Fred Noonan

Fred Noonan
Fred Noonan, June 1937, Bandung, West Java
Born	4 April 1893(1893-04-04) Cook County, Illinois
Died	unknown, missing 2 July 1937 en route to Howland Island, declared dead 20 June 1938
Occupation	Navigator
Spouse(s)	Josephine Sullivan (divorced) Mary Bea Noonan
Children	none
Parents	Joseph T. Noonan Catherine Egan

Frederick Joseph "Fred" Noonan (April 4, 1893 – missing July 2, 1937, declared dead June 20, 1938)^[1] was an American flight navigator, sea captain and aviation pioneer who first charted many commercial airline routes across the Pacific Ocean during the 1930s. He was last seen in Lae, New Guinea, on July 2, 1937, and disappeared with Amelia Earhart somewhere over the Central Pacific Ocean during their attempted round-the-world flight.

Early life and maritime career

Noonan was born in Cook County, Illinois (the Chicago area). His parents were Joseph T. Noonan (born in Lincolnville, Maine, in 1861) and Catherine Egan (born in London, England). Noonan's father died when he was four, and three years later a census report lists him as living alone in a Chicago boarding house, although relatives or family friends were likely looking after him. In his own words, Noonan "left school in summer of 1905 and went to Seattle, Washington,"^[2] where he found work as a seaman.

At the age of 17, Noonan shipped out of Seattle as an ordinary seaman on a British sailing bark, the Crompton. Between 1910 and 1915, Noonan worked on over a dozen ships, rising to the ratings of quartermaster and bosun's mate. He continued working on merchant ships throughout World War I. Serving as an officer on ammunition ships, his harrowing wartime service included being on three vessels that were sunk from under him by U-boats. ^[3] After the war, Noonan continued in the Merchant Marine and achieved a measure of prominence as a ship's officer. Throughout the 1920s, his maritime career was characterized by steadily increasing ratings and "good" (typically the highest) work performance reviews. Noonan married Josephine Sullivan in 1927 at Jackson, Mississippi. After a honeymoon in Cuba, they settled in New Orleans.

Navigator for Pan Am

Following a distinguished 22-year career at sea which included sailing around Cape Horn seven times (three times under sail)^[3], Noonan contemplated a new career direction. After learning to fly in the late 1920s^[3] he received a "limited commercial pilot's license" in 1930, on which he listed his occupation as "aviator." In following year as a Merchant Mariner, he was awarded "license #121190, Class Master, any ocean,"^[2] the qualifications of a merchant ship's captain.^[4] During the early 1930s, he worked for Pan American World Airways as a navigation instructor in Miami and an airport manager in Port-Au-Prince, Haiti, eventually assuming the duties of inspector for all of the company's airports.

In March 1935, Noonan was the navigator on the first Pan Am Sikorsky S-42 clipper at San Francisco Bay. In April he navigated the historic round-trip China Clipper flight between San Francisco and Honolulu piloted by Ed Musick (who was featured on the cover of Time magazine that year). Noonan was subsequently responsible for mapping Pan Am's clipper routes across the Pacific Ocean, participating in many flights to Midway Island, Wake Island, Guam, the Philippines, and Hong Kong. In addition to more modern navigational tools, Noonan as a licensed sea captain was known for carrying a ship's sextant on these flights.

1937 was a year of transition for Fred Noonan, whose reputation as an expert navigator, along with his role in the development of commercial airline navigation, had already earned him a place in aviation history. The tall, very thin, dark auburn-haired and blue-eyed 43-year-old navigator was living in Los Angeles. He resigned from Pan Am because he felt he had risen through the ranks as far as he could as a navigator, and he had an interest in starting a navigation school. In March, he divorced his wife, Josie, in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico. Two weeks later, he married Mary Bea Martinelli (born Passadori) of Oakland, California. Noonan was rumored to be a heavy drinker of alcoholic beverages. That was fairly common during this era and there is no contemporary evidence Noonan was an alcoholic, although decades later, a few writers and others made some hearsay claims that he was.^[5][6]

Earhart world flight

Earhart and Noonan by the Lockheed L-10 Electra during their World Flight, 1937.

Amelia Earhart met Noonan through mutual connections in the Los Angeles aviation community and chose him to serve as her navigator on her World Flight in the Lockheed Electra 10E that she had purchased with funds donated by Purdue University. She planned to circumnavigate the globe at equatorial latitudes. Although this airplane was of an advanced type for its time, and was dubbed a "flying laboratory" for the press, little real science was planned. The world was already criss-crossed with commercial airline routes (many of which Noonan himself had first navigated and mapped), and the flight is now regarded by some as an adventurous publicity stunt. Noonan was probably attracted to this project because Earhart's mass market fame would almost certainly generate a lot of publicity, and this in turn could reasonably be expected to attract attention to him and the navigation school that he hoped to establish when they returned.

The first attempt began with a record-breaking flight from Burbank, California, to Honolulu. However, while the Electra was taking off to begin its second leg to Howland Island, its wing clipped the ground. Earhart cut an engine off to maintain balance, the aircraft ground looped, and its landing gear collapsed. Although there were no injuries, the Lockheed Electra had to be shipped by sea back to Los Angeles for expensive repairs. Over one month later, they tried starting again, this time leaving California in the opposite (eastward) direction.

Earhart characterized the pace of their 40-day, eastward trip from Burbank to New Guinea as "leisurely". They took off from Lae on July 2, 1937, and headed for Howland Island, a tiny sliver of land in the Pacific Ocean, barely 2,000 meters long, with one runway on it, and a temporary refueling station. Their plan for the 18-hour-long flight was to reach the vicinity of Howland using Noonan's celestial navigation abikities, and then find Howland by using radio signals transmitted by the U.S. Coast Guard cutter USCGC Itasca.

Through a combined sequence of misunderstandings or mishaps (that are still controversial), over scattered clouds, the final approach to Howland Island never took place, although Earhart stated by radio that they believed they were in the immediate vicinity of Howland. Two-way radio contact was never established, and the aviators and their Airplane disappeared over the Central Pacific Ocean. Despite an unprecedented, extensive search by the U.S. Navy - including the use of search planes from an aircraft carrier - and the U.S. Coast Guard, no traces of them or their Electra were ever found. ^[7]

Later research showed that Howland's position was misplaced on their chart by approximately five nautical miles. There is also some motion picture evidence that a belly antenna on their Electra might have snapped on takeoff (the purpose of this antenna has not been identified, and radio communications seemed normal as they climbed away from Lae).^[8][9]

Their Disappearance

It is possible, even likely, that having run out of fuel, Earhart ditched the Electra in the ocean where she perished with her navigator. However, in her last message received at Howland Island, Earhart reported that they were flying a standard line of position (or sun line), a routine procedure for an experienced navigator like Noonan. This line passed within sight of Gardner Island (now called Nikumaroro) in the Phoenix Island Group to the southeast, and there is a range of documented, archaeological, and anecdotal evidence supporting an hypothesis that Earhart and Noonan found Gardner Island, which at that time was uninhabited, landed the Electra on a flat reef near the wreck of a freighter, and sent sporadic radio messages from there. In 1940, Gerald Gallagher, a British colonial officer and a licensed pilot, radioed his superiors to tell them that he believed he had found Earhart's skeleton, along with a sextant box, under a tree on the island's southeast corner. In a 1998 report to the American Anthroplogical Association, researchers, including a forensic anthropologist and an archaeologist, concluded, "What we can be certain of is that bones were found on the island in 1939–40, associated with what were observed to be women’s shoes and a navigator’s sextant box, and that the morphology of the recovered bones, insofar as we can tell by applying contemporary forensic methods to measurements taken at the time, appears consistent with a female of Earhart’s height and ethnic origin. "^[10][11]

However, there are several long-time experts on the aviation radio transmitters of that time who have concluded from the historical records that Earhart was forced to ditch her Lockheed Electra in the ocean northwest of Howland Island. Thus, the controversy over the final resting places of Earhart and Noonan continues.

Popular culture

Although Fred Noonan has left a much smaller splash in popular culture than Amelia Earhart's, his legacy is remembered now and then. Noonan is often mentioned in W.P. Kinsella's novels. Noonan was portrayed by the actor David Graf in the "The 37s", an episode of the Star Trek: Voyager television series. The character of an airplane pilot named Fred Noonan is portrayed by actor Eddie Firestone in "The Long Train", a 1961 episode of the television series The Untouchables. Both a baseball stadium and an aircraft rental agency are named after Fred Noonan. In addition, Christopher Eccleston has portrayed Noonan in the recent biographical movie Amelia (2009).

Fred Noonan is also mentioned in the song "Amelia" on Bell X1's 2009 album Blue Lights on the Runway, which contemplates the last moments and the fates of Amelia Earhart and Noonan.

See also

References

Notes

Bibliography

External links

• Frederick J. Noonan, Pioneer aviator– Navigator
• Fred Noonan, Sea Captain