Fred Noonan 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 stop with famed aviator Amelia Earhart (1897-1937), as her navigator when they disappeared somewhere over the Central Pacific Ocean during one of the last legs of their attempted pioneering round-the-world flight. Fred Noonan was born in Cook County, Illinois (the
Fred Noonan Earhart reported that they were flying a standard position line (or sun line), a routine procedure for an experienced navigator like Noonan. This line passed within sight of Gardner Island (now called Nikumaroro) in the Phoenix Island Group to the southeast, and there is a range of documented, archaeological, and anecdotal evidence supporting the hypothesis that Earhart and Noonan found Gardner Island, uninhabited at the time, landed the Electra on a flat reef near the wreck of a freighter, and sent sporadic radio messages from there. It has been surmised that Earhart and Noonan might have survived on Nikumaroro for