Fred Noonan an interest in starting a navigation school. In March, he divorced his wife, Josie, in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico. Two weeks later, he married Mary Beatrice Martinelli (born Passadori) of Oakland, California. Noonan was rumored to be a heavy drinker. That was fairly common during this era and there is no contemporary evidence Noonan was an alcoholic, although decades later, a few writers and others made some hearsay claims that he was. Amelia Earhart met Noonan through mutual connections in the Los Angeles aviation community and chose him to serve as her navigator on her World Flight in the Lockheed Electra
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,