Fred Noonan of Amelia Earhart" on Plainsong's album "In Search of Amelia Earhart." Noonan is a main character in Jane Mendelsohn's acclaimed novel, "I Was Amelia Earhart" (1996), and in Neal Bowers' poem "The Noonan Variations" ("The Sewanee Review", Volume CXVIII, 1990). Fred Noonan Frederick Joseph "Fred" Noonan (born April 4, 1893; declared missing July 2, 1937 and 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. He was last seen in Lae, New Guinea, on July 2, 1937, on the last land
Amelia Earhart the flight was arranged around Earhart's intention to circumnavigate the globe along with gathering raw material and public attention for her next book. Earhart chose Captain Harry Manning as her navigator; he had been the captain of the , the ship that had brought Earhart back from Europe in 1928. Manning was not only a navigator, but he was also a skilled radio operator who knew Morse code. Through contacts in the Los Angeles aviation community, Fred Noonan was subsequently chosen as a second navigator because there were significant additional factors that had to be dealt with while using celestial