There had been rain in the night, like thunder on the aged tin roof. Not the usual Hilo rain, this deluge reminded the Admiral of the furious squalls in the Line Islands south of Hawaii, at Howland, where he had spent that never to be forgotten July a lifetime ago, before the War, when he was a junior deck officer on the battleship Colorado. Nothing he had done in his life before or after that July had been as tumultuous, gallant, romantic or futile. The Colorado had been called to Howland to participate in the search for Amelia Earhart.
There had been a brief flirtation, before she had finally married Putnam (after refusing him no less than six times.) Had she been waiting for the then Lieutenant? He had married a year later, in 1932. The romance had ended by 1937, had it not? But after arriving in the search area a week after Earhart had gone missing, the Lieutenant had asked to join the recon flights as an observer, and his request had been granted. (The Colorado carried three unarmed float planes for reconnaissance work.) Considerable care had been given to the question of where to begin the search. With the southeast trades blowing from Howland in the general direction of the Phoenix Islands, the decision was made to start there. Consequently, on the 9th of July, he joined pilot John Short and two other planes as they catapulted away from the ship to try to locate Amelia at Nikumaroro (Gardner Island.) Except she wasn’t there, or if she was, she wasn’t visible from or responsive to the three noisy biplanes, and her silver Lockheed was nowhere to be found. They searched the remaining Phoenix Islands before returning to the ship and then, a few days later, after the arrival of the carrier Lexington with sixty more planes, Colorado returned to Honolulu.
Howland. Did anyone else appreciate the irony in that name? Howland. How to land an airplane there when one has reached the navigational landing coordinates and the runway, the island, the world below has been obliterated by rain. Had navigator Noonan been too nonchalant regarding his navigational skills? He was good, but he wasn’t God. Had anyone in the Earhart entourage thought to plan for such a contingency, before they chose a runway at the center of a vast empty sea and at the far end of the Lockheed’s fuel range? Once they took off from New Guinea with this flight plan, it was Howland or bust.
He thought often of that summer, how the Colorado had brought him home, first to Lahaina for some practice bombardment at Kahoolawe. Unleashing the thunder of the big guns always brought daily events to a crashing halt on Front Street, in Kihei and Kaunakakai, even Lanai City stopped to listen and stare and marvel. Then the short scenic cruise along the familiar southwest coast of Molokai and across the Ka Iwi (Boneyard) Channel to Diamond Head, and finally to Pearl Harbor, where the berth waited on Battleship Row. He had left Honolulu in 1921, on the Matsonia. Now he was returning, after graduating from the Naval Academy, an officer on one of the most powerful ships in the world. From Pearl, he caught a cab to Nuuanu for dinner with his proud parents, then a long, well deserved liberty weekend in Waikiki. Crosby was all over the radio, with something new called “Sweet Leilani”. It had recently won an Academy Award, somehow beating the Gershwins’ supremely sophisticated (and ironic) “They Can’t Take That Away From Me”.
He was still asleep in his old bed when the weekend plans were dashed the next morning. The call came canceling liberty; Colorado was shipping out immediately for search and rescue in the Line Islands. An aircraft was overdue.
The Ruler of the Heavens 