The search continues...

[Piranha 41]

Team to hunt for clues about Amelia Earhart

 

NEW YORK (AP) -- Hoping modern technology can help them solve a 70-year-old mystery, a group of investigators will search a South Pacific island to try to determine if famed aviator Amelia Earhart crash-landed and died there.

 

The expedition of 15 members of the International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery, or TIGHAR, was set to depart Thursday. The trip would mark the group's ninth to Nikumaroro, an uninhabited atoll about 1,800 miles south of Hawaii.

 

Once at the 2½-mile-long island, the group was to spend 17 days searching for human bones, aircraft parts and any other evidence.

 

They are trying to show that Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan, reached the island on July 2, 1937, crashed on a reef at low tide and made it to shore, where they possibly lived for months as castaways, written off by the world as lost at sea.

 

The conditions during the search will be punishing, with the explorers forced to contend with dense jungle vegetation, 100-degree heat, sharks that reside in a lagoon in the middle of the island and voracious crabs that make it necessary to wear shoes at all times.

 

"The public wants it solved. That's why everybody on the street today, 70 years later, knows the name Amelia Earhart," said TIGHAR founder and executive director Ric Gillespie. "She is America's favorite missing person."

 

At the time, Earhart, 39, and Noonan, 44, were nearing the end of a much-publicized round-the-world flight that had begun more than a month earlier in Oakland, California. On July 2, they left Lae, New Guinea, bound for tiny Howland Island, 2,550 miles to the east, only to vanish as they neared their destination.

 

A 16-day search by U.S. Navy and Coast Guard ships turned up no sign of the fliers or their silver, twin-engine Lockheed Electra. Despite an official finding that they ran out of gas and crashed in the ocean, the case spawned a once-popular claim that the pair were captured and executed as spies on a Japanese-held island.

 

Gillespie acknowledges that some critics regard the Nikumaroro castaway theory as far-fetched, but he says there is strong evidence to suggest Earhart and Noonan reached what was then known as Gardner Island, 350 miles south of Howland, and survived a crash-landing on its wide flat reef.

 

"Most skeptics are not really familiar with the evidence that we've found, and they usually have a vested interest in the other theories -- that they crashed at sea or were captured by the Japanese," he said.

 

The evidence includes radio distress signals that may have come from Earhart, bones found at a former campsite in 1940, and pieces of airplane parts that Gillespie says could have come from Earhart's plane. One of these is a shard of Plexiglas, the exact thickness and curvature of an Electra window, but with no serial number.

 

The bones, found by a British overseer in 1940 and first judged to belong to a mixed-race male, vanished in Fiji during World War II. But a doctor's notes, discovered in London in 1998, were reanalyzed by two American forensic anthropologists, who found the remains were more likely those of a Caucasian female about Earhart's age and height.

 

Metal detectors, digital cameras slung from kites, infrared-equipped surveying devices and even pig bones are among items TIGHAR planned to use for the expedition. The search will concentrate on two locations: the campsite where bones were found in 1940, and a site where aircraft parts were recovered.

 

Kar Burns, one of two anthropologists on the team, hopes coconut crabs native to the island -- some as big as 2½ feet across -- will carry the pig bones to wherever human bones might have been taken by crabs. DNA from human bones could help solve the mystery, Gillespie said.

 

The group -- mostly veterans of previous trips to the island -- includes engineers, environmentalists, a land developer, archaeologists, a sailboat designer, a team doctor and a videographer.

[Randall 35]

It would be interesting to know what happened but think there must be more important things they could be working on.

[alexgaddis 34]

oh boy, I am at the edge of my seat on this one...

[Big Country 461]

Kar Burns, one of two anthropologists on the team, hopes coconut crabs native to the island -- some as big as 2½ feet across -- will carry the pig bones to wherever human bones might have been taken by crabs.

 

I once read about a really big frog.

[wiegie 18]

coconut crabs

mmmm... coconut crabs... mmmm

[Chargerz 26]

It would be interesting to know what happened but think there must be more important things they could be working on.

....especially since her remains are probably at the bottom of the ocean.

[Hat Trick 21]

sounds pretty farfetched

[Donutrun Jellies 21]

How is Geraldo Rivera not hosting this?

[cre8tiff 5]

I once read about a really big frog.

 

How big was that frog?

[Savage Beatings 99]

I wonder how much money is being spent on this? I mean hey, it's their money and they can spend it however they see fit... but I'm guessing that a lot of pot bellied African babies could feast for a year on what they are going to waste in just the slim hopes of solving this lame mystery.

[H8tank 0]

I did a book report and dressed up as her in 3rd grade.

[Chargerz 26]

I did a book report and dressed up as her in 3rd grade.

Nice visual there.

[Ursa Majoris 102]

It won't be very long before her plane runs out of fuel, I would think.

[wiegie 18]

I did a book report and dressed up as her in 3rd grade.

I was going to post that in high-school I dated her niece, but now I don't think I will mention it.

Edited July 12, 2007 by wiegie

[Chargerz 26]

I was going to post that in high-school I dated her niece, but now I don't think I will mention it.

Well, don't keep us waiting! Where did the niece say she was?????

[broncosn05 0]

I did a book report and dressed up as her in 3rd grade.

I think I saw that MH.

[Jackass 73]

It would be interesting to know what happened but think there must be more important things they could be working on.

 

There are a lot of more important things all of us could be doing right now, but we're not.