Amelia Earhart Vanished Into Thin Air

During the seventy-three years since Amelia Earhart had “vanished into thin air” many theories have emerged about how and where the famous pilot died. According to some researchers, new discoveries on the Pacific island of Nikumaroro may bring us closer than ever to the discovery of what might’ve happened to her. Amelia Earhart’s daring flight around the world was cut short when her plane, the Lockeed Electra, disappeared over the Pacific Ocean on June 2, 1937. Shortly after, rescue workers began scouring the area for signs of her and her navigator, Fred Noonan. The Coast Guard and U.S. Navy launched the largest and most expensive search in American history to try and find them. When they failed, Earhart’s husband, George Putnam, financed his own search but, unfortunately, also came up empty handed. Amelia Earhart had supposedly vanished into thin air. In an official report, the U.S. government stated that the two flyers were unable to locate their destination of Howland Island, ran out of fuel, crashed into the ocean, and then sank. On January 5, 1939, Amelia Earhart was legally declared dead, even though the question of how and where had she died was still unsolved.

Since Earhart’s disappearance, many hypotheses have emerged about what …show more content…
The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery, or TIGHAR, is determined to investigate the Nikumaroro hypothesis. The group has been searching the island since 1989, gathering improvised tools, shoe remnants, and aircraft wreckage that is similar to Amelia’s plane, The Electra. Several years after Earhart vanished, they discovered that a British colonial officer had found the remains of a corpse on Nikumaroro. The bones were sent to Fiji for further analysis and were then