Amelia Earhart - near to a solution

[Weaver]

Good resume here of the state of play with research into what really happened to Amelia Earhart. Looks like these folks have lots of suggestive circumstantial evidence for their solution and are getting tantalisingly close to the clincher:

http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20130628-will-we-ever-find-amelia-earhart/1

[PR19_Kit]

We're sorry but this site is not accessible from the UK as it is part of our international service and is not funded by the licence fee.

So how did you get to see it please Weaver?

[Weaver]

We're sorry but this site is not accessible from the UK as it is part of our international service and is not funded by the licence fee.

So how did you get to see it please Weaver?

Ah, sorry - our internet at work goes through a server in Sweden: I didn't realise that page wasn't available in the UK.

Here's the website of TIGHAR's Earhart Project, which is what this is all about. Basically this aviation recovery group have conducted a series of expeditions to an island called Nikumaroro and have found extensive circumstantial and historical evidence that Earhart put her plane down just off the island, got ashore and died there some time later, but have no irrefutable "clincher" that puts the matter beyond doubt. In 2012 they conducted a sonar survey of the area off the island where they believe the tides would have eventually dragged the plane. The initial results were negative, but a re-analysis of the data now shows an anomaly in it that could an aircraft, and a recently discovered set of aerial photos of the island taken not long after her disappearence may yield more info when examined in detail (these two events are what has prompted the current rash of news stories).

http://tighar.org/Projects/Earhart/AEdescr.html

typical recent news story:

http://www.foxnews.com/science/2013/06/27/photos-could-prove-amelia-earhart-lived-as-castaway/

[tahsin]

"Will we ever... discover what happened to Amelia Earhart?"


No.

[kitbasher]

We're sorry but this site is not accessible from the UK as it is part of our international service and is not funded by the licence fee.

So how did you get to see it please Weaver?

Aha!  Saw the page wilst on hols in Sweden/Norway and didn't ralise it wasn't available in the UK.  Damn fine read too.

[Weaver]

"Will we ever... discover what happened to Amelia Earhart?"


No.

Will we ever find the Titanic?

No
No
No
No
No
No
No
No
No
No
No
No
No
No

oh, we did......

[tahsin]

Nobody ever said nobody would ever find Titanic, the only issue related to its finding was when there were lifeboats in the sea with people freezing.

[Weaver]

Nobody ever said nobody would ever find Titanic, the only issue related to its finding was when there were lifeboats in the sea with people freezing.

I'm sure plenty of people said it was impossible to find the wreck of the Titanic in the 70-ish years it took for sonar and ROV technology to make it both possible and affordable. That's pretty much the position we're in today with respect to Earhart. We probably won't ever know the exact sequence of events in an hour-by-hour, day-by-day sense, but if we have a female skeleton and 1930s woman's effects on an island that was uninhabited at the time, signs of fires and foraging that are atypical of native practice, and substantial chunks of a Lockheed Electra scattered down the reef slope, then I think you can state beyond reasonable doubt that she crashed there, survived for a while and then died. Of course finding the lost skeleton for DNA testing or finding a bit of wreckage with an unambiguous serial number on it would put the matter beyond all doubt.

[tahsin]

And I am basing that entire "No" on that even if you find a female skeleton and the like it won't be Amelia Earhart. There won't be any foreclosure in the way beacon signals moved from one location to an other, but then I would say conspiracies that would arise are not exactly the remit of this site.

[Weaver]

Well the skeleton is lost, so unless it turns up in some forgotten government archive in Tahiti, the most we can say is that, based on the hptographs and reports of it, it's consistent with Earhart. However, if they find a Lockheed electra of the right model on the reef, then even if they can't positively ID it as her's, the fact that no other Electras have ever been lost in the area, plus the skeketon, plus all the artifacts and evidence from the island, puts it beyond reasonable doubt in my opinion. I accept that  "beyond reasonable doubt" is not the same as "proven conclusively", but given the circumstances, I'd call it a good result.

[dumaniac]

it will be interesting to read the article when it is published - looks like October this year

[tahsin]

I accept that  "beyond reasonable doubt" is not the same as "proven conclusively", but given the circumstances, I'd call it a good result.

Then let me go on with saying that Japan will not return Earhart, despite former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's personal involvement and conducting the talks and what not.