Artifacts reveal Amelia Earhart survived as castaway on remote Pacific island

For decades, pioneer aviator Amelia Earhart was said to have “disappeared” over the Pacific on her quest to circle the globe along a 29,000-mile equatorial route.

Now, new information gives a clearer picture of what happened 75 years ago to Ms. Earhart and her navigator Fred Noonan, where they came down and how they likely survived – for a while, at least – as castaways on a remote island, catching rainwater and eating fish, shellfish, and turtles to survive.

The tale hints at lost opportunities to locate and rescue the pair in the first crucial days after they went down, vital information dismissed as inconsequential or a hoax, the failure to connect important dots regarding physical evidence.

The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery (TIGHAR), a non-profit foundation promoting aviation archaeology and historic aircraft preservation, reported new details Friday leading researchers to this conclusion: Earhart and Noonan, low on fuel and unable to find their next scheduled stopping point – Howland Island – radioed their position, then landed on a reef at uninhabited Gardner Island, a small coral atoll now known as Nikumaroro Island.

Using what fuel remained to turn up the engines to recharge the batteries, they continued to radio distress signals for several days until Earhart’s twin-engine Lockheed Electra aircraft was swept off the reef by rising tides and surf. Using equipment not available in 1937 – digitized information management systems, antenna modeling software, and radio wave propagation analysis programs, TIGHAR concluded that 57 of the 120 signals reported at the time are credible, triangulating Earhart’s position to have been Nikumaroro Island.

"Amelia Earhart did not simply vanish on July 2, 1937,” Richard Gillespie, executive director of TIGHAR, told Discovery News. “Radio distress calls believed to have been sent from the missing plane dominated the headlines and drove much of the US Coast Guard and Navy search.”

"When the search failed, all of the reported post-loss radio signals were categorically dismissed as bogus and have been largely ignored ever since," Mr. Gillespie said. But the results of the study, he said, “suggest that the aircraft was on land and on its wheels for several days following the disappearance.”

In addition, several artifacts found years ago – some of it discovered by Pacific islanders who later inhabited the island – seem to confirm TIGHAR’s conclusion.

These include broken glass artifacts showing evidence of secondary use as tools for cutting or scraping; large numbers of fish and bird bones collected in, or associated with, ash and charcoal deposits; several hundred mollusk shells, as well as bones from at least one turtle; bone fragments and dried fecal matter that might be of human origin.

A photo taken three months after Earhart’s flight shows what could be the landing gear of her aircraft in the waters off the atoll.

“Analyses of the artifacts, faunals and data collected during the expedition are on-going but, at this point, everything supports the hypothesis that the remains found at the site in 1940 were those of Amelia Earhart,” according to TIGHAR.

Other artifacts (some of them reported in 1940 but then lost) include a bone-handled pocket knife of the type known to have been carried by Earhart, part of a man’s shoe, part of a woman’s shoe, a zipper of the kind manufactured in the 1930s, a woman’s compact, and broken pieces of a jar appearing to be the same size and unusual shape as one holding “Dr. Berry's Freckle Ointment.” (Earhart was known to dislike her freckles.)

In July, TIGHAR researchers will return to the area where Earhart and Noonan are thought to have spent their last days, using submersibles to try and detect the famous aircraft they believe to have been swept off a Pacific reef in 1937.

Team closes in on Amelia Earhart

Ric Gillespie may be closer than anyone ever thought possible to solving one of the greatest mysteries of the 20th century.

But he still struggles to understand the complicated woman at the heart of it all.

Recently, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton joined Gillespie -- head of the International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery (TIGHAR) -- in announcing a new expedition to solve the disappearance of famed aviator Amelia Earhart.

A worldwide celebrity and American heroine, Earhart, along with her navigator Fred Noonan, vanished in 1937 as they were trying to fly around the world.

There have been countless theories, but Gillespie and his team of researchers, archaeologists and crash investigators -- his own specialty -- believe they are close to solving the riddle.

"I'm a horseman, so we're on the back straight and coming to the wire," Gillespie reasons.

Even oceanographer Robert Ballard, who discovered the remains of the Titanic in 1985, says TIGHAR's research looks promising.

In July, Gillespie's team will set out on a 220-foot research vessel from Honolulu, and head toward the Phoenix Islands in Kiribati.

They believe there's compelling evidence Earhart may have landed in shallow waters near Nikumarro island, and an analysis of a photo taken in 1937 -- showing what could be a piece of mangled landing gear sticking from the surf -- could be the best spot to search.

During past searches, they've found other clues, including an eye-witness account of someone who saw wreckage as a little girl, bones that seem to be those of a woman castaway, bits of makeup and a camp site littered with the bones of countless birds, turtles and fish.

But the newly enhanced picture may lead them to the remains of the plane.

What they're looking for is an "any idiot artifact" -- the thing you hold up and any idiot will say, 'mystery solved'.

Gillespie has been chasing Earhart for decades -- at first not wanting any part of the search, because so many others had already tried.

But clue by clue, he and his team have built a case.

Around his office in Delaware, there are pictures of Earhart and Noonan that sit near a photo of Gillespie's granddaughter.

The flyer has become a part of his life.

But he seems surer of the trail they follow than the pilot they're searching for.

"I have struggled to understand this woman, " he says. "I still don't know who she was, but she's not the Amelia Earhart of legend.

"She's someone else."

The adventurer was among the biggest celebrities of her day. And she used that as currency.

During times when Americans had very little, she offered the clouds - an ambitious woman, Gillespie reasons, who mass-marketed the dream of flight.

"I don't know if I would have liked her very much," he admits, saying that's something he's never come out and said before.

But he knows she did well for aviation.

And he's found a certain connection, beyond the search.

Earhart knew headlines were the way to move forward onto the next great quest.

Standing with Clinton during the recent announcement - happy to have the attention on a project that demands a lot of money -- something came to mind.

"The uncomfortable realization that I do the same thing (as Earhart)," he says. "It gives new perspective on Amelia."

Though it doesn't help to know what her last moments were like -- some suggesting Noonan could have died during the crash.

If only she made it onto the island, with no antibiotics and in 37 C heat amid coconut crabs and isolation, experts say she could have lasted months. But drinkable water would have been limited and death certain.

Now a man who doesn't quite understand her may be the one to finally locate her.

But like the aviator, he knows no course is certain until you actually get there.