When Amelia Earhart disappeared on July 2, 1937, she was flying the longest leg of her around-the-world flight and was only days away from completing her journey. Her plane was never found, and for more than sixty years rumors have persisted about what happened to her.

Now, with the recent discovery of long-lost radio messages from Earhart's final flight, we can say with confidence that she ran out of gas just short of her destination of Howland Island in the Pacific Ocean. From the beginning of her flight, a series of tragic circumstances all but doomed her and her navigator, Fred Noonan.

Authors Elgen M. and Marie K. Long spent more than twenty-five years researching the mystery surrounding Earhart's final flight before finally determining what happened. They traveled over one hundred thousand miles to interview more than one hundred people who knew some part of the Earhart story. They draw on authoritative sources to take us inside the cockpit of the Electra plane that Earhart flew and recreate the final flight itself. Because Elgen Long began his own flying career not long after Earhart's disappearance, he can describe the equipment and conditions of the time with a vivid first-hand accuracy. As a result, this book brings to life the primitive conditions under which Earhart flew, in an era before radar, with unreliable communications, grass landing strips, and poorly mapped islands.

Amelia Earhart: The Mystery Solved does more than just answer the question, What happened to Amelia Earhart? It reminds us how daring early aviators such as Earhart were as they risked their lives to push the technology of the day to its limits -- and beyond.

Marie K. Long, a former public relations consultant with the Western Aerospace Museum (now the Oakland Aviation Museum) in Oakland, CA., and wife of Elgen Long, passed away in 2003.

Elgen M. Long is a retired Boeing 747 captain with more than 40,000 hours of worldwide airline flying spanning 50 years as a radioman and navigator, including over 100 U.S. Navy combat missions during World War II, and patrols over Howland Island, where Amelia Earhart disappeared. He is the holder of 15 world records and/or firsts, most notably as the first person to fly around the world solo, touching down on seven continents and flying over both the North and South Poles, in 1971. Mr. Long lives in Reno, Nevada.

Preface

1 Tragedy Near Howland Island

2 In the Shadow of History

3 The Legend Begins

4 Preparations for the World Flight

5 The Flight to Honolulu

6 The Crash at Honolulu

7 Preparing for the Second World Flight

8 World Flight Resumes -- Oakland to Miami

9 World Flight -- Miami to Dakar

10 World Flight -- Dakar to Singapore

11 World Flight -- Singapore to Lae, New Guinea

12 Preparing for the Lae-to-Howland Flight

13 The Itasca and Howland Island

14 The Search for Earhart

15 Examining the Evidence

16 Solving the Mystery

Appendix

Flight Log for Earhart's Around-the-World-Flight

The Electra's Fuel Consumption

Notes

Sources

The Authors and Their Contributors

References

Acknowledgments

Index