Castle-Yankee54
Celestial
Goerner's book suggests, more plausibly than I would have thought, that her Electra had been modified with Pratt & Whitney military sourced engines to give it additional speed and a greater service ceiling and had been stuffed to capacity with fuel tanks and photographic equipment. Japan was violating international law by fortifying the mandated islands; dredging harbors, building roads, fuel supply facilities in preparation for the Pacific war everyone seemed to know was coming. They had an exclusion zone and didn't want anyone snooping around and the US military of that era just didn't have the capability for reconnaissance to see what the hell they were really up to. Her flight was an opportunity to take a peek.
The theory says that with the modified Electra and the full blessing of the government from FDR down she flew north to take a look at Truk and then headed to Howland island, and on that last leg pretty much true to the story she hit bad weather, became disoriented and went down. The book talks about the Navy and Coast Guard and Earhart being very confused about who was supposed to transmit exactly what, when and on what frequency.
Goerner could write and the story flowed well. I always figured she went into the drink and that was it, but maybe not. His book is probably about as close to it as we'll ever get unless someone finds the plane or the bodies.
Kind of ironic that the first real action of the war (after the destruction of the ABDA command) took place in the Coral Sea and the first counter strike in the Solomons, which really had nothing to do with her story. So her overflight of Truk would have been essentially worthless - it would have shown something we were unprepared to deal with.
Its a nice theory I suppose......but based on what I've seen and know about the time its still unsupported. All that can really be confirmed is that the Itasca heard her on their radio.....and then the Pacific got them.
By the way what is ABDA?