Researchers have begun searching a remote Pacific island for remnants of Amelia Earhart's plane. A team from the Archaeological Legacy Institute and Purdue University will search Nikumaroro Island for wreckage after satellite imagery appeared to show remains of a plane's tail and wing.
Earhart, her co-pilot Fred Noonan, and their plane vanished in 1937 as they attempted to fly around the world. Earhart spoke to the US Coast Guard and said she was not able to find Howland Island before they lost communication.
Possible miscalculation
Richard Pettigrew, executive director of the Archaeological Legacy Institute (ALI) at Purdue, suspects Earhart and Noonan may have miscalculated and ended up on Nikumaroro Island instead of Howland Island, which lies further north. Satellite imagery shows objects that researchers believe are the remains of the plane's tail, wing, and body sitting just metres from the shoreline.
The team is expected to search the remote island for around five days, but they could encounter coconut crabs – giant land crabs known to feast on small mammals. To be safe, they will sleep on the research vessel at night to avoid the crabs, which can have a leg span of up to three feet and can climb trees and crack open coconuts.
Theories and clues
There have been theories that Earhart and Noonan may have died when their plane crashed on the island, and their bodies were carried away by the crabs. Human bones discovered on the island in 1940 were forensically analysed in 2017 and found to have dimensions that matched Earhart's bone lengths more closely than 99% of the population. Period-specific artefacts included a woman's shoe, a compact case, a jar of freckle cream, and a medicine vial.
A further clue supporting the theory that Earhart's journey ended on or near Nikumaroro is a photo taken just three months after the disappearance that appears to show the plane's landing gear on the Nikumaroro reef. A satellite image from 2020 shows what looks like the same object, known as the Bevington Object, in the same spot decades later.
Who was Amelia Earhart?
Earhart was born in Atchison, Kansas, in 1897 to a father who was a railroad lawyer but later suffered from alcoholism, leaving the family often struggling for money. She left junior college early to become a nurse's aide and helped care for soldiers wounded in World War I, later starting a premed programme but quitting after her parents asked her to move back home to California.
It was there she took her first flight as a passenger in 1920 and was entranced immediately, saying: 'As soon as I left the ground, I knew I had to fly.' She started taking lessons, bought her first plane, and by 1922 became the first woman to fly at 14,000 feet. Earhart was chosen as the first female passenger to fly across the Atlantic in 1928 and became a celebrity overnight. In 1932 she became the first woman, and second person ever, to fly solo nonstop across the Atlantic, a journey that took 15 hours, during which she contended with mechanical issues, cold, tiredness, and a drop of 3,000 feet on her descent.
