West Lafayette, IN (WOWO) – The Purdue Research Foundation believes they might have a positive lead on how to find Amelia Earhart’s lost plane.
On July 2, 1937, Earhart disappeared over the Pacific Ocean while attempting to become the first female pilot to circumnavigate the world. Her navigator, Fred Noonan, was with her, and he also disappeared.
Steve Schultz is the senior vice president and legal counsel for Purdue University and Purdue Research Foundation. He says a new research expedition to recover the plane used by Earhart will soon be underway. The Purdue Research Foundation is joining the Archaeological Legacy Institute in an expedition to Nikumaroro Island, located in the Central South Pacific.
“So we’re announcing that Purdue Research Foundation is joining an expedition to go to Nikumaroro Island, which is in the Republic of Kiribati in the central South Pacific, to identify whether something in the lagoon of that island called the Taraia Object is the lost 10-E Electra flown by Amelia Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan, when they were lost on July 2, 1937. And we’re going there on Nov. 1 or thereabouts, and we will spend six days going there by boat sailing from Majuro in the Marshall Islands, spend five days on the island, and this will be to identify whether that object is the Electra,” said Schultz on Wednesday.
He says they first have to identify whether this artifact, located in the lagoon of the island, is the Electra.
“No other hypothesis that I’m aware of can put together contemporaneous radio bearings taken in 1937 at the time of her disappearance; radio transmissions that were heard in the days after her disappearance; 40 years of artifacts collected on Nikumaroro Island since the late 1980s; and, most recently, satellite imagery discovered in 2020, but now since traced to prior images that were first discovered, were first seen in 2015. No other theory that I’m aware of can put Amelia and Fred Noonan on that island, but I think this one just might do it,” said Schultz.
Earhart was declared legally dead in 1939, and Noonan was declared dead in 1938.
In 1935, Earhart became a visiting faculty member of Purdue University as an advisor in aeronautical engineering and a career counselor to the female students. She was a member of the National Women’s Party and an early supporter of the Equal Rights Amendment.
“No other hypothesis that I’m aware of can put together contemporaneous radio bearings taken in 1937 at the time of her disappearance; radio transmissions that were heard in the days after her disappearance; 40 years of artifacts collected on Nikumaroro Island since the late 1980s; and, most recently, satellite imagery discovered in 2020, but now since traced to prior images that were first discovered, were first seen in 2015. No other theory that I’m aware of can put Amelia and Fred Noonan on that island, but I think this one just might do it,” said Schultz.
Purdue University Research Foundation announced on Wednesday that they are going to try and find her lost plane. They’ll be heading to Nikumaroro Island to try and find the 10-E Electra flown by Amelia Earhart and her navigator Fred Noonan. He says if they find the Electra, they’ll bring it back, which is what Earhart would have wanted.
What happened to Amelia Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan, has been a mystery ever since they both went missing in 1937. Steve Schultz represents the Purdue Research Foundation. He says they have reason to believe that the plane both Earhart and Noonan were on when they went missing could be on an island in the South Pacific.
