The uninhabited Howland Island and the light that the aviator Amelia Earhart never saw

Amelia Earhart is a woman who has gone down in aviation history as synonymous with bravery, adventurous spirit and also mystery.

The last of the German rescue buoys that floated in the North Sea in World War II
The Inaccessible Island, a remote place in the middle of the Atlantic that lives up to its name

Born in 1897 in Atchison, a small town in Kansas, Amelia was introduced to the world of aviation while working as a nurse in Canada during World War II, after enlisting as a volunteer. In Toronto, she cared for wounded pilots, listening to their stories, and visited a Royal Flying Corps airfield (the predecessor of the British RAF). It was there that her lifelong passion was born.

Driven by this passion, Amelia began taking flying lessons in January 1921. She made her first flight in a Curtiss JN-4 Jenny two-seater. It was then that she decided to cut her hair, a fashion that had already begun among the first female aviators. That same year she bought a Kinner Airster biplane. In 1922 she set a world record for flying at 4,300 meters above sea level, being the first woman to fly at that distance from the ground. The following year she obtained her pilot's license, the 16th issued in the United States to a woman.

In 1928 Amelia became famous as the first woman to fly across the Atlantic, flying as a passenger on a Fokker F.VIIb piloted by Wilmer Stultz. She became known as the "Queen of the Air" and was also nicknamed "Lady Lindy", in reference to Charles Lindberg, the first pilot to fly across the Atlantic in 1927. In 1931 she married publisher George P. Putnam but kept her maiden name, breaking a custom that still exists in English-speaking countries today. In 1932 she became the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic aboard a Lockheed Vega 5B monoplane.

Amelia’s great aeronautical challenge began to take shape in 1936: a trip around the world by plane. Thanks to the financial support provided by Purdue University, she was able to buy a twin-engine Lockheed Electra 10E, built in the middle of that year and equipped with additional fuel tanks to increase its range. The first attempt to carry out this expedition failed in March 1937, due to an accident with the Electra. After repairing the plane, the expedition was resumed in June 1937, leaving from California and making stops in South America, Africa, India, Southeast Asia and New Guinea, flying some 35,000 kilometers. She piloted the plane and Fred Noonan accompanied her as navigator.

On July 2, 1937, at 10:00 a.m., Earhart and Noonan took off from Lea, New Guinea, for a flight over the Pacific Ocean, the last major leg of their world tour. The flight was about 11,000 kilometers. Their first stop would be tiny Howland Island, a small, oval, flat, treeless piece of land that was incorporated into the United States in 1857. It had historically been uninhabited, but in 1935 the U.S. government began a project to colonize it, with four men from a school in Honololu, Hawaii.

In 1937, a runway called Kamakaiwi Field was built on the island so that Earhart's plane could land there. Those early settlers also built a small lighthouse on the western side of the island, which was to serve as a navigational aid for that historic flight. In addition, the U.S. Coast Guard sent its ship USCGC Itasca to the island to support that flight.

Sadly, Amelia Earhart's Electra never made it to Howland Island. To this day, it remains a mystery what happened to it. It is believed that the plane ran out of fuel and crashed into the sea near Howland Island. All searches were unsuccessful. In January 2024, an expedition found what appears to be the wreckage of an airplane less than 100 miles off Howland Island, at a depth of 16,000 feet (4.9 kilometers). The shape of the wreckage resembles that of a Lockheed Electra, but the results are inconclusive at this time.

As for Howland Island, it was attacked by the Japanese on December 8, 1941, the day after the famous attack on Pearl Harbor. The last two settlers were evacuated on January 31, 1942, by the destroyer USS Helm. The lighthouse, known today as Earhart Light, was partially destroyed in World War II and rebuilt in the early 1960s.

The island is now uninhabited and the lighthouse is abandoned. Only a few remnants of the old houses once inhabited by settlers remain. Howland Island remains an unincorporated territory of the United States. and has been classified as a National Wildlife Refuge since 1974. Interestingly, because it is uninhabited, this island has no time zone, although it is assigned a nautical time zone known as the International Date Line West (UTC-12). Howland Island and Baker Island are the only territories with this time zone, making them the last places in the world where a given day ends.

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Main photo: Purdue University Libraries. Amelia Earhart with her Lockheed Electra.