Great Mysteries and Myths of the Twentieth Century (1998)

Season 1: Episode 8

Amelia Earhart was the all American heroine of the 1930s. Her barnstorming flights across America, the Atlantic and the rest of the world had inspired a generation, but suddenly, on the last leg of her Pacific crossing on her ultimate round-the-world trip she and her co-pilot disappeared over Japanese occupied territory. Had she been on a spying mission for the US Government? Why were no traces of her aircraft found? Had she been captured by the Japanese and then executed for her part in an elaborate, intelligence gathering mission? - or was she simply the victim of exhaustion and a navigation error?