University Daily Kansan / Tuesday, March 17, 1992
Lost, then found
Searchers solve Earhart mystery
A search team that went to the South Pacific last October believes it has proof that aviator Amelia Earlhaert made an emergency landing on Gardner Island (now known as Nikumaroro). Earlhart disappeared on an attempted round-the-world flight 55 years ago.
Around-the-world route
Gardner Island
Earlhart's last radio communication indicated a bearing of 157/337 from Howland Island, pointing the search team to Gardner Island in the Pacific.
Bearing 157/337
Earlhart's last radio
In October, searchers found a size 9 shoe heel they believe is Earhart's and a piece of metal they believe is part of the fuselage of her plane.
SOURCE: TIGRAR, Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum; Timelite Books, Launch Flight by Earlham Aitken
Earhart mystery solved after 55 years, investigator claims
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON — Bits of metal, a medicine bottle cap and parts of a woman's shoe prove Amelia Earhart landed on a remote Pacific island and later died there, probably from thirst, an investigator claimed yesterday.
"We have recovered artifacts that conclusively prove this case," said Richard Gillespie, executive director of the International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery. "The facts are there. The case is solved."
Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan, disappeared in the South Pacific on July 2, 1937, while on a flight from New Guinea to Howland Island. They were on the final portion of an attempt to fly around the world near the equator.
Neither the fliersnur their Lockheed Electra were mounted in an air and sea search mounted by the U.S. Navy. Later, reports surfaced that Earhart, of Atchison, Kan., had been captured by the Japanese and died a prisoner. This has never been proven, however, and the fate of Earhart has been the subject of numerous books.
At a news conference yesterday, Gillespie said he had solved the 55-year-old mystery.
He said his research showed that after Earhart and Noonan failed to find Howland Island, they came upon a small atoll, then called Gardner Island and now called Nikumaroro,
and landed there on a dry tidal flat during low tide.
Radio distress signals were heard from the vicinity of the island for three days but then stopped, Gillespie said.
He also said that a massive storm north of Nikumaroro generated waves that washed the Electra from the tidal flat and dropped the airplane over a coral reef edge into 2,000 feet of water.
This is why, he said, when Navy planes flew over the island a few days ago, they could see us clearly.
Nikumaroro, then uninhibited, had no fresh water supply. Gillespie said he believed Earhart and Noonan depended on rainwater to survive, but the local rainfall was only about an $1\frac{1}{2}$ inches a year. The pair probably died from thirst, he said.
Guptesie said his organization visited Nikumaroro last October and discovered several artifacts they had not found during a 1989 visit to the island.
He said expert analysis of a piece of aircraft aluminum, a length of copper wire, parts of a woman's size 9 shoe, and a bottle cap from a medicine bottle uncovered nothing that would disprove his contention that Earhart and Noonad died on Nikumaroro.
"We're very confident that the Amelia Earlhart case is solved," said Gillespie. The artifacts, he said, form circumstantial evidence in such an overwhelming way as to make them conclusive.
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