"There are claims that one of the world’s great aviation mysteries - the disappearance of 1930s airwoman Amelia Earhart - has been solved in Papua New Guinea.
The Post Courier newspaper says there are strong indications a plane wreck found off the coast of Bougainville is Earhart’s Lockheed Electra.
Locals also say they have found gold bullion in the wreckage.
But Ric Gillespie, an expert on Earhart’s disappearance, says the claims are “silly beyond description”.
Not him again. This Gillespie character is positive beyond all doubt about every little scrap of shit he finds. Look up TIGHAR and Nikumaroro for his last round of positive proof about Earhart.
The story does not say that Gillespie is the person behind this claim. In fact, it states that Gillespie says this particular claim is “silly beyond description.”
Highly unlikely. Her last radio contact was with a ship near Howland Island, her intended destination. The signal was strong, indicating that she was somewhere nearby (although probably not on her intended course).
Howland Island is about 1200 miles east of Bougainville. Even if Earhart got completely turned around and flew back toward PNG from the vicinity of Howland, she didn’t have enough fuel to get there.
Yep… read the latest from TIGHAR. You can practically draw a circle around the area in which they went down and be very confident in dismissing a number of other claims.
TIGHAR site is full of info and they’ve been doing the real grunt work.
That heavy gold bullion would be on Earhart’s flight sure makes a lot of sense; put at the back of the plane it would force the nose up, thus greatly extending the unusually long range that an around the world flight would have to be capable of.