Search Team May Have Found New Evidence Of Amelia Earhart’s Wreckage

Search Team May Have Found New Evidence Of Amelia Earhart’s Wreckage


Amelia Earhart disappeared 75 years ago in an attempt to become the first woman to fly around the world, yet people are still looking for her. Just last month, a search expedition was unsuccessful in finding Earhart’s wreckage — or so they thought.

The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery (TIGHAR) behind the $US2.2 million search expedition had to shut down early and walk away thinking it had failed. Luckily, the team kept looking. TIGHAR looked at all the underwater footage it captured, compared it to previous data and now believe they’ve stumbled upon gold. Or at least they’re very hopeful that this is Amelia Earhart’s wrecked Lockheed Electra. Ric Gillespie, executive director of TIGHAR, told the Los Angeles Times:

“We have man-made objects in a debris field… in a location where we had previously reasoned where aeroplane wreckage should be… We don’t want to oversell this. We have lots of clues… It looks like it might be the right stuff, but we need a lot more work done, and ultimately we’re going to have to go back and recover it.”

In the image at the top, Jeff Glickman, the group’s forensic scientist, says it shows what appears to be “the fender, possibly the wheel and possibly some portions of the strut” near the Pacific island of Nikumaroro, where many have long theorised Amelia Earhart crashed. What might be even more interesting is Gillespie’s description to Discovery News of another ongoing investigation about a jar — believed to be a freckle cream that Earhart might have carried — repurposed as a cutting tool that was found on Nikumaroro.

It shows signs of having been used as a cutting tool — so the jar does seem to have been associated with the castaway who died there… The question, therefore, would seem to be whether the castaway who had a jar of American women’s freckle cream was someone other than Amelia Earhart. We don’t know who that would be.”

The mystery continues. [CNN, Los Angeles Times, Discovery News]


The Cheapest NBN 50 Plans

It’s the most popular NBN speed in Australia for a reason. Here are the cheapest plans available.

At Gizmodo, we independently select and write about stuff we love and think you'll like too. We have affiliate and advertising partnerships, which means we may collect a share of sales or other compensation from the links on this page. BTW – prices are accurate and items in stock at the time of posting.