It remains one of the great 20th-century mysteries: what exactly happened when pioneering female pilot Amelia Earhart took her flight around the world?
Her plane was never found.
Now, on the 88th anniversary of that fateful flight, scientists are announcing a new effort to hunt for clues of Earhart’s missing plane, the Electra.
Amelia Earhart disappeared on July 2, 1937, at the age of 39
Highlights
- Researchers from Purdue University are reopening the investigation into the disappearance of Amelia Earhart, 88 years after she and Fred Noonan disappeared on a flight around the world.
- Researchers say new satellite photos show something protruding from the water near where she is supposed to have crashed.
- Scientists from other groups say the new photos are actually of something else entirely.
Image credits: Bettmann/Getty
Image credits: Archaeological Legacy Institute
The date was July 2nd, 1937. Amelia, along with navigator Fred Noonan, set off to become the first female pilot to circumnavigate the Earth at the Equator.
For years, investigators have believed the pair ran out of fuel before reaching their planned destination, Howland Island, and crash-landed in the Pacific Ocean.
We do know the two were last seen in New Guinea. Earhart was 39 at the time.
Image credits: San Diego Air and Space Museum Archive
Another theory about what happened, one supported by U.S. nonprofit The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery, or TIGHAR, says Earhart and Noonan likely landed on Gardner Island, now known as Nikumaroro.
TIGHAR conducted an extensive search of the small remote island lagoon back in 2012 and 2017, but came up empty.
Now officials say satellite photos are prompting them to reopen another search of the same island, which is about 1,000 miles (+1,600 kilometers) from Fiji.
“We owe it to Amelia”: Researchers at Purdue will reopen the search on Nikumaroro
Image credits: Archaeological Legacy Institute
To researchers at the Purdue Research Foundation, it’s obvious.
A protruding shape is seen near the shores of the island, which is only about 4 miles wide, including its lagoon.
The object first appeared in satellite photos starting in 2015, taken after a storm had shifted the sand.
In subsequent photos, the shape remains.
Researchers from Purdue University, which funded Earhart’s fateful first mission, are now planning another trip to the area in November to investigate whether the object is Earhart’s missing Lockheed Electra 10E aircraft.
According to an interview with Steve Shultz, Perdue’s general counsel, on NBC News: “We believe we owe it to Amelia and her legacy at Purdue to fulfill her wishes, if possible, to bring the Electra back to Purdue.”
“It’s a coconut palm tree with root ball”: Other researchers say the sat photos prove nothing
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Image credits: NASA
But others are calling foul. “We’ve looked there in that spot, and there’s nothing there,” said Ric Gillespie, executive director at TIGHAR.
During the same NBC News report, Gillespie said the mysterious object in the satellite photos is not Earhart’s plane but actually something much less exciting. A coconut tree.
“I understand the desire to find a piece of Amelia Earhart’s airplane. God knows we’ve tried,” Gillespie said.
“But the data, the facts, do not support the hypothesis. It’s as simple as that.”
NBC said Gillespie “believes the object in the satellite image is a coconut palm tree with a root ball, washed up in a storm.”
“Earhart’s dynamism was contagious”: Earhart was respected and loved at Purdue
Image credits: San Diego Air and Space Museum Archive
Despite what the next expedition to Nikumaroro island may discover, there’s no denying Earhart’s role in the advancement of women in aviation and engineering.
Earhart took a job at Purdue University in 1935, two years before her flight, as a counselor and advisor in its aeronautical engineering department.
Biographers at Purdue have written about Earhart’s open personality, saying that she was “wildly popular with students.”
According to Purdue’s website, Earhart’s “dynamism and excitement were contagious, and her interest in helping women was sincere. She would have 20 young women gathered to speak with her, and she would sit down on the floor with them and just talk.”
Before her job at Purdue, Earhart had already become the first woman to fly across the Atlantic solo.
The mission to Nikumaroro will take six days by boat this November
Image credits: Angela K. Kepler /Wikimedia
Schultz said Earhart’s post-flight plan was to return the Electra to the school so it could be studied by engineers and aviation students.
The mission to reach the island will not be a quick trip. Scientists say it will take six days to reach Nikumaroro by boat in November. Then they’ll have another five days on the island for research.
Shultz is adamant their search will be fruitful.
“If we hopefully solve the mystery and confirm that it is, then there will be further efforts to bring it back, hopefully to a permanent home,” Schultz said in the NBC interview.
Netizens are always up for a good mystery, and Amelia Earhart’s is one of the most popular
