19 Facts About Fred Noonan

At the age of 17, Fred Noonan shipped out of Seattle as an ordinary seaman on a British sailing bark, the Crompton.

Between 1910 and 1915, Fred Noonan worked on over a dozen ships, rising to the ratings of quartermaster and bosun's mate.

Fred Noonan continued working on merchant ships throughout World War I Serving as an officer on ammunition ships, his harrowing wartime service included being on three vessels that were sunk from under him by U-boats.

In March 1935, Fred Noonan was the navigator on the first Pan Am Sikorsky S-42 clipper at San Francisco Bay.

Fred Noonan was 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 Hong Kong.

Fred Noonan resigned from Pan Am because he felt he had risen through the ranks as far as he could as a navigator, and he had an interest in starting a navigation school.

That was fairly common during this era and there is no contemporary evidence Fred Noonan was an alcoholic, although decades later, a few writers and others made some hearsay claims that he was.

Fred Noonan planned to circumnavigate the globe at equatorial latitudes.

Fred Noonan was probably attracted to this project because Earhart's mass market fame would almost certainly generate considerable publicity, which in turn might reasonably be expected to attract attention to him and the navigation school that he hoped to establish when they returned.

The strength of the transmissions received indicated that Earhart and Fred Noonan were indeed in the vicinity of Howland island, but could not find it and after numerous more attempts it appeared that the connection had dropped.

The last transmission received from Earhart indicated she and Fred Noonan were flying along a line of position which Fred Noonan would have calculated and drawn on a chart as passing through Howland.

However, this theory is based entirely on supposition and misunderstanding of astronomy, it does not offer any evidence Fred Noonan was impacted by or failed to adequately account for the 24 hour variance in his sun line calculations, and was reportedly debunked by an experienced navigator on a TIGHAR forum.

Many researchers, including navigator and aeronautical engineer Elgen Long, believe that the Electra ran out of fuel and that Earhart and Fred Noonan ditched at sea.

Fred Noonan's theory is based on an error in Noonan's position when he took his Sun line of position.

Fred Noonan was portrayed by actor David Graf in "The 37s", an episode of Star Trek: Voyager.

The character of an aircraft pilot named Fred Noonan is portrayed by actor Eddie Firestone in The Long Train, a 1961 episode of the television series The Untouchables.

Fred Noonan is mentioned in the song "Amelia" on Bell X1's 2009 album Blue Lights on the Runway, which contemplates the last moments and the fates of Amelia Earhart and Noonan.

The first ballad written about Amelia and Fred Noonan was written and sung by "Red River" Dave McEnerney in 1938 called "Amelia Earhart's Last Flight".

Fred Noonan is a main character in Jane Mendelsohn's novel, I Was Amelia Earhart, and in Neal Bowers' poem "The Fred Noonan Variations".