The disappearance of aviator and writer Amelia Earhart is one of the most famous in aviation history. The International Historic Aircraft Retrieval Group (TIGHAR) has been searching for the Earhart monoplane, which disappeared without a trace in 1937, for many years.
Recently, TIGHAR specialists discovered a monoplane in the frames of the Hollywood comedy "Love on the Run". The Lockheed-Electra twin-engined monoplane L-10E featured in the film a few weeks before it was given to Earhart for his birthday. It is not known whether Earhart herself knew that the plane was a movie star.
Amelia Earhart's Lockheed-Electra L-10E aircraft.
Photo: Logawi / wikipedia.org / public domain
According to the script of the film, "Lockheed-Electra" "chases" a crowd of passengers at the airport, and then makes a spectacular takeoff. At the end of the picture, the monoplane crashes, but the main characters survive. After the disappearance of the plane in the Pacific Ocean, no one mentioned his participation in the film. This became known only after TIGHAR specialists saw the registration number on its wing.
Missing plane
Promotional video:
Amelia Erhard is a renowned American writer and aviation pioneer. She was the first female pilot to fly over the Atlantic Ocean. She has written several best-selling books about her flights and dreamed of flying around the world along the longest route, keeping as close to the equator as possible.
Amelia Earhart's round-the-world map.
Photo: Hellerick / wikipedia.org / CC BY-SA 3.0
The flight started on May 20, 1937. Together with Amelia Earhart, her navigator Frederick Noonan was on board. At the next stage of the journey, the plane flew from the coast of New Guinea to the small island of Howland in the Pacific Ocean. This section was the longest and most dangerous. After 18 hours of flight, the pilots needed to find a small island just above the water.
By order of President Roosevelt, a runway was built on Howland specifically for the Earhart flight. Officials and journalists were waiting for her there. There was a patrol ship near the island, maintaining contact with the pilots. Earhart reported that they did not see the island, there was little gasoline left, and she could not find the ship's radio signal.
At the appointed time, the plane did not appear on the island, communication with it was interrupted. The search operation for Amelia Earhart was the largest and most expensive in the history of the American fleet. She was searched for by many ships and aircraft, including the aircraft carrier Lexington and the battleship Colorado. A large number of reefs and uninhabited islands were tested, but the search was unsuccessful. Official searches were interrupted after 14 days. The unofficial ones did not stop.
The search continues
In May 2013, it was announced that the alleged wreckage of the aircraft had been found by sonar near Nikumaroro Atoll in the Phoenix Archipelago. The TIGHAR team has carefully researched the tiny coral atoll. They found a woman's shoe and a box from a sextant device. TIGHAR experts believe that Earhart made an emergency landing on the reef, where she later died for various reasons, and the plane was crashed by the waves.
Nikumaroro Atoll from above.
Photo: NASA
“We know that in 1940 British Colonial Service officer Herald Gollagher found an incomplete skeleton of a victim of the Nikumaroro disaster. Unfortunately, these bones are lost these days,”said TIGHAR CEO Richard Gillespie. Gillepsy believes that the bones could have been found in a remote part of the island, so the dead were not noticed from the planes.
Other experts also believe that the aviator could have died on the atoll. "The evidence is already ample, although not yet definitive, to support the hypothesis that Amelia landed and died on Nikumaroro Island," forensic anthropologist Karen Remy Burns told Discovery News. She believes that the main evidence is part of the skeleton found by Galaguer.
Amelia Erhard.
Photo: wikipedia.org/public domain
Burns noted that it is simply impossible to see people from the atoll. “I deliberately stood up in an open place on Nikumaroro in a white shirt and actively waving my arms, but despite this, the helicopter flew over me without noticing me,” she said. The anthropologist believes that Earhart and her navigator simply did not see the pilots.
TIGHAR researchers continue to search for the missing plane. The team intends to set off on the next expedition in the summer of 2017. They will search for the wreckage of Lockheed Electra using two manned submersibles provided by the University of Hawaii.