Expeditionists have vowed to keep searching for Amelia Earhart after a wreckage thought to be the aviator’s plane turned out to be a cluster of washed-up trees
US-based explorers who voyaged to a tiny South Pacific island in hopes of finding Amelia Earhart’s plane say they stand by the “castaway hypothesis” despite the snag in their search.
The Taraia Object expedition, a joint effort by the Archaeological Legacy Institute (ALI), Purdue Research Foundation and Purdue University, headed to Nikumaroro Island after satellite imagery from 2020 appeared to show Earhart’s Electra 10-E aircraft.
asserted
imagery → vow → aircraft
However, on Monday the team confirmed that the wreckage was actually a cluster of washed-up trees.
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wreckage → confirm → trees
By the time the team arrived at the site, a good portion of the debris had fragmented and washed away, leaving only a single Y-shaped segment — a fraction of the anomaly’s original size observed in imagery when the Taraia Object hypothesis was developed.
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hypothesis → arrive → imagery
Nikumaroro Island mapped:
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Island → map → ?
Researchers thought the suspected plane's reflective surface meant it was made out of a metallic substance, but this turned out to be carbonate veneer.
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this → think → substance
Other items found by the team were similarly coated with a shiny concretised amalgam of coral sand.
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items → find → sand
The Taraia Object expedition did find numerous artefacts through both maritime and terrestrial archaeology efforts, including a steel tube about 30 inches long discovered in the lagoon near the Taraia Peninsula.
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expedition → find → Peninsula
The setback follows two previous failed attempts to locate the aircraft’s wreckage in the waters surrounding Nikumaroro.
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setback → follow → Nikumaroro
A plane-shaped sonar image captured elsewhere on the sea floor was reported to be a pile of rocks.
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image → shape → rocks
‘We will keep searching’
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We → keep → ?
While expeditionists didn’t find the “smoking gun” they were hoping for, Rick Pettigrew, ALI’s executive director, says the team remains in great spirits.
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team → find → spirits
“Amelia Earhart never gave up — she kept pushing boundaries and flying into the unknown,” said Steve Schultz, Purdue general counsel and expedition member.
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Schultz → give → unknown
“That same fire fuels our search.
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fire → fuel → search
She kept flying, and we will keep searching.
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we → keep → ?
Did Amelia Earhart’s plane actually crash?
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plane → crash → ?
Earhart and her navigator Fred Noonan left Lae, Papua New Guinea, on the third-to-last leg of her round-the-world flight attempt on 2 July, 1937.
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Earhart → leave → July
The pair were heading to Howland Island, around 400 miles northwest of Nikumaroro when they mysteriously disappeared.
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they → head → Nikumaroro
It led to one of the US’ largest air-sea searchers in history, as the country spent two weeks scouring an area of the Pacific Ocean roughly the size of Texas.
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country → lead → Texas
Earhart’s Lockheed Electra, affectionately known as her “Flying Laboratory,” was purchased with funds from the Purdue Research Foundation.
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Electra → know → Foundation
Earhart intended to return the plane to Purdue upon completion of her flight.
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Earhart → intend → flight
But the castaway theory, developed by The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery since the 1980s, argues that Earhart and Noonan did not crash into the sea.
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Earhart → develop → sea
Instead, it is believed the pair landed on the reef flat of the remote atoll and were marooned there.
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pair → believe → atoll
The castaway theory is based on four key bodies of evidence, based on documentary records, photographs and satellite images, physical artifacts, and personal testimony.
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theory → base → records
These are:
- Radio bearings recorded from transmissions at the time by the US Navy, the U.S. Coast Guard and Pan American World Airways, which converge on Nikumaroro.
- A 2018 analysis of human bones discovered on the island in 1940, strongly suggesting they belong to a woman of Earhart’s stature
- Artefacts found on Nikumaroro including a woman’s shoe, a compact case, a freckle cream jar and a medicine vial — all dating to the 1930s.
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all → record → 1930s
- The Bevington Object, a photographic anomaly on the Nikumaroro reef captured three months after the plane’s disappearance, which appears to represent the Electra’s landing gear.
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which → capture → gear
The official US government view of Earhart's fate has long been that her plane ran out of fuel and crashed at sea near its refueling destination of Howland Island.
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plane → run → Island
The Aporia
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