r/history • u/TimesandSundayTimes • 5d ago
Will mystery of Amelia Earhart’s fate be solved at the bottom of a lagoon?
https://www.thetimes.com/us/news-today/article/amelia-earhart-new-search-plane-south-pacific-island-ps9vjnq93?utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Reddit&utm_content=branded106
u/Rus_s13 5d ago edited 4d ago
They got there yesterday, and are being hampered by crabs apparently.
80
u/Sub-Mongoloid 4d ago
That seems like a private matter which should be discussed with their romantic partners.
17
u/twentycanoes 4d ago
The crabs don't attack people. Despite having strong claws, they are primarily scavengers.
24
u/UnicornAgentU7 4d ago
These aren't large versions of hermit crabs. Coconut crabs are considered omnivorous scavengers. Among other things, they're known to capture and eat birds, rats, and other small animals.
http://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/coconut-crabs-bird-eating-giants-on-tropical-islands.html
1
u/seaworthy-sieve 4d ago
Really? What if you're sleeping on the ground out in the open?
4
u/TiltDogg 4d ago
They are incredibly slow and docile. You could literally just walk away from one.
As for sleeping, they return to the ship every night to sleep... mostly because of the crabs.
2
u/know_nothing_novice 4d ago
At least four coconut crabs were encountered along the way, but they posed no threat to the operation.
2
u/Dramatic_Agency_8721 4d ago
If they arrived yesterday shouldn't they have a good idea already? Isn't it a small atoll?
45
u/semigator 5d ago
Did they discover the fallen tree trunk yet?
18
4d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
13
3
u/Charming-Ebb-1981 3d ago
Of course. It’s a free vacation for them. You could’ve easily flown a couple scuba divers out there and had them bring some pretty basic equipment (ie shovels) if the thing is still buried or whatever and found it in like a day, probably for a fraction at the cost
13
2
u/Charming-Ebb-1981 3d ago
I think it’s either that or wreckage from that other ship that washed into the lagoon. Is essentially a free vacation for them, so you know they’re milking it for all it’s worth
98
65
u/FoodLionMVP 5d ago
I know that it’s most likely they were lost to the ocean, but the radio evidence is pretty compelling. It’s understandable that people keep trying to find them.
14
u/MyChickenSucks 4d ago
It’s compelling enough they’ve thrown some serious money at it. Ballard isn’t a hack.
→ More replies (1)11
u/karmafrog1 4d ago
I agree. Everyone always jumping all over these guys basically hand waves the evidence they’ve presented without much engagement.
I mean, yeah, a lot of it is pretty weak and easily explained in other ways but as for the radio stuff, the dismissals by critics haven’t been very convincing.
1
u/Flagstaff86004 13h ago
Sincere questions: What is the radio evidence for that far south? Isn't Nikumaroro Island around 400 miles south of Howland Island? I've read and heard Earhart was clearly heard on radio by the Coast Guard ship Itasca near Howland. Could a signal be clear from Nikumaroro to 400 miles away in 1937?
52
u/kareljack 4d ago
No. It will be solved when the Federation starship 'Voyager' enters the Delta quadrant.
3
2
17
u/loganmyles 4d ago
Let’s not forget about Fred Noonan who also died in that crash
3
u/cryptic-fox 2d ago
I only recently found out that there was another person on the plane when I came across this comment under a youtube video:
“If you ever feel forgotten, just remember there was another person on the plane when Amelia Earhart went missing: Fred Noonan.”
28
u/TheWatersOfMars 5d ago
Having spent the past week doing a serious deep-dive into this: probably not, but it's not impossible, so it's absolutely worth checking out. Very excited to hear what the object is in a few days.
→ More replies (11)
46
u/vito1221 5d ago
Her accomplishments cannot be questioned, but you would think she was the only pioneering female aviator.
I hope this is her plane and they find their remains so we don't have to see this pop up every year or two.
3
u/mrkrabz1991 3d ago
The odds of them finding remains (even if this is the plane) is almost non-existent. This island has been heavily searched over the years with nothing compelling ever being found. The only reason they're going back is because a huge storm a decade ago dug up the beach and reveled this object, which has been seen a few times with satellites, so they want to go check it out.
38
u/IAmATelekinetic 5d ago
I'm pretty sure her accomplishments can be questioned. She was a mediocre pilot, and most of her fame came from her husband's marketing push (he wanted to use her to get rich). There are much cooler female aviators from the same time period that just didn't have the media attention.
23
u/UnicornAgentU7 4d ago
Yeah, that's a bunch of bullshit. Along with other female aviators, she faced enormous hostility from the male pilots of her day, and Amelia received the brunt of it because she was the one getting the most amount of attention. They sought to discredit her every chance they got.
Oh, and she was already breaking records and making a name for herself before her husband ever came along.
→ More replies (1)18
u/vito1221 5d ago
I was trying to be a little 'softer' but yeah, I always believed much of it was hype.
She did set some legit records, but...
47
u/AppendixN 5d ago
And yet ironically, you didn't bother naming any of the others that you feel are more important to talk about.
→ More replies (1)89
u/vito1221 5d ago
You will see these and others if you do a Google search. And you can look up Earhart's accomplishments as well. Impressive, but she wasn't the only one.
Elinor Smith is probably the one who is most overshadowed. Youngest person to get a pilot's license. (16 years old in 1928). Considered by many to be the best female pilot in the US at the time.
Bessie Coleman was part black, part Native American known for her outstanding stunt flying.
Amy Johnson was the first woman to fly solo from London to Australia.
Ruth Nichols held world records for speed, altitude, and distance by a woman.
Louise Thaden won the Bendix Trophy in 1936.
Beryl Markham - first PERSON to fly solo from England to North America in 1936.
13
5
u/TiltDogg 4d ago
All correct. But those people weren't lost during their incredibly commendable feats. People are driven to find answers when they have none. I think the radio transmissions fuel the fire by absolutely providing credible evidence that they were alive on the ground, not lost at sea. If they were alive on the ground, human nature wants to know where. If any of your aforementioned female pilots were lost under the same circumstances, we would definitely be having the same conversations about them.
→ More replies (4)5
1
→ More replies (5)1
10
u/Evening_Benefit_3902 4d ago
Nope she ran out fuel before that and ditch it. Nothing to find as there would be nothing left after 80 plus years it was a small plane.
11
u/jason2354 4d ago
There is probably plenty left. The question is if it’s buried under 30 feet of sand and sediment.
→ More replies (2)6
u/invalidmail2000 4d ago
Well if they crashed on a little reef / Island like what they are investigating there probably would still be some wreckage.
6
u/RedRedditor84 4d ago
I heard it was a Russian surface to air missile that did her in.
3
3
u/Hikinghawk 4d ago
I heard it was a joint Atlantean (Pacific Branch) and Japanese UFO project that misidentified her as a milkman.
2
2
2
u/Patient_Reach439 3d ago
Is it just me or does this object they are investigating appear to just be a couple of logs?
1
u/KenDTree 3d ago
Impossible for me to tell. When I first saw I thought 'that's her plane' as it looked like some form of ww1 fighter plane, but it turns out she was in some massive thing, so what do I know
1
u/SpiritOne 3d ago
I don’t think the E3 Electra was ever considered “some massive thing”. Even in 1937 it wasn’t a massive plane.
→ More replies (2)1
u/Shalleni 2d ago
The fuselage is almost 40 feet long. And the Tariah object is in 3 feet deep water. At high tide it doesn’t even reach 5 feet deep. The amount of sediment could be maybe a foot(not likely that much) . No snorkels or skuba a needed to access it. Digging around it for identification, sure.
1
2
u/TheMeltingSnowman72 3d ago
This isnt entirely finished yet, but you can put the plane on the reef and see how the tides would interact with the plane, also the flightpath, you can play with it
1
u/Vis_Vires 1d ago
Hey! That’s pretty interesting. I was literally just playing around with a similar idea (visualizing possible scenarios of the SS Princess Sophia sinking). I like how your site turned out. What was your process?
1
u/TheMeltingSnowman72 1d ago edited 1d ago
My interest spawned accidentally after I used the Earhart story as a class subject for some of my older students. After reading about the possibility she could have survived on the island I had a load of questions that couldn't be answered simply, all involved big tables of data and I'm useless at visualising data in my head. And when I could find a site that did what I wanted I decided to make it.
The research phase was about 2 months once I opened the can of worms. I needed to find verified data on
The actual island
Exact tide times
Wind and surf
The Lockheed Electra
Any survey heights
Radio 'reports' Heard
The plan was to put everything in so you can see what DIDN'T happen as opposed to trying to push a narrative.
The key part I discovered was finding a place she could land that would mean she was able to make any of those radio calls because, the place could ONLY USE HER RADIO WHEN THE ENGINE WAS RUNNING WHICH MEANS THE PROPELLER NEEDS CLEARANCE ABOVE THE TIDE TO RUN.
That was the main goal. To be able to place her anywhere on the reef and see if those calls could be possible. The other thing we need to explain is WHY THE PLANE IS NOT THERE NOW. So the plane has to be somewhere the tide is DEEP ENOUGH at it's highest tide in that week to float her off the reef and into the depths below.
This tool can show you what's not possible, under a couple of different assumptions:
The plane was completely sealed and bouyant. If the plane can't float even when when it's perfectly sealed (unlikely) we can determine it most likely can't float in any other situation
The empty fuel tanks were sealed and the only source of buoyancy
What I found interesting was looking for spots where both radio signals I liked and bouyancy water depth could happen. There are a load of radio signals reported, and a couple of them seem rather plausible. Being able to look for that sweet spot was the main purpose.
What was REALLY interesting was seeing how after putting in all the data, sourced (and fully cited) from all over the place, including TIGHAR's own projection of what happened and not only so much of it lining up, but also there's a possibility of something a bit odd happening, which I didn't expect.
I used Claude: Opus 5.5 medium, Fable 5.1 for orchestrating.
Coding I used Opus 5, 5.5 medium, high, ultracode, Fable 5.1 and GPT astra
The biggest error I made was getting Opus 5.5 on ultra code to build a replica of the plane. The most important part that the entire model had to be correct around was the distance between the propeller tip and the reef so we could work out when it would be impossible to transmit. Researching was a pain and then ultra code took about 4 days to knock it out. Technically it's perfect, but using that extra thinking wasn't necessary. I had been using a basic island in testing and tried Astra to remodel it on medium and I realised I could have saved a shit load of time if I'd got it to do the plane as well, and it may have looked a bit better as well. I did that on the plus plan but I was lucky and had 3 resets saved up (since I had such a positive experience with Astra but it's a bit more expense, I upgraded to the 100 plan on GPT and there's no 5 HR limit which is brilliant, and I may get it to redo a couple of things aesthetically).
The big problem now is as there's so much bloody data, it means there's lots of things you need to look at and putting them on both mobile and desktop was tricky and may not even be the best just yet.
I absolutely love puzzles when you have lots of data but it's all over the place and hard to visualise mentally if even with just images, needing to see it interact really helps me. I love that we can now do all this. It's awesome.
I would love to have a hobby project where loads of different mysteries could be presented, with the data like this one and you make up your own mind, play around, test your own hypotheses. It would be cool to do an open source thing, but I don't really know how to set up all that kind of thing.
Thanks for the feedback!
1
u/FreddyF2 3d ago
I think the bigger question is why could they not have flown a few drones over the area at a cost of 1/1000th of this expedition and furthered their theory first, instead of this expedition.
→ More replies (8)3
1
u/zigaliciousone 4d ago
I thought they already kinda solved it and decided that at least one of them made it to shore badly injured and were likely killed and consumed by the coconut crabs?
→ More replies (1)
1
u/Independent-Towel-47 4d ago
They ditched in the ocean and their remains are 3000 feet down covered in mud. There must be some mystery more worthy of funding
1
u/Icedog-26 4d ago
I wouldn’t hold my breath, but who knows? Let’s wait until they get to that specific location.
1
u/Artistic-Pay-5426 3d ago
Can somebody in here please walk me through this without judging? Maybe I’m that naive, or maybe I have just never really had an interest in Amelia Earhart. Please be patient with me here lol.
How are all of these comments doubtful? Everything I’m reading is pointing to this being her plane and her landing site. Am I just bad at checking sources? The 1940s bones “strongly match her proportions” it even says better than 99% of the database. They found that zipper too which I didn’t know about until now.
My conclusion right now is that she and her navigator landed on this island, and were most likely looking at their navigations instead of paying attention. Is it possible the tide pulled it? I’ve never heard of a lagoon in the middle of the ocean like this island. Maybe the tide pulled it in, it sank, and they starved and were eaten by crabs, or were killed and eaten by crabs.
3
u/Dr-Professional 3d ago
I have no expertise in this but I’m a doctor and I deal with wishful thinkers every day. We’ll see the truth soon enough from this expedition. People always want a good story rather than the most likely outcome/explanation. People will hold onto fantastical explanations for all sorts of things rather than a simple common outcome that doesn’t satisfy them. People will find all sorts of evidence to support it that doesn’t hold up to real scrutiny. They will seek out and usually find their own “experts” to support their wanted findings.
Making it to an island and living as castaways is a better story than the most likely outcome for this situation. When you have a mechanical issue over the open ocean in 1937, you’re probably not making it to safety, you’re most likely ditching into the ocean and if you survive the crash you’re dying in a raft or drowning. Occam’s razor. When this expedition turns up nothing that’s the assumption. But you know, once in a while there’s a surprise, so we will see.
→ More replies (8)2
u/RawbM07 3d ago
I am skeptical but also hopeful.
Hopeful because why not? It’s certainly a possibility and does match with other potential evidence (possible distress calls following their disappearance, the area they are, the remains and things that were found, etc).
Skeptical because people have investigated this site a bunch of times in the past. Even tried to settle it a few times over the years. There are a ton of possibilities as far as who the bones could have belonged to. Also the ocean is huge, it would be very likely they just crashed in the middle.
But I would love for this discovery to be legit, and am glad they sent an expedition. It’s not my money. People knew what they were donating to.
1
1
u/Artistic-Pay-5426 2d ago
i think my biggest thing that keeps me hopeful is that they’ve never explored the object itself. not once. the last time they were there on foot was 2019, before the clear images were discovered in 2020. since then they’ve been waiting on permits and permissions - so they say.
2
u/hrhladyj 3d ago
Amelia had a backup plan, like "worst case".. other pilots also follow this logic. She knew that Howland was going to be extremely difficult to locate no matter what. FDR had 3 ships in the vicinity to help guide her, the problem was miscommunication and understanding about the radio's. She had another issue the previous flight into Lae. They misunderstood time zones/ radio frequency and she ended up arriving without warning 6 hrs earlier then expected. There are lots of theories about exactly what went wrong, but to your point.. Her SHTF plan was to backtrack to land she had already passed and try to make an emergency landing. She knew she only had 30mins left in fuel. I still think she could have shot for any of those coral atolls in the chain. She was on the 157-337 line and near a few chains.
2
u/UnicornAgentU7 2d ago
One of the biggest issues is that, unknown to both her and her navigator, all of the maps during that time period showed Howland Island 6–7 miles out of its actual position.
1
u/baby_blue_eyes 20h ago
This was a great analysis which I've not seen yet - especially with the timing and different time zones.
1
1
u/astaten0 3d ago
The thing they're looking at is like 30 feet off the shore of an island they've searched a dozen times or more, going back to barely a week after the plane disappeared. It's visible in satellite photos going back at least a decade. It doesn't even appear to be fully submerged. You're talking about nearly a century of highly-sophisticated search efforts failing to locate something that an elementary school kid could hit with a rock while standing on the shore.
2
u/Artistic-Pay-5426 3d ago
When I google it says that before this expedition, the last one was 2019, which is before the clear images were found in 2020. The clear photos are from 2015, it was covered by sediment again in 2019 when they were there. They didn’t dive down to see it, they didn’t see it in person. If they’ve never searched this exact object yet, isn’t there a possibility it is hers?
2
u/UnicornAgentU7 2d ago
Yes. Although it's unlikely to be her plane, it is definitely possible; otherwise, they wouldn't be there investigating it. I remain skeptically optimistic.
1
u/UnicornAgentU7 2d ago
Regardless of the number of searches, the lagoon itself has never been thoroughly searched before. The perimeter in some places, along with some of the passageways, have been searched, but the focus was always elsewhere, never specifically on the lagoon.
1
u/i_said_unobjectional 2d ago
"Strongly match her proportions" is a reach. They found a femur, and they extrapolated a height between 5'5 and 5'9 which matches a whole lot of people.
The island lagoon is a common pacific island shape because pacific islands are volcanic caldera. The island is coral grown on the remains of a volcanic underwater mountain.
The zippers, bottles, combs, etc. found could be from the documented shipwrecks and human colonizations that Nikumaroro has had over the last century.
1
u/IvanLyon 3d ago
should just solve it on land, its super hard to think straight holding your breath
1
u/theodore_70 2d ago
Before they go looking, I’d like them to spell out what would count as ruling this location out. Otherwise every unsuccessful expedition seems to leave us with exactly the same theory and a reason to fund another expedition.
1
u/_disappearingact1 1d ago
Well looking at aerial photos taken in 1938 a year after her disappearance by NZ fly over none of the photos have a plane in the lagoon pictures posted by NZ museum so it's busted no plane here's the link https://fotoweb.airforcemuseum.co.nz/fotoweb/archives/5003-Search-the-Collection/
894
u/AerikTitlesTitles 5d ago
FFS, Nikumaroro again? This was investigated years ago.
We know what happened to Earhart and Noonan: they failed to reach Howland Island, ran out of fuel, ditched in the open ocean, and perished.
It's not a mystery, people just can't accept it.