Still looking for Amelia

Noonan at far left by pole; Earhart (red arrow)???

A “recently discovered” photo may show Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan on a pier at Mili Atoll (Marshall Islands).  The photo is inconclusive – at least to the eye of someone looking at it as published. It is of poor resolution, so trying to clarify the subjects by zooming in isn’t possible to someone with my limited capabilities.  

[Note that the photo in question was later identified as one that allegedly predated Earhart's round-the-world flight by a couple of years, so the subjects in it cannot have been Earhart and Noonan after all.]

The woman in the photo looks like she (if it is a she) could be Amelia Earhart. The man, whose face is partially visible does in fact look much like Fred Noonan.  In neither case do I see anything in the photo that eliminates the possibility that it could be them.  

There is also an object near a ship close by that could be part of Earhart’s Lockheed 10.  Maybe.  The story as proposed is that Earhart and Noonan crash landed on Mili Atoll or nearby, and were subsequently taken into custody by the Japanese where they later died (or were killed).  The fact that this photo languished hidden in the US National Archives may point to a possible cover-up on the part of the US government and its spy network.  The question would then become “what were they trying to hide?”

Radio transmissions while Earhart was still in-flight indicated (by their signal strength) that she was very near Howland Island close to the end of her fuel-range-time.  Based on an over-the water speed of 170 mph (against a 25 mph reported headwind), she had 3,400 miles of range to make it the 2,550 miles to Howland The Marshall Islands would have been at the extreme edge of that range with nothing left over (roughly 950 miles NW of Howland), but why would she turn that direction?  There were closer islands (the Gilberts) directly behind her she could have returned to.  The other hypothesis that she flew south to the much closer Gardner Island (now Nikumaroro) is also a stretch – but it was in fact an achievable distance based on her stated fuel consumption of 50 gph and the 1,000 gallons with which she left Lae.

The obvious problem that I see with either of these theories is she had been very communicative up to that point, even though she was unable to have a direct two-way voice conversation with the Coast Guard stationed near Howland.  If she was deliberately heading off to look for some other place to land, why didn't she communicate that fact? That makes it seem more likely to me that she continued to search for Howland in the same area until she went dry and crashed at sea.  [On the other hand, she DID radio that she was flying "
the line" and that line would have taken her in the direction of Nikumaroro, depending on how badly she was out of position on the approach to Howland].

The fact is that neither of the groups proposing these two theories have “proven” their case.  Not yet anyway.  The Nikumaroro hypothesis has resulted in multiple expeditions to that locale to search for hard evidence.  As yet, nothing has been definitively proven by what they’ve found – only tantalizing, maybe even promising, “possibles.”

The Marshall Island theory group has this photo, a couple of pieces of airplane aluminum that could be from the Electra (or might not be), and the (purported) eyewitness testimony of islanders who stated they saw the plane land on the reef and saw the pair taken away by the Japanese. Why was their testimony discounted?  Is it because they were brown people and thought to be less reliable?  Don’t scoff, that’s been a common problem and I can cite examples.  On the other hand, there have never been any eyewitnesses that can corroborate the Nikumaroro theory.

At the request of American officials after the War, Japanese researchers claim to have looked for evidence that Earhart and Noonan were ever in Japanese custody – and they never found anything that indicated they might have been.  I think in general, Japanese record-keeping was pretty good.  At the same time, there might have been reasons the Japanese would have wanted to hide that kind of evidence.

I’ve been leaning toward the Nikumaroro hypothesis in recent years – and have followed TIGHAR’s progress in leading expeditions seeking hard evidence on that island.  While they have found promising artifacts, there has not been any one thing that has proven Earhart was actually there.  However, I keep hoping that TIGHAR will find the evidence that solves the mystery.

The leader of that group (Ric Gillespie) has gone on record stating he thinks this most recent photo is a fraud – despite the fact that other experts have examined it and said they don’t think it is – that it shows zero signs of having been tampered with.  Then, Gillespie states that the photo doesn’t look like Amelia, and it doesn’t look like Noonan.  He says the woman’s hair is wrong.  Yet I looked at a photo of Amelia as she was preparing to leave Lae on that last flight – and based on what I can see, I cannot rule out that the hair isn't a possible match. Gillespie said the hair on the person in the photo is too long.  But the person in the photo is hunched over - and that could easily make shorter hair look longer.  And the fuzzy photo of what might be Fred Noonan?  It does look like it could be him.  But neither of these "facts" proves that the photo is actually them.

Nevertheless...

In the end, as I’ve been saying for all these years, it will take more than what any of them have yet found to prove what happened to Earhart and Noonan - and that evidence might never be found.  I won't be surprised if it never is; that's a BIG ocean. No matter what, the ill-fated pair are dead and have been for many years. The question for me has always been, why are these folks spending MILLIONS of dollars searching for the truth about a story that was old news 75 years ago? There are better ways to spend that money.