Amelia Earhart
Pilot, NR16020
Already a transatlantic celebrity and a Purdue-linked advocate for women in aviation. The world flight was her last public project. She has not been found.
The missing were a pilot and a navigator. The living file is a cutter’s radio room and a husband who ran publicity.
Late witness names from capture stories are omitted unless they sit in dated official paper.
People
Fred Noonan
Navigator
A Pan American-trained navigator whose celestial work was the planned fix for Howland. His last known workplace was the Electra’s right seat on 2 July 1937.
George Palmer Putnam
Husband and publicist
Organised sponsorship and press. After 2 July he pushed the search and later the legal death. His archive is a source about the flight as a public event.
Cmdr. Warner K. Thompson
Commanding officer, USCGC Itasca
His cutter’s radio log is the primary last-hours document. The ship could hear Earhart more clearly than she could hear Itasca.
Edward Elliott
President, Purdue University
Purdue’s backing bought the Electra and tied the flight to an American campus. The university’s name remains on the sponsorship paper.
Ric Gillespie
TIGHAR executive director
The most public later advocate of the Nikumaroro landing. His group’s finds are part of the historiography; they are not a Navy identification.
A cutter and a court left paper. The Electra left a radio line.
Public-record encyclopedia. Not legal advice. Not a how-to. Graphic detail is withheld. Wars belong in a separate atlas.