Imagine diving headfirst into one of the biggest mysteries of the 20th century—what happened to the legendary Amelia Earhart? This episode takes us on a whirlwind journey through time and space, exploring the fateful events of 1937 when Earhart, a trailblazing aviator and icon, vanished over the Pacific Ocean during her ambitious attempt to circumnavigate the globe. Our guest, Dick Spink, an adventurous entrepreneur with a knack for storytelling, shares his personal odyssey that began with a casual curiosity and morphed into a passionate quest filled with archival research, eyewitness interviews, and even expeditions to the Marshall Islands.

With humor and heart, the conversation navigates complex themes such as the nature of belief, the allure of myth, and how our understanding of history can be shaped by personal stories and collective memory. We delve into the compelling interplay between fact and fiction, questioning how history is written and whose voices are amplified in the telling of these tales. By the end, we find ourselves not just looking for answers to a historical puzzle but reflecting on our own stories and the paths we choose to follow.

Takeaways:

1. Amelia Earhart's story isn’t just about flying; it’s a testament to courage and possibility.
2. The power of storytelling shapes our identity and can ignite personal change and growth.
3. The mystery of Amelia Earhart’s disappearance opens doors to questions about history and belief.

Companies mentioned in this episode:

1. Ignite Voice, Inc.
2. History Channel
3. aluminumboatkit.com
4. IndiaStrader.com

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Carelessness. You know, there was a lot of women that flew with Amelia Earhart that said, you know, she had a lot of guts.

She wasn't the greatest pilot, but she had a lot of guts. And she crashed five airplanes. She walked away from every one of them.

Stories are powerful. They're in our DNA. They help us make sense of the world, right? Give meaning to our experiences and inspire us to do extraordinary things.

But they also shape what we notice, what we remember, and sometimes what we're willing or unwilling to question.

And that tension between story as inspiration and story as influence is something we see everywhere, not just in history, but in our relationships, our careers, and the way we understand ourselves.

And because once a story takes hold, it can grow beyond the facts alone. It can become part of culture, identity, and even national mythology.

And those kinds of stories tend to last even when experts continue to debate what really happened.

Today's conversation sits right in that space. We're talking about one of the most enduring mysteries of the 20th century. What happened to Amelia Earhart.

And about what happens when a question becomes a lifelong pursuit.

Now, that name sounds familiar, right? Amelia Earhart. Well, she wasn't just a pilot. She was a global icon.

And what happened next has remained an open question for nearly 90 years.

So our guest today, Dick Spink, is an entrepreneur, an adventurer, a teacher, an actor who found himself drawn into that mystery almost by accident. What started as curiosity became years of travel, eyewitness interviews, archival research, and deep personal investment.

And while there are many theories about what happened and no single explanation that everyone agrees on, this episode isn't about proving who's right or who's wrong.

This is about story, about what happens when a story captures the imagination, how belief and evidence interact, and how stories can shape identity, purpose, and direction.

Because some stories lift people up, some create heroes, some protect ideals we want to believe in, and others quietly challenge the versions we've grown comfortable with. It makes us human.

As you listen.

Today, we invite you to hold two Ideas at once, the incredible power of story to motivate and inspire, and the importance of staying aware of how deeply stories can guide what we see and how we interpret the world.

Here's Dick Spink.

You know that History Channel show he did, which was the number one show for viewership that the History Channel did, and it was a two and a half hour special. And then several other shows have spawned from that. But when you do know the material really well, it just really helps to explain to people.

And everybody, of course, wants to know about Amelia Earhart. She's one of the greatest pieces of history of the country.

Such a.

Not just the country, but the world.

Yeah. Such a mystery and such a compelling mystery. Okay. I find it fascinating what happened in the Marshall Islands your first visit.

You know, I was down there, of course, selling my boat. You know, I was a boat builder for a long time, amongst other things, and I trans.

I kind of transferred from my knowledge of building boats into selling boats and helping people build their own boats.

And that's when I started aluminumboatkit.com Ramsey saw my webpage and he just said, hey, listen, why don't you fly down here to the Marshall Islands? And, you know, we've got about 30% unemployment here, and we really need something for our youth to do.

And so I said, oh, where are the Marshall Islands?

And from that point, I jumped on an airplane, went down to the Marshall Islands, and I got to know some people really well, got to know the president of the country, which is really no big deal because, you know, there's only 30,000 people in the Marshall Islands. So it's kind of like, you know, Bill and the mayor of Belling.

Dick, can you just. For people who don't know.

Dick, can you back up for one second and just tell us where the Marshall Islands are and why it ended up factoring into Amelia Earhart what her story was really quick.

Oh, okay, yeah, no problem. If you draw a line from, let's say, Hawaii to Australia, where you cross the equator, you are going to be in a series of islands.

It's the largest atoll nation on the planet. It's about a million square miles in area, but it only has the land mass about the size of Rhode Island.

It sits from 4 degrees north to 9 degrees north of the Pacific. It's actually just on the north side of the equator. So like I said, it's about halfway between Australia and Hawaii. It's a long ways from anywhere.

It truly is. The ocean's about 85 degrees. Beautiful. It's probably one of the most untouched aquacultures in, you know, in the world and really beautiful.

A very good friend of mine now, Martin Daley, whose ships I run in the Pacific Indies trader, he became a good friend of mine as well when I was down in the Marshall Islands visiting Ramsay. And Martin has discovered that part of the world for his surfing exploration business. And he has since formed his first.

I actually helped him build his first land based resort which is on the atoll of Eiling Lapl. And it's a fantastic place. If you want a place that's just out of this world to go visit, you should go stay in his resort. It's fantastic.

IndiaStrader.com I'm on my way.

You sold us. Yeah, we're in.

I know Kat, you'll be there in a minute.

You know I will. Next time you're going on the Indies, you tell me and I'm on it. So how does Amelia Earhart factor into the Marshalls?

Give us her who was she itinerary, who was she her and what happened?

Okay, well, Amelia Earhart of course being the, she was going to be the first person, not just woman, but the first person to fly around the world approximating the equator.

She was funded by, partially by her husband George Putnam, and also by university in California that ended up helping build her airplane, a Lockheed 10E. Now she had the extra fuel tanks in this plane to make it all the way around.

And she had some critical areas of the flight that she had to make that was specific. You specifically lay New guinea to Howland island. That's about 25, 52 miles that she had to make that flight.

And of course, you know, everybody knows Amelia Earhart. For those people that might be listening that don't know of Amelia Earhart, she was, she was first woman to fly across the Atlantic.

Of course when she did that, she did that as a, as a passenger in a plane friendship. And then again she flew across in her Lockheed Vega. She did it, she sold us after, after Charles Lindbergh did.

Well, now she was onto something bigger.

She was going to fly around the world and of course she had a tough flight to make that was the biggest over the ocean 25, 50 miles, like flying from let's say Los Angeles to New York to find the 18th hole on a golf course in New York without any visual aids along the way. Now, her aircraft, Lockheed 10E, it had a range of 4,100 to 4,500 miles. Okay? And that was well documented.

And her flight engineer that helped, that did her fuel study and her range study was Clarence Kelly Johnson, who was the founder of Skunk works, designed the SR71. The P38, did a lot of work on Amelia Earhart's aircraft as far as the designing. So she had plenty of range to make it to Howland Island.

However, she did have one fallback plan and one fallback plan only, and that was in case she couldn't find Howland Island. And Holland island was only a mile and a half long by a half mile wide.

Now, as you fly across, I know, Kat, you've flown across the ocean before and you look down and you see whether you're crossing, whether it's the Atlantic or whether it's the Pacific. And you look down and you see shadows of clouds cast on the ocean. They look like little islands.

He was the head of Air Commerce and he was very close friends with Amelia Earhart. And this backup plan she had was very well documented.

And that was that if she wasn't going to find Howland island, then she was going to turn around, fly west, back to the Gilbert Islands, which were British held. Okay? So we know that Amelia Earhart was further north.

When she radioed in one of the last few radio transmissions we got from her, she was at 1,000ft under an overcast sky. The Coast Guard cutter Itasca was sitting at Howland island trying to radio her in. They were sitting in clear blue sky.

The only place there were clouds in that area were to the northwest. Well, the Marshall Islands are just to the north of the Gilberts.

So when she turned around on her fallback plan to find the Gilberts, she actually flew to the Marshall Islands and landed at Melia Tull, where I've led nine expeditions where we've actually come up with parts of the aircraft. I explained pretty much that whole thing in the History Channel television show.

And we took all the cameras and everything and filmed part of the show out there. We were talking about all the war relics from World War II because it was quite a theater of war, World War II.

And I just made the comment, you know, didn't Amelia Earhart disappear in this part of the world. And there was an old guy at the end of the table said, yeah, she landed on our island.

And my uncle watched her for two days, and I kind of laughed at him. And anyway, that's how I. And I don't want to go on and on about that, but that's how I got started in the whole Amelia Earhart thing.

And one thing led to another, and it culminated with a few television shows and then just a lot of guest speaking around the country.

I find it fascinating because there's a theory that you had about or you have about what happened to her at Melieth, and she was with Fred Noon, right, who was her navigator at the time?

Yes, that's correct. Fred Noon.

So what happened to them?

Well, once they landed at Millionth Hill.

Landed or crashed, Dick, it was a.

Controlled landing, I would say. Well, when you look at where she landed, the beach, it's all coral heads. So the plane would have been torn up pretty good.

And Biliman Omron was a medic in Jaliud who was actually called out to the ship to treat Fred Noonan from the scars he received from the landing. And that's another well documented. I mean, there was over 200 eyewitnesses, very credible people that saw Millie Earhart in the Marshall Islands.

And Billamin Omram was one of the most credible witnesses. And anyway, so she was picked up from Millie.

She was taken to Jaliut, where she spent some time in Jali before the Japanese moved her all the way to Saipan. But when she was in Jali, there were a lot of people that saw her there.

He was writing notes in bottles and throwing them overboard. And one of the notes, it said that he was on a ship in the Marshall Islands. His ship, the Vivio, which crashed, ran aground on one of the atolls.

He was picked up by the Japanese. Their entire crew is executed except for him because he was a mechanic and the Japanese used him. They held him in prison in Jaliyah.

And on that note, in that bottle that he threw over that was picked up in Solac, France, was the message that said, I was held by the Japanese in Jalute and in a cell Next to me was Amelia Earhart, and in another cell beside her was her mechanic, meaning Fred Noonan, her navigator.

And so, as you can imagine, in the last few months, the government of Saipan has finally reached out to Donald Trump and said, you know, listen, we want some more of these files that are being held secret about Amelia Hart because she's part of our history. We know she was here. You need to get to the bottom of this and release those files. And of course, Trump said he was going to do that.

So that's one of the things that is currently being talked about. But, you know, we'll just have to wait and see.

Two things. So why would the Japanese take Amelia Earhart and Fred Noon? Why wouldn't any governments know about that? Or why hasn't that been shared?

Listen, we said, listen, we think Amelia Earhart has gone down the Marshall Islands. We want to go in and we want to see, we want to search for her because we believe she went down in the Marshalls.

And the Japanese government returned and said, listen, we, we absolutely, under no circumstances will you be allowed to have any ships in the Marshall Islands. It's off limits. But we'll send a ship to go. Look, we'll send, in fact send three ships.

One of those ships happened to be the Koshu Maru, which we have the logs of the Koshi Maru. We know it was in Jalute the second week of July.

And that was that photograph we have, that we based a lot of our show on was that photograph of not only the ship, but it had in the foreground Amelia Earhart. It had Fred Noonan in the photo. It had tied up to the back of the ship a barge with an airplane on it.

And as the Marshallese men told several people, when they had to go get Amelia Earhart's plane from Melia Toll, they used a wooden barge. There were 39 men. Marshallese men were conscribed by the Japanese.

They were told to get their sleeping masks, go to this island, that they had to move a plane from the outside of the island in to the lagoon and you can see on Google Earth still where all the coral heads are moved out of the road so they could get a barge into that little island. And that's the island that I led the expeditions on.

And why was this information kept? I don't understand that.

Well, you have to remember Amelia Earhart being who she was at the time. I mean, she was America's sweetheart.

Okay, here she comes and ends up in Japanese territory, which is a fervent, you know, forbidden to be in the Japanese territory at that time. And all of a sudden she's there. The Japanese probably are having a heck of a time trying to figure out what they're going to do with Amelia Earhart.

And you know, they don't want anybody to know anything that's going on. She's seen at this point probably a lot of the war machine.

And this is all off limits to Westerners of what's, what's going on in the Marshall Islands. And of course, they were treating her more than likely treating her as a spy.

So at that point, here they are and she probably still thinks that she's coming back to the United States. So what do the Japanese do? They don't know what to do. They don't know what to do.

They're holding her for a while, so they move her up the chain and send her to Saipan, which Saipan is of course, an area where was pretty critical. Now you gotta remember too, this was, this was several years before Pearl harbor. And we are trying to figure out how to.

We wanted to know as much about the Marshall Islands as we could. There's several different theories about what Amelia Earhart was doing there in the time, whether she was a spy or what was going on.

The only thing that myself and several researchers that I work with is to just come to the conclusion the everybody and bring out the front that yes, she was ultimately held by the Japanese. And once that comes out, then you can delve into all of the other, the other theories that happened to Amelia Earhart.

We just wanted to know that everybody know that, yes, she was there. And the majority of the eyewitnesses saw her in, in Saipan.

I've been to Saipan twice and I met an old guy there, Mr. Sublime, Dave Sublime, he was 93 years old. First time I made it there. And he picked me up in his little car, was driving me all around the island, showing me the island. He was a little boy.

He saw them move her airplane from Tanapeg harbor up To Eslito Field, where our Marines actually found her aircraft in a hangar when we took Saipan. And. And there's been. So George Devine wrote Divine. Divine wrote a book about that whole incident when that happened.

I mean, there's just too many people from the Marshall Islands to Saipan that saw Amelia Earhart, saw her in person, to the Marines that saw her airplane when we took Saipan. So, I mean, the story just goes on and on and on, and it is really an amazing. It's been quite a journey for me.

And you start getting into some different things and being a curious person and having to feed my curiosity. I ended up right in the middle of that really amazing story.

Do you ever sleep?

Well, you know, Yeah, I do. I have to make that work whenever I get a chance.

No, I'm listening, Dick. And I'm just thinking, it's a great story. Whoa. There's so many levels to it.

The academic side of me starts to wonder about a couple of things if I could ask you.

Sure.

One of them is, as America's sweetheart and somebody so important to some people in the U.S. anyway, why would the U.S. government never have done anything at the time or as more information came out?

Well, you got to remember that in today's world, a lot of people think that when they die, they're going to go to fdr. He is someone who was at the time quite a progressive politician. And, you know, you ask a lot of today's modern Democrats, they're idle.

And it's FDR now fdr. You know, I gotta also, just for one point, just say at the time, you gotta remember, tensions between the United States and Japan were pretty.

Were pretty tedious at the time. And they're expanding through the Pacific. We're worried about it. At the time, they had 10 aircraft carriers in the Pacific. We only had two.

After World War II, when things really should have come out, you know, we're trying to rebuild Japan.

And in the process of repatriating Japan, you know, the last thing we wanted people to know was that Amelia Earhart died at the hands of the Japanese. You could imagine that. America's sweetheart.

That would have thrown that election because Wendell Wilkie wanted us to get involved and stop being an isolationist. So, I mean, there were politics at play, just like, just like today were playing back then. So that really is the best answer to that question.

KEVIN okay, so you're assuming that she died at the hands of the Japanese as a prisoner at the time, yes.

She was held in Saipan. There were just too many eyewitnesses that saw her, her there.

And we, we interviewed one woman who took some food down to, oh, I believe it was her uncle. And we had her on the, on the History Channel show, Josephine Blanco.

And she, when she was a little girl, she herself actually saw Amelia Earhart and gave a great description of her. And she said so. It's funny, because she was, you know, dressed like a man, which Amelia Hart wore a lot of clothes like a man did.

So I mean, there were just too many people that saw her there.

So as this led up to World War II and then World War II broke out, of course, she slipped away.

And in all this time, have we uncovered any documents of any kind, anything original proof or something solid beyond people suggesting they saw her?

Well, you know, there are a lot of records in the National Archives, Naval Attache, Washington.

I've got article right here in front of me where we were asking the Japanese to let us search in the Marshall Islands, because we believe went down there. There's over 4,000 pages in the National Archives now that are not classified relating to Amelia Earhart and the loss of Amelia Earhart.

There were the post lost radio transmissions that took place of her when she went. Once she was down, she was trying to make radio transmissions, calling for help and giving description.

One of those radio transmissions was picked up by a lady listening to her shortwave radio.

And she gave descriptions of an atoll called Mulgrave Atoll at the time, which on the old English charts is Millie Atoll, which were the charts that Fred Newman had. And they gave Descriptions of where she was. I mean, Kevin, it goes on and on and on.

So why secrecy now? Why wouldn't all of the records be released? What kind of impact would that have if they were? Because, I mean, it's, it's over.

You know, Kat, you're right. And that's my point exactly. You know, why, why can't we just let this, you know, let's just, let's just bring it all out.

Let's, let's, let's talk about it and. Come on, release it. Well, and see, a lot of that. FDR threw her under the bus. He really did.

Now, at the time, there was probably a good reason for us to, to keep us out of World War II, but now it's time to let it, to bring.

It happened anyway, didn't it?

Yeah, it did. I mean, it. And, and so that's, that's one of the main things I always tell people, because they always ask that question. I mean, why?

Come on, let's just bring it out. Let's let it go. Well, a lot of this information was buried and buried deep back then because they didn't want it to come out.

So now you just have all these other telltale signs of it.

So, I mean, if something was buried by a presidential directive and then people trying to, to cover the, you know, the, COVID the whole story up, it's just, you know, to protect someone's background. Let's, it's time. Let's just, let's just bring the whole story out. And that's, that's, that's kind of what we're hoping Donald Trump is going to do.

He's going to try and get to the bottom. I mean, he's got his hands full with everything else.

But, but we're, we're still hoping that something is going to happen and that he's going to put somebody in charge of this to dig it up.

Now, I could only imagine those people that are going through some of the archives and some of the material could pull some of these pieces of paper out and look at these and go, oh, my God, is this stuff that we could really tell the public? I mean, you know, how cruel the Japanese were during World War II, framing it like that.

It sounds so much like the Epstein files. There's some parallels that are ironic and bizarre.

Just curious, from your perspective, it seems such a stupid move on Amelia Earhart and her husband's part to send her on this journey during World War II across a war zone. Why do you suppose? What were they thinking?

And we have to do what we have to do. And. And she was. She was a pretty amazing. A pretty amazing woman.

And, you know, gosh, there have been so many books written about her and so many different things that she has done and, you know. Yeah, carelessness. You know, there was a lot of women that flew with Amelia Earhart that said, you know, she had a lot of guts.

She wasn't the greatest pilot, but she had a lot of guts. And there were, you know, she. You know, she crashed five airplanes. She walked away from every one of them. But. And there's been.

You know, a lot of people critiqued her flying and said that she wasn't that great of a pilot, but, you know, she had the guts, and that's really what mattered, and she wanted to do this. This was her ultimate flight. Flying around the world, approximating the equator.

Flight was a big deal back then. It wasn't like it is now. Flying is just, you know, we. We just think of it as our. As a. Right. Right back then, it was really a privilege, wasn't it?

Oh, yeah. And, you know, the airplane she had at the time, too, at Lockheed, it was a beautiful aircraft.

One of the things that really stayed with me after this conversation is how a single question can open an entire chapter in someone's life. And for Dick, the search for Amelia Earhart wasn't just about him.

It became about connection, curiosity, and following a path that felt deeply personal and meaningful.

And most importantly, I think it's a powerful reminder of what story can do, how a narrative can motivate us, shape our choices, give direction to our energy and attention. Story can be a compass, and it can also be something worth pausing to reflect on. You know, we notice how. How much influence it holds in our lives.

Maybe part of why this story still resonates is because of who Amelia was in the first place. Not just a missing person, but someone who chose courage, risk, and possibility at a time when that kind of choice was rare and bold for women.

Her life and the mystery around her disappearance continue to invite big questions about ambition, exploration, and what it means to push beyond what's known.

So whether you're drawn to historical mysteries or you're just thinking about the stories you tell yourself about who you are and what you're capable of, we hope this episode invites you to reflect on what stories you're following and why it matters to you.

Because the stories we engage with don't just entertain us. They shape our identity, our direction, our beliefs, and sometimes even the risks we're willing to take.

If today's conversation sparked something for you, we'd love for you to share it. Subscribe and join us for future episodes as we keep exploring voice, story, and the human experience.

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