Amelia Earhart’s Plane Wreck Site May Have Been Found in Papua New Guinea

UNITED STATES – JANUARY 13: Earhart (born 1897) standing in front of the Lockheed Electra in which she disappeared in 1937. Earhart began flying in 1920, and broke the women’s altitude record in 1922. In 1928 she was invited to be the first woman to fly across the Atlantic and became an international celebrity. In May 1932 she became the first woman to fly solo across in the Atlantic. Earhart promoted aviation and helped found the Ninety-Nines, an organization dedicated to female aviators. On 1 June 1 1937, Earhart and navigator Fred Noonan left Miami, Florida on an around the world flight. They disappeared after a stop in Lae, New Guinea on June 29, 1937, with only 7,000 miles of the trip left. While a great deal of mystery surrounds her, her contributions to aviation and women’s issues have inspired people for over 80 years. (Photo by SSPL/Getty Images)

Researchers say that a site in Papua New Guinea may contain the long-lost remains of Amelia Earhart’s plane.

Wreckage off the coast off Buka Island, Papua New Guinea, may offer a vital clue to the decades-long mystery, according to investigators from Project Blue Angel. The Project’s members have been studying the site for 13 years and say that wreckage off Buka Island could be from Earhart’s Lockheed Electra 10E.

Earhart famously disappeared while attempting to fly her Lockheed Electra 10E plane around the world. The aviator and her navigator Fred Noonan went missing on July 2, 1937, during a flight from Papua New Guinea to Howland Island in the Pacific. Their fate became one of the great mysteries of the 20th century and is still hotly debated.

“The Buka Island wreck site was directly on Amelia and Fred’s flight path, and it is an area never searched following their disappearance,” said William Snavely, Project Blue Angel director, in a statement. “What we’ve found so far is consistent with the plane she flew.”

Snavely has traced Earhart’s route from Lae in Papua New Guinea, which was the departure point for her doomed final flight. The researcher thinks that low on fuel she may have decided to turn back during her journey to Howland Island.

Divers from Papua New Guinea have surveyed the site on a number of occasions for Snavely. Last year US members of Project Blue Angel also investigated the site, which is about 100 feet below the ocean’s surface. “While the complete data is still under review by experts, initial reports indicate that a piece of glass raised from the wreckage shares some consistencies with a landing light on the Lockheed Electra 10,” explains the Project, in its statement.

“Amelia’s Electra had specific modifications done to it for this specific journey, and some of those unique modifications appear to be verified in the wreckage that’s been found,” added pilot and aerospace engineer Jill Meyers, who is Blue Angel’s PR Manager.

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SOURCE: NY Post; Fox News, James Rogers