A piece of aluminum debris recovered in 1991 appears to belong to Amelia Earhart’s lost plane, according to researchers at The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery (TIGHAR).
This article published in Discovery News, tells the story of the evidence uncovered off a tiny uninhabited island, Nikumaroro, between Hawaii and Australia.
Amelia Earhart’s Lockheed Electra disappeared over the Pacific Ocean on July 2, 1937, in an attempt to set a record flying around the world at the equator. What happened to her and Fred Noonan, her navigator, has never been determined.
Amelia Earhart, the person and her disappearance, have always fascinated me. How could a woman of such celebrity just disappear… in a Lockheed Electra? Given that the debris in question was found in 1991, why did it take so long to compare that piece of sheet metal with an existing Lockheed electra?
The piece of aluminum aircraft debris at the center of the claim was recovered in 1991 from Nikumaroro, an uninhabited atoll in the southwestern Pacific republic of Kiribati. Strong circumstantial evidence suggests that debris belongs to Earhart’s twin-engined Lockheed Electra.
Earhart spent several days in Miami prior to beginning her ill-fated journey. During her stay, the window at the right rear of the fuselage was replaced with a piece of sheet metal. According to the Discovery News article, a photographer from The Miami Herald captured a photo of the right side of the airplane as it was taxiing for departure. The sheet metal replacing the rear window clearly stands out. When placed in the same position on an Electra being restored here in the United States, the size of the debris and the rivet holes are an eerie match.
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