The Itasca had laid a heavy smoke screen for two hours on the morning of July 2; it would have been visible to AE, flying at an altitude of 1,000 feet, for more than forty miles from the south and east, but only twenty miles from the north and west.
Evidently, judging from her reports, Amelia had been flying earlier during the night at a high altitude and above a thick overcast of clouds. Her signal strength, if direct and not the result of skip waves, indicated a maximum distance of 250 miles from Howland and not nearer to the island than 30 miles. Such was the conclusion of the Itasca.
All available land areas were searched and hundreds of thousands of miles of sea area. On July 19, 1937, the Navy released the Itasca from any further search; the cutter’s mission was completed.
Back in California George Palmer Putnam had called on Jacqueline Cochran. He remembered Amelia’s having told him about her friend’s strange and marvelous powers at extrasensory perception. He was very excited when he came into Miss Cochran’s Los Angeles apartment. He begged her to help him locate Amelia.
Miss Cochran told GP where the plane had gone down: that it had ditched in the ocean, that Fred Noonan had fractured his skull against the bulkhead, that Amelia was alive, and that the plane was floating on the water. She named the Itasca as a ship that was in the area although she had never heard the name before; and she named a Japanese fishing vessel in the same location. She told GP to get ships and planes into the area immediately to begin the search.
For two days Jacqueline Cochran followed the course of the drifting Electra. Ships and planes searched the area of her insight, but to no avail. Miss Cochran was racked with disappointment. If her ability were worth anything, she reasoned, it should have been able to locate and save her friend. Giving up, Jacqueline Cochran went to the cathedral in Los Angeles and lit candles for the repose of Amelia’s soul. She never tried her powers at ESP again.
Amelia had unquestionably disappeared. At best, her attitude toward her radio plans for the flight was casual; at worst, a combination of poor coordination, faulty radio receiver, and imperfect navigation instruments, had sent plane, pilot, and navigator to a watery grave.
The search over, rumors now began to abound and multiply about what had really happened to Amelia Earhart and her navigator Fred Noonan.
Each would cause Noonan’s wife and Amelia’s husband and mother untold hours of anguish and false hope.