New Evidence in Amelia Earhart Mystery

Photo Credit: BleedingCool.com

A Brief on Amelia's Attempt to Fly Around the World

Amelia Earhart and her navigator Fred Noonan disappeared July 2, 1937 in an attempt to be the first woman to fly around the world. This mystery has perpetuated for 80 years with little evidence of what really happened to the celebrated aviatrix.

She planned the flight for months and started unceremoniously by flying from Oakland, California to Miami, Florida. She made the announcement of her intentions and left Miami on June 1, 1937. She made numerous stops in South America, Africa, and Southeast Asia on her journey. She arrived in Lae, New Guinea on June 29, with only 7,000 miles to go of the 29,000-mile journey.

She took off from Lae on July 2 at Midnight. Her first stop would be Howland Island, 2,556 miles away. The Coast Guard Cutter, Itasca, was on duty at Howland to guide her in. The Itasca was receiving Amelia's radio transmissions clearly, but she could not hear theirs. To make a long story short, she never found Howland Island, and they never found her following a $4 million search effort that continued through July 19, 1937.

Amelia's planned flight path. Photo Credit: commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Hellerick

The last confirmed radio transmission from Amelia was on July 6, 1937. She has never been found, but theories have been plentiful in her wake.

Previous Theories

There is the crash and sink theory which simply claims that Amelia and Fred ran out of fuel, crashed into the Pacific, and perished at sea.

The Gardner Island (now Nikumororo) theory suggests that Amelia and Fred crash-landed near Gardner Island and survived for a time on the island. A sextant box like one that Fred owned, and the heel of a size 9 women's shoe like Amelia might have worn were found on the island. A partial skeleton was also found, but the evidence is skewed by a British Colony of pearl divers who inhabited the island for a time and the shipwreck of the SS Norwich City which yielded castaways who died on the island.

In my opinion, none of the evidence from Gardner Island can be used as proof of Amelia's survival.

The final theory is that Amelia and Fred crashed and were captured by the Japanese near Saipan. They were subsequently executed as spies.

New evidence may support this final theory and it is my hope that we find Amelia and Fred once and for all.

The Latest Evidence - A Photo Lost in the National Archives for Decades

The History Channel unearthed the photo, a lost needle in the haystack that is the National Archives. It depicts several natives with a Caucasian man and woman on a dock labeled Jaluit Atoll 1937. Jaluit Atoll is part of the Marshall Islands located in the South Pacific.

The woman is seated on the dock. Her hair is short and she is wearing pants. She is looking to her right.

In the far left foreground, the man is leaning against a sign.

Here's the blow up:

Photo Credit: MSNBC

One of the most compelling things in this photo is the hairline of the man as compared to this photo of Fred Noonan:

Photo Credit: TheParanormalGuide.com

Even more compelling than that...in the original image, the woman is looking right toward a ship towing a plane on a barge. That ship is the Koshu, and that plane has been said to be 38 feet in length by photo experts working for the History Channel. That is the exact length of Amelia's lost Lockheed Electra.

This was commemorated in 1987 on stamps issued in the Marshall Islands as seen below:

Photo Credit: stamps-plus.com/Scans/MRS-C20a.jpg

Pretty crazy, huh?

In addition, here's a video that interviews many natives of Saipan and the Marshall Islands who either saw Amelia themselves or grew up with stories about her being among them:

It's exciting when we reach a point where we might actually solve an 80-year-old mystery. I'm looking forward to watching this documentary.

If you'd like to watch, it airs on the History Channel on July 9, 2017 at 9pm EDT.

What do you think about this mystery?