Posted on 12/17/2010 12:46:01 AM PST by Jet Jaguar
US aircraft history buffs are hopeful that tiny bones along with artefacts from the 1930s found on a remote Pacific island may reveal the fate of pioneering aviator Amelia Earhart. In one of aviation's most enduring mysteries, Earhart took off from Lae, in what is now Papua New Guinea, while attempting to circumnavigate the globe via the equator in 1937 and was never seen again.
A massive search at the time failed to find the flyer and her navigator Fred Noonan, who were assumed to have died after ditching their Lockheed Electra aircraft in the ocean, according to the Amelia Earhart Museum.
Now aviation enthusiasts from US-based group The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery (TIGHAR) say they have evidence suggesting the pair made it safely to Nikumaroro Island in Kiribati and lived as castaways.
TIGHAR executive director Rick Gillespie said the group, which has carried out 10 expeditions to Nikumaroro over the past 22 years, found three small bone fragments on the uninhabited island earlier this year.
Gillespie said the bones appeared to be part of a human finger, although they could also be from a turtle, and had been sent to the Molecular Science Laboratories at Oklahoma University for DNA analysis.
"We're very hopeful that this will produce the result we're looking for," he told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation Thursday.
(Excerpt) Read more at breitbart.com ...
I’m going for the turtle, too!
turtle or Amelia. May her mystery be laid to rest.
“Harpo Marx with Amelia Earhart”
That’s two people I wouldn’t have expected to see in a photograph together...
And then there are the rumors that the Japanese killed her for straying over one of their secret sites pre-WWII.
And then there is the movie that makes her a heroine for accepting an assignment to deliberately go missing pre-WWII, so our air force would have an excuse to do a massive search for her over secret Japanese sites.
I’m still rooting for the turtle.
Me too. It's that fortuitous resemblance to Lindbergh.
If the three bone fragments they found were hers, shouldn’t there have been some pieces of the plane around?
Find the airplane on the bottom of the ocean and you will find her inside.
Nikumaroro was once called Gardner Island. In 1940, about 190 bones of a skeleton, along with a 1930's era women's blucher-style shoe (with an American "Cat's Paw" heel) were discovered on the island and turned over to the colonial administrator of the Phoenix Islands.
The medical examiner ruled the bones to be mixed race. Earhart was known to wear women's blucher-style shoes.
A lot of official telegraphs were generated in 1940 regarding the skeleton and the prospect that it was Earhart.
The file of telegraphs was discovered about twenty years ago.
Since that time, a group has been back to Nikumaroro, to the area on the island described in the telegraphs as the site where the skeleton was discovered.
Natives who lived on the island around 1937-1940 report a plane on the reef.
There are something like nine sites of small campfires remaining at the point of the island where the skeleton was said to have been found, all in a small area. The fire sites are littered with the skeletons of small fish, including the heads (which the natives eat) and lots of shellfish.
The skeleton is now missing. The measurements of the bones were taken, however. When those measurements are placed into modern computers, it appears that the skeleton was that of a European (white) woman approximately 5'7", or about Earhart's height.
The searchers found a 1930's era woman's compact; Earhart was known to fly with a compact (she said you never knew when you would meet the press). They found part of a woman's hand lotion bottle, made in the U.S. in 1935. They found parts of a jackknife, and the model was identified to be the same model as listed on the inventory of items carried on Earhart's final flight.
They also searched for bones, because not all of the skeleton was found in 1940. They assumed that smaller bones were carried away by crabs into crab holes or under tree roots. They found three small pieces that they assumed were bone, and not coral.
These are the three pieces described in the article.
Anyway, there's a lot that's NOT in the article that it suggests the reef off Nikumaroro may have been where Earhart's round-the-world flight ended.
I'm not saying it did. I'm just reporting what I've read and what I've seen in the documentaries on the expeditions to Nikumaroro.
Paging Dr. Brennan!
Interesting. Thank you.
Some of it does not appear to be military, as it does not have military paint. Some has the same rivets used in an Electra, Earhart's plane.
Other small aircraft parts have been found on Nikumaroro, but no conclusively identified as coming from an Electra.
Natives said there was a plane on the reef in the late 1930's. The documentary discusses the tides, and water levels would have reached above waist level in an Electra cockpit. The plane wouldn't have stayed there long.
I don't believe any researchers have been to Nikumaroro in about ten years. Obviously, somebody needs to explore the water around the reef . . . unless all they want to do is sell books based on what they know so far.
Actually, they have.
How could they not belong to Amelia Earhart?
People are weird.
A little Googling led me to the Discovery Channel website, which claims that a sexton box was found on Nikumaroro in 1940 along with the partial skeleton. The serial numbers were consistent with the type carried by Fred Noonan, Earhart’s navigator.
There may be a lot that was found in 1940 and in the expeditions from 1990 to the present that are screamingly inconsistent with Earhart, which aren’t being disclosed because they ruin a good story.
What is being told, however, paints as reasonable a picture of the place where Earhart ‘disappeared’ as any other I’ve heard.
For years, there was the story of Earhart and Noonan being buried on some island by the Japanese. Some years ago, a research team dug up those sites until they hit bedrock. They didn’t find any human remains.
Is crashing a sea-plane into the ocean considered landing when you’re not near the land?
Thanks. Your link to The Earhart Project is a great starting link for anyone who wants more information on the Nikumaroro/Gardner Island connection, including links to the TIGHAR project.
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Oh man. It was Lootie Guy all along! LOL!
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