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    Noonan joined the navy at seventeen years of age and spent twenty-two years as a merchant sailor and officer. He survived the sinking of three ships struck by German U-boat torpedoes during World War I. Noonan earned a master’s license for oceangoing ships of unlimited tonnage. Later, he qualified for a license as a Mississippi River boat pilot.
    Noonan eventually quit the sea and moved into aviation. While living in New Orleans in 1929, he took flight training at the Texas Air Transport SAT division in nearby Chalmette. In January 1930, he was issued a pilot’s license for transport planes. In 1930, he started working for the New York, Rio, and Buenos Aires Airlines that later merged into Pan American Airways. In 1935, Noonan navigated the first round trip of the four-engine flying boat, the China Clipper , between San Francisco and Honolulu. Later, he mapped Pan American clipper routes across the Pacific Ocean. In 1934, he was assigned to the newly established Pan Am Pacific Division, headquartered in San Francisco.
    No one doubted Noonan’s abilities as a navigator. In truth, he was famous, almost legendary, among navigators for his pioneering Pan American Airways work and was regarded as the most accomplished aerial navigator in the world. He soon earned a reputation as being competent with the complexities of celestial navigation and in a short time was regarded as one of the most experienced navigators in the world—when he was sober. Though never noted in his military and professional records, it was well known that Noonan had a drinking problem.
    In spite of his numerous and documented successes at Pan Am, the “official” story was that he resigned from the company after seven years. Another version of his departure from Pan Am, and likely the true one, had to do with Noonan’s well-known drinking problem; the company was forced to let him go. According to author Vincent Loomis, “No one in the aviation industry would touch him . . . because of his addiction to alcohol.” As it happened, Noonan was living in Oakland as Earhart and her team were preparing for the flight around the world.
    At one time or another, Putnam, Mantz, and Earhart all expressed some dissatisfaction with the navigational abilities of Manning. William Miller of the Bureau of Air Commerce asked Putnam how the Oakland-to-Honolulu flight had gone, and Putnam commented on concerns relative to Manning’s navigational problems. Miller told Putnam about Noonan, praised him highly, and suggested that he could set up a meeting between the two men. A conference was arranged a few days later, and by the time it was concluded, Noonan had agreed to assist in the navigation as far as Howland Island. Earhart met with Noonan a short time later. With the passage of a few more days, he would be selected to replace Manning as navigator.
    As preparations continued for the around-the-world flight, Noonan was filing for a Mexican divorce from his wife. Approximately one week later, he and his fiancée, Mary B. “Bee” Martinelli, eloped to Yuma, Arizona, and were married on March 27. Noonan and Bee were driving the Golden Gate Highway near Fresno on the way back to Oakland, Fred at the wheel, when they experienced a head-on collision. The subsequent investigation showed Noonan was driving in the wrong lane of traffic. Acquaintances suspected Noonan was drunk.
    At the time, Noonan held a second-class commercial radio operator’s license that he had earned around 1931. This type of license required “transmitting and sound reading at a speed not less than sixteen words per minute in Continental Morse Code and twenty words per minute in plain language.” In 1935, Almon Gray, a Pan American Airways flight officer, observed that Noonan could send and receive plain language at speeds of only eight to ten words per minute. Ultimately, it was determined Noonan had limited facility with Morse code.
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