As i posted a long time ago, this was the likely resting place of the media darling of the 1930's, Ms Amelia Earhart. This provides us effective confirmation and work has led to a likely deep water target for the plane.
It appears that with their last fuel, they set the plane down at the first available atoll that they could reach. One assumes that they ran into unexpected headwinds and they lost the inevitable gamble. It is very unfortunate and a little more common than most pilots will ever admit. Our other public sampling of the risks accepted by pilots in the face of weather is the multiple trips made by singers. We have lost our fair share.
In the end, i suspect that we are well on the way to recovering the plane itself. That will have to be good enough and we have a clean answer.
Amelia Earhart Plane Fragment Identified
Oct 28, 2014 07:30 PM ET
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A piece of aluminum debris recovered in 1991 appears to belong to Earhart’s lost plane.
WhereAmeliaEarhartPlaneFragmentCameFrom:Photos
A fragment of Amelia Earhart's lost aircraft has been identified
to a high degree of certainty for the first time ever since her plane
vanished over the Pacific Ocean on July 2, 1937, in a record attempt to
fly around the world at the equator.
New research strongly suggests that a piece of aluminum
aircraft debris recovered in 1991 from Nikumaroro, an uninhabited atoll
in the southwestern Pacific republic of Kiribati, does belong to
Earhart’s twin-engined Lockheed Electra.
The search for Amelia Earhart is about to continue in the
pristine waters of a tiny uninhabited island, Nikumaroro, between Hawaii
and Australia.
According to researchers at The International Group for
Historic Aircraft Recovery (TIGHAR), which has long been investigating
the last, fateful flight taken by Earhart 77 years ago, the aluminum
sheet is a patch of metal installed on the Electra during the aviator’s
eight-day stay in Miami, which was the fourth stop on her attempt to
circumnavigate the globe.
The patch replaced a navigational window: A Miami Herald photo
shows the Electra departing for San Juan, Puerto Rico on the morning of
Tuesday, June 1, 1937 with a shiny patch of metal where the window had
been.
“The Miami Patch was an expedient field repair," Ric Gillespie,
executive director of TIGHAR, told Discovery News. "Its complex
fingerprint of dimensions, proportions, materials and rivet patterns was
as unique to Earhart’s Electra as a fingerprint is to an individual."
TIGHAR researchers went to Wichita Air Services in Newton,
Kans., and compared the dimensions and features of the Artifact 2-2-V-1,
as the metal sheet found on Nikumaroro was called, with the structural
components of a Lockheed Electra being restored to airworthy condition.
The rivet pattern and other features on the 19-inch-wide by
23-inch-long Nikumaroro artifact matched the patch and lined up with the
structural components of the Lockheed Electra. TIGHAR detailed the
finding in a report on its website.
“This is the first time an artifact found on Nikumaroro has been shown to have a direct link to Amelia Earhart,” Gillespie said.
The breakthrough would prove that, contrary to what was
generally believed, Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan, did not
crash in the Pacific Ocean, running out of fuel somewhere near their
target destination of Howland Island.
Instead, they made a forced landing on Nikumaroro' smooth, flat
coral reef. The two became castaways and eventually died on the atoll,
which is some 350 miles southeast of Howland Island.
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