Search for Amelia Earhart Begins Off Hawaii

Latest expedition hopes to find concrete evidence of plane
By Evann Gastaldo,  Newser Staff
Posted Jul 3, 2012 7:05 AM CDT
Search for Amelia Earhart Begins Off Hawaii
In a 1937 file photo aviator Amelia Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan, pose in front of their twin-engine Lockheed Electra in Los Angeles.   (AP Photo, File)

Seventy-five years later, could the world finally learn the fate of Amelia Earhart? An expedition is setting sail from Hawaii today, headed to the uninhabited island of Nikumaroro where it hopes to finally determine once and for all what happened to the famous aviator. Recently unearthed clues, including a jar of anti-freckle cream, other 1930s relics, and even a bone fragment, point to the possibility that Earhart ended up on the remote island after crash-landing and lived there for a time as a castaway with navigator Fred Noonan.

The $2 million expedition is led by Ric Gillespie, a champion of the Nikumaroro theory and executive director of the International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery, which has mounted nine previous expeditions to the island, the BBC reports. After making the 1,800-mile journey to Nikumaroro, researchers will spend 10 days diving near Nikumaroro, using sonar-equipped robots to search the water for conclusive evidence of Earhart's airplane, Reuters reports. "The public wants evidence, a smoking gun," Gillespie says. "That smoking gun is Earhart's plane." (More Amelia Earhart stories.)

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