Amelia Earhart (20 page)

The July 25, 1949, issue of the
New York Times
carried a statement by Mrs. Amy Otis Earhart, Amelia's mother. In the article she said, “Amelia told me many things. . . . But there were some things she couldn't tell me. I am convinced she was on some sort of government mission, probably on verbal orders.”

Captain Paul L. Briand, in his book
Daughter of the Sky
, wrote that Earhart and Noonan “had flown over islands in the Japanese mandate which were being illegally fortified, the plane had been shot down by anti-aircraft guns, the pilot and navigator had been taken and held as spies.”

Dr. M. L. Brittain, the president of Georgia Tech, had been a passenger aboard the USS
Colorado
during the search for Earhart and Noonan. Brittain stated, “We got the definite feeling that Miss Earhart had some sort of understanding with government officials that the last part of her voyage around the world would be over some Japanese islands, probably the Marshalls.” In 1944, Brittain maintained that Earhart had been a prisoner of the Japanese and that she would eventually be liberated and returned to the United States.

I
n 1944, Sergeant Thomas E. Devine was the top noncommissioned officer to First Lieutenant Fritz W. Liebig, commanding officer of the 244th Army Postal Unit, which arrived at Saipan following the defeat of the Japanese there on July 12. The unit was bivouacked at Cape Obiam (also spelled Obyam) at the southern end of the island.

Shortly after arriving at Saipan and getting settled, Liebig requisitioned a jeep and summoned Devine to drive him to Aslito Airfield, a recently captured airfield one-half mile away to the northeast. As they neared the installation, a military policeman halted the jeep and informed Liebig they were not allowed to approach. Liebig responded that he had orders to report there. After examining their identification documents and writing down their names and serial numbers, the MP allowed them to proceed.

On arriving at a cluster of buildings and a hangar at Aslito Airfield (today it is named Isley Airfield), Devine pulled the jeep to a stop near a hangar and out of the way of any potential traffic. At the front of the hangar was stationed a group of enlisted marines positioned as if on guard duty. A man who seemed to be in charge, but neither wearing a uniform nor carrying the required sidearm and dressed in only a white shirt and khakis, appeared to be issuing instructions. As Liebig and Devine climbed out of the jeep, the man approached them and, without identifying himself, informed them that the hangar was off-limits and told Liebig to report to the nearby administration building. Devine waited outside.

As Devine lingered in the shade of the building, a marine officer approached the man in the white shirt and angrily demanded to know why the hangar was off-limits. He then said, “We know Earhart's plane is in there! Our men laid down their lives on the line and now they won't even get credit for finding the plane!” The officer, now accompanied by a handful of others who had just walked up, stated that marine major Wallace Greene had determined that it was Earhart's Electra in the hangar. He was informed that Greene had that very day been promoted to colonel.

The man in the white shirt approached the group and asked the vocal officer for his identification. After writing it down, he turned and walked away. Devine noted that the man had “flattened, pugilistic features, yet was handsome.” The marines decided to go to the administration building to deal with the matter. When they left, Devine walked back over to the jeep to await the return of Liebig.

Devine had not been in his position long before a marine guard walked up and told him he would have to move the jeep. Devine asked the guard whether it was true that Earhart's plane was inside the hangar. The guard admitted that it was. By this time, Liebig had finished his business, and the two men returned to Camp Obiam.

During the return trip, Liebig and Devine discussed what had transpired outside of the hangar and wondered how Earhart's plane could be in Saipan when the U.S. Navy had informed the world that it had crashed and sunk near Howland Island two thousand miles to the southeast seven years earlier.

Later that afternoon, Devine encountered two other members of his unit—Sergeant Henry Fritzler and a man whose name he could not remember. Following a brief conversation, the unnamed marine said offhandedly, “They're bringing up Earhart's plane.” Devine asked him what that meant, but the marine, believing he was revealing too much information, changed the subject.

A short time later, Devine heard the sound of an airplane approaching the camp. Looking up, he spotted a “twin-engine, double-fin civilian plane.” From his position on the ground, Devine could read the identification number. It was NR16020. Clearly, the Electra either survived the crash landing at Mili Atoll or was repaired by the Japanese after it was recovered and transported to Saipan.

Though the members of the unit were not allowed to leave the camp after sundown, Devine decided to take a chance on a clandestine return visit to Aslito Airfield. He invited a friend, Private Paul Anderson, to accompany him. The two men arrived at a point near the southwest corner of the airfield that contained an extended arm of the airstrip. In his book,
Eyewitness: The Amelia Earhart Incident
, Devine wrote:

At the southwest end of the airfield, before a roofless hangar, we saw the twin-engine, double-fin plane which earlier had flown above Camp Obiam. It displayed no military insignia. As we drew closer, a photographer stood up from a crouch. He was facing the plane, apparently photographing it, but was too far away to determine if he were military or civilian. I wanted to speak to him, but as I approached, he ran away.

Near the twin-engine plane, Devine and Anderson spotted several containers of fuel. Moving closer, Devine once again saw the same identification number he had earlier seen on the plane flying over the camp. The two men decided to see whether they could enter the aluminum airplane. Nearing one of the propellers, Devine noted that it bore the inscription “Hamilton Standard.”

While trying to determine the best way to get into the Electra, Devine spotted the same photographer again. When the photographer realized he had been seen, he turned and ran away a second time. A moment later, two men emerged from a hangar a short distance away. One was wearing a flyer's helmet and jumpsuit. The other was the man in the white shirt Devine had seen that morning. He was now carrying a bandolier of ammunition across his shoulders. The two men were walking toward two fighter planes that were idling on a nearby landing strip. Devine and Anderson decided it was time to hasten back to their camp.

After showering and preparing to retire for the night in his tent, Devine heard a “muffled explosion” coming from the direction of Aslito Airfield. A second later he spotted a large fire. Curious, he decided to sneak back to the location to have a look.

According to Devine:

The fire roared as I crouched and crawled toward the airfield. When I could see what was burning, I was aghast! The twin-engine plane was engulfed in flames. I could not see anyone by the light of the fire, but I lay very still and watched the blaze. I dared not move lest the fire disclose my presence to an alert sniper.

Suddenly, I was enveloped by a tremendous noise. A plane had taken off and was directly over me. After a slight interval, a second plane followed. Both of them were evidently headed for one of the aircraft carriers off Saipan.

As Devine watched, the two fighter planes sent a fusillade of bullets into the Electra, igniting the fuel and creating an explosion similar to the one Devine heard back at camp. The explosion and fire completely obliterated the identity of the Electra.

Devine concluded that the fuel canisters he had seen earlier were added to the tanks, nearly filling them. More fuel was likely poured into and onto the Electra. In August 2003, sixteen years after the publication of his book that contained an account of the discovery of the Electra, Devine received a letter from a man named Art Beech. Beech told Devine about his uncle as a member of a task force sent to Saipan to “recover what they could of Amelia Earhart, bring her back if she was alive, and destroy everything if she was dead.” The uncle recovered “her diary and some other papers.”

While on Saipan, according to the letter writer, the uncle saw the Electra in flight on at least two occasions. One day, the uncle was ordered to dump two five-gallon cans of aviation fuel onto and into the aircraft and set it afire. The following day, he watched as a bulldozer pushed what remained of Earhart's Electra into a dump “containing damaged Japanese planes.”

Devine pondered the events he witnessed at the Aslito Airfield and wondered at their meaning. Obtaining access to a military publication several weeks later, Devine encountered a photograph of the man in the white shirt. It was Secretary of the Navy James V. Forrestal.

When Forrestal learned of Earhart's Electra being found in the hangar at Aslito Field, he knew he would have to become involved. A brilliant man and a competent administrator, Forrestal knew immediately that this discovery bode ill for future peace efforts and postwar international relations with Japan, not to mention the damage it could cause to the reputations of President Roosevelt, Morgenthau, and others. Any news of the Electra needed to be suppressed.

Forrestal controlled most of the publicity emanating from the U.S. Navy. Prior to the Aslito Airfield incident, Forrestal had made five well-publicized inspection trips to the Pacific, publicity he generated himself. It should be pointed out that when Forrestal made these trips, he normally dressed in khakis and an unbuttoned white shirt. Significantly, while Forrestal kept a concise and up-to-date diary, he entered nothing during the time he was alleged to be in Saipan. The 1944 trip to Saipan generated no publicity, for it would not have been in the best interests of the U.S. government to do so should the report of the existence of the Electra prove to be true. Such news would have resulted in considerable ill will toward the Japanese.

On returning stateside, Devine submerged himself deep into research regarding Amelia Earhart, her disappearance, and the possibility that the government erred in declaring she “crashed and sank” in 1937. Devine wrote a report of his experience at Aslito Airfield in Saipan and submitted it to the Office of Navy Intelligence. He was in possession of some photographs pertinent to his research that he wanted to submit but was informed by the head of the ONI that he was to send them to the security risk agency at the Hartford, Connecticut, Naval and Marine Corps Reserve Training Center.

The obvious question is why, after twenty-three years, would information and/or photographs related to the disappearance of Amelia Earhart be regarded as a security risk?

J
ames V. Forrestal died on the morning of May 22, 1949, at Bethesda Naval Hospital in Maryland. His death has been referred to as “shocking” and “disturbing.” U.S. Navy officials immediately released the information that Forrestal's death was a suicide. According to the report, Forrestal walked into a sixteenth-floor pantry, tied one end of the sash from his bathrobe to a radiator and the other end around his neck, and leaped out the window. Skeptics insist he was murdered and that his death was tied to the disappearance of Amelia Earhart.

Before he had completed two years as Secretary of Defense, James Forrestal was forced to resign by President Harry S. Truman. A short time later, he was taken to the Bethesda Naval Hospital to undergo treatment for “operational fatigue.” Following his admission to the facility, he was diagnosed with low blood pressure, anemia, and exhaustion, along with psychiatric symptoms . . . associated with excessive fatigue,” by military physicians.

Forrestal was placed in a room on the sixteenth floor of the hospital and virtually held prisoner there. He was allowed visits from no one save his wife and two sons, and even these were difficult to arrange. His attending physician, Captain George M. Raines, refused requests from Forrestal to see anyone else, specifically forbidding access to his brother, Henry, his priest, Father Paul McNally, and Monsignor Maurice S. Sheehy. Sheehy, a close friend, was a former Navy chaplain. Sheehy made at least seven trips to the hospital to see Forrestal but was denied each time. No reason was ever provided. A restricted visitation policy such as this seems extreme for someone diagnosed with symptoms of fatigue. Could it be that a decision had been made to isolate Forrestal as much as possible? And could that decision have had anything to do with the disappearance of Amelia Earhart?

After threatening to go to the press regarding the bizarre regulations pertinent to visiting his brother, Henry was finally admitted. He later stated that Forrestal was in good health, “acting and talking as sanely and intelligently as any man I've ever known.” Dr. Raines eventually admitted to the family that Forrestal was “fundamentally all right.” As a result, Henry began making arrangements to check his brother out of the hospital. Only a few hours after initiating the paperwork for Forrestal's release, the former secretary of defense was found dead.

Only moments before Forrestal died, he received a visit from Admiral Husband E. Kimmel. Later, Kimmel was court-martialed and found by a military court to be one of the officers responsible for the lack of preparation relating to the attack on Pearl Harbor. According to records, Forrestal was one of the officers who blamed Kimmel for irresponsibility and lack of preparation related to the disaster. According to the priest who was in attendance on the floor of the hospital, Kimmel ordered the navy corpsman responsible for monitoring Forrestal to leave the room. Kimmel was the last person to see Forrestal alive.

The family of James Forrestal claimed he was not a man capable of committing suicide, that they had made plans to travel to some location in the country to spend time relaxing. Forrestal was looking forward to it and making plans for the trip.