Is it a plane or a tree? Amelia Earhart expedition aims to solve mystery of disappearance
The Guardian US
T
The Guardian US
Original Source
A US research expedition is heading to a remote Pacific atoll to investigate what they believe is the wreckage of aviator Amelia Earhart's plane, which vanished in 1937. The discovery would mark a major breakthrough in solving one of aviation's greatest mysteries, though other experts remain skeptical that the submerged object is anything more than a fallen tree.
A team of US researchers is approaching a remote Pacific atoll where they suspect the famed aviator Amelia Earhart crash-landed in 1937, in the latest attempt to crack one of the biggest mysteries of the 20th century.
The 17-person expedition was inspired by satellite images taken over several years showing a submerged object in the uninhabited island’s sandy lagoon – evidence dismissed by other longtime Earhart sleuths who say it is probably a fallen tree.
These researchers – led by archaeologists who raised funding from Earhart’s former benefactor, Purdue University – hope it will instead be revealed as the wreckage of her Lockheed Model 10-E Electra. Separate aerial footage of the area suggested the submerged object has a metallic glint, the team say.
“Finding Amelia Earhart’s Electra aircraft would be the discovery of a lifetime,” said the expedition’s leader, Richard Pettigrew, before he set sail this month. “Confirming the plane wreckage there would be the smoking-gun proof.”
Earhart and her navigator Fred Noonan vanished during their attempt to circumnavigate the globe at the equator. By that point, Earhart, 39, was already a celebrity and aviation pioneer, having broken several records including being the first woman to make a nonstop solo transatlantic flight.
Locating the wreck of the twin-engine plane would confirm a long-held – but unproven – hypothesis that Earhart and Noonan ditched at the atoll of Nikumaroro, part of the archipelago country of Kiribati and about halfway between Australia and Hawaii.
They were en route to Howland Island, about 400 miles north of Nikumaroro, when their plane ran low on fuel and disappeared.
After a six-day sea voyage from Tarawa, the capital of Kiribati, the research group is expected to arrive on the uninhabited atoll on Tuesday local time and will spend several days searching for the “Taraia Object”, an elongated shape named after the part of the island where it was first noticed in a 2020 satellite image.
The expedition says it has been lying there for several years, and is even visible in aerial photography dating back to 1938.
Pettigrew, who heads the Archaeological Legacy Institute, a non-profit organisation, raised funds for the mission with Purdue University in Indiana, where Earhart once taught and which funded her ill-fated final flight on the modified plane she called her “flying laboratory”. The university runs an airport and opened an Amelia Earhart Terminal last year.
The expedition builds on an already large body of evidence pinpointing the atoll as the location where the aviators went down. Much of it was gathered during dozens of visits between 1989 and 2019 by teams from the US explorers group Tigher (The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery).
Tighar’s co-founder – and perhaps Earhart’s most well-known explorer – Ric Gillespie, said the Taraia Object was likely a dead pandanus tree, which is native to the area, that washed into the lagoon.
Gillespie, who is the author of One More Good Flight: The Amelia Earhart Tragedy, said he and other teams had visited the exact site where the object was located in 2001 and 2007 with metal detectors.
“There’s nothing there, or we would have found it,” he said in an interview this year. “If they suddenly discover that Amelia Earhart’s wreckage is there, I’ll be very surprised, but I’d be the first one to congratulate them. But I don’t think they are going to find anything.”
While Tighar agrees the Electra made an emergency landing on the atoll, they believe it was washed off a reef and now probably lies undiscovered and in pieces in deep water off the island’s western end.
Tighar’s version of the mystery was that Earhart, and possibly Noonan, were marooned on Nikumaroro but survived for a while, drinking rainwater and eating small fish and turtles. This theory is based on signs of a castaway’s campsite and 1930s-era artefacts, such as a jar of what is believed to be cosmetics freckle cream.
The pair’s disappearance led to a large US government search, including a flyover of Nikumaroro, then known as Gardner Island.
The Purdue mission says the object may not have been found by previous expeditions as it could have been covered with sand.
The 17-person expedition was inspired by satellite images taken over several years showing a submerged object in the uninhabited island’s sandy lagoon – evidence dismissed by other longtime Earhart sleuths who say it is probably a fallen tree.
These researchers – led by archaeologists who raised funding from Earhart’s former benefactor, Purdue University – hope it will instead be revealed as the wreckage of her Lockheed Model 10-E Electra. Separate aerial footage of the area suggested the submerged object has a metallic glint, the team say.
“Finding Amelia Earhart’s Electra aircraft would be the discovery of a lifetime,” said the expedition’s leader, Richard Pettigrew, before he set sail this month. “Confirming the plane wreckage there would be the smoking-gun proof.”
Earhart and her navigator Fred Noonan vanished during their attempt to circumnavigate the globe at the equator. By that point, Earhart, 39, was already a celebrity and aviation pioneer, having broken several records including being the first woman to make a nonstop solo transatlantic flight.
Locating the wreck of the twin-engine plane would confirm a long-held – but unproven – hypothesis that Earhart and Noonan ditched at the atoll of Nikumaroro, part of the archipelago country of Kiribati and about halfway between Australia and Hawaii.
They were en route to Howland Island, about 400 miles north of Nikumaroro, when their plane ran low on fuel and disappeared.
After a six-day sea voyage from Tarawa, the capital of Kiribati, the research group is expected to arrive on the uninhabited atoll on Tuesday local time and will spend several days searching for the “Taraia Object”, an elongated shape named after the part of the island where it was first noticed in a 2020 satellite image.
The expedition says it has been lying there for several years, and is even visible in aerial photography dating back to 1938.
Pettigrew, who heads the Archaeological Legacy Institute, a non-profit organisation, raised funds for the mission with Purdue University in Indiana, where Earhart once taught and which funded her ill-fated final flight on the modified plane she called her “flying laboratory”. The university runs an airport and opened an Amelia Earhart Terminal last year.
The expedition builds on an already large body of evidence pinpointing the atoll as the location where the aviators went down. Much of it was gathered during dozens of visits between 1989 and 2019 by teams from the US explorers group Tigher (The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery).
Tighar’s co-founder – and perhaps Earhart’s most well-known explorer – Ric Gillespie, said the Taraia Object was likely a dead pandanus tree, which is native to the area, that washed into the lagoon.
Gillespie, who is the author of One More Good Flight: The Amelia Earhart Tragedy, said he and other teams had visited the exact site where the object was located in 2001 and 2007 with metal detectors.
“There’s nothing there, or we would have found it,” he said in an interview this year. “If they suddenly discover that Amelia Earhart’s wreckage is there, I’ll be very surprised, but I’d be the first one to congratulate them. But I don’t think they are going to find anything.”
While Tighar agrees the Electra made an emergency landing on the atoll, they believe it was washed off a reef and now probably lies undiscovered and in pieces in deep water off the island’s western end.
Tighar’s version of the mystery was that Earhart, and possibly Noonan, were marooned on Nikumaroro but survived for a while, drinking rainwater and eating small fish and turtles. This theory is based on signs of a castaway’s campsite and 1930s-era artefacts, such as a jar of what is believed to be cosmetics freckle cream.
The pair’s disappearance led to a large US government search, including a flyover of Nikumaroro, then known as Gardner Island.
The Purdue mission says the object may not have been found by previous expeditions as it could have been covered with sand.
🔗 Share Article
Tags:#أميليا إيرهارت#الطيران#اكتشافات أثرية#ألغاز تاريخية#المحيط الهادئ#الأثار
Source: The Guardian US
For Context
Related reads from the same topic or latest developments
