laboratory" by the press, little real science was planned. The world was already crisscrossed by commercial airline routes (many of which Noonan himself had first navigated and mapped), and the flight is now regarded by some as an adventurous publicity stunt for Earhart's gathering public attention for her next book. Noonan had recently left Pan American Airways and was available to help out. Noonan was probably attracted to this project because Earhart's mass market fame would almost certainly generate considerable publicity, which in turn might reasonably be expected to attract attention to him and the navigation school that he hoped to establish when they returned. Noonan's addition to the Electra's crew just days before the departure of the first world flight attempt appears to have been occasioned by the discovery that the flight's designated navigator Captain Harry Manning, needed help. Noonan did not have the necessary visa to accompany the flight as far as New Guinea, but his skills in aeronautical-celestial and dead-reckoning navigation were most needed for the flight from Hawaii to Howland Island, a tiny sliver of land in the Pacific Ocean, barely 2,000 meters long. Noonan would leave the flight at Howland and return to Honolulu aboard the U.S. Coast Guard cutter Shoshone. This plan appears to have been altered after the plane reached Hawaii.

On March 13, 1937, Noonan's name appeared for the first time in the press as a member of Earhart's crew. On March 16, the first attempt was delayed due to weather conditions, and Noonan, having had a chance to assess the plane's navigational equipment, had identified a major deficiency in the flight's preparations. As described in a Time magazine article later that summer, Noonan was "dismayed to discover that there was nothing with which to take celestial bearings except an ordinary ship sextant. He remedied that by borrowing a modern bubble octant designed especially for airplane navigation." Modern bubble octants were expensive, and Noonan apparently did not own one himself. It is equally apparent that he was unwilling or unable to borrow one from his former employer, even though Pan American had a major terminal in Alameda. The octant was safely aboard when the flight began on March 17 with a record-breaking flight from Burbank, California, to Honolulu. On March 19, Noonan sent a telegram to Mary: "Leaving 1:30 AM your time. Amelia has asked me to continue with her at least as far as Darwin, Australia and possibly around before I can return from Australia. I love you, Fred." The next day, while the Electra was taking off to begin its second leg to Howland Island, its wing clipped the ground. Earhart cut an engine off to maintain balance, the aircraft ground looped, and its landing gear collapsed. Although there were no injuries, the Lockheed Electra had to be shipped back to Los Angeles by sea for expensive repairs. One week later, on March 27, Fred and Mary were married in Yuma, Arizona. According to newspaper accounts, the couple planned to settle in Oakland but wound "spend a brief honeymoon in Hollywood as Noonan is now engaged with Miss Earhart in preparing plans for the re-start of the world flight." On April 4, Fred's forty-fourth birthday, as he and his bride drove through Fresno on their way back to Oakland along the Golden State Highway, they hit another car head-on. Fred escaped with minor bruises, while Mary was hospitalized with "an extensive laceration on the knee and other injuries." The other driver was not injured, but the man's wife and infant daughter were treated for bruises and released. Noonan was cited for driving in the wrong lane. Noonan maintained a post office box address in Hollywood, and a business directory published later that year lists a residence address in Los Angeles. After the Electra was certified on May 19, Noonan was on hand in Burbank the next day for the "sneak takeoff" of the second world flight attempt. Three days later, Earhart and Noonan arrived in Florida, having completed the Electra's cross-country test flight. In Miami, Noonan took the opportunity to renew his acquaintance with Helen Day, a young woman he had met when he worked for Pan American's Caribbean Division. He wrote to Day at least four times during the world flight.

Over one month later, Earhart and Noonan began the second world flight attempt, this time leaving California in the opposite (eastward) direction. When Earhart made the announcement on May 30, she said she had originally "planed to be alone except for a navigator on the Pacific, where objectives were small islands on a vast ocean. Now I am taking Captain Noonan the whole distance to save time on occasion." Earhart characterized the pace of their 40-day, eastward trip from Burbank to New Guinea as "leisurely". As Noonan tracked the Electra's progress southward to San Juan, he and Earhart worked along together for the first time on the trip. Earhart made jotted comments that spoke rather dismissively of "Freddie," as he looked for a lighthouse and pointed out a partly submerged wreck off shore." Nonetheless, a growing admiration appeared in notations such as "6:35. We sight a reef. Freddie said we'd pass one at 6:40. Pretty good." and "Freddie says San Juan at 1:10 EST from white hankies of foam?" (an allusion to Noonan's ability to judge surface wind speed and direction from the appearance of the sea). Earhart's notes written later in the world flight refer to Noonan as "Fred" or "F.N.," never "Freddie". Contrary to belief, Noonan was not confined to the navigator's station in the rear cabin and able to communicate with Earhart only in notes passed forward over the fuel tanks by means of a bamboo pole, he spent much of his time in the cockpit with Earhart, clambering over the fuel tanks into the rear cabin only when he needed room to spread out a chart or use the lavatory, though they did communicate primarily in writing, due to the noise of the engines. After completing about 22,000 miles (35,000 km) of the journey, they took off from Lae on July 2, 1937, and headed for Howland Island. Their plan for the 18-hour-long flight was to reach the vicinity of Howland using Noonan's celestial navigation abilities and then find Howland by using radio signals transmitted by the U.S. Coast Guard cutter USCGC Itasca.

Through a combined sequence of misunderstandings or mishaps (that are still controversial), over scattered clouds, the final approach to Howland Island failed, although Earhart stated by radio that they believed they were in the immediate vicinity of Howland. The strength of the transmissions received indicated that Earhart and Noonan were indeed in the vicinity of Howland island, but could not find it and after numerous more attempts it appeared that the connection had dropped. The last transmission received from Earhart indicated she and Noonan were flying along a line of position (taken from a "sun line" running on 157–337 degrees) which Noonan would have calculated and drawn on a chart as passing through Howland. Two-way radio contact was never established, and the aviators and their aircraft disappeared somewhere over the Central Pacific Ocean. Despite an unprecedented, extensive search by the U.S. Navy—including the use of search aircraft from an aircraft carrier—and the U.S. Coast Guard, no traces of them or their Electra were ever found.

Later research showed that Howland's position was misplaced on their chart by approximately five nautical miles. There is also some motion picture evidence to suggest that a belly antenna on their Electra might have snapped on takeoff, which could explain Earhart's inability to receive radio transmissions during the flight. One relatively new theory suggests that Noonan may have made a mistake in navigation due to the flight's crossing of the International Date Line. However, this theory is based entirely on supposition and misunderstanding of astronomy; it does not offer any evidence Noonan was impacted by or failed to adequately account for the 24-hour variance in his sun line calculations, and was reportedly debunked by an experienced navigator on a TIGHAR forum.

Theories on disappearance
The U.S. Navy concluded that the Electra had run out of fuel and Earhart and Noonan ditched at sea and perished. Many later studies came to the same conclusion; navigator and aeronautical engineer Elgen Long, developed the "crash and sink" theory which is the most widely accepted explanation of Earhart's and Noonan's fate. Joe Lodrige, an experienced pilot and navigator, did extensive research, and his analysis put the aircraft east of Howland. His theory is based on an error in Noonan's position when he took his sun line of position. The angle of the sun was almost on the horizon, as it was just coming up. Lodrige is able to position the aircraft more accurately based on wind data. With this better position, his sun line puts the crew too far east. Thus, when they flew the distance required, and then turned 90 degrees southeast on course, they never found the island. Lodrige puts their final crash position as 0°10'N 175°55'W, which is in the water at 65 miles southeast of Howland and 39 miles east of Baker.

The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery (TIGHAR) notes that in her last message received at Howland Island, Earhart reported that they were flying a standard position line (or sun line), a routine procedure for an experienced navigator like Noonan. This line passed within sight of Gardner Island (now called Nikumaroro) in the Phoenix Island Group to the southeast, and TIGHAR has found a range of documented, archaeological, and anecdotal evidence supporting a hypothesis that Earhart and Noonan found Gardner Island, uninhabited at the time, landed the Electra on a flat reef near the wreck of a freighter, and sent sporadic radio messages from there. Ric Gillespie, author of Finding Amelia, wrote that while listening to alleged radio signals on their home radios, Mabel Larremore heard a woman claiming to be Earhart say Noonan was "seriously injured" and that she had "some injuries but not as serious as Mr. Noonan's." Betty Klenck heard an apparently injured man acting agitated with a distressed woman claiming to be Earhart, and uttering repeatedly what sounded like, "Marie". Noonan's wife's first name was Mary Bea. The man said "Water's knee deep-let me out." Klenck heard the woman say, "George, get the suitcase in my closet...California." Four years earlier, in a letter to her mother, Earhart had asked that, should anything ever happen to her, the suitcase of private papers stored in her closet in California be destroyed. Klenck heard the woman repeatedly say something that sounded like "New York City", which has been speculated to have been actually Norwich City, a large British freighter wrecked on the island in 1929. The signals had stopped when search planes flew over the island a week after the disappearance, noting "signs of recent habitation." TIGHAR theorises that the Electra had by then been washed over the reef edge into the ocean where it broke up and sank. TIGHAR theorises that Earhart, and possibly Noonan, may have tried to survive on the island before perishing as castaways, just before a British exploratory expedition visited Gardner Island in October 1937, just three months after the disappearance. In 1940, Gerald Gallagher, a British colonial officer and a licensed pilot, radioed his superiors to tell them that he believed he had found Earhart's skeleton, along with a sextant box, under a tree on the island's southeast corner. Although Noonan required and used a sextant for celestial navigation, this artifact has been connected to an American naval survey vessel that visited Gardner Island in 1939, a year before it was recovered. In a 1998 report to the American Anthropological Association, researchers, including a forensic anthropologist and an archaeologist, concluded, "What we can be certain of is that bones were found on the island in 1939–40, associated with what were observed to be women's shoes and a navigator's sextant box, and that the morphology of the recovered bones, insofar as we can tell by applying contemporary forensic methods to measurements taken at the time, appears consistent with a female of Earhart's height and ethnic origin. However, the bones themselves have been lost since they were examined by Dr. D.W. Hoodless on Fiji in 1940. A subsequent study published in 2018 also made similar claims as those presented in 1998. Neither study had the benefit of actually examining the long lost bones as Hoodless did. Typically, forensic anthropologists, like all scientists, base their conclusions on their own examinations. Hoodless' examination methods and original conclusions that the bones belonged to man have been upheld by reputable modern researchers.

Contradictory research has recently been advanced; it is possible to set course for and see Gardner from a point on the over Howland sunline (passing seven miles east of), but one does not simply reach Gardner by following such a line. A position line is part of a circle circumference and may be considered a straight line only for limited distances. The sun's azimuth change per hour is about 15 arcdegrees, whereas the Howland-to-Gardner flight (409 statute miles) would have taken 2 hours 55 minutes (at 140 mph). As a result, the aircraft, when having followed the LOP by astronavigation, would have passed far northward of Gardner when reaching its meridian. The "Gardner" hypothesis originates from a 1980s book where navigator Paul Rafford, Jr. "fell off his chair when seeing that the position line points in the direction of Gardner Island". Apart from such supposition, it was with the available fuel reserves (45 gallons) impossible to reach Gardner from the Howland region: the route would have taken 120 U.S. gallons at least.

The author of an article in Journal of Navigation, Vol. 9, No. 3, December 2011, avers that due to insufficient fuel reserves from 1912 GMT, no land other than Howland itself and Baker at 45 miles could be reached. With a maximum ferry range of 2,740 statute miles, even the closest islands Winslow Reef and McKean Island, at 210 and 350 miles away respectively, were unreachable.

David W. Jourdan refutes the theory that Earhart and Noonan landed on Gardner Island, claiming that any transmissions attributed to Gardner Island were false.

Ocean explorer Robert Ballard led a 2019 expedition to locate Earhart's Electra or evidence that it landed on Nikumaroro as supposed by the Gardner/Nikumaroro hypothesis. After days of searching the deep cliffs supporting the island and the nearby ocean using state of the art equipment and technology, Ballard did not find any evidence of the plane or any associated wreckage of it. Allison Fundis, Ballard's chief operating officer of the expedition stated, “We felt like if her plane was there, we would have found it pretty early in the expedition.”

In popular culture
Although Fred Noonan has left a much smaller mark in popular culture than Amelia Earhart's, his legacy is remembered sporadically. Noonan is often mentioned in W.P. Kinsella's novels. Noonan was portrayed by actor David Graf in "The 37s", an episode of Star Trek: Voyager. The character of an aircraft pilot named Fred Noonan is portrayed by actor Eddie Firestone in The Long Train, a 1961 episode of the television series The Untouchables. Both a baseball stadium and an aircraft rental agency are named after Fred Noonan. A 1990 episode of Unsolved Mysteries featured Mark Stitham as Noonan. In a 1976 TV miniseries Noonan was played by Bill Vint. Rutger Hauer portrayed Noonan in the TV movie Amelia Earhart: The Final Flight (1994), and Christopher Eccleston portrayed Noonan in the biographical movie Amelia (2009).

Fred Noonan is mentioned in the song "Amelia" on Bell X1's 2009 album Blue Lights on the Runway, which contemplates the last moments and the fates of Amelia Earhart and Noonan. The first ballad written about Amelia and Fred was written and sung by "Red River" Dave McEnerney in 1938 called "Amelia Earhart's Last Flight". Antje Duvekot's Song "Ballad of Fred Noonan" on her 2012 album "New Siberia" imagines Noonan's unrequited and unremembered love for Earhart. The controversy over Earhart and Noonan's disappearance was discussed in the song "The True Story of Amelia Earhart" on Plainsong's album "In Search of Amelia Earhart." Noonan and Earhart's fate is also considered in the song "Amelia" by Mark Kelly's Marathon, the opening single from the 2020 eponymous album by Mark Kelly (keyboardist) from Marillion. Noonan is a main character in Jane Mendelsohn's novel, I Was Amelia Earhart (1996), and in Neal Bowers' poem "The Noonan Variations" (The Sewanee Review, Volume CXVIII, 1990).