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Have We Found Amelia?

Submitted by Mark Esposito, Guest Blogger

University of Oklahoma researchers are conducting DNA testing on bone fragments found on a remote and deserted Pacific Island to determine if they belong to Amelia Earhart.  Earhart and navigator, Fred Noonan, were lost on July 2, 1937, attempting a trans-global fight aboard the Electra. A massive search involving the U.S. Navy revealed nothing but weak or unintelligible signals presumably from the Electra were received. Now we may know why.

The unlucky pair may have crash landed on Nikumaroro Island surviving long enough to make a camp. In 2007 several personal items belonging to Earhart were discovered by the researchers. They have returned several times but only found the bone chips on the most recent trip. The fragments are being compared to DNA samples provided by the Earhart family.

Nikumaroro Island (formerly Gardner Island), is part of the Phoenix Islands, Kiribati, in the western Pacific Ocean. It is a remote, elongated, triangular coral atoll with profuse vegetation and a large central marine lagoon. It is about      1,800 thousand limes from Hawaii. In a sad irony,  British survey parties began arriving in 1938 at Nikumaroro, by which time she and Noonan may have succumbed to injuries, starvation or disease.

The expedition is being led by  International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery which comprises of a band of aviation enthusiasts based in Delaware.

Source: Thaindian News

Mark Esposito, Guest Blogger

45 thoughts on “Have We Found Amelia?”

  1. Back in the 1930s, all navigation was by dead reckoning. There was no system of radio navigation such as was developed after WW-II. When I bought my first E6B (a complex slide rule device used for aerial navigation) the flight instructor who sold it to me said, “This is used for dead reckoning navigation. They call it that because if you reckon wrong, you will probably end up dead.”

  2. Mespo,

    I am still missing something here.

    Bones and fecal have been recovered.
    DNA tests are being conducted.
    DNA will be established.

    In what time frame do you think
    that the labs will be able to produce
    a link to some descendant of Amelia’s?

    A month? 6 months? A year?

    If these materials are proven to be
    human, there must be some parts of the
    aircraft buried or washed not too too
    far away???

    Thanks Mespo Super Sleuth…

  5. MESPO,

    Thank you very much for that link.
    Most informative.
    Communication misunderstandings are
    usually at minimum a contributing
    factor to fatal aircraft accidents
    and incidents.

    I’d love to see more aviation related
    posts…

    Thanks

  6. Former Federal LEO
    1, December 25, 2010 at 10:20 am
    What a bunch o’ wise-akers. An intelligent guy writes a good, serious article and this is his thanks–all for one unimportant double-letter transpositional typo.

    ===================================================

    FFLEO’s response was funnier than the typo.

    Poor mespo, his only semi-defender is a guy who roams the desert looking for lost cattle.

    I, for one, have always been fascinated by the Amelia Earhart story and found the additional information mespo provided very interesting.

    Now you may all call me a kiss-up and toss your half eaten fruit at me …

  7. Bud:

    An incredibly sad theory of the Earhart tragedy is told here about the doings of the US Navy ship, Itasca:

    “The Itasca was at Howland Island to provide communications, smoke signals, and radio bearings to guide Earhart and Noonan as they approached the small isolated island in the mid-Pacific. I reject as fanciful the many conspiracy and faulty navigation theories involving the loss of the two fliers. Earhart and Noonan attempted to fly from Lae to Howland Island, arrived in the vicinity of the island short of fuel, and went into the sea nearby trying to find it. Things were what they seemed to be.
    Those who have flown over the sea when the sun is bright and low, with cumulus clouds about, know how difficult it would be to see a tiny island having a highest elevation of only about 15 feet. Looking toward the sun one sees only a blinding, shimmering path of silvery reflected sunlight in an arc about 15° to 20° wide; within that arc nothing can be seen. Elsewhere, numerous cloud shadows look exactly like islands.
    The Itasca was making smoke, but it would have been conspicuous only if seen from sea level with a light blue sky in the background. Earhart and Noonan, however, were flying at 1,000 feet and the smoke seen from that perspective would have had an inky, blue-sea background. Color contrast would have been minimal; the odds were against them.
    Tiny Howland would have been difficult to spot in any case, but none of this would have mattered if the fliers could have received a radio bearing for final guidance. That was not to be.

    Failure to Provide Timely Radio Beacon Signal

    The Itasca failed to provide a timely radio beacon signal for the fliers to home on. Her 550-270 kiloHertz (kHz) radio direction finder and 500 kHz beacon transmitter do not appear to have been manned until 0730 ship’s time, according to the log kept by Radioman Third Class T. J. O’Hare. The plane by that time would have been nearing Howland and the fliers would have been trying to find the island visually. By 0730, they likely would have given up trying to find the radio beacon, thinking their radio direction finder was not working.
    Commander Thompson should have had Radioman Third Class O’Hare on watch at least from the time the plane was about 200 miles from destination (i.e., at 0615 ship’s time or earlier) and should have been transmitting a beacon signal on 500 kHz–not listening on that frequency. Almost every time “500 KCs [kilocycles]” (kilocycles rather than kiloHertz was the term in use at the time) is mentioned in the logs, one kept by O’Hare and the other by Radioman Third Class W. L. Galten, it is in the context of a request on 3105 kHz that Earhart transmit on 500 kHz so the Itasca could get a bearing–or a simple note such as “LSNIN [listening] 500” or “NIL [nothing] FROM KHAQQ [the aircraft] 500.” It seems clear that the Itasca was listening on 500 kHz, not transmitting a steady beacon signal. One cannot do both at the same time.
    Earhart and Noonan simply could not transmit on 500 kHz. They depended on their radio direction finder and could have taken bearings on the cutter’s 500 kHz transmitter if it had been in operation. The fliers needed a continuous beacon signal on that frequency, except during the plane’s scheduled transmissions, and there was none. Had there been one, it could have guided them to Howland Island.
    All involved evidently misunderstood who was to take the bearings, ship or plane, so the cutter’s crew listened on 500 kHz when they should have transmitted. But they did neither until the plane was already almost at destination.

    Failure to Support Radio Direction Finder on Howland

    “On 5 July, Commander Thompson reported in a long message to Coast Guard Headquarters (with copy to San Francisco Division) that “SHIP [ITASCA] MET ALL EARHART REQUESTS WITH EXCEPTION INABILITY TO SECURE EMERGENCY RADIO BEARING ON 3105 KILOCYCLES DUE BRIEF EARHART TRANSMISSIONS AND USE VOICE. . . .” He is on the defensive here and attempting to shift blame squarely to Earhart. The “USE [of] VOICE” would not have prevented bearings being taken. In any case, the cutter’s 0756 radio log entry does not bear him out. At that time, Earhart requested bearings and made a series of “long dashes,” i.e., unmodulated carrier. She had made several transmissions that were too short to DF (get a direction-finding bearing), but she did not do it this time.
    Commander Thompson’s report does not tell the rest of the story. Richard B. Black, Department of the Interior, and Radioman Second Class Frank Cipriani had brought aboard the Itasca a portable radio direction finder (RDF) that could tune the high frequencies used by Earhart for communications, with the intention of setting it up on Howland Island. For no apparent reason, Commander Thompson at first flatly refused to put Cipriani and his equipment ashore on the island. It could have been because he regarded his ship as responsible for guiding Earhart to Howland and he did not want anyone else to steal his thunder.
    Black, however, was determined that Cipriani and his RDF equipment would go ashore. Eventually, he prevailed, but Commander Thompson gave only grudging support and sent Cipriani ashore with a battery of inadequate capacity. Despite minimum use, the battery was totally discharged just when it was needed most–when Earhart desperately wanted a bearing taken and was sending those long dashes.
    But for this, bearings almost certainly could have been taken, although they could not have been sent to the plane because Earhart was not receiving voice transmissions from the Itasca. The bearings could have been a lifesaver during the rescue attempt, however, giving the searchers a better idea of where to look for the downed plane.”

    http://www.euro-downloads.com/gazette/G108.html

  10. The rumor I heard about that tragic flight, was that the aircraft had a compass made by a company called TATES.

    And apparently they were notoriously unreliable.
    So unreliable in fact, that they even had an industry saying.

    She was has a Tates, is lost.

  11. “Wonder how far they’d [limes] go end to end?”

    I don’t know; however, my guess is the distance would be somewhat less than a string of end-to-end limeys…

  13. Thanks for the support FFleo, but I like the “limes” typo. Wonder how far they’d go end to end?

  15. FFLEO,

    It’s not very thankful to waste such a fruitful holiday bounty. 😉

  16. What a bunch o’ wise-akers. An intelligent guy writes a good, serious article and this is his thanks–all for one unimportant double-letter transpositional typo.

  17. 1,800 limes and not a bottle of rum or Coke in sight.

    What was a girl to do?

    On the positive side, we can be sure she didn’t die of scurvy.

  18. …is 1,800 limes less of a distance than 1,800 lemons, or cumquats, or…and would it matter if you used kilometers instead?

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