Personally, I have heard about this “mystery” for years and don’t understand the obsession with it. She either crashed in the ocean or on an island. If an island, she was never found. The exact where of it almost does not matter to me.
I have heard some speculate she was somehow captured by the Japanese. That is the most interesting of the possibilities. However, if that was the case, you would think it would have come out somehow after the War.
lots of potential grant monies...book opprotunities, movie and TV royalties....’cmon man ..get with the program!!! /s
“She either crashed in the ocean or on an island.”
This has always been mildly interesting to me as my mom was an aviator in the 40s. The burning question about why is there no evidence of Earhart and Noonan’s remains was addressed once in a speculative video that suggested that they crashed close to an island and managed to crawl to shore. Without food or fresh water they soon expired.
The ‘no remains’ part was answered by suggesting that crabs consumed the bodies. To prove this point the researchers that made the video placed a hog carcass on the beach and recorded what happened. The crabs literally ate every molecule of the hog carcass - hair, skin, bones, everything in very short time, less than a day or two.
If ocean Crabs, schrimp, lobster made short work of them, tiny fishes nibbled away.
If land those same crabs, flies and larva and perhaps coconut crabs.
She possessed less than stellar navigation skills and navigator she hired was a drunk. The plane is niw covered in corals and other growth.
The “discovered” but not recovered is though to be an engine cowling. I understand that the research can’t seem to relocate the spot.
If it is that particular cowling, rocks and shoals, tides, and currents could have placed it many miles from the actual crash site.
I would amazed of any link or association with Earhardt let alone a discovery.
She is my 12th cousin, once removed - I have always followed any news on her. Someone was operating a ham radio when AE may have gone down and heard a woman come across the airwaves. There was something about a man who may have had a head injury and speculation that it was AE on that channel. Then there was something about her in a Japanese prison camp and then something about her plane being found several years ago - we will probably never know.
“The exact where of it almost does not matter to me.”
But it does to a lot of people, who do not really care to be constrained by your lack of interest.
One evening at a bar in the Ginza district in Tokyo, my friend was having dinner and drinks with a group when Genda came over and drew my friend aside to meet someone: a former Japanese officer who claimed to have been in charge of the firing squad that executed Amelia Earhart on Saipan. My friend heard and believed the story he was told that evening.
Yet I am not at all sure the story was true. Too many times I have read or been told lies about events in history by supposed witnesses or participants. Indeed, to make matters worse, the received version of history is never complete or accurate, so there is often enough doubt to give scope to inventions of one sort or another and to revisions to history as new evidence is discovered.
Indeed, it is even possible that Earhart and Noonan survived a crash at sea and were captured by the Japanese, only to eventually die by execution on Saipan, just as my friend was told.
I remember all those claims from back then, even that she was executed by the Japanese. One even claimed her aircraft was found crashed in Canada.
Others claimed she never actually flew the aircraft but was there just for photo purposes.
Another theory I’ve heard she was captured by islanders.
I thought she was near Howland Island? That’s about 700 miles from Tarawa. I’m thinking this is not her plane.