Richard Gillespie, executive director of the International Group for
Historic Aircraft Recovery, released a report Tuesday saying Earhart's
plane made 57 credible distress calls in the week after she disappeared
in 1937, and he believes he can tie them to her and navigator Fred
Noonan.
The report, which was not peer-reviewed, comes on the 121st anniversary of Earhart's birth in 1897.
Gillespie said he ruled out dozens of other possible Earhart radio
signals from July 3-7, 1937, because they were hoaxes, were picked up by
listeners in locations that couldn't possibly have detected the signals
or included advanced Morse code that neither Earhart nor Noonan knew
how to transmit. In some cases, civilian listeners reported hearing SOS
messages with phrases that closely matched that day's episode of The
March of Time, a radio news and dramatization program.
The signals deemed credible mostly took place at nighttime, when there
would be low tide on Gardner Island -- now known as Nikumaroro.
Searchers and archaeologists have theorized this coral atoll is where
Earhart landed, about 400 miles south-southeast of her intended
destination, Howland Island.
In some of the messages, like one purportedly heard by Canadian Thelma
Lovelace on July 7, 1937, Earhart could be heard saying her Lockheed
Electra plane had partly landed in water. Had this been the case, she
would only have been able to transmit signals at night during low tide
-- the plane's engine could not have been turned on during high tide
when it would have flooded.
"Can you read me? Can you read me? This is Amelia Earhart. This is
Amelia Earhart. Please come in," Lovelace said she heard that morning
when she was trying to tune in a Japanese music program on her shortwave
radio.
She said Earhart give her latitude and longitude, which she wrote in a book.
ARCHIVEEarhart tells UPI of battling fire, fog across Atlantic
"We have taken in water, my navigator is badly hurt; We are in need of
medical care and must have help; we can't hold on much longer," the
message continued.
Gillespie said the U.S. Coast Guard and Navy later wrote off the
messages as hoaxes after being unable to locate Earhart and Noonan --
even after a search of Gardner Island and other islands in the area.
To support his theory, Gillespie pointed to human bones found on the
island in 1940. Initial analysis of the bones, which included a radius
and humerus, indicated they belonged to a man. But earlier this year,
Dr. Richard Jantz, a professor and researcher at the University of
Tennessee, published a study saying the measurements match Earhart.
In 1940, potential settlers on the island also discovered a woman's
shoe, a sextant box that appeared to match one Noonan carried, and a
Benedictine bottle, something Earhart was known to carry. None of the
items have been definitively linked to the pair, though, and no part of
the aircraft has ever been found.
Before her disappearance, Earhart earned fame for being the first woman
to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean and non-stop across the United
States. She disappeared while attempting to become the first woman to
circumnavigate the globe.
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Jul 24, 2018

Study: Radio signals may prove Amelia Earhart crashed on Pacific island
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