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 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. In March 1935, Noonan 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). 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