A much-anticipated expedition to locate Amelia Earhart’s missing aircraft is set to begin next week, after being delayed for more than a year.
Earhart was 39 when she disappeared in 1937 while attempting to become the first woman to fly around the world.
For more than 80 years, investigators were left without answers. Then, in 2020, satellite images revealed what appeared to be a “visual anomaly” in the lagoon off Nikumaroro Island, a remote South Pacific atoll roughly midway between Australia and Hawaii.
Although the prevailing view has long been that Earhart crashed into the open ocean, researchers now believe she may have landed on Nikumaroro. The feature, known as the “Taraia Object,” could be the wreckage of the Lockheed Electra she was flying.
Purdue University archaeologist Dr. Richard Pettigrew will lead a 16-member team to the remote Pacific reef in the coming days, using advanced technology to investigate the site.
“There’s a lot of evidence, you know, supporting this hypothesis. Knowing what we know, we can’t turn our backs on it. We can’t. We can’t avoid going there,” Pettigrew told WYFI.
If Pettigrew’s theory is confirmed and the team finds Earhart’s Lockheed Electra, it could finally resolve one of aviation’s most enduring mysteries.
It could also uncover the tragic fate of the pioneering aviator and her navigator.
Earhart, born in 1897, stands beside the Lockheed Electra in which she disappeared in 1937
Researchers will examine the Taraia Object, pictured, on a remote Pacific island they believe may hold Earhart’s missing Electra
The discovery would suggest that Earhart became lost during her round-the-world flight, exhausted her fuel supply and landed on a small, isolated island. There, she may have died from hunger and dehydration before her remains were consumed by coconut crabs.
“The very idea that she wasted away on the island and eventually died and got eaten by coconut crabs—that’s a horrible, horrible vision,” Pettigrew told Our News Outlet last year.
“I don’t like thinking about it, but it’s inevitable.”
Such a discovery would provide a macabre conclusion to the mystery surrounding Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan, who vanished over the Pacific on July 2, 1937, while flying from Papua New Guinea to Howland Island.
Earhart’s attempt to become the first woman to circumnavigate the globe faced powerful headwinds, and she radioed that the aircraft was running low on fuel.
The disappearance of the aviation pioneer, who had inspired women around the world to pursue their ambitions, sent shockwaves across the globe.
The US Navy searched the area for 16 days but failed to find any sign of the aircraft or its crew.
The official theory remains that Earhart’s plane ran out of fuel, crashed and sank in the deep ocean near Howland Island.
The lack of wreckage, however, has fueled countless alternative theories about what happened to the pair.
Some claims have been wildly improbable, ranging from alien abduction to the suggestion that Earhart survived and lived in New Jersey under an assumed name.
Some speculate Earhart and Noonan crash-landed on Mili Atoll, 800 miles northwest of Howland, and were taken prisoner by the Japanese and transported to Saipan, where they died in captivity.
Various teams have tried to pinpoint the crash location by scanning the ocean floor or using computer models based on Earhart’s radio transmissions.
No one has found a verified plane part or bone fragment.
In 2024, it looked as if the mystery might be solved when explorers at South Carolina firm Deep Sea Vision discovered an ‘aircraft-shaped object’ in the area of the Pacific where the legendary aviator vanished.
However, a second expedition dashed hopes, revealing that the object was not an aircraft but simply a bunch of rocks.
Since the late 1980s, many investigators have probed another theory: that Earhart made an emergency landing on a dry flat stretch of coral reef off what was then known as Gardner Island, southwest of Howland.
Veteran archaeologist Dr Richard Pettigrew on a previous expedition to Gardner Island, now called Nikumaroro
Earhart was on one of the final legs of her round-the-world flight in 1937 when she disappeared
Coconut crabs can weigh up to 9lbs (4kg) with a body length of 16 inches, and have large claws with which to crack open coconuts
Deep Sea Vision previously released sonar images (pictured) they believed might be the remains of Earhart’s plane but it turned out to be a bunch of rocks
Researchers at the International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery (Tighar), point to Earhart’s last in-flight radio message heard by the Coast Guard cutter Itasca, which put her on course for Gardner.
A series of distress calls in the days after the disappearance, apparently made by Earhart from a safely-landed Electra, also point to her having landed on Gardner, though these may have been hoaxes.
Various expeditions to that distant island, now called Nikumaroro, have uncovered bones, a campfire, clothing and navigational gear, that may suggest Earhart ended her days there.
Her remains may have been devoured by the carnivorous coconut crabs, which inhabit the island and weigh up to 9lbs and have claws powerful enough to crack open coconuts.
A multi-million-dollar search of waters off Nikumaroro in August 2019, spearheaded by ocean explorer Robert Ballard, found no trace of Earhart’s twin-tailed monoplane there.
Pettigrew, 78, of the Oregon-based Archaeological Legacy Institute (ALI), says Ballard was looking in the wrong spot.
He’s collected dozens of aerial and satellite images of the island that appear to show a metallic object, about the size of the Electra, in the shallow waters in Nikumaroro’s lagoon interior.
The so-called Taraia Object is about the size of the Electra’s fuselage and tail.
Pettigrew’s team is now planning to travel to the island and scour the depths of its lagoon for the wreckage from October 13.
The possible wreckage was first noticed in 2020, but can be seen in photos dating back to 1938. Now, and at other times, it’s been covered in sludge.
Researchers have been investigating Nikumaroro Island as Earhart’s final stop since the late 1980s
Earhart was flying a Lockheed Model 10 Electra with navigator Fred Noonan (right) when their plane vanished near Howland Island
Earhart’s plane vanished on July 2, 1937. In the last in-flight radio message, Earhart said: ‘We are on the line 157 337… We are running on line north and south.’ These numbers refer to compass headings – 157° and 337° – and describe a line that passes through the intended destination, Howland Island
American aviator Amelia Earhart poses atop her Lockheed Vega Monoplane in about 1932
Speaking about his planned and subsequently delayed expedition last year, Pettigrew said: ‘The excitement is palpable.
‘I’ve looked at this back and forth, up and down, in and out, for years now. And I think the evidence is quite overwhelming. I am very confident, and I think we’re going to come home with the goods.’
But he recalled the swagger of other explorers before they embarked on their own, doomed missions, and checks himself.
‘I’m also aware that I could be wrong,’ he added.
After so many failed, costly bids to locate the Electra by other explorers, Pettigrew appeared to be struggling to raise funds, pushing it back twice.
If he uncovers the Electra, Pettigrew said he plans to install a webcam to ward off relic hunters until salvage work is able to begin.
Raising the plane and placing it in a museum would likely cost hundreds of millions of dollars.
It could also spawn rival claims from ALI, Kiribati, and Purdue University in Indiana, which donated some of the funds that paid for Earhart’s plane.
Curators at the Smithsonian’s Air and Space Museum support the mainstream crashed-and-sank theory, but are understood to be keen to display a salvaged Electra.
Such is the lure of Earhart, 89 years after she went missing on her way back to California, says Pettigrew.
‘She was ahead of her time and highly admired by people,’ he told Our News Outlet.
‘It was a horrible tragedy that she disappeared, but the fact of her disappearance has also kept her memory alive, because the mystery is constantly haunting people.’
