New Try to Solve Old Mystery: Privately Funded Effort to Search Near Pacific Atoll for Signs of Earhart’s Plane
What became of Amelia Earhart’s plane when it disappeared over the Pacific 75 years ago has long intrigued aviation fans. On Tuesday, U.S. government officials and a private historical group are expected to announce a new effort to locate the famed aviator’s twin-engine Lockheed.
The effort, projected to kick off in July, will be financed with roughly half a million dollars in private funds, according to people familiar with the details. It will focus on a remote Pacific atoll called Nikumaroro, halfway between Hawaii and Australia, near where the plane carrying Ms. Earhart and a companion may have gone down during an attempted around-the-world flight.
A search team will concentrate on the deep waters near Nikumaroro, which was the site of a 2010 search that focused on coral reefs and nearby shallow waters, these people said.
The impetus for the latest expedition is a recently discovered photo, apparently taken near Nikumaroro just months after Ms. Earhart’s disappearance. Some experts believe it may show a portion of the plane’s landing gear.
State Department officials held a hastily arranged briefing Monday night to describe the photo. After “very intense photo analysis” by government and outside experts, according to one senior official, “the judgment is that it’s worth exploring.”
The official added that “a very healthy dose of skepticism has to be in play.”
The search will be spearheaded again by the International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery, which has championed the theory that the renowned female aviator and Fred Noonan, the other crew member on the July 1937 flight, ended up on or near the west coast of the island, formerly called Gardner Island.
Aviation experts aren’t unanimous in believing that scenario. Some longtime Earhart theorists are convinced that bad weather caused the plane to run out of fuel and forced a ditching in the ocean. Officials from the private recovery team declined to comment about specifically where they intend to look and who is financing the expedition.
An event scheduled for Tuesday at the State Department in Washington is expected to reveal many of those specifics. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton sent out invitations promising to open “a new chapter in the search” for what remains of the legendary plane.
Since the island is now part of the Republic of Kiribati, State Department officials have helped pave the way for an underwater search.
Officials at the Smithsonian’s Air and Space Museum also have been briefed. A museum official on Monday declined to provide details, except to say “we have no formal partnership” with the search but “support any general effort” to unravel the mystery.
Continuing fascination with the crash has spawned numerous Web sites, far-out explanations and various conspiracy theories.
Ms. Earhart’s plane was on one leg a record-setting global trip but disappeared before reaching Howland Island, which the U.S. Navy had outfitted with a landing strip, fuel supplies, a radio transmitter and support personnel.
Her final frantic radio transmissions to the crew of a Coast Guard cutter, possibly advising them she and Mr. Noonan were lost, added to the mystery.
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