Every time we talk about a mysterious aeronautical disaster , a name comes to mind; Amelia Earhart. Even now that more than 80 years have passed since his disappearance, neither followers nor historians can answer exactly what happened, where did his remains really end? And above all, What did the last message of Amelia Earhart ?
In the following article we are going to give you some information about this last message from Amelia Earhart. You want to know more? Keep reading!
What did that last message from Amelia Earhart say?
When Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan, his co-pilot, had that terrible accident, they had time to send a distress signal . Actually, that distress signal, which was more of a message, could be heard hundreds of miles away.
In the summer of 1937, in St. Petersburg, Florida , was Betty Klenck, a 15 year old teenager, in the living room of her house. Betty was an unconditional fan of "new technologies" and used to spend long hours entertaining with family radio. Betty's father had installed a long wire antenna that was almost 20 meters long and that ran through the backyard of the Klenck family. That long antenna was powerful enough to be able to capture transmissions from a long distance, much more than a conventional radio would.
Betty, in addition to being interested in the waves, was a "crazy plane", as she described herself. Perhaps thanks to that, he was able to recognize the importance of the message that came to him that summer afternoon.
She was drawing while listening to her radio when, suddenly, she heard a voice on the radio that said: "Speaking Amelia Earhart. Earhart. " Amelia Earhart's message could not have come up with a better listener. Since Betty was such an airplane fan, she quickly recognized Earhart's name and immediately transcribed everything she could understand.
She spent almost 3 hours sitting there and taking note of everything she could hear, but the signal gradually faded away. Her father came home around 6:15 p.m. and she ran to show him everything she had heard and recorded that afternoon. They also went to their neighbor's house to see if he had also been able to detect the signals, but there was no luck, since the only 20-meter antenna in the neighborhood was his.
When Betty's father read his daughter's transcript, they called the Coast Guard who confirmed that there were already ships tracking the area. It seems that they did not give them too much credit and they were told that everything was under control. It seemed incredible that a girl of only 15 years had been the only one to hear the signal of the last message of Amelia Earhart, the most famous aviator of all time.
But what did the message say?
The truth is that it was not a completely clear message because , in addition to being diffuse, the voices often faded . But many details that Klenck pointed out coincide with what was later learned or assumed to have happened on Earhart's last flight, so it seems unlikely that Betty would invent the story.
Some of the data that Betty aimed to target
Betty heard Amelia repeat "W40K Howland port" or "WOJ Howland port" which coincided with Earhart's travel destination; Howland Island.
He also heard that she had suffered a minor injury but that her co-pilot Noonan was seriously injured. He understood that the plane was filling up quickly with water. In that last message from Amelia Earhart, Betty could hear that "the water is rising, it is reaching us at the height of the knees". After Amelia is heard to say "let me out" and Noonan responds "I can not do it". It seems that then Noonan gets out and Amelia prepares to do so.
Message credibility
Although at first, the authorities of the time did not give any credibility to the transcripts of Betty Klenck, the truth is that her family kept trying until, finally, in the year 2000 everything changed.
In 1970, John Hathaway, the neighbor of Klenck, contacted Fred Goerner, who had published, four years earlier, a book about Amelia's biography. He did not get any results and they continued to show no interest in Betty's notebook. Over the years, Hathaway tried again, but this time with The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery (The International Group for the Historical Recovery of Aircraft), known as TIGHAR.
Undoubtedly, without the collaboration of TIGHAR, the whole world would never have had access to the valuable notes of Klenck. From that moment, there were many listeners who claimed to have heard, or believe to have heard, the voices of Earhart and Noonan that fateful afternoon. In total there were about 57 people who, in all likelihood, had Amelia Earhart on the other side of her radio . All claimed to have heard his name repetitively, an intelligent performance by Amelia.
All these data do nothing but give credibility to the transcript that Betty Klenck did, that afternoon of 1937, and that was the last message of Amelia Earhart.