75th anniversary of missing aviatrix AMELIA EARHART’s South Pacific disappearance as new search employs deep sea robots armed with cameras.
for her doomed plane that vanished without a trace on July 2, 1937 over the South Pacific.
The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery is search for Amelia’s doomed aircraft, a Lockheed Electra, that vanished July 2, 1937, on the island of Nikumaroro, where they believe Earhart crashed.
Earhart was attempting to circle the Earth with crew member Fred Noonan when they lost radio contact and were never heard from again.
The latest $2 million expedition will search the underwater reef slope off the west end of Nikumaroro, formerly Gardner Island, an uninhabited coral atoll in the Pacific, looking for signs of wreckage from Earhart’s Lockheed Electra.
Led by Richard Gillespie, TIGHAR is proposing an alternative theory as to what happened on that last ill-fated flight.
Many experts think a navigational error caused the pair to run out of fuel over the sea, but the Wilmington, Delaware nonprofit search team Earhart crashed on Nikumaroro and survived there for days – possibly weeks — before finally succumbing to the elements.
"What we're hoping for is to come back with good imagery, photographs of wreckage that's conclusively, unquestionably pieces, at least, of Amelia Earhart's Lockheed Electra aircraft; that's the goal," said Gillespie, whose team will deploy robots equipped with sonar and high-definition video cameras to search the waters off the island for clues.
TIGHAR has sent 10 previous expeditions to the Pacific Island, with past trips resulting in the discovery of bones but tests were inconclusive as to whether they were human, but this new search may finally put to rest the mystery,RadarOnline.com reported
