Since the
disappearance of Air Malaysia Flight MH370 and its 329 passengers and crew I’ve
been asked repeatedly about whether the 1937 Earhart/Noonan disappearance
provides any insights into what may have happened. I’m not the best person to ask, of course,
and I’m relieved to pass the baton to Ric Gillespie to provide authoritative
opinions.
One thing I
will say, though, is that the MH370 disappearance has given me some insights
into the Earhart/Noonan mystery – or rather, into how people have reacted to
that mystery over the decades. These
insights fall into four categories.
1. Regarding authoritative
conclusions. As of a couple of days ago,
the Malaysian authorities decided that MH370 “ended” in the southern Indian
Ocean, and it was remarkable – to me at least – how quickly the mainstream
media accepted this conclusion. I got
the feeling that the media just felt like the story had run its course and it
was time to go on to other news (of which, of course, there is plenty). But the U.S. Navy was pretty definitive back
in 1937, too, when it decided that Earhart and Noonan had gone into the
drink. Seventy-seven years on, it looks
a lot like this decision was ill-informed.
I wonder whether back then, as (seemingly) now, it just seemed to the
authorities and the media like there was nothing more to say and it was time to
move on.
2. Developing conspiracy theories. Acceptance of the “official explanation” for
the MH370 disappearance, such as it is, seemed to happen so precipitously,
based on so little evidence, that even I – and I’m pretty gullible – began suspecting
things. Is the official story really the
most likely one, or is it … well, covering something up? I have no dog in the fight; I knew no one on
MH370, have no personal or professional or political reason to be concerned,
and yet I found myself raising an eyebrow, thinking “hmmm……” So I find myself with new sympathy for the
Earhart/Noonan conspiracy theorists like Mike Campbell of “The Truth At Last” (http://www.amazon.com/Amelia-Earhart-The-Truth-Last/dp/1620060566). Not that I think they’re right, but that I
can better understand the skepticism that motivates them.
3. Blaming the victim. If the rush to accept the official MH370
explanation seems a bit premature, the rush to ascribe the plane’s loss to
pilot suicide seems downright unseemly.
Maybe it’s true, but I haven’t seen a shred of relevant evidence. This too reminds me of some official (and
other) reactions to the Earhart/Noonan disappearance, that blamed Earhart for
her own (and Noonan’s) demise. She was
said to just not have been a very good pilot, not to have thought things
through, not to have prepared well enough, to have been more or less
incompetent. To judge from TIGHAR’s
research, Earhart did make some serious, maybe fatal mistakes, but she was by
no means incompetent; she seems to have done a solid, professional job of
finding a place to land and putting her plane down in one piece. But blaming her, I suppose, was part of
making the whole disappearance understandable, and so it may be with the
ostensibly suicidal crew of MH370.
4. Insensitivity to the families. I can only shudder at some of the news
accounts quoting searchers as expressing “hope” that the satellite images from
the southern Indian Ocean represent parts of the Boeing 777. Have these people, I thought, no concern at
all for how that plays with the families of those lost? We HOPE for evidence that your loved ones
have gone to the fishes? Wouldn’t there
be some more discrete, more sensitive way to say it? I have new appreciation for the anguish that
Earhart’s family, and Noonan’s, must have gone through in the weeks, months,
years after the ’37 disappearance, and for how even now the enthusiasms of
Earhart researchers, including TIGHAR, may seem pretty crude and unfeeling to
family members.
So, no, the
Earhart/Noonan disappearance doesn’t give me any insights into what happened to
MH370, but the MH370 disappearance informs me, sadly, about the events of July
1937.
