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http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/2012/0602/Amelia-Earhart-New-evidence-tells-of-her-last-days-on-a-Pacific-atoll-video
For decades, pioneer aviator Amelia Earhart was said to have “disappeared” over the Pacific on her quest to circle the globe along a 29,000-mile equatorial route.
Amelia Earhart: New evidence tells of her last days on a Pacific atoll (+video)
By
Brad Knickerbocker
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Now, new information gives a clearer picture of what happened 75
years ago to Ms. Earhart and her navigator Fred Noonan, where they came
down and how they likely survived – for a while, at least – as castaways
on a remote island, catching rainwater and eating fish, shellfish, and
turtles to survive.
The tale hints at lost opportunities to locate
and rescue the pair in the first crucial days after they went down,
vital information dismissed as inconsequential or a hoax, the failure to
connect important dots regarding physical evidence.
The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery (TIGHAR), a non-profit foundation promoting aviation archaeology and historic aircraft preservation, reported new details Friday leading researchers to this conclusion: Earhart and Noonan, low on fuel and unable to find their next scheduled stopping point – Howland Island – radioed their position, then landed on a reef at uninhabited Gardner Island, a small coral atoll now known as Nikumaroro Island.
Using what fuel remained to turn up the engines to recharge the batteries, they continued to radio distress signals for several days until Earhart’s twin-engine Lockheed Electra aircraft was swept off the reef by rising tides and surf. Using equipment not available in 1937 – digitized information management systems, antenna modeling software, and radio wave propagation analysis programs, TIGHAR concluded that 57 of the 120 signals reported at the time are credible, triangulating Earhart’s position to have been Nikumaroro Island.
"Amelia Earhart did not simply vanish on July 2, 1937,” Richard Gillespie, executive director of TIGHAR, told Discovery News. “Radio distress calls believed to have been sent from the missing plane dominated the headlines and drove much of the US Coast Guard and Navy search.”
"When the search failed, all of the reported post-loss radio signals were categorically dismissed as bogus and have been largely ignored ever since," Mr. Gillespie said. But the results of the study, he said, “suggest that the aircraft was on land and on its wheels for several days following the disappearance.”
In addition, several artifacts found years ago – some of it discovered by Pacific islanders who later inhabited the island – seem to confirm TIGHAR’s conclusion.
These include broken glass artifacts showing evidence of secondary use as tools for cutting or scraping; large numbers of fish and bird bones collected in, or associated with, ash and charcoal deposits; several hundred mollusk shells, as well as bones from at least one turtle; bone fragments and dried fecal matter that might be of human origin.
A photo taken three months after Earhart’s flight shows what could be the landing gear of her aircraft in the waters off the atoll.
“Analyses of the artifacts, faunals and data collected during the expedition are on-going but, at this point, everything supports the hypothesis that the remains found at the site in 1940 were those of Amelia Earhart,” according to TIGHAR.
Other artifacts (some of them reported in 1940 but then lost) include a bone-handled pocket knife of the type known to have been carried by Earhart, part of a man’s shoe, part of a woman’s shoe, a zipper of the kind manufactured in the 1930s, a woman’s compact, and broken pieces of a jar appearing to be the same size and unusual shape as one holding “Dr. Berry's Freckle Ointment.” (Earhart was known to dislike her freckles.)
In July, TIGHAR researchers will return to the area where Earhart and Noonan are thought to have spent their last days, using submersibles to try and detect the famous aircraft they believe to have been swept off a Pacific reef in 1937.
The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery (TIGHAR), a non-profit foundation promoting aviation archaeology and historic aircraft preservation, reported new details Friday leading researchers to this conclusion: Earhart and Noonan, low on fuel and unable to find their next scheduled stopping point – Howland Island – radioed their position, then landed on a reef at uninhabited Gardner Island, a small coral atoll now known as Nikumaroro Island.
Using what fuel remained to turn up the engines to recharge the batteries, they continued to radio distress signals for several days until Earhart’s twin-engine Lockheed Electra aircraft was swept off the reef by rising tides and surf. Using equipment not available in 1937 – digitized information management systems, antenna modeling software, and radio wave propagation analysis programs, TIGHAR concluded that 57 of the 120 signals reported at the time are credible, triangulating Earhart’s position to have been Nikumaroro Island.
"Amelia Earhart did not simply vanish on July 2, 1937,” Richard Gillespie, executive director of TIGHAR, told Discovery News. “Radio distress calls believed to have been sent from the missing plane dominated the headlines and drove much of the US Coast Guard and Navy search.”
"When the search failed, all of the reported post-loss radio signals were categorically dismissed as bogus and have been largely ignored ever since," Mr. Gillespie said. But the results of the study, he said, “suggest that the aircraft was on land and on its wheels for several days following the disappearance.”
In addition, several artifacts found years ago – some of it discovered by Pacific islanders who later inhabited the island – seem to confirm TIGHAR’s conclusion.
These include broken glass artifacts showing evidence of secondary use as tools for cutting or scraping; large numbers of fish and bird bones collected in, or associated with, ash and charcoal deposits; several hundred mollusk shells, as well as bones from at least one turtle; bone fragments and dried fecal matter that might be of human origin.
A photo taken three months after Earhart’s flight shows what could be the landing gear of her aircraft in the waters off the atoll.
“Analyses of the artifacts, faunals and data collected during the expedition are on-going but, at this point, everything supports the hypothesis that the remains found at the site in 1940 were those of Amelia Earhart,” according to TIGHAR.
Other artifacts (some of them reported in 1940 but then lost) include a bone-handled pocket knife of the type known to have been carried by Earhart, part of a man’s shoe, part of a woman’s shoe, a zipper of the kind manufactured in the 1930s, a woman’s compact, and broken pieces of a jar appearing to be the same size and unusual shape as one holding “Dr. Berry's Freckle Ointment.” (Earhart was known to dislike her freckles.)
In July, TIGHAR researchers will return to the area where Earhart and Noonan are thought to have spent their last days, using submersibles to try and detect the famous aircraft they believe to have been swept off a Pacific reef in 1937.
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http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/australiaandthepacific/kiribati/9309084/US-Navy-prepares-mission-to-solve-riddle-of-Amelia-Earharts-death.html
US Navy prepares mission to solve riddle of Amelia Earhart's death
By Julian Ryall, Tokyo
Seventy-five years after Amelia Earhart sealed her place in flying history as the first woman to attempt to circumnavigate the world, the US Navy is preparing a mission to solve the riddle of her death in the Pacific.
One of the most enduring mysteries of the annals of aviation, is what happened after Miss Earhart last radioed from her Lockheed Model 10E "Electra" that she was unable to locate an airstrip for landing.
The accepted wisdom was that Earhart's aircraft had simply run out of fuel and
crashed into the ocean on July 2, 1937, as she searched for Howland Island.
Howland was the final refuelling stop before flying on to Honolulu and
completing the journey by touching down in Oakland, California.
An expedition that will set sail from Hawaii on July 2, which marks the 75th
anniversary of the last message by Phoenix International, the US
Navy's primary source of deep ocean search and recovery expertise, will map
a former British possession that has been indentified as the most likely
crash site.
A team of enthusiasts from the International Group for Historic Aircraft
Recovery (Tighar) has drawn up the plans for the expedition, which is backed
by the US State Department.
It will use high technology, including multi-beam sonar, to inspect a steep
and craggy underwater mountainside on the western reef slope of island of
Nikumaroro, a former British colony that is today part of the republic of Kiribati.
"Our objective on this expedition is to conduct a thorough search of the area we judge to be most likely to contain wreckage from the Earhart Electra," said Tighar.
While much of the aircraft is likely to have been lost in the intervening years, researchers believe some key components - such as the Pratt & Whitney engines - could still be where they sank 75 years ago.
"Any man-made objects found will be photographed and their location carefully recorded," the group said. "No recovery of objects will be attempted unless necessary to confirm identification.#"Should identifiable wreckage from the Electra be discovered it will be documented as thoroughly as possible in situ so that a separate expedition can be equipped with the appropriate means to recover and conserve the materials."
If the aircraft had sufficient fuel to reach Nikumaroro, which was at the time the uninhabited British possession known as Gardner Island, it could have landed on reef flats before being washed over the ledge.
Earhart and Fred Noonan, her navigator, could have survived on the island for a time, but eventually succumbed to injury or infection, food poisoning or thirst.
The theory is supported by British colonial records in Fiji reporting the discovery of the partial skeleton of a castaway who perished shortly before the island was settled in 1938.
The bones were found in the shade of a tree in a part of the island that fits the description of the encampment that Tighar has been excavating.
The site is dotted with the remains of small fires on which meals of birds, fish, turtle and even rat were cooked.
Previous research trips have turned up parts of aluminium skin from an aircraft, plexiglass from a cockpit, a zip made in Pennsylvania in the mid-1930s, a broken pocket knife of the same brand that was listed in an inventory of Earhart's aircraft and the remains of a 1930s woman's compact.
Ric Gillespie, executive director of Tighar, says they still need to find incontrovertible proof that Earhart on Nikumororo - the "smoking gun."
This expedition apparently offers the best chances of that yet, with new forensic evidence of a photo that may show part of the aircraft on the reef sufficient to convince the US government to support the project.
--
"Our objective on this expedition is to conduct a thorough search of the area we judge to be most likely to contain wreckage from the Earhart Electra," said Tighar.
While much of the aircraft is likely to have been lost in the intervening years, researchers believe some key components - such as the Pratt & Whitney engines - could still be where they sank 75 years ago.
"Any man-made objects found will be photographed and their location carefully recorded," the group said. "No recovery of objects will be attempted unless necessary to confirm identification.#"Should identifiable wreckage from the Electra be discovered it will be documented as thoroughly as possible in situ so that a separate expedition can be equipped with the appropriate means to recover and conserve the materials."
If the aircraft had sufficient fuel to reach Nikumaroro, which was at the time the uninhabited British possession known as Gardner Island, it could have landed on reef flats before being washed over the ledge.
Earhart and Fred Noonan, her navigator, could have survived on the island for a time, but eventually succumbed to injury or infection, food poisoning or thirst.
The theory is supported by British colonial records in Fiji reporting the discovery of the partial skeleton of a castaway who perished shortly before the island was settled in 1938.
The bones were found in the shade of a tree in a part of the island that fits the description of the encampment that Tighar has been excavating.
The site is dotted with the remains of small fires on which meals of birds, fish, turtle and even rat were cooked.
Previous research trips have turned up parts of aluminium skin from an aircraft, plexiglass from a cockpit, a zip made in Pennsylvania in the mid-1930s, a broken pocket knife of the same brand that was listed in an inventory of Earhart's aircraft and the remains of a 1930s woman's compact.
Ric Gillespie, executive director of Tighar, says they still need to find incontrovertible proof that Earhart on Nikumororo - the "smoking gun."
This expedition apparently offers the best chances of that yet, with new forensic evidence of a photo that may show part of the aircraft on the reef sufficient to convince the US government to support the project.
--
