The fate of Amelia Earhart has puzzled the world for nearly 90 years, and a new expedition says answers could arrive within days. A team of researchers is heading to a tiny island in the Pacific after satellite photos picked out a strange shape in the shallows that looks a lot like a crashed aircraft.
A shape in the sand
The blurry images show what experts believe could be the body and tail of a plane, buried in the white sand of Nikumaroro. The mysterious feature has been nicknamed the "Taraia Object".
Not everyone is excited. Skeptics argue the shape may be nothing more than a pile of dead trees. A 17-strong search crew is now set to examine the waters and find out for themselves.
The flight that vanished
Earhart became famous as the first woman to fly solo non-stop across the Atlantic. On July 2, 1937, she disappeared over the Pacific with her navigator, Fred Noonan, while attempting to become the first female pilot to fly around the world.
The US government maintains that she ran out of fuel and plunged into the sea near Howland Island, her intended stop.
The team heading to Nikumaroro believes the pair missed Howland, flew south and crash-landed on the island’s reef, possibly dying as castaways.
The hunt begins
The $900,000 mission is led by the US-based Archaeological Legacy Institute and Purdue University. The crew set sail from Tarawa, the capital of Kiribati, on an 830-mile boat journey and plan to spend five days searching the reef.
Mission leader Richard Pettigrew said that finding Earhart’s Lockheed Electra "would be the discovery of a lifetime". Purdue’s Steve Schultz said it would solve "one of the great mysteries in aviation history, certainly one of the great mysteries of the 20th century". A find could also reveal details of her final hours, or even lead to her remains.
Theories and doubters
The disappearance has fed wild theories for years. Some claim the pair flew to Japanese-controlled Saipan and were executed as American spies. Another rumour says Earhart survived, moved to New York under the name Irene Bolam and lived quietly. The real Ms Bolam answered that story with a multi-million-dollar lawsuit.
Critics call the new hunt a wild goose chase. Biographer Mary Lovell said: "This is not the first such expedition to find Amelia, by any means. They are an annual feature."
Author Laurie Gwen Shapiro insists the plane lies at the bottom of the ocean near Howland Island and called the voyage "nonsense". In her words: "There’s no way that she ran out of fuel, frantic and then flew hundreds of miles back. This is just a way to get people’s names in the news and raise money."
Where things stand
For now, the Taraia Object remains a faint outline in satellite pictures. The crew will soon see whether it is a piece of aviation history or just driftwood. Either way, the world will be watching the reef at Nikumaroro.
Image credit: GOOGLE
Source: Daily Express US
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