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This series presents information based in part on theory and conjecture.

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The producer's purpose is to suggest some possible explanations but not necessarily

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the only ones to the mysteries we will examine.

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The early morning of July 2nd, 1937.

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The media air heart and her navigator are bound westward over the lonely mid-Pacific.

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It is the final leg of a grueling round-the-world flight.

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Within several hours, they will disappear.

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1932.

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The media air heart returns home triumphantly.

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Against incredible odds, she is the first woman to have flown the Atlantic Ocean to

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Ireland all alone.

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America is crippled by the depression, but for this brave woman, the nation gladly

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musters its most lavish welcome.

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Her courage has captured the heart and imagination of the entire world.

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It's much easier to fly the Atlantic Ocean now than it was a few years ago.

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I expect to be able to do it in my lifetime again.

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Possibly not as a solo expedition, but in regular transatlantic service, which is inevitable

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in our lifetime.

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Her skill and courage are established.

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The media air heart delights in the challenge of new accomplishment.

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She sets an altitude record in an auto gyro.

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Soon she's aloft again to capture a new women's transcontinental speed record.

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And what did you carry on the trip?

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You mean to eat?

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Yeah, to eat and drink.

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Well, I carried some water, of course, because my cockpit is very warm, and I carried a sandwich

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in case I didn't eat it, so I carried some hot chocolate and the all reliable tomato

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juice.

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What kind of sandwich was it?

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Chicken sandwich.

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In 1935, she sails for Hawaii on an announced pleasure trip with her husband publisher,

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George Putnam.

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She once told him, I fly better than I wash dishes.

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The public wonders why she has taken her plane along.

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The media air heart put speculation to an end when she flew home, becoming the first

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to solo from Hawaii to California.

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Even now, she's thinking of another great adventure.

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Soon, she announces her plans for a flight around the world.

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Contemplated course covers about 27,000 miles.

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It will be the first flight in successful, which approximates the equator.

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The plane I'm using on the proposed flight is a transport plane.

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It is for Lockheed Electra, normally carrying 10 passengers and two pilots.

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This airplane will take a video on her most challenging and hazardous flight.

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Several days before departure, she tells her husband and the public just why she will

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do it.

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Well, DP, you know it's because I want to.

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Two hours later, that has a fairly familiar sound.

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But aside from that, you expect to accomplish something for aviation, do you not?

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Well, yes, I do.

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And if the flight's successful, I hope it will increase women's interest in flying.

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If so, it will be worthwhile as far as I'm concerned.

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Well, how about taking me along?

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Well, of course, I think a great deal of you, but 180 pounds of gasoline on a flight,

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perhaps might be a little more valuable.

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You mean you've reported 180 pounds of gasoline to 180 pounds of heart.

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Thank you, guess right.

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A rainy June morning, 1937.

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The final preparations are made.

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In the next 40 days, Amelia and her expert navigator, Fred Nuenen, will fly three quarters

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of the way around the world.

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On the final leg of the flight, with little more than 7,000 miles to go, she will vanish

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over the mid-Pacific without a trace.

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The news that Amelia Earhart was lost registered shock and disbelief throughout the world.

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She'd come within days of achieving her goal, and for many it was difficult to accept that

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so courageous a woman could be gone so suddenly.

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Almost immediately after her disappearance, the public imagination became fired with rumors

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and speculation that Amelia Earhart and her navigator, Fred Nuenen, might be alive and

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well on an uncharted Pacific wreath that she may have been shot down by Japanese fighter

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planes and then captured, that perhaps she was actually on a top secret spy mission for

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our government.

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Five years after her disappearance, a Hollywood film starring Rosalind Russell does much to

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keep rumors about Amelia Earhart alive.

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Miss Carter, we want you to do a job for us.

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A big job.

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So big that I have no hesitation in saying that the safety of our country may very well

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depend upon a successful outcome.

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Are you sure you want me?

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It's a job that can be only carried off by a woman who happens to be a world-renowned

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flyer and whose personality has caught on with the world.

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You land on that little speck right there.

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The top secret mission calls for the lady flyer to deliberately ditch near a small Pacific

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island where food and provisions have been stored.

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But as far as the world knows, you're lost.

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There'll be widespread search for you.

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Public opinion will demand it.

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That search will include the Japanese mandated islands.

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And Japan won't dare to interfere because we are looking for you, the world's greatest woman flyer.

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During that search, we'll photograph a brisk square mile of those islands.

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Then when war comes, we'll be able to defend ourselves against attack and strike back at the nerve centers of their empire.

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Ladies and gentlemen, this afternoon somewhere in the South Pacific, a brilliant flying career has probably ended.

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Tony Carter has definitely lost.

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There has been no report for hours.

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The second attempt to overcome the hazards of a world plane has ended in disaster.

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Tony Carter lost somewhere in the South Pacific.

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When she learns the Japanese know of the plan, she ditches where no one can find her.

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Questions about Amelia Earhart persist.

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Yet retired Air Force Major Joseph Jervis has devoted nearly 20 years of research to what he believes is the answer.

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The last flight was really a military flight.

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Two civilian people flying a civilian aircraft on a mission for the then President of the United States, Franklin Roosevelt.

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The purpose of the flight was to overfly the truck at all in the Pacific where the Japanese were secretly fortifying to take pictures of it and to return back to the United States

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with photographic evidence to present to the League of Nations that Japan was in violation of the treaty.

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The Japanese with an aircraft carrier station between Canton Island and Hull and with Japanese Zero intercepted Earhart and shot her down and she made a crash landing on the island of Hull.

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Major Jervis' belief that Amelia Earhart landed on Hull Island is based largely on his interpretation of civilian radio direction reports received during the Earhart flight.

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He also finds a photograph of Hull Island which he believes shows a Japanese flag near the wreckage of Amelia Earhart's aircraft.

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From a former Japanese soldier Ramon Cabrera, Jervis learned that in 1937 a woman pilot was interrogated by this Japanese officer and then taken captive to Japan.

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In Japan she was a very important political prisoner. She was held captive in the Imperial Palace for a period of approximately eight years at the close of World War II.

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Two weeks before MacArthur occupied Japan, Jaclyn Cochran and a group of people went in there and secretly removed Amelia Earhart out of Japan before the occupation disguised as a nun.

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They brought her to this country, she took on a new identity, new occupation, has spent time living in Jamesburg, New Jersey, a place called Leisure World and also has spent time abroad being involved in foreign radio broadcasts particularly in the area of Luxembourg.

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I have been studying Amelia Earhart for 17 years. I have over a thousand photographs of her from the time she was a baby through her time in elementary and high school and all the other things that she did.

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I know more about her than I know about my mother.

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Well Amelia Earhart, I believe, has taken on an identity of the name of Irene Bolam.

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In 1965, Jervis meets this couple while delivering a lecture. He becomes convinced that this woman's true identity holds the proof to his theory.

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And I went over and I met this couple and I looked this lady straight in the face and I knew who it was as soon as I looked at her. Amelia Earhart. I would know her anywhere in the world.

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The fantastic story which makes me out to be some kind of a mystery woman is utter nonsense.

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I think she's Amelia Earhart because this entire episode is shrouded with mystery.

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I am not a mystery woman. I am not Amelia Earhart.

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I don't know what the ending to all this, you know, will be but I would like it to have, you know, a happy ending. Really. I really would.

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If there was anything bad about it, I don't think I'd want to be associated with it. Really.

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Because I have that much admiration and respect for her. I think she's really a lovely person. Really. And I like her very much.

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Jervis is not alone in his search and others have come up with different answers.

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A determined search for a solution to the Amelia Earhart mystery has followed many intriguing routes.

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Two independent investigators now believe that the final answer is very close at hand.

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The Pacific leg of Earhart's last flight is by far the longest and most dangerous.

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Her first destination is a refueling stop at Howland Island.

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A tiny two square mile at all in the mid-Pacific, it juts only 15 feet above the sea.

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The Coast Guard cutter, Etasca, stands off Howland to provide Earhart with radio assistance.

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On the morning of July 2nd, Earhart radios that she is low on fuel in the vicinity of Howland but cannot find the island.

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A world record holding pilot and navigator, Captain Elgin Long has carefully studied a wealth of detailed information about Amelia Earhart's last flight.

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He has analyzed such things as the fuel consumption of Earhart's plane, the strength of radio signals received by the cutter, Etasca,

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and the effect on the flight of crosswinds, which Earhart did not even know were there.

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With this data, Captain Long has reconstructed a sophisticated navigational model of Amelia Earhart's final flight.

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Actually, I think everything went smooth in the flight. All indications are up until they reported over Howland Island at 742.

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At that time they said we should be on you, but we cannot see you. In other words, they thought they were at Howland.

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They didn't know anything was wrong up until then.

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Now, I can't find the evidence that doesn't indicate any single mistake that anyone made that caused them to miss the island, which they obviously did.

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Rather, it's a series of small errors that compounded themselves, unfortunately all in the same direction, which caused it all to happen.

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And indeed, they did miss the island.

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And of course, once they couldn't find the island, they searched for it for over an hour and ran out of fuel, and their fuel was exhausted,

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and then were forced to ditch the airplane into the sea.

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In the movie Flight for Freedom, the end was depicted this way.

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From the information he has gathered, Captain Long believes that he has pinpointed the exact place where Amelia Earhart crashed into the sea.

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The location is about 40 miles northwest of Howland Island, an area where the water is over 16,000 feet deep.

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Actually, the airplane is almost perfectly preserved. You know, this is something we weren't familiar with.

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Just a few years ago, of course, we didn't know anything about the deep abyss, but now we know that things are preserved in deep water.

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And we have recovered airplanes that have been underwater for almost 30 years, and as long as they were in deep water,

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everything in that airplane and the airplane itself, it was scary at a depth. It's just like the day it went down there.

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Navy recovered an airplane off the coast of San Diego. They show that the airplane is almost in perfect condition.

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It's very surprising to learn this, because we're used to things that come from shallow water.

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We're used to things recovered off the coast of Florida and 200 feet of water, covered with barnacles, covered with coral, rusted out.

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It's not that way in deep water.

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Captain Long believes that advanced deep sea exploration equipment like this could be used to locate and then recover the Earhart plane.

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The airplane sitting there today, right now, this moment, just like it went down 39 years ago.

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And I know that now, in order to really put it all finally to rest, we've got to get an expedition together.

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We've got to get out and search and locate our airplane and recover it.

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And then I think finally that will put the Amelia Earhart mystery once and for all. The Amelia Earhart search will reach its conclusion.

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When Amelia Earhart is lost, a frantic search for begins immediately.

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It is the largest naval sea hunt of its kind in history. 63 planes scout the Pacific.

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The coordinated search also includes more than a dozen surface vessels.

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In three weeks, 250,000 square miles of ocean are carefully scanned.

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There is no sign of Amelia Earhart.

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We believe the Navy missed Earhart in the search in 1937, perhaps by only a few miles.

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Radio messages were received after the disappearance by amateur radio operators along the west coast of the United States,

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and they were also received by Navy radio stations.

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If we'd looked in the right area in 1937, Amelia might be with us today.

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Newsman Fred Garner has spent more than 16 years investigating the disappearance of Amelia Earhart.

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His belief that she survived her crash into the Pacific is that she was a very dangerous person.

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The crash into the Pacific is based on his analysis of information in civilian and military radio reports.

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These reports were painstakingly uncovered by Garner during several research trips to Washington.

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Garner's persistent detective work, however, did not begin in Washington, D.C.

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It began in 1960 with CVS. I was a correspondent here in San Francisco.

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We received information that it was a possibility that Amelia Earhart might have reached Saipan in the western Marianas.

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I was sent by CVS news to Saipan to find out if there was supporting information.

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Saipan Island is nearly 1500 miles northwest of Earhart's destination at Howlin Island.

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Yet, Jesus Salas, a Saipanese farmer, recalls an incident in the Garapan prison on Saipan.

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In 1937, while a prisoner of the occupying Japanese army, Salas sees a white woman in the cell next to him.

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She is held there for several hours.

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Prison guards tell Salas that she is a captured American pilot.

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Salas never sees her again.

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Jose Panjelen, a grocer on Saipan, remembers seeing a white woman on the second floor of a compound hotel several times.

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He hears that she is a captured pilot and spy.

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These native Saipanese, Joaquin Seaman and Ben Salas, tell Gernr of hearing that an American woman was buried in this cemetery sometime in 1937.

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Gernr excavates several gravesites but finds no proof.

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The strongest evidence to me is the eyewitness reports on the island of Saipan.

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To me, it is inconceivable that these people were not telling the truth and it is inconceivable to me that anyone else answering those descriptions was on that island at that time.

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Later, Gernr finds Japanese newspaper articles from the time of Earhart's disappearance.

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One reports that Amelia Earhart was picked up by a Japanese fishing boat.

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Gernr also learns of secret government documents which he believes can prove the Japanese capture of Amelia Earhart.

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It is my belief that Amelia landed on a small reef area between Howland Island and Canton and the Northern Phoenix Group.

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She was picked up after our search by the Japanese taken to Saipan.

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She died in Japanese custody and the proof of her Japanese custody is contained in records of the Counter Intelligence Corps captured from the Japanese at the end of World War II.

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Those records are today classified in Washington.

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They are records supposedly of Japanese interrogation of Earhart and I think that a final answer to the mystery is going to be written.

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Alas, Amelia Earhart is not alive and well in living in New Jersey.

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I wish that she were.

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In at least some sense, Amelia Earhart is alive.

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For in the memory of her courage, her passion, her dedication to an ideal, she still touches many of us.

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It has been nearly 40 years since Amelia Earhart vanished and the final answer to her disappearance is still an enigma.

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There's a vast amount of convincing yet sometimes contradictory evidence which can support any one of several explanations.

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But who is right?

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For at least three men, the search for the answer will continue.

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It will go on until someone proves without the slightest doubt the final fate of this daring and charismatic woman.

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Before the takeoff on her last flight, Amelia wrote to her husband,

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Please know that I am quite aware of the hazards.

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I want to do it because I want to do it.

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Women must try to do things as men have tried.

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When they fail, their failure must be but a challenge to others.

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Coming up next in search of continues with the probe into why the death of Glenn Miller was never properly investigated.

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Then 20th century with Mike Wallace looks at the attack on the cruise ship Achille Laro and other terrorist acts against Americans.

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