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She flew straight into the imagination of the world.

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She was a fascinating figure with tremendous courage.

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She vanished into a notion of mystery.

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I do not believe that the whole story has been made known.

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A life and a legend still inspires our present.

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Her name was Amelia Earhart.

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She was the only one who knew about the unknown.

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She was a land that knows no limits of time or space.

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From the dawn of discovery to the nightfall of catastrophe,

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journey to a universe that we unexplained, the unforeseen, the unbelievable.

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I'll face beyond reality where no question will go unanswered.

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I'll trace what nymphs and legends are law, superstition and science.

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Trapped into a world of secrets and mysteries.

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It's time for our journey to begin.

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You flew into history.

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And where did you land?

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Knowledge surrounds these library walls and with these instruments that knowledge can be ours.

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Some people are destined for glory.

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Men and women able to capture the hearts and minds of millions.

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And when they pass on, the world mourns their loss.

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But often with the clarity of hindsight, we can rediscover the very real, very human qualities that can get lost in the rush towards heroism.

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In the case of Amelia Earhart, this rediscovery can lead us to a new understanding of her life and her mysterious death.

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Dawn, July 3rd, 1937.

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Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan, her navigator, were exhausted.

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They'd been awake for over 20 hours and the vibration and noise from the twin motors of their Lockheed Electric airplane had driven them to the end of their endurance.

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There was precious little room in the cockpit to stretch and any sleep would have to wait until they reached their final destination.

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They watched the sun explode over the horizon and searched frantically for the small island that should have been right under them.

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Fuel and time were running out.

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Amelia tried to work the radio to find out where they were.

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They were close, very close.

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But at 8.43 a.m., one hour passed the point when the plane's fuel supply should have been exhausted.

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Their last transmission ceased.

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The plane, Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan, had simply disappeared.

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Amelia Earhart was born in Atchison, Kansas in 1897.

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Even as a child, she displayed the qualities that would mark her adulthood.

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I can always say one was never bored when she was around.

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She wanted to do unusual things, that is things that were unusual for women in those days.

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And we were quite happy tomb boys.

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In 1917, the 20-year-old Amelia would work as a nurse at a military hospital where many of her patients were flyers.

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Perhaps through them, she discovered what would soon become her private and then public obsession, flight.

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It was new to everybody, of course. Only, of course, most people thought everybody who flew were a little cracked in the upper story, you know.

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To do such dangerous stuff as flying.

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Amelia, of course, she was a lovely girl. She wasn't pushy.

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But when she wanted to do something, she would use all that she had in her to do it.

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And she just had to fly.

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In 1928, the year after Lindbergh's historic solo flight across the Atlantic,

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Amelia, quite by chance, was invited to be a passenger on another transatlantic trip.

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Upon the successful completion of this journey, even though she didn't actually pilot the plane, she was hailed as Lady Lindy.

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Her life would never be the same. And her face began to appear almost daily in the world's newspapers and magazines.

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I captured her as she was. She was a great person, but did not walk around and strut her around as though she was.

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I think perhaps ours was not a photo session that was a working session.

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It was a sort of a friendly, though I was her brother and would be taking pictures of her.

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From the beginning, her career was managed, some say ruthlessly pushed, by George Putnam, a publisher who first enjoyed a business relationship with her,

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and then became more emotionally involved.

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She married in February of 1931, and by then, Amelia was well along her way to becoming a media superstar.

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Though some say that her flying abilities barely kept up to her legend and to the world's expectations.

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Millions of women looked up to her for making it in a man's world,

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and she was determined to push her abilities as far as they could go.

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Flying record after flying record became hers.

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In early 1937, Amelia Earhart was ready for her ultimate achievement and around the world flight.

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Despite her fantastic accomplishments, many people were concerned that this global flight was too ambitious.

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According to some flying friends including stunt pilot Paul Mantz, Amelia's navigation abilities were weak,

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and her knowledge of radio transmission weaker.

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But the flight posed an irresistible challenge.

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Even on paper, the flight looked difficult. In reality, it would prove to be impossible.

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Beginning in Oakland, California, she would travel east, the plane often flying over vast stretches of ocean.

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The longest trip would begin in New Guinea, ending over 6,000 miles away on a tiny Pacific Island.

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That, at least, was the plan.

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Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan never made it to their destination, the Holland Island in the Pacific.

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World reaction was immediate.

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Within hours after their disappearance, President Roosevelt ordered a naval search of the area.

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The aircraft carrier Lexington and the battleship Colorado conducted a detailed sweep of the waters near Howland.

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They found nothing.

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Back in the United States, the media that had done so much to create a legend

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continued to generate speculation as to what had happened.

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Two years later, in 1939, Amelia and her navigator were declared legally dead.

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Her story, her was shadowed by the oncoming Second World War.

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The Pacific that was her final resting place became a battleground,

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and it was not until after the war that the case was reopened when startling information began to appear.

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I think there is sufficient evidence now at this point to believe that she was picked up by the Japanese,

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and may have died in Japanese custody.

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It's one of the amazing stories of the 20th century, but I think the answer lies in Japan.

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Disappearance of Amelia Earhart has become one of the world's great mysteries.

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Some say that mystery has been solved, claiming that she was not a victim of fate,

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but one of the first victims of the Second World War.

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World War II tore the Pacific apart.

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When peace came in 1945 and the victorious Allied armies occupied Japanese territories,

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strange stories began to surface about a mysterious woman flyer and her male companion,

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captured and imprisoned by the Japanese.

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The year of the capture, 1937, the same year that Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan vanished.

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Fred Garner is a man with a mission. His search has taken over 30 years,

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but he feels that he has discovered the truth.

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I believe the plane went down in a reef area that lies between Howland Island and Canton Island in the northern Phoenix Group.

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She broadcast for several days, and they never found the exact area,

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and I think she was picked up by the Japanese and taken into first of the marshals and then to Saipen in the Marialas.

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Garner's many trips to the Pacific brought him to Saipen,

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and it is there that he believes Amelia Earhart can be found.

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Questioning of literally hundreds of the natives on various of the Pacific Islands

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indicate to us clearly that a man and woman bearing the description of Earhart and Noonan,

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flyers were being held by the Japanese.

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The woman died of dysentery sometime between 8 and 14 months after a rival on the Abandoned Inner.

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Navigated with Fred Noonan and was executed after her death.

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So far, Garner has yet to find definitive proof that Amelia survived her crash,

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but another researcher working in Washington, DC, believes that she has found just that.

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I came across a very obscure file, and in it was a telegram from Wai-ching China internment camp

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notifying hundreds of Americans that their relatives were still alive,

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and of a particular interest to us is the one that was addressed to GP Putnam,

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who was Amelia's husband, and that telegram contains 10 words,

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camp liberated, all well, loads to tell, love to mother.

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And this telegram leads me to believe that Amelia did not die at the scene of the 1937 crash,

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but was in fact picked up by Japanese interned in China at Wai-ching and lived through 1945,

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when the camp was liberated.

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Any mystery as enduring as the Earhart case is bound to attract theories,

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some logical, some fantastic.

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There have been incredible explanations as to where Amelia Earhart may have gone,

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or where she may be today.

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This is Amelia's Lockheed Electra.

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It should have taken her around the world.

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Instead, it disappeared.

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Or did it?

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In 1944, seven years after Amelia vanished, an American sergeant named Thomas Devine swore

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that he saw that plane inside Pan.

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I was present at the captured Japanese S. Leo airfield, where Marine Corps officers were discussing

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the discovery and presence of Amelia Earhart's airplane in a nearby captured hangar.

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The hangar was padlocked and guarded by a group of Marines.

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I did see the plane on three occasions, and the last time it was in flames.

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I burned the plane.

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Devine believes that the US government simply wanted to forget the incident,

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closing an embarrassing chapter in American-Japanese relations.

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It is my intention to go back to Saipan before my lifetime is expended

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to prove that the remains of Earhart and Núñez are still on Saipan.

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Matrix Anne Pellegrino, who duplicated Amelia's around the world flight,

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has an even more far-fetched theory as to where she can be found.

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I think there is a slight possibility that Amelia Earhart may still be alive.

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I believe that she agreed to do something for the government and blew the cover,

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and I think for that reason she was forever told that she could never come back as Amelia Earhart.

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Most researchers believe otherwise, and many feel that there is really only one place where Amelia can be found today.

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Based upon all her fuel and historical data that we have,

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logic says that she went down. She went, she's down at the bottom of the ocean.

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Many theories have appeared and will appear to explain what happened to Amelia Earhart.

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Some say she was steered wrong by reformed alcoholic Fred Núñez,

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who took one drink too many the night before departure.

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Others, that simple inexperience, doomed the pair.

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But the truth remains obscure. Or is it?

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If what happened to Amelia Earhart and her navigator was an accident,

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it may be possible to trace their final moments.

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Using modern methods of accident investigation, perhaps this enduring mystery can be put to rest.

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Since that July morning in 1937 when Amelia Earhart and Fred Núñez vanished,

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the cause of their disappearance has spawned much speculation.

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But there's one man who believes there is no mystery.

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In fact, he feels that today her remains can still be found, 16,000 feet below the South Pacific.

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Amelia and Fred became involved in an aircraft accident. It was simple as that.

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It involved communications and navigational mistakes that they couldn't find the island.

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Gerdjian Long has spent the last 25 years studying the maps and navigational tools

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used by Amelia and Fred on their last flight.

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He feels certain that they came very close to their final destination,

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only missing by a scant few miles due to faulty equipment.

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He had about a three and three quarter degree westerly deviation in his compass that he didn't know he had.

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The island was six and a half miles approximately to the east of where they thought it was.

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It's like trying to find something but you're looking in the wrong place.

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Long has studied not only the text of Amelia's last messages,

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but their recorded reception on board the Coast Guard cutter, Atasca, anchored just off Highland Island.

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It appears from the text that Amelia and Fred never realized how close they were.

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I can only speculate about their last agonizing moments,

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as time and their chances for survival dwindled with every passing second.

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Amelia's voice began to show the incredible strain.

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Over 20 hours of sleepless flight, the hellish morning sun in her face,

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the drone of the engines growing louder, louder.

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Finally, the engines began to sputter and then went silent.

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It would only have taken a few moments for her plane to hit the water

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and even less time to disappear beneath the waves.

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Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan were gone.

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And according to Elgin Long, her plane is still there,

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only a few miles away from Howland Island.

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If we can locate the airplane on the ocean floor, where I believe it is,

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and it is in a manageable search area,

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I think we will finally solve once and for all the Amelia Earhart mystery.

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Elgin Long is sure he's right.

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In fact, he's looking for investors to stake the $3 million it would take to find her plane.

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But how can he be so sure?

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What Elgin Long has done is to use mathematics to cross-check Amelia's radio transmissions

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and their reception on board the ATASCA as they increased in strength.

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Through these calculations, it is possible to triangulate Amelia's position

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as she approached her destination and as she flew right by.

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Still, radio signals can be deceiving.

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And as logical as this theory appears, the data still remains inconclusive.

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Amelia Earhart's last flight has become a mythic journey.

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Although there were many pioneers who gave their lives to flight,

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Amelia somehow lives on.

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Why?

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Amelia Earhart was more than a flyer.

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She was an inspiration.

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She believed that a woman should be allowed to do whatever she was capable of doing.

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And if that was going out and flying an airplane around the world setting world's records,

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while her husband stayed at home and minded the business, that was okay.

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That's what she should be able to do.

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Millions of American women followed everything that she did.

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She was a fascinating figure with tremendous courage.

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It's not the mystery. That's not the important thing.

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The important thing is what she did with the time that she had.

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The courage of Amelia Earhart and the unsung Fred Noonan transcends any theory about their final disappearance.

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Their exploits inspired millions around the world.

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And they should be remembered for their lives, not for their deaths.

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For Amelia Earhart's spirit represents something that will never become outdated.

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A belief in an individual's ability and right to accomplish anything their imagination can conceive.

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You flew into history.

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May you find peace there.

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Secrets and mysteries presents information based in part on theories and opinions, some of which are controversial.

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The producer's purpose is not to validate any side of an issue, but through the use of actualities and dramatic recreation,

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relate a possible answer, but not the only answer to this material.

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For telecom auditions provided by new Hilton Hawaiian Village, home of Don Ho,

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a 22-acre resort on Waikiki Beach with dazzling views, swimming pools and more, the Hilton Hawaiian Village.