Fred J. Noonan back in focus as new Amelia Earhart expedition sets sail for Nikumaroro

Nearly 90 years after Amelia Earhart and her Irish American navigator Fred J. Noonan disappeared, a relaunch of the Nikumaroro expedition has put Noonan back in the spotlight. Newly surfaced letters and the team’s focus on a so-called Taraia Object have researchers hopeful that fresh evidence will finally clarify the navigator’s crucial role in Electra’s final hours.

Nearly 90 years after Amelia Earhart and her Irish American navigator Fred J. Noonan vanished on July 2, 1937, the Archaeological Legacy Institute and Purdue Research Foundation will mount a November expedition to investigate a visual anomaly called the Taraia Object on Nikumaroro Island. Dr. Richard Pettigrew said, “What we have here is maybe the greatest opportunity ever to finally close the case,” and the team plans to use sonar magnetometry and careful dredging to learn whether the Electra lies beneath lagoon sediment. 

Noonan was more than a supporting name in a mystery he helped to create. Frederick Joseph Noonan was born in Cook County, Illinois, and carried an Irish family story on his mother’s side. In the weeks before the final flight, he left detailed, newly surfaced correspondence that sheds light on his navigation plans and thinking. A long-lost 17-page letter dated June 23, 1937, offers a rare first-person view into the navigator’s notes and route planning and has been highlighted by historians tracing Noonan’s role.

His skill was celestial navigation and he was the man charged with keeping Earhart on course toward tiny Howland Island. Radio traffic from the flight suggested the pair were uncertain of their position with Earhart reporting “by Noonan’s reckoning the plane should be just over the Itasca” a line historians have returned to repeatedly when reconstructing those final hours. The Nikumaroro hypothesis argues that Electra may have attempted a shallow landing on a reef and then been buried by shifting sediment and storms over decades, CBS News reports.

Purdue and ALI have framed the mission as both archaeological and deeply personal. Pettigrew added, “With such a great amount of very strong evidence, we feel we have no choice but to move forward and hopefully return with proof.” Purdue Research Foundation spokespeople have said the university would like to see the Electra returned if it can be identified and recovered, noting Earhart’s ties to Purdue and her wish that the plane one day come home.

If the team locates wreckage, the find could reshape how Americans remember the final chapter of a flight that captivated the world and that holds particular resonance in Irish American archives, where Noonan’s own voice has finally been heard again through newly discovered papers. 

The expedition will travel by sea in early November with a 15 to 16-person field team, and investigators emphasize they will document and test everything before any excavation. As they prepare to enter the lagoon, researchers say they are driven by evidence and by the hope of finally answering a question that has haunted aviation history for generations.