Amelia Earhart Plane - The mystery behind Amelia Earhart may have just gotten closer to being solved after a fragment of her plane found 17 years ago in the Pacific has been identified by scientists, according to Discovery News. The Amelia Earhart plane fragment has been identified for the first time since her plane disappeared over the Pacific Ocean on July 2, 1937, attempting to fly around the world on the equator.
In 1991, researchers found a piece of aluminium which at the time could have been anyone's. Now, researchers have identified this piece as belonging to Amelia Earhart's plane, reports U.S. News.
The aluminum sheet was a patch installed on Amelia Earhart plane while staying in Miami for eight day stays, her fourth stop on the global tour, according to a press release from the The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery (TIGHAR), which has long been investigating Earhart's last flight 77 years ago.
The debris from Earhart's twin-engined Lockheed Electra was found in Nikumaroro, Kiribati. The island is uninhabited and located in the southwestern Pacific Ocean, in the republic of Kiriba.
"The Miami Patch was an expedient field repair," Ric Gillespie, executive director of TIGHAR, told Discovery News. "Its complex fingerprint of dimensions, proportions, materials and rivet patterns was as unique to Earhart's Electra as a fingerprint is to an individual."
A team of researchers from the international group went to Wichita Air Services in Newton, Kans. There, they compared the dimensions and features of the Artifact 2-2-V-1, the metal sheet found on Nikumaroro, with the structure of a Lockheed Electra, the Amelia Earhart plane.
In a report on the TIGHAR website, it said that the researchers found that the pattern features on the 19-inch-wide by 23-inch-long Nikumaroro artifact matched the patch and lined up with the Amelia Earhart plane, a Lockheed Electra.
"This is the first time an artifact found on Nikumaroro has been shown to have a direct link to Amelia Earhart," according to Gillespie.
Now, the search for Amelia Earhart herself is going to carry on in Nikumaroro, between Hawaii and Australia.
The breakthrough would reportedly prove contrary to what others previously thought of Earhart's fate and what had happened to the Amelia Earhart plane. It appears that Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan, did not crash in the Pacific Ocean while running out of fuel. Instead, they were forced to land on the Nikumaroro's coral reef.
Eventually, the two reportedly became castaways and died on the island, which is located some 350 miles southeast of Howland Island.
"Earhart sent radio distress calls for at least five nights before the Electra was washed into the ocean by rising tides and surf," explained Gillespie.
In June 2015, TIGHAR will return to Nikumaroro to investigate what went wrong in the expedition using the Remote Operated Vehicle (ROV) technology supported by Nai'a, a 120-foot Fiji-based vessel that has served five previous TIGHAR explorations.
Spanning 24 days, the expedition will include divers searching for other wreckage at shallower depths. An onshore search team will also be trying to identify objects that could signify an initial survival camp.
With the Amelia Earhart plane identified, solving the mystery behind what happened to the iconic individual in the famous expedition may finally be solved. "Funding is being sought, in part, from individuals who will make a substantial contribution in return for a place on the expedition team," said Gillespie.
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