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Finding Amelia with Hard Facts and Sound Science - Ric Gillespie at NEAM
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- Published on Apr 17, 2026
- On Sunday, July 16, we were treated to a talk by Ric Gillespie, Executive Director of TIGHAR - The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery, on "Finding Amelia with Hard Facts and Sound Science." He debunked some of the recent theories on her fate and offered a very realistic picture of Earhart, her attempted world flight, the events surrounding her disappearance, and the U.S. government's failed attempt to find her.
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Over 2,000 miles in a loud prop plane no thanks. My head would explode
As a former USAF navigator with a fair amount of celestial navigation experience I wouldn't want to make their trip with their equipment in poor weather.
Amelia was a couragous adventurer.
ComRsch / SigInt (jump-trained infantry) ... years of tracking Ivan and Boris around the north short of Scotland with 1970s RFDF.
Fuzz. heh is why me and "Tiny" were tasked with copying weak signal CW /*grin*/
Oh ya finding a needle in 1000 haystacks
Well, once the government gets involved, you know you know it’s gonna be all screwed up
I bet the aircraft is sitting at about 6,000m on the ocean floor.
gee.. you think?
More likely she landed on a cloud
Like most A.E. documentaries, the last half tends to be vast amounts of copium.
Likely she did land on that reef
Enjoying Rics newest book The Last Great Flight at the moment. As a Brit I love these American museum youtube channels there's so much enthusiasm for social history it's always uplifting and interesting content especially these more modern museums.
Ric, I hope someday soon you find her. You have a good strong theory.
The cherry-picking of data is the key to this and many other mysteries that have taken on a life of their own. Information for modern historical events such as Amelia's disappearance tends to accumulate thousands of pages of data, such that it becomes possible to create any conspiracy out of it all. Heck, you could link it to the Princes in the Tower if you wanted. I have a saying: You can prove anything with anything.
But with reference to the Nikumaroro theory, it doesn't sound like you've considered the evidence.
I'm almost certain after hearing about some of the artifacts found that Earhart made it to Gardiner island . There was also a story told by a girl who was a teenager in Florida in 1937 who said that their radio caught a transmission from Earhart in which she said she had landed at an island and that there was a shipwreck nearby . The girl thought Earhart called it the New York City . There was actually a shipwreck called the Norwich City on Gardiner/Nikamororo island .
This is obviously the ship Earhart saw .
Actually Earhart didn't crash but made a rough water landing .
With all respect for Amelia, Fred and those who for decades relentlessly pursued the answers. Perhaps at this juncture it may be best to put search efforts to rest, considering the tremendous cost and possible health and safety risks to the searchers. I think most experts would agree on the most likely cause of the disappearance. Difficulties with navigation and radio communication led to the exhaustion of fuel. Even if it was discovered that they were captured by the Japanese, what would be done about it in today's political environment? Ask for an apology from allies who's parents weren't even alive when this incident occurred?
Is the Lockheed in the museum the one that a woman was rebuilding in Lakehurst West Field Hanger and later in Hanger One before she got Lymes disease?
On at least one of your expeditions, you used Nai'a which is my all-time favorite liveaboard
The only way they get to Gardner is that they were off course and fairly close to it. However, if that were the case, the signal strength 5 calls overhead Itasca make no sense because the range for that is fairly limited. You can't have it both ways.
You are correct sir. The S-5 radio receptions indicate she was within 100 miles of Howland, thus at least 300 miles from Nikumaroro. 300 miles is 2 hours flying time if not more. A long way to go when "gas is running low" and you think you are close to your destination.
It would be intersecting to take a plane similar to the Lockheed Electra and land it on the reef on the same surf conditions/close to the same calendar date and film the next 6 days to watch where the plane ends up
Or go and transmit from there and get radio reception logs off people who heard the transmissions, where and how far away.
Fly around Howland and do the same.
The thing that doesn't add up about the radio signals after flight ceased: Nobody heard exactly the same thing. If you had several independent reports all saying the same thing, then that would have something, but all can be dismissed, because they didn't hear the same thing.
not necessarily. The signals were modulating, they couldn't be heard as clearly as when she was in the air. Not everyone would hear the same message depending on the signal propergation throung and bouncing off the upper atmmosphere.
@UncleTerry A lot of attention has been paid to Betty's famous notebook in which she reported recorded Earhart's calls for help. But what Betty was listening to was probably a broadcast radio station and the program "The March Of Time". Google search for "The March Of Time". On one of the pages in the notebook, Betty wrote down the call letter "KGMB", which was the call sign for a Broadcast radio station in Honolulu Hawaii. Earhart's radio call sign was "KHAQQ". The Itasca's call sign was NRUI.
They assessed each report independently with various factors to gauge how credible it was. Most have been dismissed as false, the rest that remain are the most believable
Not everybody would be listening at the same time so various messages could have been heard.
This assumes they were all listening to the same transmission. They weren't.
It makes sense if they were blown south and looking for Howland and decided after circling and not finding it to go south where there are more islands. Or even thinking they did find Howland and saying we can't see you meaning the ship.
I agree with radio signals and propagation. On 5.262 MHz my signals are weak and only just audible at Hack Green online receiving station 40 miles away but I am able to get to Mallaig almost 300 miles away to make a contact. This is with 2 Watts out. My contacts have been between 80 miles and 284. It's not a popular frequency so I don't know how much further my signal would go. It works this way for ground based stations but having never flown in a plane with radio I can't say about that propagation mode.
That donut is known as the dead zone or skip zone.
Beddie Clink and the New York City reference does sound interesting.
Bill, amateur radio call sign G4GHB.
close the depth with in 100 sq mi is 17000 ft the bottom is flat.
Bill, with your radio background you should find this video interesting:
ruclips.net/video/bdA6bm9tL8M/video.html
Exhaustive research by a team of radio engineers put Amelia within 100 miles when last heard. Her messages weren't going by skywave, they were propagating by groundwave.
@haroldbeck4351
Thank you for this. I had a quick look and I'll have proper look later.
G4GHB.
@haroldbeck4351
I just finished watching the video.
It's very likely they ditched into the sea but those reports of hearing transmissions are strange. Maybe heard her name mentioned by people and got confused thinking it was her.
Or a sick joke by people.
But that Betty whatever she's called seems convinced that she heard Amelia.
G4GHB.
@bill-2018I dug into Betty's claims Tighar provided the time she was listening.
Even a 50 W transmitter and several watts of effective radiated power, a Gardner Island signal couldn't reach Florida in daylight. Between 3- 6 PM Florida time (7-10 AM Gardner), D- layer absorption limits 3105 kHz to a few hundred miles and 6210 kHz to maybe ~1,500 miles at best. Florida is ~7,000 miles away-off by thousands, not margins. A Florida reception in that window cannot be from Gardner Island
I have the utmost respect for Ric Gillespie and his research of what happened to Earhart, more than anyone since she disappeared, however, instead of being a first rate detective I would spend all my time proving the Electra landed on Gardner Island by finding more pieces that will confirm it, because its still there, Earhart is gone. If I could get to Gardner (Nikumaroro) tomorrow, I'd get all the credit by proving that's where she ended up, then I could spend my golden years writing a book, not before.
ruclips.net/video/bdA6bm9tL8M/video.html
There were a LOT of inaccuracies from that History Ch. Documentary. They even said the Electra was the first all-metal plane EVER built. Simply NOT true. That's just one example. But there were a LOT of mistakes in that show.
Maybe the piece of aluminum was the window patch installed in Miami Rick.😅
Or maybe not:
istigharartifact2-2-v-1apieceofac-47wing.yolasite.com/
gardnerghost.blogspot.com/2019/11/
My theory they landed on a coral reef gave sos signals " then high tide and winds floated the plane into the night many kilometres away where it finally sank.with injured amelia and co pilot unable to move at all !
*Fred Noonan wasn't a co-pilot. He was the navigator sitting in the rear of the plane. Amelia's husband asked her not to allow Fred to sit next to her because people would say that she had made the journey thanks to Fred who had been a Pan Am professional pilot and navigator.*
How did Earhart know that ship wreck was the SS Norwich City? any names must have been eroded off.
The ship's marking were still visable.
There was also a cache of survival supplies with a sign left on the island by the shipwreck rescuers. There was even a lifeboat from the Norwich City included in that cache. Generally, the name of the ship is also put on their lifeboats.
@donjordan6789 In 1929 the SS Norwich CIty ran into the reef in a storm and exploded and burned. (you can see pictures of the ship from 1935 there is no name on the bow). When Henry Maude and Eric Bevington did their expedition to Gardner Island in 1937 several months after Ameila disappeared, they referred to the ship as "the wreck" probably because they didn't know its name until later. The sign was put up by the New Zealand Survey Expedition in 1938. For the lifeboats its possible they had the name on them, but the pictures i can find there is no name on those lifeboats probably because the ship was renamed from the Normanby to the SS Norwich city. They did find silverware and crockery inside the burned-out hull with the ships original name. I think it's a hard sell that if she landed there, she would have known the name.
@primer50i saw pictures of the lifeboat at 1 time years ago but have lost it. Do you have a picture of the lifeboat and sign?
@donjordan6789I don't have any pictures of them personally. There are only a handful of pictures via Google of the ship before its demise. One closeup as it goes under a bridge where you can clearly see a single life boat. Surprisingly I know I've seen pictures of the sign but I can't find that either. Googles algorithm possibly. There is a discussion on this matter on Tighar forums.
I believe in the gardner island theory good luck boys !!✌️✌️
Me too ...too much evidence
@YoungShadTvthat, and now that they still havnt found the plane !!
@YoungShadTv ruclips.net/video/bdA6bm9tL8M/video.html
The Discovery Channel documentary ... painful.
As an old ground-pounder _(I turned down commission just to evade careerists!)_ I clued in on how loud-mouthed yuppie could easily sabotage the entire effort.
AU WWII team came across debrie.
Now yuppie has the team exploring a deep ravine, 600 ft deep.
Sure, contradict data ... makes for good TV!
Fascinating report. You appear to have covered absolutely everything and I wish you well into the future. I do wonder what survival gear they may have carried for such a trip in those days. Rgds from Australia.
On one video a guy who had been a pilot and navigator said there was no life raft visible in the plane looking at photo's so maybe not much else.
I've read that the sextant box has been attributed to a survey team from a survey ship that was surveying the island, and that it has been confirmed through numbers on the box.
You are correct. See: gardnerghost.blogspot.com/2018/10/the-origin-of-nikumaroro-sextant-box.html
It’s possible, but so is Noonan.
It was positively linked to the USS Bushnell 1939 hydrography survey of Gardner island by serial number through navy records. By John Kada a Tighar member . There is no question of its origin it's been thoroughly debunked.
@primer50Yea I had read that before. But I'm not certain the proposed link to Noonan was ever posted as definitive, so maybe "debunked" isn't the most appropriate term. Confirmed as not connected to Noonan is better.
But as I've maintained previously, I don't put much emphasis on this archeology, nor hang my hat on it. My leaning toward the Gardner Island Landing and Castaway theory hangs primarily on the PanAm DF triangulated 3105 transmissions intersecting at Gardner. And secondarily on Gardner Island being on that 157° 337° line. I'm open to being swayed one way or another with either corroborative or contradictory evidence relative to that evidentiary line.
@JT-rx1eoFair enough - “confirmed as not connected to Noonan” is probably the cleaner phrasing. I agree it was never formally presented as definitive proof on its own.
That said, my point in bringing it up isn’t to make the archaeology carry the theory, but to illustrate a broader pattern: physical artifacts on Gardner consistently turn out to have plausible, well-documented alternative origins once they’re examined closely.
Where I diverge more strongly is on the evidentiary weight given to the Pan Am DF work on 3105. The intersect-at-Gardner conclusion depends heavily on assumptions about signal origin, propagation, and station dominance that aren’t well constrained-especially given known high-power stations on 3105, harmonic leakage, and the 180° ambiguity inherent in early DF.
Gardner being on the 157°/337° line is true, but that line alone doesn’t uniquely privilege Gardner without independent confirmation of distance or timing. Without that, it functions more as a geometric possibility than a locating solution.
Like you, I’m open to being swayed either way - but for me, that would require DF evidence that can be shown to be robust against those known technical limitations, or independent corroboration that doesn’t rely on the same assumptions.
Sandwiches are important. She was probably hangry abd over shot the island
Years ago I noticed in the Woods something that looked like the Letter A. Some later I saw this Video where they said, that this was the Place where they found Bones. Could it be, that Amelia made this Letter A by herself, many, many Years ago? She could have plant Trees, tiny Trees and didnt plant Trees on this Letter. After some Years, the Illusion was finished. Could it be a last Goodye of her?
Sooooo…… Have you found her yet with your hard facts and science? 🤔
The found the aircraft 100 off howlands island near its last location.
Sixty miles.
It turned out to be rocks
If they maid it to a island why not make a sos sign or smoke signal
No one knows the inventory of her plane so we don't know if she had that capability. But if she had done, she almost definitely wouldn't have been seen anyways. It took the US Navy days to reach the island
Nine days. She might've thought the Electra would suffice to alert rescue, but by the time the plane was swept away, she was either too weak to make a sign or didn't realize the plane was gone. If she had run out of fuel, exhausted the battery and taken off every provision she had, there would've been no point in taking the trip back to the plane from the campsite at the other end of the island.
ruclips.net/video/08uYcvbTuF4/video.html
This guy is a sellsman
If you believe in something, like their Nikumaroro theory, you advocate for it. So what?
Tighar has been looking in the wrong spot for years. No way she had the fuel to reach Gardner. The Electra would float. It was carrying 1092 gallons of fuel and 0 gallons when she crashed. The tankage would displace at least 1092 gallons of water at 8 pounds/gallon or 8,736 pounds. The aircraft weighed around 7,000 pounds. 8,736 > 7,000 = floats.
we don't know there was "0" fuel. She had some left to start an engine to charge the battery. and the plane may have been dragged off the reef by tides before the fuel was completely exhausted. Also Fuel tanks are not always completely watertight Because of the filler caps. especially back then. That is why pilots sample the fuel from the tanks during preflight to check for water in the gas, especially if the airplane is sitting outside and not hangered. Also, how do you know the tanks weren't ruptured, ripped, or damaged in the crash landing?
Why wouldn't they have checked Gardner Island way back when she first was missing just to make sure. For them to just disregard the most logical thing is quite insane to me. I think this was a complete botched attempt to find her and her navigator. This is such a tragedy. I love this information and it completely makes sense in what you are saying about everything. Thank you for doing this work and I hope to find out what really happened to her before I leave this life. ELON MUSK MIGHT BE INTERESTED IN FUNDING YOU FOR THIS. WORTH A SHOT
They did a piss-poor job at Gardner, that's for sure. They were looking for the plane, but the pilot could've landed in the lagoon and at least waited for an hour or more (not his fault, he did what was asked of him). Just a flyover wasn't enough time for a potential castaway, dehydrated, starving and possibly injured, taking shelter under the bush, to run out to the beach and make themselves visible. If Amelia was there, she probably only witnessed the search plane flying away, never to return.
The US government spent 88 million dollars (adjusted for inflation) looking for Ameila (a civilian) in 1937. It was one of the largest and most expensive search-and-rescue operations in history at the time. Nine days after she went missing three sea planes circled and did power dives for 20 minutes over Gardner Island to attract attention (it would have been loud) . Moreover, Tighar- The International Group of Historical Aircraft Recovery (who hasn't recovered a single aircraft in its 40 years in business) doesn't have one single piece of irrefutable evidence to confirm she was ever on Gardner Island. Ameila Earhart is basically their cash cow which they have spent in excess of 5 million *donated* dollars "looking for her". You don't hear much from Tighar these days because the island is played out. The last two trips (out of 12) they came back empty handed. Robert Ballerd (the guy that found the Titanic) searched the waters around the island in 2019 and found absolutely nothing. The most likely scenario is she ran out of fuel and crashed into the Pacific Ocean somewhere within 100 miles of Howland Island her intended destination.
I think the radio signals on a harmonic are at best unlikely. A contemporary navigator worked the numbers on this and put her final radio call at around 0 deg 10 min N 175 deg 55 min W. That's around 58nm SE of Howland and several hundred miles from Nukimoro. He also stated that assuming she was in the vicinity of Howland (which seems likely given the signal strength being strong, then faded.) there is no way she would have had the fuel to reach it. The presentation is some years old, but it's on YT here... ruclips.net/video/T7dg9sqnppA/video.html
You are correct. At 7:30 a.m. she reported to Itasca and stated that "gas is running low, only 30 minutes left. She also stated "We must be on you, but can not see you. She also stated that she was "circling" at a location where she thought Howland Island should be. But obviously, it wasn't! This information was taken directly from the Itasca radio log recorded that morning. I have the full transcript.
@booniebuster4193 I think you mean Howland island.
Were they circling Gardner island thinking it was Howland and her saying we can not see you mean they could not see the ship.
@bill-2018 There is no radio language in her last messages that would indicate she ever saw any island or ship.
@booniebuster4193 Did she report seeing any ships?
Why no backup frequency to use?
It seems badly organised.
What of the supposed bearings from PanAm radio ops. at Gardner island?
@bill-2018 I have a copy of the actual authentic radio log recorded by the Itasca on that morning. It is a microfilm copy of the original. So it is not open to speculation as to what was or was not, said. The only time she mentioned seeing a ship was when she was only about 700 miles from Lae and some 1,300 miles from Howland. At that time she reported that she saw lights from a ship. I think that ship was the "Myrtalbank" (sp?). But that radio call is not in the Itasca log because they did not hear it. She was too far away at that point. According to the Itasca log, at no time did she mention seeing any ships or any island.
As for the Pan Am radio bearings. These radio calls were likely authentic. But not from the Electra! Several ships in that part of the Pacific were aware of and were in some cases searching for the Electra. The airwaves were full of radio calls trying to contact the Electra. Some were originating from the area around that island chain. Of course, some of the radio bearings were pointing to that area. Even if some bearing did point to Gardner Island, the Navy would have gone there immediately and searched for the Electra. One Navy search plane did fly over the island early on but did not see any distress signals or airplane wreckage. There were likely some private citizens in the U.S. who were also making calls in the blind trying to establish contact with Amelia.
Let's say for the sake of argument that she did actually land on Gardner Island and was making radio calls. According to the TIGHAR hypothesis, she landed directly in front of the shipwreck S.S. Norwich City which was pretty much fully intact at that time. The shipwreck was noted on navigational maps for that area of the Pacific. All she, or Fred, would have had to do was look at the map and see which island the S.S. Norwich City was wrecked on. That would give her the name of the island, which she could then transmit that name over the radio.
Was looking at Tighar website and can’t find where they have located and recovered any historic aircraft?
They have not!
Navy has the airplane. 😂😂
has anything been said as to why she didn't say her name or name of the island when was on air ? every thing may of been over the heads of plane ole people on a radio back then , just seems i would say my name first off .
She might have said her name. If they didn't know the name of the island but can see the name on that ship so used that. Or they believed they were on Howland so no need to say any more just,"We can't see you" meaning the ship.
I think Ric said she did say her name in one transmission... @33:20 i think the African American kid heard it.
She flew past Howland Island
Tom Devine = Gomer Pyle. Somebody was pulling his leg in classic US military style and he was still falling for it 50 years later.
the airplane is there
Note..An importsant fact is where them sonar image was taken off Howland island. This was Earhart's last reported location. If it were some other airplane that rolled off a carrier what are the chances that it would have done that at Earharts last location. THERE IS NOT OTHER AIRCRAFT REPORTED MISSING IN THIS AREA. wAKE UP. That fact couped with the size of the image and the distinctive tale piece show clear evidance that Earharts plane has been found near Howland island , where she ran out of fuel, and not 400 miles away. Robart Ballad did and exhaustive 2 million dollar search in the waters around Gardiner island where you say the plane was washed over into the ocean and he found no trace of the place. A whole plane just does not dissolve like and alka seltzer. Get real Ric.
Yeh except the Romeo sonar image was just found to be a pile of rocks. You can have your opinions but due to your laziness that is all they are.
Lack of hard facts.
airplane is there
A British officer and his survey crew indeed landed on Gardner Island in October of 1937. Their ship was tied up to the stern of the shipwreck. They spent 3 days searching and exploring the island. His name was H.E. Maude. He made a very detailed report of what was on the island and the feasibility of supporting a small population of Islanders from other islands. His report is more than 30 pages long. There is no mention in his report of aircraft wreckage found on the reef or anywhere on the island. Also, in January 1941 the schooner Nimanoa landed a party on Gardner and did not mention any airplane wreckage on the reef.
If it was in deeper water why would they see anything.
@bill-2018 Remember, the hypothesis is that the castaways died on the island. That would mean that their remains would be lying around somewhere. No bodies were found. Not even any remains of the crew of the Norwich City who died as a result of the shipwreck. Some of them were buried on the island in 1929.
@booniebuster4193 Eaten by crabs and bones crunched if they ever got there?
@booniebuster4193 there were remains found in 1940 that now they are 99% sure belonged to Amelia. What are you even talking about? You have no clue what you’re talking about. And they said the tide would’ve pulled the plane into the ocean after the 6th night when she stopped sending distress signals. Of course it wouldn’t be on the reef 3 months later. You’re a low iq individual. There’s no point even explaining this to you.
The trouble with Ric he does not use science or even flight records of erarharts last flight.
False.
She is just a lousy pilot that has no idea about much of anything.
Radio work is atrocious. Without Paul an̈d the radio radioman she is as good as dead.😢
If she was out of fuel, how'd she run the engine to recharge the battery? Plot hole right there.
They believe she wasn't out of fuel when she landed. Did you even watch the full video
30 minutes left. Landing on Gardner saved fuel to run the radio and not lugging weight of the aircraft saved fuel.
@bill-2018and she only had to run 1 engine
Yep, running only one engine at idle to recharge the battery is definitely not the same as trying to fly it. Even if they had only 30 mins of estimated flight time left, every plane has some reserves even when the gauge reads zero. And if they did reach Gardner and she transmitted distress calls, it's plausible that she did run out of fuel at one point, but transmitted until the battery also died. The transmissions sent in the last few days might've been on battery alone.
🙄 If she landed on the reef, she had some remaining fuel.
I think she ditched in the ocean between Howland and Gardner island, and the radio messages that followed where trolls after they heard she was missing
A lot is being made of Betty's Notebook. But I find it very curious that Betty also wrote down on one of the pages in her notebook the letters "KGMB". KGMB happened to be the call sign for a broadcast radio station on the air at the time from Honolulu Hawaii broadcasting on a frequency of 1320. It was also carrying the radio program "The March Of Time". That program was a news and reenactment program of current events of the day. In it, actors would play the part of newsworthy characters. It so happens that one of those stories was about Amelia Earhart. Probably many times during the search efforts. I suspect that what Betty heard was the skip wave from that broadcast on radio station KGMB.
great idea, now prove it.
@jaybee7890 You can't prove it! I can only go by what was written in her notes. She wrote the letters KGMB on one of the pages of her notebook. Do a Google search for old radio stations and you will find that call letters KGMB was a broadcast radio station on the air at the time.
@jaybee7890Good advice for TIGHAR. According to Betty's notebook, Amelia was saying 'water knee deep'..."we can't bail out'. But according to TIGHAR's own analysis, Amelia's plane would have been sitting on a reef flat with nithing but puddles on it at this time. The words that Betty has Amelia saying are very close to the words that known hoaxers had Amelia saying, that the news media of the time reported nationally.
One of the problems with her notebook is she never wrote down any dates or frequencies that I'm aware of. If she regularly listed to shortwave music there is no reason, she would be that high up in the frequency range (harmonics) as no music except foreign station were up that high (she never wrote down any foreign music). For the radio broadcast "The March of Time" a radio dramatization of Ameila Earhart's final flight broadcasted on Friday, July 9, 1937, out of New York *CORRECTION* (it was on July 8th, 1937, the only source i could find years ago was a newspaper article which i didn't account for it being written the day after.) Which caused a lot of false reports and confusion during that time it's totally possible that's what she heard.
@haroldbeck4351Um, perhaps the tide was coming in. How do you ascribe the "New York City" comparison to "Norwich City" to hoaxer repitition?
My goodness, where has critical thinking gone?
All the time and money wasted.
Who cares!
They've lost ATOMIC BOMBS IN THE OCEAN.
FIND SOME OF THOSE!!!!
and I'll be impressed.
I'm inclined to agree with Mr. Gillespie that Gardner Island was where Earhart and Noonan came down, but I don't agree about the wheels-down beach-landing part of the theory. It's inconceivable to me that anyone would try a wheels-down landing on a strip of beach when one didn't know how firm or soft it was. A wheels-down landing on soft beach almost guarantees flipping over and the occupants sustaining injuries. I'm also thinking a wheels-up belly landing on the beach was inadvisable because there was no way of knowing what was just under the sand. If there was coral under the sand, the aircraft is apt to tear itself apart on landing. So I'm thinking Amelia ditched just off the island's leeward shore or in the relative shelter of the lagoon's protected waters. The aircraft would have been almost out of fuel at that point, so the extra fuel tanks would have provided considerable reserve buoyancy sufficient (by my estimates) to keep the aircraft (assuming it was intact) afloat for a little while, maybe a day or so....presumably long enough to continue to use the radio. One of the things that always puzzled me about the after-ditching radio messages that were picked up....the person transmitting never says what happened. I should have thought whomever was transmitting would have said something to the effect that they had ditched off some island and would have provided a rough estimate of their location (although they WERE lost, so by definition a location approximation is a bit too much to ask).
Why we need the answer is just us being selfish , it doesn't matter , first she is gone and not coming back, second she is remembered and third no matter what we find we will never know , we are not as smart as everyone thinks , if so why are we still fighting over land and money when we should be one species for the planets sake , we all just think about ourself and those close to us not the big picture , one day we will all be gone and this planet will become a rock like mars and nobody will be here to care ..what's it matter , waisting time on the past when the future is grim makes no sense to me .....
Im listening to this video and all i see is Kermit the Frog talking
the airplane is there
You nailed it!! So funny!! 😂
The hypothesis is that she landed on the reef near the wreckage of the Norwich City. Then according to the TIGHAR theory, she left the Electra and all of their survival gear except for some odd things like a Freckle Cream bottle and hiked 3.5 miles to the far side of the island and died at the "7 site". That is about as far as you can get away from the Norwich City. Is that logical?
Not to mention all of the supplies left on the island by the Norwich City rescuers. Odd! What were they thinking?
Not at all logical. The guy who found the bones said the castaway died 2 miles from the only coconut trees on the island. Coconut milk could have kept the castaway hydrated. So why not stick close to those coconut trees, why go camp 2 miles from them, which on that island would have been a difficult walk? No evidence of used-up coconuts at the campsite either.
@haroldbeck4351Maybe she wanted to get away from Noonans dead body? Hermit crabs eat anything and are relentless.
@haroldbeck4351 @haroldbeck4351 Let's not forget. There is another logical explanation for why bones were on the island. In 1929, when the Norwich City was grounded and destroyed, 14 men from the ship were killed. Eleven of them were never found. But three of them were buried on the island by the remaining survivors. In all likelihood, the bones were from one of the buried seamen.
Fred Hooven - who graduated from MIT, held 38 patents, taught at Dartmouth, was an electrical engineer, etc. - came up with the Nikumaroro Landing theory. He eventually rejected it, himself, as impossible because so many settlers lived on that island shortly after Earhart was lost - someone would have seen something. 100 days after Earhart went missing Harold Maude led a team that surveyed that island - they saw absoluitely nothing having to do with Earhart. This is an enormous scam on the American public. Gillespie makes tons of money, National Geogrpahic and Discovery Channel make tons of money (etc.) and they're laughing all the way to the fucking bank. From 1938 until 1964 fifty to one-hundred people lived on that island. In 12 expeditions to Nikumaroro - 12! - TIGHAR has found some junk (which makes sense) and none of it is connected to freaking Amerlia Earhart. This is laughable - Gillespie is a former insurance salesman who is just grifting. This whole theory began as a wild ass guess and it has now been disproven over and over and over.
Why do you, and why would anyone, put the credence of the entire theory in the hands of archeology? When Gillespie himself has said the bedrock of the theory lies in the fact that between July 2 and July 5, 1937, Pan American Airways DFstations at Wake, Midway, and Honolulu took Radio Direction Finder (RDF) bearings that triangulated to Gardner Island.
No opinions of amount of fuel left, or the likelihood of pilots decision to fly that far South, or what archeology of Nikumaroro has or has not uncovered, take the triangulation data into consideration.
The main issue with the Hooven Report isn’t the data itself, but how it was treated. Marginal HF DF bearings were plotted as thin deterministic lines without accounting for SNR-derived error cones or night-time skywave distortion. A Pan Am “Gardner Island fix” does not exist in the 1937 record. Contemporary Pan Am and Coast Guard DF logs record only weak, unstable, sub-threshold bearings and explicitly warn they are unreliable; no operator drew a map, claimed a fix, or attempted triangulation because the signal-to-noise conditions did not support direction finding. The intersecting DF lines that now appear on maps are a late-20th-century construct - first documented in the Hooven Report and later popularized by TIGHAR - where qualitative, operator-cautioned notes were converted into precise geometry without uncertainty bounds. Gardner only ‘appears’ after uncertainty is discarded and noise is treated as navigation.
@primer50 The only problem with your comment is that I was officially certified as a 'dumb guy' years ago....haha. I wasn't sure what to make of some of your abbreviations, etc. I asked AI to 'decode' your comment and found it interesting - AI's 'translation', for the non-technical, was as follows: "What this really says is that the original 1937 radio signals were too weak and unreliable to locate anything. The radio operators at the time explicitly warned that the bearings couldn’t be trusted, and none of them ever claimed a fix or drew a map pointing to Gardner Island. The “intersecting lines” that later appear on maps were created decades later by treating noisy, unreliable signals as precise navigation data. Once you account for uncertainty and radio distortion, Gardner Island disappears entirely - it only shows up after bad data is forced into false precision." - Thanks for that techincal breakdown, by the way.
@guymerritt4860 No problem, I'm a technical guy that's terrible at putting thoughts into easy-to-understand sentences. Cheers!
@primer50 That's fine - it was interesting info.
This guy just keeps on grifting.
Mr Gillespie, you stopped short very much planned to not say why Noonan and Earhart are in a book from 1935. I smell a conspiracy to say the photo was 1935 instead of when they disappeared. What is Noonan and Earhart doing in Jaluit with a Japanese ship in the background towing an aircraft that resembles the Lockheed Electra. Please do us a gigantic favor and stop pretending to solidify your theory of Gardner Island and answer why Noonan, Earhart and the plane are in a photo in Japanese waters in 1935 which show hands down that they are the ones in the picture. I am waiting for your response that you side tracked. hmmmmmmm
I think that's actually Hillary Swank who time traveled to be in the photo. unless it's a another random person photographed from 50 + yards away. 😂
The flight happen in 1937! enough said
lol!
Photos been debunked. Earhearts plane has been found by sonar ~3 miles down near Howland island.
So zero facts and zero sound science then. Just a bunch of guys writing books about something they obviously know nothing about because they havent found her or solved the "mystery "
Who really gaf?! Find MH370.
the plane went down in the ocean north of Howland island.
Wrong
ruclips.net/video/sKSCK0nB9yQ/video.html
We hope her bones can be found!
@elayneconrad5747
They were, and then lost again.