Amelia Earhart's Letter to Her Fiance on the Morning of Their Wedding

[+ beethoven]

There was a discussion of her disappearance and the photograph on NPR this afternoon (Thursday). Evidently, the US knew all about the crash and what the Japanese did, but did not want to reveal that we had broken the Japanese codes. The Hitler Channel --- oops! I mean the History Channel --- will broadcast their program about this on Sunday night at 9 pm EDT.

[Moondance]

Researchers think they know where Amelia Earhart died — days after a photo suggested she lived

The Washington Post, July 9, 2017

 

Despite recent claims to the contrary, there’s no doubt in Ric Gillespie’s mind that Amelia Earhart died as a castaway after her plane crashed on a desolate island in the Pacific Ocean.

 

But he realizes the rest of the world needs a smoking gun.

 

Or, perhaps, four barking border collies.

 

Gillespie’s group, the International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery (TIGHAR), believes that Earhart and Fred Noonan, her navigator, died as castaways on an empty island in the Pacific Ocean and hoped that the collies’ noses would help corroborate this theory.

 

The dogs — Marcy, Piper, Kayle and Berkeley — have been specially trained to sniff out chemicals left by decaying human remains.

 

Just last week, the History Channel suggested that Earhart may have been captured by the Japanese after a newly unearthed photograph from the National Archives showed what researchers claim are the pilot and her navigator in Jaluit Harbor in the Marshall Islands after their disappearance.

 

TIGHAR researchers, on the other hand, continue to believe that Earhart’s plane was blown off course by strong Pacific winds. Running out of fuel, Earhart and Noonan landed injured but intact on an empty island 400 miles short of their refueling stop. British officials discovered a partial human skeleton on the island in 1940 but ultimately (and Gillespie believes erroneously) concluded that it didn’t belong to the famed aviator.

 

On June 30, the dogs, their handlers and a group of researchers were dropped on that island — once called Gardner Island, since renamed Nikumaroro — as part of an expedition paid for by National Geographic.

 

The researchers hoped the dogs would lead them to the site where that skeleton was found. With a lot of luck and a little DNA analysis, researchers believed they could unearth a bone and solve an 80-year-old missing-person case.

 

Within moments of beginning to work the site, Berkeley, a curly red male, lay down at the base of a ren tree, eyes locked on his handler, Lynne Angeloro. The dog was “alerting,” indicating to Angeloro that he had detected the scent of human remains.

 

Next up was Kayle, a fluffy, eager-to-please female. She also alerted on the same spot. The next day Marcy and Piper, two black-and-white collies, were brought to the site. Both dogs alerted.

 

The signals were clear: Someone — perhaps Earhart or her navigator, Fred Noonan — had died beneath the ren tree.

 

But TIGHAR researchers discovered no bones there. They’ve sent soil samples to a lab capable of extracting human DNA but haven’t obtained results yet. They concede it’s a long shot.

 

That means Gillespie’s theory about Earhart’s final days remains just that.

 

It has some competition. Most people — and the U.S. government, which declared Earhart and Noonan dead after they couldn’t be found — believe that Earhart’s plane went into the Pacific Ocean and that all that remains of the failed expedition is resting on the seabed.

 

Others believe Earhart and Noonan were captured by the Japanese, a theory that has recently been revived by the discovery of the newly unearthed photo that purportedly shows Earhart and Noonan alive in the Marshall Islands.

 

In the photo, according to The Post’s Amy B Wang, “a figure with Earhart’s haircut and approximate body type sits on the dock, facing away from the camera. … Toward the left of the dock is a man they believe is Noonan. On the far right of the photo is a barge with an airplane on it, supposedly Earhart’s.”

 

Gillespie thinks the claim from the picture showing Jaluit Harbor is rubbish and worries that a lot of people will be misled when it airs on the History Channel.

 

“This is something that’s going to be put out to millions of people,” he told The Post. “I wish the History Channel would just air ‘Ancient Aliens.’ It would be more credible.”

 

TIGHAR has looked into those claims and tried to debunk them.

 

But Gillespie believes “the overwhelming weight of the evidence” paints a narrative of what happened after Earhart and Noonan got lost halfway between Hawaii and Australia.

 

After her crash-landing, TIGHAR believes, Earhart used the radio from her damaged plane to call for help for nearly a week before the tide pulled the craft into the sea.

 

“Earhart made a relatively safe landing at Gardner Island and sent radio distress calls for six days,” Gillespie

. “There are 47 messages heard by professional radio operators that appear to be credible.”

 

Three years later, British officials discovered the skeleton on the island and wondered whether it might belong to the famed aviator. Officials shipped the 13 bones to a medical school in Fiji, where they were examined by D.W. Hoodless, a physician.

 

He concluded that the bones belonged to a short, stocky European man.

 

But Gillespie’s group thinks Hoodless was wrong. After running the bones through a more robust anthropological database in 1998, they determined that the bones could have belonged to a taller-than-average woman of European descent — someone like Earhart.

 

Over the past three decades, members of TIGHAR have made a dozen expeditions to the island trying to prove their theory.

 

They’ve collected piles of evidence showing that a Westerner was possibly marooned on the island in the 1930s: improvised tools, remains of a shoe, aircraft wreckage, bits of makeup. They analyzed remains of food found in a fire and went to extreme lengths to determine what may have become of Earhart’s body.

 

Earhart has been Gillespie’s passion for three decades, and he concedes there’s an internal tug of war between the scientist who wants objective evidence and the person who thinks he knows the answer.

 

“When I’m totally scientific, I say all of the available evidence points to this conclusion,” he said. “But after a while, you look at a stack of supposed coincidences a mile high and it’s clear … I don’t think I’m different from any scientist that’s working on a case like this. You maintain your objectivity, but it’s hard not to get excited.”

[Moondance]

Doubts Raised Over Unearthed 'Amelia Earhart' Photo

NBC News, July 12, 2017

 

Last week, the History cable channel revealed a photograph that purported to show the vanished aviator Amelia Earhart on a dock in the Marshall Islands after she disappeared...

 

On Tuesday, however, a Japanese blogger wrote that the photo was taken two years before she went missing and isn't her. Now, History says it is conducting an investigation to look into the blogger's claims.

 

http://img-s-msn-com.akamaized.net/tenant/amp/entityid/BBEgwn5.img?h=455&w=728&m=6&q=60&o=f&l=f&x=1417&y=900

 

The photo was said to show a woman who resembles Earhart and a man who appears to be her navigator, Fred Noonan, on a dock in the Marshall Islands.

 

But the Japanese blogger said in a post on Tuesday that the same photo appears in a Japanese travel book on the Pacific Islands in 1935 — two years before Earhart and Noonan went missing in July 1937. Japan's national library website also lists the publication date as 1935 on its website.

 

http://img-s-msn-com.akamaized.net/tenant/amp/entityid/BBEgBib.img?h=600&w=728&m=6&q=60&o=f&l=f

 

The post said that the original caption of the photo says in Japanese that it was taken in the town of Jabor in Jaluit Atoll, which is in the Marshall Islands. According to a translation by NBC News, the caption [also] mentions [that] Jabor [is] an exceptionally good port that becomes quite lively when large ships arrive carrying goods from the mainland.

 

The Japanese government has always maintained that it has no documents suggesting Earhart was ever in its custody.

[Moondance]

History Investigates Amelia Earhart Doc Claims, Suspends Repeats

 

Daniel Holloway

Senior TV Reporter, VARIETY

JULY 19, 2017

 

History has decided not make a documentary about Amelia Earhart available on streaming and on-demand platforms as it investigates challenges to evidence behind claims made in the two-hour special.

 

“Amelia Earhart: The Lost Evidence” proposed that Earhart, who disappeared while piloting a plane over the Pacific Ocean in 1937, had survived a crash landing and been captured by the Japanese military. As evidence, it offered up a photo that analysts claimed was likely taken between 1937 and 1943. The special premiered earlier this month on the A+E Networks cable channel.

 

But on the heels of reports about the photograph and capture theory, a Japanese military blogger stepped forward last week with evidence that the photograph had been taken in 1935, two years before Earhart’s disappearance. The blogger cited a book allegedly published in 1935 containing the photograph.

 

That claim counters assessments by multiple analysts quoted in the History special, but itself has been challenged by an analyst who told History that the authenticity of the book may be questionable.

 

History said it would investigate the photograph. The network decided to not move forward with scheduled re-airings of the special and to remove it from on-demand and streaming platforms as the investigation continues.

[Guest DeepSouthDad53]

“Amelia Earhart: The Lost Evidence” proposed that Earhart, who disappeared while piloting a plane over the Pacific Ocean in 1937, had survived a crash landing and been captured by the Japanese military. As evidence, it offered up a photo that analysts claimed was likely taken between 1937 and 1943. The special premiered earlier this month on the A+E Networks cable channel.

 

I watched and enjoyed it. But a few days later I youtubed a mid 70s "In Search Of" episode about her. It mentioned the "taken by Japanese as POW and probably killed a few years later" theory as one of several possibilities. Apart from the dubious photo and a few more islander narrators, The History Channel doc didn't take it that much further.

[samhexum]

Researchers say that a site in Papua New Guinea may contain the long-lost remains of Amelia Earhart’s plane.

 

Wreckage off the coast off Buka Island, Papua New Guinea, may offer a vital clue to the decades-long mystery, according to investigators from Project Blue Angel. The Project’s members have been studying the site for 13 years and say that wreckage off Buka Island could be from Earhart’s Lockheed Electra 10E.

 

Earhart famously disappeared while attempting to fly her Lockheed Electra 10E plane around the world. The aviator and her navigator Fred Noonan went missing on July 2, 1937, during a flight from Papua New Guinea to Howland Island in the Pacific. Their fate became one of the great mysteries of the 20th century and is still hotly debated.

 

“The Buka Island wreck site was directly on Amelia and Fred’s flight path, and it is an area never searched following their disappearance,” said William Snavely, Project Blue Angel director, in a statement. “What we’ve found so far is consistent with the plane she flew.”

 

Snavely has traced Earhart’s route from Lae in Papua New Guinea, which was the departure point for her doomed final flight. The researcher thinks that low on fuel she may have decided to turn back during her journey to Howland Island.

 

Divers from Papua New Guinea have surveyed the site on a number of occasions for Snavely. Last year US members of Project Blue Angel also investigated the site, which is about 100 feet below the ocean’s surface. “While the complete data is still under review by experts, initial reports indicate that a piece of glass raised from the wreckage shares some consistencies with a landing light on the Lockheed Electra 10,” explains the Project, in its statement.

 

“Amelia’s Electra had specific modifications done to it for this specific journey, and some of those unique modifications appear to be verified in the wreckage that’s been found,” added pilot and aerospace engineer Jill Meyers, who is Blue Angel’s PR Manager.

 

However, the project notes that the wreckage has been gradually eroded by years of rough water and earthquakes.

 

“While there is no way to be certain yet that this is definitively Amelia Earhart’s Electra, the crash site may hold the clues to solving one of the world’s greatest mysteries,” Snavely added in the statement.

 

Project Blue Angel is planning another expedition to Buka in the Spring that will harness advanced imaging technologies.

 

There are a number of competing theories about what ultimately happened to Earhart.

 

One well-publicized theory is that she died a castaway after landing her plane on the remote island of Nikumaroro, a coral atoll 1,200 miles from the Marshall Islands. Some 13 human bones were found on Nikumaroro, also known as Gardner Island, three years after Earhart’s disappearance.

 

Last year, a scientific study claimed to shed new light on the decades-long mystery of what happened to Earhart. Richard Jantz, an emeritus anthropology professor at the University of Tennessee, argued that the bones discovered on Nikumaroro in 1940 were likely Earhart’s remains. The research contradicts a forensic analysis of the remains in 1941 that described the bones as belonging to a male. The bones, which were subsequently lost, continue to be a source of debate.

 

While some are convinced that Nikumaroro is Earhart’s final resting place, another theory suggests that she met her end on Mili Atoll in the Marshall Islands. In 2017, controversy swirled around a photo that was touted as providing a vital clue as to Earhart’s fate.

[+ azdr0710]

[samhexum]

Explorer who found the Titanic wants to solve Amelia Earhart’s disappearance

 

Robert Ballard, the oceanographer who found the Titanic in 1985 during a secret military operation, will begin to search for signs of Amelia Earhart, the pilot who disappeared from her attempted around-the-world flight on July 12, 1937, after taking off from Lae, New Guinea, in a Lockheed Electra 10E plane bound for Howard Island, located just north of the equator.

 

Her disappearance prompted years of search efforts and conspiracy theories, including beliefs Earhart was captured and killed by the Japanese, settled with the natives of a Pacific island and even returned to New Jersey where she secretly lived out the rest of her days as a housewife. A REAL HOUSEWIFE OF NEW JERSEY?!?!?

 

Ballard and a National Geographic expedition will search for her plane near a Pacific Ocean atoll that’s part of the Phoenix Islands.

 

His team will use remotely operated underwater vehicles in their search, the National Geographic channel said Tuesday. An archaeological team will also investigate a potential Earhart campsite with search dogs and DNA sampling.

 

National Geographic will air a two-hour special on Oct. 20. “Expedition Amelia” will include clues gathered by the International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery that led Ballard to the atoll, named Nikumaroro.

 

Ballard also is responsible for finding pieces of John F. Kennedy’s World War II patrol boat in the Solomon Sea, the German battleship Bismarck in the Atlantic, and many ancient ships in the Black Sea, as well as hydrothermal vents near the Galapagos, the channel said.