PUTNAM MYSTERY

Dominion, Volume 36, Issue 15, 13 October 1942, Page 5

PUTNAM MYSTERY

Suggestion Of U.S. Espionage

(By Telegraph.—Press Assn.—Copyright.)

(Special Australian Correspondent.)

SYDNEY, October 11,

Japan may have been responsible for the disapi>earaiice of Amelia Earhart Putnam, the famous American woman flyer, who was lost in the South-west Pacific five years ago. Site and her navigator, Fred Noonan, may have learned too much about Japanese war preparations in this, theatre to be allowed to live.

This suggestion is made by Mr. Charles Palmer, associate of tin: lost flyer’s publisher husband, Mr. George Putnam, writing in tlte American magazine “Skyways.”

Mrs. Putnam and Noonan took off from Lae, in New Guinea, on July 2, 1.937, for Howland Island, 2500 miles north across the closely-guarded Japanese mandated islands. Later, though the American Navy launched a l(i-day search, covering more than 100,000 square miles, no trace of the missing flyers was found. Mr. rainier now asks: "In the light of recent events, was Mrs. Putnam's flight financed by the United States Government so that she could fly over the secrecy-shrouded Japanese mandated areas? Hid Japanese espionage discover this and liquidate her? “Did the United States Navy, though realizing that the chances were a thousand to one against finding the flyers, make that extensive search as npretext for ranging in prohibited areas?” Though Mr. I’utnam denies that the United States Government invested any money in the flight, it is known that the Government prepared Howland Island some months before the flight and stationed two cutters on the route from New Guinea. "Why did Mrs. Putnam refuse to disclose her position after leaving Lae, specially after circling for a forced binding?” asked Mr. Palmer. “Did she want to hide from the world, specially from Japan, that she had gone off her course into Japanese areas? “Recent raids of task forces of tae United States Nnvy were obviously based on information which lends credence to the view that the navy did not spend 250,00(1 dollars a day in a 10-day search for nothing.”