Search for Amelia Earhart Starts Again

A photo of Amelia Earhart and her employment application. CREDIT: DailyGrommet/i-concepts View full size image

The search for Amelia Earhart will resume this summer in the waters off Nikumaroro, an uninhabited island in the southwestern Pacific republic of Kiribati where the legendary pilot might have died as a castaway.

With support from the Discovery Channel, the expedition will be carried out by the The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery (TIGHAR), which has long been investigating the last, fateful flight taken by Earhart 75 years ago.

The new expedition will use high tech underwater equipment to search for pieces of Earhart's plane.

The tall, slender, blond pilot mysteriously vanished while flying over the Pacific Ocean on July 2, 1937 during a record attempt to fly around the world at the equator.

The general consensus has been that her twin-engined Lockheed "Electra" had run out of fuel and crashed in the Pacific Ocean, somewhere near Howland Island.

But according to Ric Gillespie, TIGHAR's executive director, there is an alternative scenario.

PHOTOS: Amelia Earhart

"The navigation line Amelia described in her final in-flight radio transmission passed through not only Howland Island, her intended destination, but also Gardner Island, now called Nikumaroro," Gillespie said.

The possibility that Earhart and navigator Fred Noonan might have made an emergency landing on Nikumaroro's flat coral reef, some 300 miles southeast of their target destination, is not a new theory.

"This was the oldest Earhart theory," Gillespie said. "This was the theory the Navy came up with in the first days following the flight's disappearance. And they did search the atoll, but only from the air," Gillespie said.

In nine archaeological expeditions to Nikumaroro, Gillespie and his team uncovered a number of artifacts which, combined with archival research, provide strong circumstantial evidence for a castaway presence.

PHOTOS: Clues Point to Amelia Earhart as Castaway

"We found archival records describing the discovering in Nikumaroro in 1940 of the partial skeleton and campsite of what appears to have been a female castaway," he said.

"We identified the place on a remote corner of the atoll that fits the description of where the bones and campsite were found. Archaeological digs there have produced artifacts that speak of an American woman of the 1930s," Gillespie said.

He added that evidence on the island would also suggest that Earhart survived as a castaway "for a matter of weeks, possibly more."

In the forthcoming expedition, Gillespie and his team will be concentrating on Earhart's plane. The underwater search will be carried by Phoenix International, the U.S. Navy's primary deep ocean search and recovery contractor.

On July 2, the 75th anniversary of Earhart's disappearance, the TIGHAR team will sail from Honolulu aboard the University of Hawaii oceanographic research ship R/V Ka Imikai-O-Kanaloa.

"When we get there, in about eight days, we'll survey the general area with multi-beam sonar to create an accurate map of the undersea topography and prioritize the search area," Gillespie told Discovery News.

"Targets will be identified using high resolution, side scan sonar mounted on an Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV). Finally, we will investigate suspicious looking targets using a Remote Operated Vehicle (ROV) with dual manipulators and color video camera system and lights," Gillespie said.

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The search relies on what Gillespie called "the most exciting breakthrough" -- a photograph of the island's western shoreline taken three months after Amelia's disappearance.

"It shows an unexplained object protruding from the water on the fringing reef," Gillespie said.

Forensic imaging analyses of the photo suggest that the shape and dimension of the object are consistent with the landing gear of a Lockheed Electra.

"We have reason to believe that the airplane went over the reef edge near the spot where the object appears in the photo," Gillespie said.

"We'll do our best to find Amelia. During the painful recovery from the Great Depression, Amelia Earhart inspired America with her courage and determination. America needs Amelia again," Gillespie said.

This article was provided by Discovery News.