06x05 - The Final Flight of Amelia Earhart

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Tonight, Amelia Earhart,

the world’s most
famous female pilot,

takes off on the final leg
of a record-breaking flight.

Earhart is attempting
to become the first woman

to fly around the world.

She’s flown 22,000 miles,
she only has 7,000 miles left.

But Earhart never
arrives at her next stop,

a tiny island in
the Pacific Ocean.

Earhart, her
navigator, and her plane

vanish without a trace.

The Navy conducts a massive
search by sea and air,

but nothing is found.

Now, we’ll explore
the top theories

regarding Amelia Earhart’s
doomed final flight.

There are many
conflicting stories,

and in the eyes
of some, secrecy.

We will never stop
looking for Amelia Earhart.

She was lost, of course,
but where did she go?

What really happened to
Amelia and her navigator?

June 1st, 1937,


Miami Municipal
Airport in Florida,

world-famous pilot
Amelia Earhart

sets off on her most
daring mission to date.

All eyes are on Amelia Earhart.

She embarks on her quest

to become the first woman to
fly around the world.

At this point,

Earhart is not only one
of the most well-known women

in America, she’s a celebrity.

Record firsts were no novelty

to aviatrix Amelia.

On May 20th, 1932,

she successfully
spanned the Atlantic

from Newfoundland
to Londonderry, Ireland,

the first woman to
make the flight solo.

Amelia Earhart at this time

is easily the most
photographed woman on earth.

She might be the most
famous woman on earth.

She is pursued everywhere,
the press is obsessed.

Her feats of flying, daring, do

are well known and
she is about to embark

on her most daring
feat of flying yet,

to circumnavigate the globe.

Which had been done
before with various vessels,

but never in an airplane
around the equator,

which is, of course, the
widest part of the globe.

She’s going to stay as close
to the equator as possible,

making this the longest
route that you could take.

She had already
accomplished a lot of firsts,

but this would have
established a new life

for air travel in general,

and the world is really excited.

Amelia Earhart and
her navigator, Fred Noonan,

take off in a
Lockheed E-10 Electra.

It will be legendary

if she manages to complete
this trip around the world.

Born in
Atchison, Kansas in 1897,

Amelia Earhart
is in her early 20s

when her interest in
flying is first sparked.

She takes her
first lesson in 1921

when she’s 24 years old.

She starts to fly and she
just falls in love with it.

The freedom, the
adventure, the challenge,

it becomes her passion.

Amelia Earhart demonstrates
a real knack for flying,

and it’s only six months later

that she is able to
purchase her own plane.

In October 1922, she reaches
an altitude of 14,000 feet.

So, within 18 months of
starting to take lessons,

she’s already broken
the world’s record

for altitude flying for a woman.

Amelia Earhart is
quickly coined Lady Lindy.

There are plenty
of newspaper articles

that put her portrait right
next to Charles Lindbergh.

In 1932,

Lady Lindy becomes
the first female pilot

to fly solo across
the Atlantic Ocean.

Earhart had done it again,

and frankly no one
was too surprised.

And in 1935, she
becomes the first person,

either male or female,

to fly from Honolulu
to California solo.

By this point, Earhart
has set seven records

for being a women pilot,
for speed and distance,

and she is known across the
nation, indeed across the world,

as the Queen of the Air.

America’s Miss Amelia Earhart,

world’s leading lady flyer.

Now, Earhart is planning
her most ambitious flight yet.

What sets this mission apart
is the route that she’s taking,

nearly 29,000 miles around
the equator of the Earth.

This has never been done
before by man or a woman.

It’s estimated to
take about a month,

and this is going to
be a true challenge

for the Queen of the Air.

It’s extremely dangerous.

They stop to refuel in South
America, India, East Asia,

and each time, it’s
a media sensation.

On June 29th,

she and Noonan land in
Lae, Papua New Guinea.

They take a few days there to
wait for favorable weather.

The next destination
is Howland Island

in the middle of
the South Pacific.

The plan is for them to
land and refuel at Howland,

after which they’ll
continue on to Honolulu,

and then make the
flight to Oakland.

And that’s a flight that
Earhart has made before.

On July 2nd,


Earhart and Noonan take off
on route to Howland Island.

The challenge is the stretch
from Lae to Howland Island

is the longest
of the entire trip.

Today, this trip would
take a modern aircraft

four or five hours.

Amelia Earhart is
planning on 18 hours

for her to travel
this 2,500 miles.

This is a long flight
with a very small target.

The island is about 1/20
the size of Manhattan

in the middle of the Pacific.

So with few, if any,

other landmarks to
help guide the route,

this is looking for a
needle in a haystack.

There’s nothing
at Howland Island.

It’s just an airstrip that
was only very recently built.

It’s about two miles long
and about a half a mile wide

and a Coast Guard Cutter.

The USS Itasca is
stationed in the vicinity

to help guide her
into the island.

To find Howland Island,
let alone land on it,

is going to call on all
of her piloting skills

and all of Fred Noonan’s
navigational skills

to make it a success.

But Fred Noonan
is up to the challenge.

Noonan is a
celebrated navigator.

He had been in charge

of mapping all of the
transpacific routes

for Pan-American Airlines.

There’s no GPS then,

so he’s gotta use technology

that is comparatively primitive.

He had been a sea captain
and he could use a sextant,

which is a centuries-old
form of navigation

that doesn’t require

all of his modern
technology to be working

in order for them
to be successful.

Because he has a sextant,
he can use dead reckoning,

he can use the
stars to navigate,

even if all of this
modern technology fails.

Noonan’s ability
to navigate by the stars

is a reason he and Earhart
fly mostly by night.

If they’re going to make
this trip, an 18-hour trip,

obviously some of it is
going to be at night.

And they want to time it

so their approach to Howland
Island is during full daylight.

One of the safety
measures in place

was a US Coast Guard
ship called the Itasca,

and they had radio
communication,

and also it was capable

of sh**ting up a
black plume of smoke

that would show them the way.

Four hours after takeoff,

Lae receives a
message from Earhart.

She says, "Height, 7,000 feet,

speed, 140 knots, and
everything’s okay."

Three hours later, total
of seven hours into the flight,

she reports position


height 8,000 feet
over cumulus clouds.

Wind, 23 knots.

When the tower
gets that message,

it’s clear that Amelia
Earhart and Fred Noonan

are exactly where
they’re supposed to be.

By 7:18 PM,

Earhart is out of range
of the Lae Airport

and still too far from the
USS Itasca at Howland Island.

She isn’t heard from again
until over two hours later.

They received that
transmission on the USS Itasca.

But everything still seems to
be going according to plan.

But there’s starting
to be concerns

about the amount of fuel

because the plane is running
into major headwinds,

and that also means a
loss of fuel efficiency.

Around 2:45,

Itasca’s radio operator
receives a message from Earhart.

It’s a weather report that
it’s cloudy and overcast.

This is a great sign.

This means that the Itasca

can begin to broadcast
its own radio signals

to guide the plane
to Howland Island.

But for an unknown reason,

it’s clear that while Earhart

can communicate with the Itasca,

she isn’t receiving
any of their messages.

So this continues for six hours

with the same
frustrating results.

She is way behind schedule,

and this is, of
course, a huge factor

when we are considering how
much fuel she needs to land.

The Itasca, as planned, sends
up its heavy smoke signal,

which should be visible within


flight at 8:43 AM,

the Itasca receives a
message from Amelia saying,

"We are on the line, 157, 337."

We will repeat this message.

We will repeat this
on 6210 kilocycles.

Wait, listening on


"We are running on north-south."

And the sound of her voice
is starting to get thin,

is starting to get
a bit panicked.

At that moment,
because she says,

"I’m gonna switch over to
this different frequency,

I’m switching over."

She never does, we
never hear her on 6210,

which suggests that
her engine sputtered,

went out, flamed out,

and at that point, she’s gliding
the plane into the water.

This is the last message
that Earhart will ever send.

By 9:00 AM,

all the radio operator on the
Itasca can hear is static.

When Amelia Earhart
and Fred Noonan

fail to arrive on
Howland Island,

there is just a really
dismal realization

that the worst
may have happened.

The flight’s taking

considerably longer
than expected,

at least two hours longer.

By the time she sends
her last message,

it’s likely that the Electra
was running on fumes.

It’s also been suggested that
the fuel tanks were not full.

It was common
practice for pilots

to take off with
less than a full tank

because weight
mattered considerably,

especially on
long distance flights.

The Electra can hold


But we have some evidence

in the form of a
letter from Earhart,

where she suggests that

she might be able to
make the flight on less,

maybe 950 gallons of fuel,

which would give her

just a little over 20
hours of flying time.

After flying 20
hours and 13 minutes,

it would make sense that

she would’ve run
out of fuel shortly after

and crashed into the ocean.

If she ditches that plane

in the vicinity
of Howland Island,

someone would’ve seen it.

But the fact is there was no
report of the plane going down,

there’s no debris
found on the water,

there is no fuel that’s
bubbled up to the surface.

She just seems
to have disappeared.

When Amelia Earhart
doesn’t arrive on Howland Island

on July 2nd, 1937,

the US Navy and Coast Guard
begin searching an area

of the Pacific Ocean,
roughly the size of Texas.

For the public, when they hear

that Amelia Earhart has not
arrived on Howland Island,

it would be like if one
of the biggest stars

on the planet, at this
time, suddenly disappeared.

The story of a brave woman

of the air enters
a shroud of mystery.

She had so many
fans around the world

who were paying
attention to this flight,

and when she doesn’t
turn up on July 2nd,

people are following
the newspapers.

People are listening to the
radio for any kind of update.

Where is Amelia Earhart?

The Itasca anchors

off a tiny desert island.

The Itasca begins their
search for Amelia Earhart

within an hour of
losing contact with her.

They had established
communication with her

and they had the best idea
of where to start looking.

The US Navy deploys 62 planes

from the aircraft
carrier, USS Lexington,

which sails from Hawaii,


from Howland Island,

and that’s just the beginning.

You’ve got an aircraft
carrier, several Coast Guard

ships, the USS Colorado,

other vessels end up
joining the search,

as many as 4,000 sailors
engaged in this effort

at a cost of maybe $4 million,

which would be equivalent
to about $75 million today.

On July 19th, after 17
days of searching an area

that was 150,000 square miles,
the search is called off.

Given the resources
devoted to the search,

given that they’re using
every technology available,

it may seem surprising

that they were not able
to locate any wreckage.

Many people believe that even
though it would be difficult

and it may take a lot of
time, we should have been able

to find some trace of either her

or her plane, and
none was ever found.

Maybe there’s a reason

why there was no evidence
on the surface of the ocean.

Maybe Earhart and
Noonan make it to land.

Theorists point out that
there’s still no proof

that she crashed into
the Pacific Ocean.

She is well-known, well-trained,

highly-acclaimed pilot with
a very experienced navigator.

Some theorists suggest

that once they realized they
couldn’t find Howland Island,

they had, in fact, changed
their destination

to a different island nearby.

The closest island

to Howland is Baker
Island, just 40 miles away.

Baker Island was
looked at from the air,

but no one saw anything

as big as the Electra
to just sand and trees.

The next most
logical island nearby

where she may have
gone is 400 miles away

and it’s called Gardner Island.

To call it an island
is almost a stretch.

It’s tiny. You have
four and a half miles.

It’s sandbars, it’s palm
trees, and totally uninhabited.

Gardner is a sandbar,
literally an oval-shaped sandbar

with some water in between it,

and there is no place to land.

Amelia was a very
experienced pilot

and she was very familiar

with this particular
aircraft, the Electra 10-E.

Even out of fuel, she
will be able to glide it

and make a soft landing
either on the sandbar

or land it on the water, and
then hop out with Mr. Noonan.

Navy planes do search
Gardner Island from the air.

Now, they report what they call
signs of recent habitation,

but no aircraft,
no signs of life.

The planes fly over
the island in pairs.

They don’t see SOS
written in the sand.

No smoke, no fresh
human activity

that would suggest
somebody was in distress.

And so, they conclude that
this isn’t a viable location

for Earhart to have ended up.

But three years later in 1940,

a new discovery
suggests those planes

may have overlooked something.

British Colonial
Officer Gerald Gallagher

is leading an expedition
on the island, scouting it

for possible settlement, when
he finds a terrifying thing,

a human skull.

Continued search of the
island turns up other things,

bone fragments, a portion
of a woman’s shoe.

They find a bottle
of herbal alcohol.

And they find a box, empty,

but made to contain
a US Navy sextant.

We know that Noonan
flies with a sextant.

So, this has Gallagher thinking

that he stumbled upon Amelia
Earhart’s human remains.

The bones that are
discovered on Gardner Island

are then sent to
an expert on Fiji,

Dr. DW Hoodless,

who examines the
skull, the tibula,

and the other small bone
fragments that were discovered.

He determines that
the bone fragments

were from a male,
short, maybe about 5’5",

and quite stocky,
middle aged, 45 to 55.

Earhart was in her late 30s.

She was petite and slim,

and Noonan was also
a very slim man.

So, neither of them
matched the profile

of a short, stocky,
middle-aged man.

In any event, this is
regarded as conclusive

that this could not
have been the remains

of either Noonan or Earhart.

That opens up the question,
where else could she be?

Did she crash? Did she
make an emergency landing?

Where did she go?

These questions remain
unanswered for decades.

Then, in 1960,

a radio journalist
forwards a shocking theory.

For decades after Amelia Earhart

and her navigator, Fred Noonan,

vanish in the middle
of the Pacific Ocean,

speculation swirls that
there’s more to the story.

How does a celebrated
pilot just disappear?

And there’s no
evidence of her plane.

Did she just get swallowed
up by the Pacific Ocean

or is there another explanation?

As is often the
case when a celebrity

disappears without a trace,

speculation abounds that maybe

the official explanation
is not a truthful one.

This is certainly the
case with Amelia Earhart.

The question of
where she has ended up

fascinates a CBS radio
newsman named Fred Goerner.

He spends years
investigating this.

He looks through any document
he could get his hands on.

And in 1966, Goerner comes out

with a book called "The
Search for Amelia Earhart,"

in which he advances a
really interesting theory.

According to Goerner, in 1937,

Amelia Earhart had
never truly intended

to land on Howland Island,

and that she was part of
a secret government mission

to actually spy on the Japanese

in the lead up to World w*r II.

The Chinese
forces tried desperately

to stem the surging
tide of the invasion.

Japan had been at w*r with China

since 1931 when they
invaded Manchuria.

And in ’37, they’re poised
to invade mainland China.

Japan has colonies

in the Marshall Islands
and the Marianas Islands.

There are reports

that the Japanese are
fortifying these islands

with the expectation

that they’re going to face
the US Navy at some point.

Of course, any
kind of surveillance

of Japanese military activity
would be incredibly valuable

to the US government,

and how better to acquire
that surveillance material

than from the air?

But you can’t just fly a
plane into Japanese airspace

and expect it not
to get shot down.

Goerner claims to
have interviewed dozens

of World w*r II veterans,

as well as high
ranking officials

in the US military, and
people in the Pacific Islands.

And he comes to the conclusion

that Earhart’s final
flight was, in fact,

covertly designed by the US
military, an elaborate ruse.

So, what was really surveillance
activity was disguised

as a celebrity record-breaking,
world-circling flight.

The theory goes
that Amelia Earhart

was instructed to land her plane

as far away from Howland
Island as possible.

This would then trigger
the massive search

that was conducted
after she went missing.

The idea being that the navy

isn’t really searching the South
Pacific for Amelia Earhart.

What they’re doing is trying

to survey Japanese
military activity.

If that theory is
true, it’s brilliant.

You could never get that close

to Japanese territory in secret,

but if you’re searching
for Amelia Earhart,

you can basically spy
out in the public.

For those who believed

that Amelia Earhart
is actually a spy,

it’s the only way you could
explain why Franklin Roosevelt

was willing to commit such a
massive amount of resources,

both money and manpower,
to finding a single aviator

who was missing in the Pacific.

Proponents of the spy theory

also point to a number
of strange details

that suggest Earhart

may have deliberately
avoided detection.

The Electra was equipped

with the latest
in radio technology.

It had all of the most modern

and up-to-date, two-way
communication devices.

She was also scheduled to make
a radio contact every hour.

But in her 20-hour flight, she
only does that seven times.

Why would somebody

who was supposed to
check in every hour

only check in after four hours,

and then another three hours?

Maybe she was up to something
else, goes the theory.

Remember when Amelia Earhart

was having that communication
issue with Itasca

where they could hear her
but she couldn’t hear them?

Was that a glitch or was
she purposely being evasive?

Five hours
into her final flight,

Earhart reports her position
as 150.7 east and 7.3 south.

Which doesn’t make sense

because that’s only
about 200 miles from Lae,

and by this point, she should
be over 400 miles away.

So, for those inclined
to believe this theory,

this is a key piece of evidence.

False location reports

that make it harder
for her to be tracked,

for some people could only
mean one thing, spy mission.

According to the theory,
they lay low for a while,

and then once the search ends,

they are quietly relocated
and given new identities.

Earhart and probably
Noonan as well

lived out the rest of their
lives as somebody else.

There are other theories
that hold that, yes,

Earhart did survive

past her purported
death in July of 1937,

but under very
different circumstances,

circumstances that
would prevent her

from communicating at all
with the outside world.

In January of 1939, 18
months after Amelia Earhart

vanished over the Pacific Ocean,

she is officially declared dead,

but still the search
for answers goes on.

By now, most people
believe the official story,

that the aviator fell victim

to navigational issues,
crashed, and sank.

But there is yet
another credible theory

that Amelia Earhart
ended up a thousand miles

from where she was
supposed to land,

only to end up a prisoner.

While he’s writing his book,

Fred Goerner speaks
with a navy veteran

who had been stationed on

the Marshall Islands
during World w*r II.

The navy veteran
named John Mahan

claims that he had spoken to
two Marshall Island natives

who had been told by two
US military officials

that they had seen
Japanese soldiers

transporting 2 captured
US aviators,

one man, one woman.

Goerner also tells another story

about another
Marshall Island native

who told two US Navy officers

that a Japanese friend had told
him about a white lady pilot

who had crashed near the Jaluit
Atoll, was taken prisoner.

He claims that a Japanese boat

picked her up and took her away,

maybe to Kwajalein,
maybe to Saipan.

Amelia Earhart is not only

the most-celebrated woman pilot,

but she is one of very
few female pilots.

To see a white woman aviator

in the Marshall Islands,
completely unheard of.

How else to account
for this story?

For a white woman
to have been shot down

or captured by the Japanese
in the Marshall Islands, 1937,

requires lot of people
to be making stories up.

So, there is an element to the
story that forces you to ask,

was there in fact a woman
flying in the Marshall Islands?

And if there was, who was it?

Even some
US government officials

find the story convincing.

Admiral Chester Nimitz,

who was overall naval
commander in the Pacific,

is interviewed
by Goerner in 1965.

Goerner quotes Nimitz as saying,

"I want to tell you,
Earhart and her navigator

did go down in the Marshalls

and were picked up
by the Japanese."

For the admiral
of the Pacific fleet

to make a statement
of that magnitude

has suggested to some that
the US government knew

or had information about
Amelia’s disappearance.

And you wouldn’t
expect an admiral,

particularly Admiral Nimitz,
to make a statement like that,

unless he had some
pretty good evidence.

Some say that Amelia

died of dysentery while
she was in captivity.

Some say that she was ex*cuted
on the island of Saipan.

Others say that Fred Noonan

was also ex*cuted after
Amelia Earhart died.

But the fact is we
just don’t know.

Goerner also talks to a
couple of US army veterans

who had been stationed
in the Marianas Islands.

They said that
they were shown items

that belonged to Earhart,

and that they were shown

where Earhart and
Noonan were buried.

And when Goerner goes
to investigate this lead,

he meets with some pretty
significant resistance

from the US military.

He makes four trips to
Saipan to try to figure out

what happened to
Earhart and Noonan,

doesn’t really find any
conclusive evidence.

Decades later, all of
this is just hearsay.

It’s myth and legend.

But in 2015,

something like a piece of
evidence maybe turns up.

At Mili Atoll in the Marshalls,

a native led investigators

to a site where he claimed
that Earhart went down.

A reef where he
claims the plane crashed

and was then salvaged and
drug across the beach,

and then carried
away by the Japanese.

So, there is no evidence,

but the investigators
decide to search anyway

and they discover a
small piece of metal.

A rectangular piece
of aluminum was found

that may have been a
part from the plane.

It’s painted red

and it’s known
that at least part

of the Electra was painted red.

And under that red paint,
a yellow chromium primer,

which was known to be used
in the 1930s and 1940s,

and it looks as though
it’s the cover plate

for an auxiliary power unit
that would’ve been found

on a Lockheed Electra
made during this time.

In addition to that, there
was a round piece of aluminum

that they conclude
is a dust cover

for landing gear for
a Lockheed Electra.

It is certainly a
fascinating discovery,

but there is just no way to know

if what they found
is an actual piece

to this Amelia Earhart puzzle

or if it is just an
unrelated artifact.

Rather than
speculate on new leads,

some investigators take a
deeper dive into old theories.

Experts start to go back

and reevaluate and redetermine

if maybe some of our old
leads were, in fact, correct.

Amelia
Earhart’s final radio message

to the USS Itasca is one

of the biggest clues in
her unsolved disappearance.

But what if that wasn’t
actually her last transmission?

Soon after Earhart’s
disappearance,

well before she’s
pronounced dead,

ham radio operators in the
United States began reporting

to have received transmissions
from Amelia Earhart.

Many of these are
dismissed as cruel hoaxes,

but there are some which
deserve additional scrutiny,

because of the
details transcribed

by the radio operators.

After Earhart’s disappearance

about 5,000 miles from
Howland Island, a young,

a 16-year-old civilian,
ham radio operator,

named Dana Randolph

reports hearing the voice of a
woman at about the same time

that Amelia Earhart
would’ve been in distress.

Randolph lives
in Rock Springs, Wyoming

and is listening on a
commercial radio set

with shortwave bands

connected to a special
antenna he’s just installed.

At about eight
o’clock in the morning,

he hears a female voice saying,

"This is Amelia Earhart.

Ship on a reef
south of the equator.

Station KH9QQ."

And then, according
to the report,

the signal just dies away.

Dana and his father
share this information

with a local government
radio operator.

Now, this operator tells them

that given the
frequency involved,

it is possible for them

to have heard a transmission
from halfway around the world.

So, this government
radio operator

takes down the information

and forwards it
to Washington, DC,

but what happens

to that information
after that is unknown.

There’s another message

that reaches a 15-year-old girl
in St. Petersburg, Florida.

This girl’s name
is Betty Klenck.

Her and her dad are
interested in radio.

Her father has just
installed a new antenna,

which enables her to get
signals from farther away.

She’s listening soon
after the disappearance

and scanning through shortwave

and she gets a message saying,
"This is Amelia Earhart."

Betty hears the
message shortly after news

of Amelia Earhart’s
disappearance is made public.

She knows Earhart’s
voice from newsreels

and is certain she is listening

to the famous aviator as
her plane fills with water.

For the next couple of hours,

Betty listens to what
she describes as a male

and a female voice that are
growing increasingly distressed,

continually giving
their distress calls

and their location information,

and that both of their voices
sound strained and frightened.

Betty starts writing
down the messages

and getting as many of
the numbers as she can.

What Betty describes

is a bad situation that
is quickly getting worse.

Purportedly, this is
Noonan and Earhart

talking back and
forth in the plane

as it begins to fill with water

and they try to plot how
it is they’re going to,

not only get out of the
wreckage, but then survive.

Their father comes home and
he hears the final messages.

He is convinced
that this is real,

and so they report
to the Coast Guard.

The Coast Guard
though assures them

that the navy is in the
area, the search is underway.

There’s nothing to worry about.

How might we explain the fact

that two separate radio
operators, amateurs, were able

to receive transmissions
purportedly from Amelia Earhart?

You could say that Betty

and Dana heard about Amelia
Earhart’s disappearance

and decided to jump
on the bandwagon

for their 15 minutes of fame.

But Betty and Dana did
not know each other

and they live thousands
of miles apart.

In 2011, Earhart researchers

compare when the
radio transmissions

were received by both Betty
Klenck and Dana Randolph.

They began to detect
what they say is a pattern

that these transmissions
were happening

at certain times of the day,
at low tide on Gardner Island.

Low tide would only happen
at night or early morning,

and that just happens

to be when these
purported transmissions

from Earhart were received
back in the States.

In order to use the radio,

the plane’s engine
needs to be on.

But in order for the
plane’s engine to be on,

it could not be even
partially submerged in water.

If the Lockheed was stuck

on a sandbar or an atoll,

only when the water had receded
would they have been able

to start up the engine,

thus allowing them to
transmit that message.

So, that means

that they could only turn
the plane on at low tide.

Many researchers believe Earhart

was navigating toward Gardner
Island when she vanished.

Earhart’s
final documented message

by the radio is,
"KHAQQ to Itasca.

We are on the line, 157, 337."

So, this is a
navigational indicator

that the plane is flying on a
northwest to southeast route.

And it cuts right
through Howland Island.

But if they can’t
find Howland Island,

are they northwest of it
or they’re southeast of it?

Northwest, there’s
nothing but open ocean,

but southeast,

Baker and Gardner Islands

are not too far away.

If she ended up on Baker Island,

search crews would’ve
found her pretty easily,

because it’s so close.

So, that leaves us once again
looking at Gardner Island.

Three months after
Earhart’s disappearance,

a British official who
scoped out Gardner Island

to see its suitability for
a colony, finds evidence

that somebody had been
camping there overnight.

Did it ever cross his mind

that it may have been
Earhart and Noonan?

Maybe not, because that
report simply got shelved.

In 2018, the issue of the bones

found on Gardner Island
comes back up again.

Now, the bones themselves
are long gone at this point,

but an anthropologist at
the University of Tennessee

uses software entering
all the measurements

and information that had been
taken down years earlier,

and finds that the original
investigator was wrong,

that this well could have
been a human female skeleton

and that it is more
like Amelia Earhart

than 99% of bones
could have been.

Unfortunately, the bones were
discarded as medical waste,

so we’ll never know, ’cause
those bones were thrown away.

Without those original
bones to analyze,

it’s just too inconclusive.

However, new evidence
has developed

that leads us in a completely
different direction.

It has been more than 80 years

since Amelia
Earhart disappeared,

and the search for her lost
plane is heating up once more,

thanks to a private expedition.

Tony Romeo is the founder
and CEO of Deep Sea Visions,

an underwater
exploration company

that’s based in
the United States.

In the fall of 2023,

using his own new
state-of-the-art technology,

he begins to scour the seafloor

in the vicinity of where Earhart

is purported to have gone down.

We said to ourselves,

"It’s been 86 years
since Amelia’s disappeared."

We have a really good
trail of evidence

as to where she went down.

The technology is available
today to do a deep water search.

"Why not take a shot at this?"

We mobilized out of Port
Moresby, Papua New Guinea,

not too far from where
she took off from.

We intended to cover
about 5,000 square miles.

We did that in about


And we scanned an area
around Howland Island,

about the size of Connecticut.

Tony Romeo conducts
this search of the area

using an autonomous vehicle

that travels 18,000
feet below the surface,

about 160 feet from
the ocean floor,

taking sonar images as it goes.

Shoots out these
powerful pulses of sound,

and it goes back and forth

looking off to the
side about a mile.

So you’ve got about a mile
swath as it does each turn.

And it looks at the reflection

when it comes back
to the sonar system,

and it paints an image
of what it’s looking at.

When Romeo and his team

head home in December 2023,

they review the
sonar data received

by their underwater drone

and find a startling image.

They find something at
a depth of 16,000 feet,

about 100 miles off the
coast of Howland Island,

an image that looks a whole lot

like a small
twin-engined aircraft.

And it was just incredible.

And I remember sitting down
and thinking, "This is it.

This is the first time
her plane’s been seen

in 80 some years."

The measurements of
the Lockheed Electra,

that’s not secret information.

He compares what this image
is to the size of that plane

and the vertical stabilizers
that he sees on it.

And they’re pretty much a match.

Could this be some
other twin-engine plane?

Well, there are no reports

of a crash of a
plane of that design

anywhere close to there.

For that reason, he
becomes convinced

that it’s actually the plane.

But Romeo and his team

aren’t celebrating just yet.

There were some stuff that
we were skeptical about.

It is blurrier
than we would like.

It was taken at quite some
distance from the sonar.

So the resolution isn’t as
good as what we would’ve hoped,

but we suspect very
strongly it’s a plane.

The other really
strong possibility

is that it’s just
a natural formation

that’s a cruel trick of nature
that looks just like a plane.


later, in October 2024,

Romeo and his crew
return to the site

and send their
submersible down again.

And this time, the pictures
they take are much clearer.

Hopes that Amelia
Earhart’s long lost plane

had been found were
dashed this week.

Researchers scanning the
Pacific Ocean for the wreckage

thought they had
found it last year,

but upon further inspection,

it’s just a natural rock
formation shaped like a plane.

It was obviously
a real disappointment,

no question about that.

We really thought we had
a very promising target,

but we didn’t go with the
champagne bottle open.

Despite the
disappointing setback,

the researchers
vowed to search on.

The group says they’ve covered

nearly 7,700 square miles so far

in their efforts to find
the ill-fated plane.

It’s a really
small target, right?

And it’s a really big ocean.

But with the ability of
deep sea sonar systems

to scan the seafloor,

it’s just a matter of time till

all the major mysteries
of the ocean are solved,

including finding
Amelia’s plane.

Why are we so interested
in what happened to a woman

who disappeared 80 years ago?

Well, she was a superstar.

She was somebody who
was known by everyone,

and there were a lot of
people cheering for her

to finish this round
the world voyage.

To suddenly find such a
huge source of inspiration

to have vanished,

the question of
what happened to her

will be a question
that we will never,

ever be satisfied not knowing

Romeo plans to
return to the site

sometime in the near future.

Until then,

the fate of history’s
most famous female pilot

will remain the
unfinished final chapter

of her legendary career.

I’m Laurence Fishburne,

thank you for watching
History’s Greatest Mysteries.