U.S. Navy Sends Fleet of Warships and Aircraft Carrier to Aid Search in Howland Island Region Honolulu, July 4. Pan-American Airways radio station here to-night heard radio signals which may have been sent by Mrs, Amelia Earhart Putnam, adrift in the desolate Pacific Ocean.
If the signals did come from the famous aviatrix, who was lost while en route from Lao, New Guinea, to Howland Island on Friday, the present position of her helpless plane is estimated to be in the neighbourhood of the Phoenix group of islands, in the region of Canton and Enderbury.
With the aircraft carrier Lexington and. the destroyers Cushing, Perkins, Lampoon, and Drayton rushing here from the Pacific Coast, and the U.S.S. Colorado is already on its way to Howland Island from Honolulu, the greatest sea-hunt in history was under way to-day for the lost fliers. At present the U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Itasca is searching the area west of Howland while a naval patrol plane is awaiting favourable weather here to make a new attempt to fly over the South Pacific to look for the fliers.
-The faint signals heard here to-night were the fliers' anxiously awaited answer, it is hoped, to messages previously broadcast by. station KGMB.
Neither the Pan-American station nor others which heard similar signals were able to confirm: positively the identity of the sender but an officer at the Navy radio station at Wailupe said the results so far "look mighty encouraging."
He pointed out, however, that there was the possibility that radio stations endeavouring to find Mrs. Putnam and her navigator, Capt, Fred Noonan, might have been made victims of a cruel hoax.
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