USNS Amelia Earhart (T-AKE-6) USNS Amelia Earhart (T-AKE-6) USNS "Amelia Earhart" (T-AKE-6), a "Lewis and Clark"-class dry cargo ship is the only ship of the United States Navy to be named for noted American aviation pioneer and women's rights advocate Amelia Earhart (1897–1937). The contract to build the ship was awarded to National Steel and Shipbuilding Company (NASSCO) of San Diego, California, on 27 January 2004. Her keel was laid down at the end of May 2007 at General Dynamics' NASSCO shipyard. In early 2007, Alex Mandel along with members of the Amelia Earhart Society (AES) and Amelia Earhart Research Association (AERA) successfully petitioned
Amelia Earhart suggestion that a can of freckle ointment found on Nikumaroro might have been Earhart's, when the Electra was "virtually a flying gas station" with little room for amenities, as Earhart and Noonan carried extra gas tanks in every scrap of available space. Another theory is that Earhart and Noonan were captured by Japanese forces, perhaps after somehow navigating to somewhere within the Japanese South Pacific Mandate. In 1966, CBS Correspondent Fred Goerner published a book claiming that Earhart and Noonan were captured and executed when their aircraft crashed on the island of Saipan, part of the Northern Mariana Islands archipelago.