THE SEARCH FOR AMELIA EARHART'S PLANE BY TIGHAR RESEARCHERS

Was Earhart on a Secret Mission?

By Victor M Adamus

The famed American aviatrix Amelia EARHART disappeared while seeking out Howland Island as a refueling stop during her 1937 round-the-world flight; Earhart Light, a day beacon near the middle of the west coast, was named in her memory. The island was established as a NWR in 1974.

I’ve always been fascinated with missing people of worth.  My Dad and I, mostly him as a career military person, was following news of the disappearance of Amelia Earhart not only because he was a fighter pilot in World War II, but his love for flying offered up a puzzle as to why a seasoned pilot would have gone down under near perfect weather conditions and close to Gardner Island in the South Pacific which is between Hawaii and Australia.  He also followed her successes as one of the first record breaking female pilots.  It made him proud to read all the coverage of Earhart over the years.

Recently off a sandy beach a discovery of a 1930 cosmetic jar, used by people who have freckles, as Earhart had, was found giving up another clue as to the area where her plane could have crashed or landed.  Attempts to find pieces of the aircraft are now under way by The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery (TIGHAR)  which relies on a torpedo-shaped Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) called Bluefin-21 and a Remote Operated Vehicle (ROV).  Much of the funding has come from the Discovery Channel and public donations.

Bluefin-21 and ROV

The hunt, however, isn’t without its’ problems.  Off the initial reef is an old British ship the steamer SS Norwich City, which went aground on the island's reef in 1929. Much of her debris covers the ocean floor, the exact location of the search area.  I’m reading daily reports from the team as they post them online and it’s fascinating in itself to witness the length these research professionals are going about clearing the area in the hopes of finding an airplane part, something unique to the plane flown by Earhart and Fred Noonan. 

Mysteries aside, it was much later in years that the CIA revealed that Noonan was an agent for the old Army field command which later became the Central Intelligence Agency.  The search for Earhart has all the makings of a spy novel.  The explanation as to how a super ace pilot lost control of her ship when better odds are that she could have found enough landing area to take the plane down on Gardner Island only raises more questions leading to rumors she was shot down by hostile gun boats in the area. 

The Earhart Project is testing the hypothesis that Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan landed, and eventually died, on Gardner Island, now Nikumaroro in the Republic of Kiribati.

TIGHAR researchers are currently investigating the reef slope off the west end of Nikumaroro in the attempt to find pieces of Earhart's Lockheed Electra aircraft.

"The objective of the expedition is to locate, identify and photograph any and all surviving aircraft wreckage," Ric Gillespie, TIGHAR's executive director, said.

Walking with President Hoover

For more information other than the links above, interested readers should use Google Chrome to search WIKI for Earhart’s history and her own biography and other related pages that refer to a CIA mission to identify if Gardner Island would be appropriate for a refueling stop for American aircraft in times of war.