A fresh lead in the search for Amelia Earhart?

"ttyymmnn" (ttyymmnn) 08/12/2019 at 15:19 • Filed to: wingspan

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Back in October 1937, a British colonial officer was scouting Gardner Island, which is now called Nikumaroro. He took a photo of the island, and a shipwreck. But his camera also caught something else. And now, researchers believe that the blurry artifact in the photo might well be a landing gear from Amelia Earhart’s Lockheed Electra. The people at The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery (TIGHAR) are convinced that it’s at least worth investigating, and famed finder of lost things Robert Ballard is going to take a look.

TIGHAR photo by J. Glickman

Enhance.....

The wheel on the left is from Earhart’s takeoff accident on her first aborted attempt at flying around the world. The so-called Bevington object is the photographic smudge that has led the National Geographic Society to spend a few million bucks to see if the can find the missing plane.

Are we seeing elephants in cumulus clouds? Possibly. TIGHAR, and Robert Ballard, think otherwise. I guess we’ll find out.

Read more about the analysis of the photograph at !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! .

The Washington Post also has a write-up about the photo and the search for the Electra.

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CarsofFortLangley - Oppo Forever > ttyymmnn 08/12/2019 at 15:23

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Can’t we just zoom and enhance?

wafflesnfalafel > ttyymmnn 08/12/2019 at 15:29

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interesting - I can see why there is some excitement 

415s30 W123TSXWaggoIIIIIIo ( •_•))°) > ttyymmnn 08/12/2019 at 15:29

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I just love that the whole Ballard Titanic expedition was secondary to searching for a Russian sub and since he was successful with that they let him find the Titanic, which was such a success in itself it became  the perfect cover story. I had a Woods Hole Alvin sub T shirt back then, I loved it.

415s30 W123TSXWaggoIIIIIIo ( •_•))°) > CarsofFortLangley - Oppo Forever 08/12/2019 at 15:30

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Mac is on it

functionoverfashion > ttyymmnn 08/12/2019 at 15:32

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That’s fascinating, I love it!

ttyymmnn > CarsofFortLangley - Oppo Forever 08/12/2019 at 15:32

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Yes, to a point.

ttyymmnn > wafflesnfalafel 08/12/2019 at 15:33

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Indeed. I think this photo was taken three months after her disappearance. 

ttyymmnn > 415s30 W123TSXWaggoIIIIIIo ( •_•))°) 08/12/2019 at 15:37

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Not Russian subs, two American subs ( Thresher and Scorpion ) . The Navy wanted to see how the reactors were holding up. Not because they were concerned with leakage, but because they wanted to dump more radioactive stuff in the ocean.

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2017/11/titanic-nuclear-submarine-scorpion-thresher-ballard/

415s30 W123TSXWaggoIIIIIIo ( •_•))°) > ttyymmnn 08/12/2019 at 15:40

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Oh I thought it was a crippled Russian sub they couldn’t get to and we found it. 

Cash Rewards > CarsofFortLangley - Oppo Forever 08/12/2019 at 15:41

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facw > 415s30 W123TSXWaggoIIIIIIo ( •_•))°) 08/12/2019 at 15:43

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You may be thinking of this, which was a different, and far more ambitious operation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Azorian

ttyymmnn > 415s30 W123TSXWaggoIIIIIIo ( •_•))°) 08/12/2019 at 15:45

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You might be confusing the Titanic mission with the Glomar Explorer , which did attempt to recover a sunken Russian sub.

415s30 W123TSXWaggoIIIIIIo ( •_•))°) > facw 08/12/2019 at 15:45

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Oh yes I do remember that ship.

OPPOsaurus WRX > ttyymmnn 08/12/2019 at 15:46

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I could be wrong, but I don’ t think they had AutoCAD back in 1937

RamblinRover Luxury-Yacht > ttyymmnn 08/12/2019 at 15:47

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One might note that it’s nearly impossible to come home empty-handed here, as there’s sure knowledge of a shipwreck at this site even with no Electra parts.

ttyymmnn > OPPOsaurus WRX 08/12/2019 at 15:50

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If you click on the TIGHAR link, it will explain how they took their AutoCAD drawing and showed how it would have been lit at various times of the day. So that’s how it would have been lit at 1:00 pm on 10/15/37.

Future next gen S2000 owner > ttyymmnn 08/12/2019 at 16:12

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Amelia got tired of all the instagram haters and trolls on Twitter. She’s been kicking it at my house laying low. She’ll leave the house of all the people searching for her stop looking.

WilliamsSW > RamblinRover Luxury-Yacht 08/12/2019 at 16:41

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Yep - the shipwreck is on the right in the photo. Plus the Brits tried to colonize the island only a year or so after Earhart disappeared, which could yield some false positives.  

WilliamsSW > ttyymmnn 08/12/2019 at 16:43

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It seems to me that Gillespie and TIGHAR decided on the answer years ago, and are trying to fit evidence to it, while ignoring anything that  contradicts their narrative.

That said, I hope they find success - it would be great to know for sure what happened to her and Noonan.

Thomas Donohue > ttyymmnn 08/12/2019 at 16:54

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I’ve been following the TIGHAR search for a few years, and happy to see that Ballard is bringing his technology and expertise to Gardner/Nikamuroo. However the thing that bothers me is that there was an aeria l search of Gardner Island in the weeks after the plane went missing, and before the Bevington photo was taken .

The pilots at the time saw “signs of recent habitation” on the island, but no wreckage. If the landing gear was still in shallow water, and presumably had a wing or at least some other wreckage just under the surface nearby , wouldn’t they have seen it? B elow is the current satellite imagery of the wreck of the Norwich City, and the landing gear would have been to the northeast of it. If a search plane was low enough to see recent habitation (i.e. much closer than this satellite photo) I would think the wheel and other wreckage would have been clearly visible to them in the shallow surf .

I am hoping the plane is there, a few hundred feet down the ledge, and that I’m wrong.

Either way, I’m glad Ballard will definitively find something, or rule out the Gardner Island theory.

ttyymmnn > Thomas Donohue 08/12/2019 at 17:00

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If the landing gear was still in shallow water, and presumably had a wing or at least some other wreckage just under the surface nearby, wouldn’t they have seen it?

Could tides have played a factor? I wonder, too, what “recent signs of habitation” means. What exactly did they see?

Thomas Donohue > ttyymmnn 08/12/2019 at 18:16

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From the official report, they circled at 50ft. but they don’t explain what ‘recent habitation’ referred to. According to TIGHAR, Earhart would have landed at high tide, and tidal variances were at most 2 meters.

If everything except the landing gear were swept over the ledge, I still think that they would have seen something even if it were 5 ft down. They clearly were looking near the shipwreck, but then again, it could have distracted them.

From M’Kean the planes proceeded to Gardner Island (sighting the ship to starboard enroute) and made an aerial search of this island which proved to be one of the biggest of the group. Gardner is a typical example of your south sea atoll … a narrow circular strip of land (about as wide as Coronado’s silver strand) surrounding a large lagoon. Most of this island is covered with tropical vegetation with, here and there, a grove of coconut palms. Here signs of recent habitation were clearly visible but repeated circling and zooming failed to elicit any answering wave from possible inhabitants and it was finally taken for granted that none were there.

At the western end of the island a tramp steamer (of about 4000 tons) bore mute evidence of unlighted and poorly charted “Rocks and Shoals”. She lay high and almost dry head onto the coral beach with her back broken in two places.

The lagoon at Gardner looked sufficiently deep and certainly large enough so that a seaplane or even an airboat could have landed or taken off in any direction with little if any difficulty. Given a chance, it is believed that Miss Earhart could have landed her plane in this lagoon and swam or waded ashore. In fact, on any of these islands it is not hard to believe that a forced landing could have been accomplished with no more damage than a good barrier crash or a good wetting.

From Gardner, the planes headed southeast for Carondelet Reef, sighting its occasional breakers a good ten miles away. No part of the reef is above water and, although it could be plainly seen from the air, the water over it must have been at least ten to twenty feet in depth. Finding nothing here the planes returned to the ship.

Thomas Donohue > Thomas Donohue 08/12/2019 at 18:27

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The ship is scanning the western edge of the island, tracking photo below.

Someone to follow on Twitter if you’d like to see updates on the ships location. @jaysguitars

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ttyymmnn > Thomas Donohue 08/12/2019 at 18:42

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“Signs of habitation” could presumably be Pacific islanders who used it as a remote base or rest point.

FWIW, I still think they missed Howland by a few miles  and simply came down in the open ocean. It would be neat if they find something, but I’m not optimistic.

punkgoose17 > ttyymmnn 08/12/2019 at 21:31

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I am already convinced Nikumaroro is the island she crash landed at. They found bones, shoes, freckle cream, and a piece of the plane. Too bad the bones found there in 1940 were lost.  https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/will-search-for-amelia-earhart-ever-end-180953646/