Aircraft historians have contacted the University of Hawaii about the possibility of providing a research ship to search for the wreckage of Amelia Earhart’s Lockheed Electra plane that disappeared without a trace over the Pacific 75 years ago, UH officials said Tuesday.
"We do not know at this point whether or not the University of Hawaii at Manoa research vessel Ka‘imikai o Kanaloa will be used in the newly announced search for the remains of aviator Amelia Earhart’s airplane, believed to be lost somewhere over the Pacific in 1937," UH spokeswoman Lynne Waters said. "We have received initial inquiries as to the possibility of chartering or renting the KOK for this purpose by the organization mounting the new search, but it has not gone beyond the inquiry stage as of (Tuesday)."
The Associated Press reported Tuesday that enhanced analysis of a photograph taken just months after Earhart’s plane vanished shows what experts think may be the landing gear of the aircraft protruding from waters off the remote island of Nikumaroro, in what is now the Pacific nation of Kiribati.
Historians, scientists and salvagers from The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery are scheduled to return to the island for 10 days in July in the hope of finding the wreckage and perhaps even the remains of Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan, the AP reported.
Ric Gillespie, executive director of the group, acknowledged that the evidence was "circumstantial" but "strong."
"The most important thing is not whether we find the ultimate answer or what we find; it is the way we look," he said. "We see this opportunity to explore … the last great American mystery of the 20th century as a vehicle for demonstrating how to go about figuring out what is true."
Earhart and Noonan disappeared July 2, 1937, while flying from New Guinea to Howland Island as part of her attempt to become the first female pilot to circumnavigate the globe.
Extensive searches at the time found nothing, and many historians are convinced they crashed into the ocean.
Gillespie’s group believes Earhart and Noonan might have managed to land on a reef abutting Nikumaroro, an atoll then known as Gardner Island, and survived for a short time. They surmise the plane was washed off the reef by high tides shortly after the landing and that the wreckage might be found in the deep water nearby.
Their previous visits to the island have recovered artifacts that could have belonged to Earhart and Noonan and suggest they might have lived for days or weeks.
