Recalling and Protecting the Indomitable Spirit of Amelia Earhart and some Important Forgotten History…

Worldwide, the name ‘Amelia Earhart’ exists on a short list of the 20th century’s most influential women thanks to her profound contributions to the ‘women’s rights’ movement, her immeasurable courage, and her great skill as a pilot. (Yes, Amelia was a great pilot.) Over the years, though, Amelia’s profound legacy became overshadowed by the so-called ‘mystery‘ of her 1937 disappearance — that happened toward the end of a much publicized ‘globe circling flight’ she was making with renowned Pan Am navigator, Fred Noonan.

Late edition headline, July 2, 1937

The facts pertaining to the disappearance of Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan are reviewed here in detail.

Further down, the ‘forgotten history’ portion delves into the amazing story of a 1930s’ pilot-friend of Amelia’s, the enigmatic Irene O’Crowley Craigmile (1904-1982, surname ‘Bolam’ added in 1958), shown below in the 1940s. Her odd correlation to Amelia Earhart still challenges conventional thinking and wisdom.

Above, Irene O’Crowley Craigmile in 1945 (surname ‘Bolam’ added later by marriage) and a 1970 news clip from the Camden New Jersey Courier Post, wherein she acknowledged her past friendship with Amelia Earhart, but wished not to comment when it came to questions that asked who she really was.

First, the main topic explored here has to do with the place Amelia Earhart finally brought her plane down on the date of July 2, 1937:

Below, a Honolulu Star Bulletin headline the day after Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan were declared “missing” contradicted what later became the ‘official recorded history’ of their loss:.

Amelia’s last ‘officially logged’ radio transmission was heard by the Coast Guard at 8:43AM on the morning of July 2, 1937, as she safely flew above the Pacific Ocean in her Lockheed Electra aircraft. A bit earlier she mentioned she was having trouble spotting tiny Howland Island, where she and Noonan were scheduled to land.

After her 8:43AM transmission, Lockheed experts offered that Amelia’s plane had ‘enough fuel’ to make it to her alternate landfall choice, England’s Gilbert Islands. The Earhart-Noonan team had flown over the Gilberts the previous night while enroute to Howland. Thus, based on their fuel supply and other leads — that included additional radio transmissions received from Amelia the first few days after the two fliers were reported missing, many felt they had managed to reach a remote area of the Gilberts where they awaited being rescued.

Radio operators, Pierson & McMenamy

The post-loss radio calls identified as Amelia’s were heard by a variety of listeners. They included messages received by a Pan AM radio operator in Hawaii, and others heard by a few stateside individuals, including two professional radio operators based in California, Walter McMenamy and Carl Pierson. (See newspaper clips further down.)

McMenamy and Pierson attested that they recognized Amelia’s voice sending an “SOS” along with her plane’s call letters, “KHAQQ” nearly 24 hours after she and Noonan were declared ‘missing.’ Both operators had worked for Amelia two years before when they tracked her Hawaii to Oakland flight. This time they had been engaged by the Los Angeles Times to track her world flight progress from their Long Beach ‘Beacon Hill’ station. The messages they received left both of them ‘certain’ that Earhart and Noonan made it to dry land, knowing that their radio would not have continued to function otherwise. [Note: Lockheed estimated that Amelia’s plane would have sunk within three or four hours had it managed to ‘successfully’ land on water.]

Based on all of what became known, including a keen awareness of a no-fly-zone area that stretched from the far northern Gilberts into the Marshall Islands (during the tenuous pre-dawn of World War Two), McMenamy, Pierson, and others who heard Amelia’s calls, including one ‘Nina Paxton’ of Kentucky, ascertained that the flying duo did not simply ditch onto the ocean surface and sink below the waves. They determined, just as logic dictated, that such a highly experienced flying team had viewed their ‘Plane B’ attempt to make it to the Gilberts as a life-saving measure, and they used every ounce of their combined intelligence and piloting skills to follow through on it. [Note: Amelia’s plane was outfitted to hold over a thousand gallons of fuel that gave it a distance range of 4000 miles. The Lae, New Guinea to Howland Island flight leg she and Noonan went missing on stretched 2550 miles. Where their ‘Plan B’ had them turning around to head back to the Gilbert Islands after not spotting Howland, it would have tacked on 700 additional miles, still leaving them fuel to spare.]

Below are clips from an article that appeared in the Honolulu Star Bulletin on July 3rd, 1937, the day after Earhart and Noonan were reported missing.

McMenamy and Pierson heard Amelia’s radio calls for a few more days after that, but mentioned they were “leaned on” not to talk about them, later admitting they felt it was their “patriotic duty” to comply with the request. This enabled it to soon after be purported (and for the most part accepted), that the duo probably died by way of ditching at sea.

The next graphic marked another example of an Earhart radio transmission received by one Mrs. C. B. ‘Nina’ Paxton on the afternoon of July 3, 1937. Mrs. Paxton first wrote a letter to famous news radio commentator, Walter Winchell, contradicting a news broadcast of his that said “no messages were received vocally from Miss Earhart” after the morning of July 2nd. In 1943, she again wrote a more comprehensive letter to Winchell (he did not publicly comment on either letter), reminding him of what she heard from Amelia in 1937, that ended up being held in a State Department file until 2011. [Note: Walter Winchell’s 1930s and 1940s national news radio program was famously listened to and for the most part was ‘believed’ by Americans. Winchell had also built a reputation among law enforcement and politicians that featured his willingness to either spread or suppress stories in return for his silence. His outspoken style, both feared and admired, could build up or destroy a person’s reputation, often without credence for doing so. (This aspect of Winchell was loosely portrayed by Burt Lancaster in the 1957 movie ‘Sweet Smell of Success.’) Winchell succeeded at his craft until his 1950s support of McCarthyism led him to fall out of favor.]

Below, Nina Paxton, her initial letter to Winchell, and her personal record of Amelia’s words.

Multiple testimonials from the Marshall Islands that were recorded in subsequent years spoke of Amelia’s plane striking a reef and damaging a wing when it ditched at Mili Atoll in the lower Marshall’s, as depicted in the below illustration, thus aligning with the ‘damage to her plane’ that Nina Paxton heard Amelia mention:

As if it were strategized, the post-loss radio transmissions from Earhart and Noonan (that were verified in an official White House transcript recorded and archived nine months after the two were declared ‘missing’), did not affect the ‘official’ record that said the fliers were ‘last heard from’ while still airborne looking for Howland.

In the meantime, a few individuals took to suggesting that the duo might have had a side agenda that went wrong after they flew into the Marshall’s restricted territory — where they were captured and then ‘died’ while being held against their will. [Decades later, a more tepid suggestion had them making it to an uninhabited island far south of the equator where they supposedly died as castaways.]

Were the various notions of Earhart and Noonan’s deaths taking place overseas accurately based? It’s highly doubtful, and here’s why: The peculiar, nearly forgotten ‘1970 national news story’ about Amelia Earhart, that quietly managed to further exist as an unresolved controversy pertaining to Amelia Earhart’s post-loss existence as a different, unrecognizable person sporting a new identity. Read on to learn more about it.

Up first, though, is a quick review of a few story versions from years past that tried to account for what happened to Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan — after they missed spotting Howland Island on the morning of July 2, 1937.

First version, They Crashed and Sank: From early on, Earhart and Noonan’s failed world flight ending was generally depicted as in the above illustration – that appeared in the book, Amelia Earhart: The Legend of the Lost Aviator by Shelly Tanaka, illustrated by David Craig. Accordingly, after they ditched onto the ocean surface, the two fliers were unable to inflate their life raft, leaving them to drown as Amelia’s plane sank below the waves at unknown coordinates. The truth remained, however, that the general public never knew for certain where the two fliers ended up heading with their reserve fuel supply, thus leaving much room for other projections.

Next version, They Ditched in pre-WWII Restricted Territory: This one dating back to the pre-World War Two years gained much steam during the war, when it was conveyed by U.S. soldiers serving in the Pacific theater’s South Sea Islands region, that they repeatedly heard tell of Earhart and Noonan having ended up in the Marshall Islands at its southernmost point, a no-fly zone for the U.S. at that time. The duo’s misplay ostensibly occurred after they flew too far north of their ‘Plan B’ Gilbert Islands option, perhaps while trying to avoid earlier reported storm squalls. The Commander of the U.S. Navy’s Pacific Fleet during the war, Admiral Chester Nimitz, was placed in charge of the Marshall’s when the U.S. occupied them in 1944. Twenty years later, in 1964, Admiral Nimitz admitted to CBS radio’s Fred Goerner (both shown above) that it was long ago “known and documented in Washington” that “Earhart and her navigator went down in the Marshall Islands and were picked up by Japan.” In 1962, U.S. Navy Commander John Pillsbury had also intimated to Goerner that by his investigating what actually happened to Earhart and Noonan, he was onto something that would “stagger his imagination.” The end result was Fred Goerner’s 1966 best selling book, The Search For Amelia Earhart, in which Goerner included Admiral Nimitz’ and Commander Pillsbury’s words and sentiments among his impressive trove of compelling investigative research. After Goerner’s various trips to the South Sea Islands, where by way of many testimonials he learned a lot about the Marshallese version of Earhart and Noonan’s loss, he concluded in his book that the duo may have been on an espionage mission gone bad, and Amelia Earhart might have died of medical neglect while sequestered by Japan. He also added a rumor that described Fred Noonan having been executed by Japan’s military. Here, it should be noted that while Marshall Islands officials to this day maintain that Earhart and Noonan ended up there, no hard evidence of a spy mission they were on, or of their deaths having occurred anywhere overseas ever surfaced.

Following steps 1 through 5 above presents the basic Marshallese version of Earhart and Noonan’s world flight ending and its outcome.

Last version, They Died as Castaways: A newer story that surfaced in the 1990s was initially popularized by way of a Life Magazine article. Its proponents offered that Earhart and Noonan, after missing Howland Island, chose to fly southward to the Phoenix Islands group where they ended up ditching on the uninhabited Island of Nikumaroro. After making it there, the theorists postulated that Amelia’s plane was lifted from the shore by a strong tide that pulled it out to deep water — where it sank to the ocean floor. Their theory went on to say that Fred Noonan likely died before Amelia, who was left to wander the island alone until she too died, leaving her remains to be devoured by giant crabs. The same theorists founded a cottage industry that raised money to finance expeditions to the island — where they found debris items — some of which they claimed had belonged to Amelia and Fred. After it was verified that an attempt to colonize the island was made (1940s to 1960s) with as many as fifty people having lived there, the consensus was the items were things the colonists left behind. The theorists also claimed the duo’s post-loss radio signals came from Nikumaroro, ignoring more solid bearing-read information that showed them emanating from the Marshall Islands. Early on, the theorists, learned that human bones were found on Nikumaroro around 1940, when it was known as ‘Gardner Island.’ They tried to contend that the bones were Amelia’s, even though they were examined by a medical expert at the time, who, after determining they were a male Chamorro’s bones, discarded them. People still took the Nikumaroro idea seriously though, which wasn’t so surprising given the way the news media and the U.S. Naval Institute latched on to it. Their combined promotional efforts worked well enough that many individuals became convinced that Nikumaroro is where Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan ended up, without heeding to the reality of its claims having been far fetched and unauthenticated.

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Before moving on to review the thought provoking ‘1970 news story’ about Amelia, that quietly went on to exist as an unresolved controversy, let’s take a moment to reflect on Amelia Earhart’s amazing positive spirit:

Saturday, May 21, 1932 — after Amelia landed in Londonderry, Ireland, Royalty at Buckingham Palace was anxious to congratulate her.

Amelia’s plane trip across the Atlantic Ocean in 1928, that left her receiving a ticker tape parade in New York City for being the first woman passenger to do such a thing, was easily eclipsed in 1932, when she became the first woman and only the second person ever to solo a plane across the Atlantic. (Joining Charles Lindbergh.) To think that one day she was standing on the North American continent, and then 15 hours later she found herself in Ireland after piloting her single-engine plane to get there was uniquely impressive. Then just two days after her solo-crossing, she was photographed, as depicted in the above painting, strolling toward Buckingham Palace to meet with Royalty with a casual air as if nothing special had happened.

Amelia Earhart was an amazing human being.

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Getting back to the unresolved controversy that pertained to a ‘highly unexpected’ assertion about Amelia Earhart, it involved the person shown facing news reporters here in a November 11, 1970 Associated Press photo. Said ‘person’ whose name was Irene O’Crowley Craigmile, was the reluctant subject of what quickly became a national news story.

Next, Irene O’Crowley Craigmile, young and pretty looking below in a 1945 dated photograph, was not the same person as the woman shown above in 1970, who she shared the same ‘Irene O’Crowley Craigmile’ identity with after World War Two. The discovery of the ‘different carbon footprints’ the two women left behind did not occur until the 21st century, when the 1934 born ‘son’ of Irene O’Crowley Craigmile positively identified the person below to have been his mother:

As the other ‘Irene O’Crowley Craigmiel’ shown below stood alone holding her 1970 press conference, no one was aware that she appeared nowhere as ‘Irene O’Crowley Craigmile’ prior to the end of WWII. The record also showed that in 1958, she married international businessman, Guy Bolam of England, thus making her also known as ‘Mrs. Irene Bolam.’

It was an independent study conducted in 21st century that conclusively determined a total of three different 20th century women had been attributed to the same Irene O’Crowley Craigmile identity. (The person shown in the 1970 newspaper photo and the younger ‘1945’ Irene O’Crowley Craigmile having been two of them.) Below, we see the study’s separation of the two Irene O’Crowley Craigmiles who shared the same identity after World War Two, with the surname of “Bolam” added in 1958. [Note: The Irene in the below right column, shown in 1946 and 1965, was the same person who faced the press in 1970.]

Importantly, the plurality of Irene O’Crowley Craigmile’s physical being was further evidenced by way of the study showing that neither of the two women above depicted the original Irene O’Crowley Craigmile, a long ago pilot and a past friend of Amelia Earhart. The original Irene O’Crowley Craigmile is shown below between her husband, Charles Craigmile, and her father, Richard Joseph O’Crowley, in an old newspaper photo. (Taken ‘about 1930.’)

Below is a colorized digital enhancement of the original Irene O’Crowley Craigmile:

By now you can see that this website is not only about Amelia Earhart, for it is also about rediscovering the original person of Irene O’Crowley Craigmile, who for some unknown reason was seen no more after the 1930s — while her identity continued on after being applied to two other people, with one of them, who only appeared as ‘Irene’ after WWII, looking a lot like an older version of Amelia Earhart:

Above center, an early composite from the study shows why it continued to move forward with its human comparison direction. Initial alignments between the post-WWII Irene and Amelia revealed a congruence that was too close for comfort. Further down see later achieved video dissolve composites.

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Below, in 1931, while Charles Craigmile and the original Irene O’Crowley Craigmile were on a road trip, Charles was stricken with appendicitis and died within two days after neglecting to seek medical treatment. The clip below came from a Paterson, New Jersey newspaper dated September 23, 1931:

Much less was known about the original Irene O’Crowley Craigmile until after the 21st century arrived, when some key discoveries rejuvenated the unresolved controversy that began with the 1970 news story. After her husband Charles died, the original Irene O’Crowley Craigmile (B. 1904), decided to become a pilot and briefly became part of Amelia Earhart’s Long Island New York flying circle. Below, she is shown in the same September 1, 1932 Akron Beacon Journal (poor quality) newspaper photo with Amelia Earhart and other ‘famous’ women fliers. At the time she had just started taking flying lessons.

Below is a rare ‘1933’ dated photo that shows the original Irene in her OX-5 biplane. She was awarded her pilot’s license that spring. After the 21st century study commenced it was soon noticed that clear ‘typical photos’ showing Irene as an adult prior to the 1940s (such as family or wedding photos) were not attainable.

Bringing an end to her brief days as a pilot, the ‘original’ Irene O’Crowley Craigmile gave birth to a son in early 1934 when she was briefly married to a former flight trainer of hers, an itinerant barnstorming and transport pilot by the name of Alvin Heller. Their marriage was soon annulled, but the couple’s son, Clarence Alvin ‘Larry’ Heller, kept his father’s surname. At his attorney’s office and in writing (in 2014), the ‘original’ Irene’s son, Larry Heller, positively identified his mother in younger and older forms, as shown here:

The above center composite confirmed the person Larry Heller identified as his mother was the same individual in younger and older forms. Larry Heller (somewhat oddly) had never been asked to visually identify his mother before. After he did the following realizations were made: 1.) His mother did not resemble Amelia Earhart. 2.) After World War Two, his mother’s identity was shared by the person pictured below, who was also shown to match in younger and older forms. To reiterate, after World War Two the person below was attributed to the same name and identity of the Irene O’Crowley Craigmile shown above, to a point where she also referred to Larry Heller as her ‘son.’

Amelia Earhart, age 30

NOTE: More detailed information about this story is presented in the 2025 limited edition publication, Discovering Irene O’Crowley Craigmile by Tod Swindell, that verifies the three person ‘shared identity’ factor and its discovered correlation to Amelia Earhart. [Copies privately made available.]