One of history’s greatest missing person mysteries surrounds Amelia Earhart and her navigator Fred Noonan, whose plane was lost somewhere in the Pacific near Honolulu in 1937. A bunch of people calling themselves The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery now says it has more evidence supporting the claim that she wasn’t immediately killed after her plane went down.
Just before the plane disappeared, radio transmissions from Earhart tell of them being low on fuel. A large part of the search in 1937 focused on the waters of the Pacific. However, Australian news outlet News.com.au reports that TIGHAR has backed up claims that say she safely landed her plane and “died as a castaway” instead.
A TIGHAR representative “said from the time the plane vanished off the radar on July 2 to July 6, there were more than 100 radio transmissions from Earhart calling for help.” This meant that the plane was on land and intact enough for Earhart to use the radio. A number of people picked up on distress calls that seemed to be from her.
From the story:
A woman in Melbourne even picked up her frequency.
A housewife in Texas listening on a short-wave radio a short time later also heard Earhart’s pleas. She heard the plane had landed part in water and part on land.
What’s fascinating about [TIGHAR]’s theory, is a girl from St Petersburg in Florida who was 16 when Earhart went missing.
According to [TIGHAR], she was at home listening to her radio when Earhart interrupted the frequency.
The girl grabbed a notebook next to her radio and began to transcribe Earhart’s call for help.
[TIGHAR] now has the notebook and he said the whole thing read like a modern 911 call.
“It’s very confusing, some things don’t seem to make sense,” he said.
“In several places in the notebook she wrote ‘New York, New York’.
“That’s how she wrote New York City or something that sounded like New York City.”
In the past, TIGHAR has visited the island that is believed to be where she landed—Gardner Island—but hasn’t had the “right equipment” to locate debris from the plane. However, as next July will mark the 80th anniversary of Earhart’s disappearance, TIGHAR plans to go back with submarines in order to conduct an underwater search.
At the same time, TIGHAR’s efforts have been met with heavy criticism and skepticism, so it’s tough to choose which theory to believe. So maybe none of this is actually true!
Who knows. Maybe the coconut crabs really did get her.
Via New York Post