DID YOU KNOW?
Memorial plaque
Hanger Museum in Atchinson, Kansas
atoll between New Zealand and Hawaii that appears to show an engine cover buried underwater that could have been part of the boundary-breaking aviator’s plane. There is an object in the photo that appears to be a Lockheed Electra engine cowling. The similarity to an engine cowling and prop shaft was not noticed until years later and the exact location was not noted at the time, which meant attempts to re-locate the object were unsuccessful. If the testing reveals that the engine cover was from Earhart’s twin-engine Lockheed Model 10E Special Electra, it would not explain why the plane crashed into the ocean.
However, most experts believe that Earhart’s plane crashed in the Pacific Ocean near Howland after running out of fuel. Since the 1960s, the Japanese capture theory has been fueled by accounts from Marshall Islanders living at the time of an “American lady pilot” held in custody on Saipan in 1937, which they passed on to their friends and descendants. Some of the theory’s advocates suggest that Earhart and Noonan were in fact U.S. spies and their around-the-world mission was a cover-up for efforts to fly over and observe Japanese fortifications in the Pacific.
Since 1989, TIGHAR has made at least a dozen expeditions to Nikumaroro, turning up artifacts ranging from pieces of metal (possibly airplane parts) to a broken jar of freckle cream, but no conclusive proof that Earhart’s plane landed there.
Amid ongoing controversy, spanning more than 80 years of debate among researchers and historians, the crash-and-sink theory remains the most widely accepted explanation of Earhart’s fate. But over three expeditions since 2002, the deep-sea exploration company Nauticos has used sonar to scan the area off Howland Island near where Earhart’s last radio message came from, covering nearly 2,000 square nautical miles without finding a trace of the wreckage of the Electra. Until that wreckage or some other definitive piece of evidence is found, the mystery surrounding Amelia Earhart’s final flight will likely endure.
Over 70 years later a photograph from a 2009 expedition in the Pacific Ocean around Nikumaroro Island — a remote
Lastly, a year after the disaster, Britain colonized the island and newcomers reported seeing parts of planes, 1930s-era glass bottles, and bones in