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Amelia Earhart's Plane Disappears, Radio Signals Heard in 1937

Posted on: Wednesday, 6 July 2005, 12:00 CDT

America's most famous female pilot and her navigator had disappeared in the South Pacific during their attempt to fly around the world, and weak radio signals believed to have come from her plane were heard by amateur radio operators.

The signals were undecipherable except "LAT" for latitude, the July 3, 1937, Tulsa World reported.

They were believed to have been transmitted from the plane flown by Amelia Earhart, a frequent Tulsa visitor. She and her navigator, Fred Noonan, were making an around the world flight "just for fun."

Their flight began in March but was ended by an accident in Hawaii. The flight resumed on June 1 and the two flew to New Guinea, where they took off again on July 1, headed for tiny Howland Island, a destination they never reached.

The wife of publisher George P. Putnam, Earhart had already flown the Atlantic and crossed the Pacific from Honolulu to Oakland, Calif. Putnam said this was to have been her last flight across an ocean.

The Navy dispatched a flying boat and a cutter to start an immediate search and they were followed by several major ships, but no trace was ever found. The disappearance of the pair remains a mystery and has been the subject of numerous books and movies.

Elsewhere on the front page, the Tulsa World admonished its readers to be careful during the three-day Fourth of July weekend and their annual exodus from the city to "worship of fire shooting revelry."

It noted that Tulsans were planning trips to favorite spots in the Ozark Hills, Colorado, Dallas or Fort Worth as well as Wilburton for the dedication of the Spanish-American War Veterans park.

Special buses were to run from downtown to Mohawk Park for an old- fashioned picnic and some speech-making. Ten local churches were planning a combined church service on Sunday at Skelly Stadium.

Aviation news also dominated the front pages of the July 3, 1971, and July 3, 1972, Tulsa Worlds, both of which reported hijackings. The 1972 event was the first of a series of skyjackings that month. Three of the hijackers were slain; the others surrendered.

In the 1971 case, a man and woman armed with pistols and explosives released most of the passengers from a Braniff 707 they hijacked in Monterrey, Mexico, but collected $100,000 in ransom for one passenger they still held.

At the hijackers' direction, the plane was flown to Buenos Aires where the two surrendered two days later. All but $15,000 of the ransom money was recovered in Buenos Aires. Hijacker Robert Lee Jackson, a Navy deserter from Tennessee, couldn't explain what happened to the missing money.

A young Asian who claimed he had a bomb tried to hijack a Pan American Airways 747 headed from Manila to Saigon and ordered its captain to fly to Hanoi, the July 3, 1972, World reported.

The plane landed in Saigon after the hijacker was told it must be refueled. The captain and two passengers wrestled the hijacker to the floor and the captain ordered another passenger to "kill the son of a b----." The other passenger, a former police officer, fired five shots from a .357-magnum into the hijacker, killing him.

Two hijackers were killed in a shootout with FBI agents after they tried to hijack a Pacific Southwest Airlines 737 jet in San Franciso, and a knife-wielding man surrendered about three hours after boarding and trying to hijack an American Airlines 707 at Buffalo the next day.

The San Francisco hijackers had demanded $800,000, two parachutes and maps showing the route to Russia. An FBI agent posed as a pilot and another agent slipped aboard as others negotiated with the hijackers. A passenger also was killed and two others were wounded.

Another gunman demanded $455,000 and a parachute the next day as he commandeered another PSA airliner and forced it to land at San Diego. That hijacker, an AWOL soldier, surrendered several hours later after a policeman told him about night scopes the FBI had on rifles.

An Oklahoma City-Dallas American Airlines flight and a National Airlines Flight headed to New York's Kennedy Airport were hijacked on July 13 but the hijackers surrendered.

President Richard Nixon ordered stricter searches of all commuter flights after the incidents.

Reflections on 100 years of the Tulsa World, researched and written by Gene Curtis, former Tulsa World managing editor

If you would like a photo-quality reprint of this or any other Tulsa World page from any date, call 732-8198. Page reprints are $35 each.

Source: Tulsa World

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