Fred Noonan

Fred Noonan was born in Cook County, Illinois to Joseph T. Noonan (born Lincolnville, Maine, in 1861) and Catherine Egan (born London, England), both of Irish descent.[2] Noonan's mother died when he was four, and three years later a census report lists his father as living alone in a Chicago boarding house. Relatives or family friends were likely looking after Noonan. In his own words, Noonan "left school in summer of 1905 and went to Seattle, Washington,"[3] 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.[4] 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.

Following a distinguished 22-year career at sea, which included sailing around Cape Horn seven times (three times under sail),[4] Noonan contemplated a new career direction. After learning to fly in the late 1920s,[4] he received a "limited commercial pilot's license" in 1930, on which he listed his occupation as "aviator." In the following year, he was awarded marine license #121190, "Class Master, any ocean,"[3] the qualifications of a merchant ship's captain.[5] 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 Josephine in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico. Two weeks later, he married Mary Beatrice Martinelli (née Passadori) of Oakland, California. Noonan was rumored to be a heavy drinker. 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.[6][7]

Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan

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 aircraft was of an advanced type for its time, and was dubbed a "flying laboratory" by the press, little real science was planned. The world was already crisscrossed by 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 for Earhart's gathering public attention for her next book.[8] Noonan was probably attracted to this project because Earhart's mass market fame would almost certainly generate considerable publicity, which in turn might 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 back to Los Angeles by sea 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". After completing about 22,000 miles (35,000 km) of the journey, 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. Their plan for the 18-hour-long flight was to reach the vicinity of Howland using Noonan's celestial navigation abilities 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 failed, although Earhart stated by radio that they believed they were in the immediate vicinity of Howland. The strength of the transmissions received indicated that Earhart and Noonan were indeed in the vicinity of Howland island, but could not find it and after numerous more attempts it appeared that the connection had dropped. The last transmission received from Earhart indicated she and Noonan were flying along a line of position (taken from a "sun line" running on 157–337 degrees) which Noonan would have calculated and drawn on a chart as passing through Howland. Two-way radio contact was never established, and the aviators and their aircraft disappeared somewhere over the Central Pacific Ocean. Despite an unprecedented, extensive search by the U.S. Navy—including the use of search aircraft from an aircraft carrier—and the U.S. Coast Guard, no traces of them or their Electra were ever found.[N 1]

Later research showed that Howland's position was misplaced on their chart by approximately five nautical miles. There is also some motion picture evidence to suggest that a belly antenna on their Electra might have snapped on takeoff (the purpose of this antenna has not been identified, however radio communications seemed normal as they climbed away from Lae).[10][11] One relatively new theory suggests that Noonan may have made a mistake in navigation due to the flight's crossing of the International Date Line.[12] However, this theory is based entirely on supposition and misunderstanding of astronomy, it does not offer any evidence Noonan was impacted by or failed to adequately account for the 24 hour variance in his sun line calculations, and was reportedly debunked by an experienced navigator[13] on a TIGHAR forum.

Although Fred Noonan has left a much smaller mark in popular culture than Amelia Earhart's, his legacy is remembered sporadically. Noonan is often mentioned in W.P. Kinsella's novels. Noonan was portrayed by actor David Graf in "The 37s", an episode of Star Trek: Voyager. The character of an aircraft 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. A 1990 episode of Unsolved Mysteries featured Mark Stitham as Noonan. In addition, Rutger Hauer has portrayed Noonan in the TV movie Amelia Earhart: The Final Flight (1994) starring Diane Keaton, and Christopher Eccleston portrayed Noonan in the 2009 biographical movie Amelia (2009).[22]

Fred Noonan is 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. The first ballad written about Amelia and Fred was written and sung by "Red River" Dave McEnerney in 1938 called "Amelia Earhart's Last Flight". Antje Duvekot's Song "Ballad of Fred Noonan" on her 2012 album "New Siberia" imagines Noonan's unrequited and unremembered love for Earhart. The controversy over Earhart and Noonan's disappearance was discussed in the song "The True Story of Amelia Earhart" on Plainsong's album "In Search of Amelia Earhart." Noonan and Earhart's fate is also considered in the song "Amelia" by Mark Kelly's Marathon, the opening single from the 2020 eponymous album by Mark Kelly (keyboardist) from Marillion.[23] Noonan is a main character in Jane Mendelsohn's novel, I Was Amelia Earhart (1996), and in Neal Bowers' poem "The Noonan Variations" (The Sewanee Review, Volume CXVIII, 1990).

• Air navigation
• Amelia Earhart
• List of people who disappeared mysteriously at sea
• USCGC Itasca (1929)

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