Frederick Joseph Noonan (born April 4, 1893 – disappeared July 2, 1937, declared dead June 20, 1938) was an American flight navigator, sea captain and aviation pioneer, who first charted many commercial airline routes across the Pacific Ocean during the 1930s. As the flight navigator for famed aviator Amelia Earhart in their pioneering attempt at circumnavigating the globe, the two disappeared somewhere over the central Pacific Ocean on July 3, 1937.
Early life Fred Noonan was born on April 4, 1893, in Cook County, Illinois, to Joseph T. Noonan (born Lincolnville, Maine, in 1861) and Catherine Egan (born London, England), both of Irish descent. Noonan's mother died when he was four, and three years later the 1900 census report listed his father as living alone in a Chicago boarding house. Relatives or family friends were likely looking after Noonan. In his own words, Noonan "left school in summer of 1905 and went to Seattle, Washington," where he was a seaman at an early age, serving in a succession of merchant ships and steadily advancing in his ratings and certifications.
Maritime career At the age of 17, Noonan shipped out of Seattle as an ordinary seaman on a British sailing bark, the Crompton. Between 1910 and 1915, Noonan worked on over a dozen ships, rising to the ratings of quartermaster and bosun's mate. During World War I, Noonan lived in New York and served aboard several American and British ships in the merchant marine, though he was never in the U.S. Navy. He continued working on merchant ships throughout the war. Serving as an officer on ammunition ships, his harrowing wartime service included being on three vessels that were sunk from under him by U-boats.Taylor, Blaine. "Were They Spies for Roosevelt?" Air Classics, Volume 24, Number 2, February 1988, p. 26. After the war, Noonan continued in the Merchant Marine and achieved a measure of prominence as a ship's officer. In 1926, the U.S. Shipping Board awarded Noonan his license as "master of steamers of any gross tonnage." His maritime career was characterized by steadily increasing ratings and "good" (typically the highest) work performance reviews. His career moving ahead, the 34-year-old Noonan married Josephine Sullivan in 1927 in Jackson, Mississippi. After a honeymoon in Cuba, they settled in New Orleans, where Noonan worked for the Mississippi Shipping Company as chief mate on the SS Carplaka, a Design 1022 ship.
Navigator for Pan Am Following a distinguished 22-year career at sea, which included sailing around Cape Horn seven times (three times under sail), Noonan contemplated a new career direction. After learning to fly in the late 1920s, he received a "limited commercial pilot's license" in 1930, on which he listed his occupation as "aviator." In the following year, he was awarded marine license #121190, "Class Master, any ocean," the qualifications of a merchant ship's captain.Lovell 1989, p. 245. During the early 1930s, he worked for Pan American World Airways as a navigation instructor in Miami and an airport manager in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, eventually assuming the duties of inspector for all of the company's airports. Adapting his maritime navigational expertise to aviation, Noonan was instrumental in developing techniques for the company's nascent Pacific Division.
In March 1935, Noonan and his wife moved to Oakland, California, and for the rest of that year, Noonan served as navigating officer on the survey flights that pioneered commercial air service across the Pacific. He was the navigator on the first Pan Am Sikorsky S-42 clipper at San Francisco Bay. In April, he navigated the historic round-trip China Clipper flight between San Francisco and Honolulu, piloted by Ed Musick (who was featured on the cover of Time magazine that year), its course set by Noonan. Noonan was subsequently responsible for mapping Pan Am's clipper routes across the Pacific Ocean, participating in many flights to Midway Island, Wake Island, Guam, the Philippines, and Hong Kong. He made at least 21 flights for Pan American in 1936, including numerous, often lengthy, test hops and five round-trip Pacific crossings to Manila. His last flight with the airline – a 16-day marathon as navigator of the "Philippine Clipper" – concluded on December 7, 1936. Sometime later that month, he left the company. In a 1939 book by Pan Am pilot William Grooch, who reported something of a rebellion among the airline's flight crews following the trip, Noonan said, "We've lived on promises for a year. I'm through." and resigned immediately.
1937 was a year of transition for Noonan, whose reputation as an expert navigator, along with his role in the development of commercial airline navigation, had already earned him a place in aviation history. The tall, very thin, dark auburn-haired and blue-eyed 43-year-old held maritime ratings and a pilot's license and was also a celebrated aerial navigator living in Los Angeles. He resigned from Pan Am because he felt he had risen through the ranks as far as he could as a navigator, and he had an interest in starting a navigation school. References in his own correspondence make it clear that Noonan enjoyed an occasional drink, and it is possible that he sometimes overindulged, but there is no contemporary evidence Noonan was an alcoholic or was fired by Pan American for drinking, although decades later, a few writers and others made some hearsay claims that he was.Taped interview between John Leslie and Victor Wright, 1972, PAA archives, Richter Library, Miami, consulted April 2006: 35 years later, in a 1972 interview with Pan American executive John Leslie, Victor Wright (a crewmember who flew with Noonan on Clipper flights) said "he drank himself out of a job ... It got to Noonan by way of drink. We had no one to do the navigating except Noonan. Harry Canaday then took over and navigated on the way back." On March 3, Noonan's attorney filed divorce papers for his wife Josephine in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico. Around this time, Noonan was also involved in a serious automobile accident.
Earhart world flight and disappearance
Amelia Earhart met Noonan through mutual connections in the Los Angeles aviation community and chose him to serve as her navigator on her World Flight in the Lockheed Electra 10E that she had purchased with funds donated by Purdue University. She planned to circumnavigate the globe at equatorial latitudes. Although this aircraft was of an advanced type for its time, and was dubbed a "flying laboratory" by the press, little real science was planned. The world was already crisscrossed by commercial airline routes (many of which Noonan himself had first navigated and mapped), and the flight is now regarded by some as an adventurous publicity stunt for Earhart's gathering public attention for her next book. Noonan had recently left Pan American Airways and was available to help out. Noonan was probably attracted to this project because Earhart's mass market fame would almost certainly generate considerable publicity, which in turn might reasonably be expected to attract attention to him and the navigation school that he hoped to establish when they returned. Noonan's addition to the Electra's crew just days before the departure of the first world flight attempt appears to have been occasioned by the discovery that the flight's designated navigator Captain Harry Manning needed help. Noonan did not have the necessary visa to accompany the flight as far as New Guinea, but his skills in aeronautical-celestial and dead-reckoning navigation were most needed for the flight from Hawaii to Howland Island, a tiny sliver of land in the Pacific Ocean, barely long. Noonan would leave the flight at Howland and return to Honolulu aboard the U.S. Coast Guard cutter Shoshone. This plan appears to have been altered after the plane reached Hawaii.
On March 13, 1937, Noonan's name appeared for the first time in the press as a member of Earhart's crew. On March 16, the first attempt was delayed due to weather conditions, and Noonan, having had a chance to assess the plane's navigational equipment, had identified a major deficiency in the flight's preparations. As described in a Time magazine article later that summer, Noonan was "dismayed to discover that there was nothing with which to take celestial bearings except an ordinary ship sextant. He remedied that by borrowing a modern bubble octant designed especially for airplane navigation." Modern bubble octants were expensive, and Noonan apparently did not own one himself. It is equally apparent that he was unwilling or unable to borrow one from his former employer, even though Pan American had a major terminal in Alameda. The octant was safely aboard when the flight began on March 17 with a record-breaking flight from Burbank, California, to Honolulu. On March 19, Noonan sent a telegram to Mary: "Leaving 1:30 AM your time. Amelia has asked me to continue with her at least as far as Darwin, Australia and possibly around before I can return from Australia. I love you, Fred." The next day, while the Electra was taking off to begin its second leg to Howland Island, its wing clipped the ground. Earhart cut an engine off to maintain balance, the aircraft ground looped, and its landing gear collapsed. Although there were no injuries, the Lockheed Electra had to be shipped back to Los Angeles by sea for expensive repairs. One week later, on March 27, Fred and Mary were married in Yuma, Arizona. According to newspaper accounts, the couple planned to settle in Oakland but would "spend a brief honeymoon in Hollywood as Noonan is now engaged with Miss Earhart in preparing plans for the re-start of the world flight." On April 4, Noonan's 44th birthday, as he and his bride drove through Fresno on their way back to Oakland along the Golden State Highway, they hit another car head-on. Fred escaped with minor bruises, while Mary was hospitalized with "an extensive laceration on the knee and other injuries." The other driver was not injured, but the man's wife and infant daughter were treated for bruises and released. Noonan was cited for driving in the wrong lane. Noonan maintained a post office box address in Hollywood, and a business directory published later that year lists a residence address in Los Angeles. After the Electra was certified on May 19, Noonan was on hand in Burbank the next day for the "sneak takeoff" of the second world flight attempt. Three days later, Earhart and Noonan arrived in Florida, having completed the Electra's cross-country test flight. In Miami, Noonan took the opportunity to renew his acquaintance with Helen Day, a young woman he had met when he worked for Pan American's Caribbean Division. He wrote to Day at least four times during the world flight.