In Search of Amelia Earhart notably Andy Roberts who shared vocals on the album, created an atypical British folk album conceived around the idea of the legends surrounding Amelia Earhart and her supposed demise. Matthews had read a book by Fred Goerner hypothesizing that Earhart and her flying companion Frederick Noonan had crashed around the Japanese held Marshall Island area and been taken prisoner by the Japanese on Saipan, in the Marianas, in 1937. Their plane had supposedly been outfitted with aerial cameras and had a bigger fuel tank than anyone outside of the US government knew. After being grilled by Japanese interrogators Earhart would
Fred Noonan Electra might have snapped on takeoff (the purpose of this antenna has not been identified, however radio communications seemed normal as they climbed away from Lae). One relatively new theory suggests that Noonan may have made a mistake in navigation due to the flight's crossing of the International Date Line. Many researchers including navigator and aeronautical engineer Elgen Long believe that the Electra ran out of fuel and that Earhart and Noonan ditched at sea. The "crash and sink" theory is often the most widely accepted explanation of Earhart's and Noonan's fate. In her last message received at Howland Island,