Radio Replica Sparks New Hope in 87-Year Search for Amelia Earhart
An authentic 1937 radio transmitter, identical to the one used by Amelia Earhart on her fateful final flight, could be the key to finally locating the wreckage of her missing aircraft. This is according to the deep-sea exploration team at Nauticos, who have shared their groundbreaking new approach with the Daily Mail.
Today marks 91 years since Earhart embarked on her historic solo flight from Honolulu, Hawaii, to Oakland, California, becoming the first person to fly solo across the Pacific Ocean. Yet, just over two years later in July 1937, she and her navigator Fred Noonan vanished during an ambitious around-the-world attempt. Their disappearance remains one of history's greatest unsolved aviation mysteries.
The Veteran Explorer's Unique Strategy
Leading the modern search is David Jourdan, a former US Navy submarine officer and physicist who co-founded the ocean technology firm Nauticos in 1986. After a career locating lost submarines and ancient shipwrecks, he turned his attention to Earhart in 1997.
Jourdan's team has already scoured an area of seabed the size of Connecticut using autonomous vehicles. To narrow the search, they embarked on an unprecedented mission: to perfectly recreate Earhart's last flight and radio transmissions. The plan hinged on finding working replicas of her aircraft's Western Electric Model 13C (WE 13C) transmitter and the RCA receiver used by the US Coast Guard ship Itasca near her target, Howland Island.
"The bedrock of Nauticos's strategy was finding and refurbishing the communication equipment onboard Earhart's plane and the Coast Guard ship she was sending radio transmissions to," the team explained.
The Hunt for the Perfect 1937 Radio
In summer 2019, after a 20-year search, Nauticos volunteer and radio engineer Rod Blocksome finally acquired the crucial equipment. He purchased both the WE 13C transmitter and the RCA receiver for $3,000, spending nearly a year restoring them to their original 1936 specifications.
With a loaned plane similar to Earhart's Lockheed Electra and a ship made electrically identical to the Itasca, the team took to the skies in September 2020. They flew 200 miles offshore from Howland Island, with Jourdan's sister, Sue Morris, speaking Earhart's exact words into the refurbished radio.
"We were able to replicate pretty much every piece of that radio communication. That gave us much greater confidence in the distances," Jourdan stated.
New Data and the Multi-Million Dollar Mission Ahead
The experiment highlighted enduring uncertainties, particularly the cryptic nature of Earhart's final messages and the hour-long gap between them. Her last confirmed transmission at approximately 8.43am local time gave a compass bearing but no direction of travel.
Nevertheless, the new radio data has given Nauticos renewed confidence. "Having narrowed it down... we feel like we can pretty much look everywhere else she could be with a very high confidence, you know, 90 percent confidence," Jourdan claimed.
The team is now preparing for another deep-sea expedition, delayed by the COVID-19 pandemic and funding challenges. Jourdan estimates he needs to raise about $10 million for a month-long mission. The search area, averaging 18,000 feet deep, will be scanned by an autonomous vehicle using high-frequency sound waves to acoustically map the seabed.
"Amelia's plane should ring out pretty clearly," Jourdan said, noting that metal creates a strong echo. "Unless, of course, it's in a crevasse or it's behind a mountain range."
Despite previous searches turning up empty, the combination of vast areas already ruled out and this new radio analysis fuels optimism that the 87-year-old mystery of Amelia Earhart's final resting place may soon be solved.
