LOST FLYERS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 12 October 1942, Page 3

LOST FLYERS

MRS AMELIA PUTNAM & NAVIGATOR EVENTS OF 1937 RECALLED. SUGGESTED JAPANESE RESPONSIBILITY. (Special Australian Correspondent.) SYDNEY, This Day. Japan may have been responsible for the disappearance of Amelia Earhart Putnam, the famous American woman flyer, who was lost in the south-west Pacific five years ago. She and her navigator, Fred Noonan, may have learned too much about the Japanese war preparations in this theatre to be alowed to live.—This suggestion is made by Mr Charles Palmer, an associate of the lost flyers, and of the late Mrs Putnam’s husband, the publisher, Mr George Putnam. Writing in the American magazine “Skywards,” Mr Palmer says: Mrs Putnam and Noonan took off from Lae, in New Guinea, on July 2, 1937, for Howland Island, 2500 miles to the north, across the closely-guarded Japanese mandated islands. Fifteen hours after taking off, when the American flyers must have been over the Japanese islands, their last brief message was received, saying: “Circling, but cannot see the island. Gas running low.” Although the American Navy launched a sixteen days’ search, covering more than 100,000 square miles, no trace of the missing flyers was found.” Mr Palmer now asks: “In the light of recent events, was Mrs Putnam’s High; financed by the United States Government so that she could fly over secrecyshrouded Japanese mandated areas? Did the Japanese espionage discover this and liquidate her? Did the United States Navy, although realising that the chances were a thousand to one against finding the flyers, make that extensive search as a pretext for hanging in prohibited areas? Although Mr Putnam denies that the United States 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, especially after circling for a forced landing?” asks Mr Palmer. “Did she wane to hide from the world, especially Japan, that she had gone off her course into Japanese areas? Recent United States Navy task force raids, obviously based on information, lend credence to the view that the Navy did not spend 250,000 dollars a day in a sixteen-day search for nothing.”