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Probably mineral deposits would be my first guess. The location and deep water geological earth changes argue for this potential. It makes no sense to be searching for this plane high and low and yet be unwilling to go to a lagoon but be willing to conduct deep water searching. It doesn't smell right. It's not logical.
 
Just a thought:
Hypothetically speaking, even if people were on the island, if the plane had already run out of fuel and was simply gliding in for a landing, it's possible they could put down without being heard. Maybe!

On another note, I read through this entire thread and didn't see a mention (but may have missed it), about the Post Loss Radio Signals received after the last official contact from Earhart. Some of these are very interesting, and if, not a hoax or a misunderstanding, COULD possibly mean that Earhart survived a landing.

https://tighar.org/Projects/Earhart/Archives/Research/ResearchPapers/Brandenburg/signalcatalog.html

A lot of these are quite interesting, and I think they've done a good job at explaining why some are not plausible.
 
Probably mineral deposits would be my first guess. The location and deep water geological earth changes argue for this potential. It makes no sense to be searching for this plane high and low and yet be unwilling to go to a lagoon but be willing to conduct deep water searching. It doesn't smell right. It's not logical.

To date, the sponsored expeditions have been directed at searching the sea floor in the areas that someone's interpretations / theories predict are the most likely locations - much like the search for MH370.

TIGHAR's fixation on Gardner / Nikumaroro is based on the intersection of multiple presumptions and tantalizing bits of data. If their analysis of the flight and radio factoids had sufficiently convinced them Earhart had overshot the Itasca rather than undershot it by the time she allegedly went into the north / south search pattern, they may well have focused more on Orona in the early going.

On the other hand ... Orona was inhabited at the time, the Navy searchers actually landed and spoke with the inhabitants, and the inhabitants told them 'not here'. During the same initial searching the Navy fliers didn't touch down on deserted Gardner / Nikumaroro, but only surveyed it from the air. Also, there would eventually be a discovery of castaway remains on Gardner / Nikumaroro, and this was understandably taken to be highly suggestive.

Anyway ... TIGHAR doesn't have the resources needed to cruise around to multiple islands surveying other possibilities. Each of their expeditions is tightly planned to accomplish a certain pre-planned agenda in a particular place. As long as they remain fixated on Gardner / Nikumaroro, there's every reason to believe they won't be looking elsewhere.

One should also bear in mind that promoting Hull / Orona is something that's surfaced only within the last few years. The elaborate conspiracy theory that's been developed to support the Orona hypothesis doesn't carry nearly as much weight as the admittedly fragmentary and sketchy evidence TIGHAR has woven together into their case for Gardner / Nikumaroro.

Another possible issue is that Orona is now part of a protected marine reserve / sanctuary.
 
Just a thought:
Hypothetically speaking, even if people were on the island, if the plane had already run out of fuel and was simply gliding in for a landing, it's possible they could put down without being heard. Maybe!

If you believe the theoretical numbers, Earhart and Noonan would have had to fly around for anywhere from 2 to 5 hours before their fuel was exhausted. If they'd done what Earhart's last clear message claimed they were doing - shifting onto a north / south search pattern - they'd theoretically have had enough fuel to make multiple back-and-forth laps along that path, depending on how far in each direction they went before circling back.

... Or else Earhart's radio comment that 'fuel is low' indicates the situation was quite different from what the theory would have suggested.

SIDE NOTE: I've recently noticed a lot of folks have taken to citing the Electra's designer - Kelly Johnson - as some sort of authority on what could or could not have happened. Johnson was a brilliant engineer and aeronautical designer. He wasn't a pilot, and his primary involvement with the Earhart flight was to calculate and forward estimated parameters for optimum fuel management.

There's no way of knowing whether, and / or to what extent, Earhart followed his recommendations.

There's also no way of knowing to what extent the special characteristics of Earhart's plane (a customized 10E with more powerful engines than were used on the previous Electras) may have affected things.
 
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... Ya know if they ditched in the lagoon and you hadn't heard any engine noises or anything to cause you to search for a plane, then just because someone was on that Island doesn't mean they would have heard the plane ditching. If they never made it out of the plane there wouldn't be anything to reveal that they were only feet beneath the water. She probably ran the tanks dry thinking it would help them float. There's problems with the lagoon ditching, but who knows? ...

If they'd ditched in the Hull Island / Orona lagoon, it would have been around mid-morning to midday local time.

A water ditching is a very tricky thing, and it goes awry at least as often as it goes well enough to survive. Pilots I've known have consistently claimed they'd rather face a belly landing on open level ground than a water landing.

It would be even riskier to try it in a central lagoon, which would be the equivalent of ditching in a swamp with a high likelihood of tree stumps. The difference is that on an atoll the 'tree stumps' are coral protrusions.
 
As far as the Orona Island habitation goes, one only has to imagine what it would be like on a small atoll like Orona. It's windswept with constant surf. Being upwind, sitting or walking along a surf, having a blinder of coconut trees and scrub brush, all those things together make it plausible to not have heard or seen anything, even relatively close by.

I did some checking and really this is fairly large atoll. Looking at the images and scale of the Island I can't give much weight to fact that one other human was living there when this may have happened.
https://howlingpixel.com/wiki/Orona

What interests me almost more than the mystery of what happened to Amelia Earhart is the rather mysterious happening surrounding what I'd call the exploitation of marine and wildlife sanctuaries.
 
If they'd ditched in the Hull Island / Orona lagoon, it would have been around mid-morning to midday local time.

A water ditching is a very tricky thing, and it goes awry at least as often as it goes well enough to survive. Pilots I've known have consistently claimed they'd rather face a belly landing on open level ground than a water landing.

It would be even riskier to try it in a central lagoon, which would be the equivalent of ditching in a swamp with a high likelihood of tree stumps. The difference is that on an atoll the 'tree stumps' are coral protrusions.

They might have reasoned it was safer than trying to ditch off the beach not knowing which way the current might take them if they managed to get into a rubber raft. I can understand the reasoning but like you say, it's dicey to begin with, and of course sharks love lagoons as well right?

I think it's them myself. Kind of have a gut feeling to this. I'll bet they never made it out and are still inside and sitting right there on the floor of that lagoon.

I mean based on what you say about the time of day, based on the amount of fuel they had onboard and the range that plane had, they must have found a Island during that time flying a search pattern.
 
I did some checking and really this is fairly large atoll. ...

Yes - Hull / Orona is considerably larger (overall) than Gardner / Nikumaroro, and it would have been a much more livable place for castaways.

Looking at the images and scale of the Island I can't give much weight to fact that one other human was living there when this may have happened. ...

I can't figure out what you mean by this ... :dunno:

There were multiple people on Orona at the time. The copra plantation had been re-populated earlier in the year.
 
Yes - Hull / Orona is considerably larger (overall) than Gardner / Nikumaroro, and it would have been a much more livable place for castaways.



I can't figure out what you mean by this ... :dunno:

There were multiple people on Orona at the time. The copra plantation had been re-populated earlier in the year.

I looked at photos of the Island to judge how large it's beaches are, how dense the foliage is, what it would be like to be living on it.

You're more the expert since you know there were people there, but where were they living, and what were they doing during the estimated envelope of time that the plane would have gone down if it had ditched in the lagoon?

In my opinion you could have hundreds of men on that atoll and still not have seen or heard the plane go down. It all depends on where they were and what they were doing. These atolls are mid ocean with steady strong winds most of the time, combined with driving surf, sound is muffled even close by. Based on World War II case histories, where even with lookouts and scouts and patrol boats, the enemy still managed to slip their way inside the defenses, and to make a beachhead before anyone was the wiser. So it's possible even with people right close by that no one heard or saw anything. It's possible and it's probable. More likely than unlikely.

My issue isn't that were people on the atoll at the time the plane would have had to ditch to fit the flight envelope, hence someone should have seen or heard something, rather my issue would be why the plane sank and didn't drift ashore or onto a reef head and become noticed later?

It was a large plane for it's day. Still is actually, just not that the average person would realize that, but it's the size of a light to med WWII bomber. Indeed the same plane became the basis for the Ventura Patrol Bomber. Then it had very large internal fuel tanks inside the main hull of the plane. Whether these were full or empty, either way those tanks should have provided a good deal of flotation. They were very large tanks. The whole plane should have floated for days, possibly weeks or longer even.

To me, those two facts should say that if they ditched in the lagoon, why then would the plane have sunk, and sunk quickly enough that it wasn't noticed, or quickly enough that it didn't drift on to the either the lagoons beach or on to a coral outcropping?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_Model_10_Electra

harneypage07floorplan.jpg


harneypage05portside.jpg
 
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... there were people there, but where were they living, and what were they doing during the estimated envelope of time that the plane would have gone down if it had ditched in the lagoon? ...

The wreck site alleged by the Google Maps guy is in the northeast quadrant of the lagoon (offshore from the northernmost or northeast corner).

Assuming Earhart knew what she was doing in attempting a water landing (an open issue in and of itself) she would have been coming in west-to-east - i.e., she would have traversed most of the length of the lagoon before stopping and sinking. This is in part supported by the fact the winds reported for the 24 hour period spanning the fatal flight leg were almost unanimously cited as being from the east.

I'm not sure how the copra plantation of the time was laid out. There was an older settlement on the island, which had been abandoned a year or two earlier but re-settled in 1937. Lambrecht's report mentions the largest structure visible was on the south side of the western end of the island. The bulk of the earlier settlement was more to the north.

Here are a couple of map images I culled from the 'Net, illustrating the Hull / Orona layout and the comparative sizes / orientations of Hull versus Gardner Islands.

hull.jpg


phoenixislands.jpg


As far as I've been able to tell, the alleged wreck site is roughly below (as in 'just south of', not 'underneath') the 'Best Channel for small boats' caption in the first image.

The most reasonable lagoon landing approach would have been from the west - over the western end of the island. This would have meant the approach would have passed over the established old settlement.

Earhart's last understandable radio transmission (in which she indicated she was shifting to the north-south search line) was logged at 0843 local time. My best guess is that there were 2 - 5 hours worth of fuel remaining at best. I reckon Hull would have been on the order of 2.5 - 3 hours' flight time from the Howland vicinity. This would put an arrival at Hull sometime on the order of 1115 to 1145 local time at the very earliest (if Earhart had headed straight there after the last clear transmission) and circa 1400 at the latest (based on my estimate of remaining fuel).

Lambrecht's arrival at Hull was probably around 1500 - 1530 local time, also from the west, and he reported people on the ground were clearly watching and waving at his plane.
 
... my issue would be why the plane sank and didn't drift ashore or onto a reef head and become noticed later?

It was a large plane for it's day. Still is actually, just not that the average person would realize that, but it's the size of a light to med WWII bomber. Indeed the same plane became the basis for the Ventura Patrol Bomber. Then it had very large internal fuel tanks inside the main hull of the plane. Whether these were full or empty, either way those tanks should have provided a good deal of flotation. They were very large tanks. The whole plane should have floated for days, possibly weeks or longer even.

To me, those two facts should say that if they ditched in the lagoon, why then would the plane have sunk, and sunk quickly enough that it wasn't noticed, or quickly enough that it didn't drift on to the either the lagoons beach or on to a coral outcropping? ...

The probable buoyancy of Earhart's Electra - had it been intact - has long been an issue. Some theorists have claimed the plane could have drifted tens, or even hundreds, of miles. The array of fuel tanks - if empty - would certainly have contributed to overall buoyancy. However, estimates vary as to whether the tanks would have helped enough to keep the Electra bobbing on the surface for long.

The 'had it been intact' bit is the key thing here. As I said earlier - water landings are extremely tricky, and it's mostly a matter of luck whether you can skim / skip across the surface to a peaceful stop. It's just as likely something will get hung up in the water and the plane will tear itself apart as it cartwheels.
 
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OK, so I'm wasting time looking for a good image of the fuel tanks caps. Where they put fuel into the aircraft. Almost certainly these caps are air tight because aircraft have a way of draining fuel with vacuum pressure caused by the wings and body while in flight. You always want to physically check your fuel levels and secure the caps for this reason. Therefore these fuel tanks in the body and in the wings should have provided a good deal of flotation. This is my reasoning.

So I'm looking for some good images of the fuel inlets right? Then I see another image of what looks like the lockheeds main gear all rusted and missing it's tire and I think, what the heck, that's conclusive evidence, but no it's not actually from any island in the South Pacific.
leftmainlower.jpg



It's instead from a crashed Lockheed Electra 10E from Idaho that was recovered as supposedly necessary information to validate the image below (*read the story), and which frankly is about as absurd as you can get. So why then all these seemingly official proofs when the image they are now comparing to the recovered crash artifact is so murky that it's absurd to say that they needed either actual blueprints of the maingear, or else an actual main gear strut, and just to validate that the image was actually from a lockheed electra? Their official forensic photograph expert now saying that it is from a lockheed electra, but if so why then didn't they get a grappling hook in that thing? I mean good lord, seriously? It's not adding up.


Which take me to this article below and the image that they are saying is part of the plane.
https://tighar.org/Projects/Earhart...tonObjectUpdate/69_BevingtonObjectUpdate.html

objectparsed.jpg


" It was in large part the strength of this interpretation of the image, corroborated by U.S. Government photo analysts, that prompted then-Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton to endorse TIGHAR’s Niku VII expedition at a special State Department event on March 20, 2012"
https://tighar.org/Projects/Earhart...tonObjectUpdate/69_BevingtonObjectUpdate.html

Oh but wait...there's more!

This would seem to vindicat TIGHAR...but does it?

http://aviationmystery.com/index.php?topic=63.0

A federal court judge in Wyoming dismissed a 2013 lawsuit, filed by $1 million donor Timothy Mellon, that alleged TIGHAR actually located and videotaped Electra wreckage during a 2010 expedition and fraudulently covered it up.
http://www.philly.com/philly/news/A..._the_year_its_solved.html#EkCmU7Qv0oI0HHF7.99

http://aviationmystery.com/index.php?topic=63.0

Here this obscure blogspot says maybe the plane was actually found long ago, though that's not exactly what he say's. http://ulgeesh.blogspot.com/
 
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The wreck site alleged by the Google Maps guy is in the northeast quadrant of the lagoon (offshore from the northernmost or northeast corner).

Assuming Earhart knew what she was doing in attempting a water landing (an open issue in and of itself) she would have been coming in west-to-east - i.e., she would have traversed most of the length of the lagoon before stopping and sinking. This is in part supported by the fact the winds reported for the 24 hour period spanning the fatal flight leg were almost unanimously cited as being from the east.

I'm not sure how the copra plantation of the time was laid out. There was an older settlement on the island, which had been abandoned a year or two earlier but re-settled in 1937. Lambrecht's report mentions the largest structure visible was on the south side of the western end of the island. The bulk of the earlier settlement was more to the north.

Here are a couple of map images I culled from the 'Net, illustrating the Hull / Orona layout and the comparative sizes / orientations of Hull versus Gardner Islands.

View attachment 5619

View attachment 5620

As far as I've been able to tell, the alleged wreck site is roughly below (as in 'just south of', not 'underneath') the 'Best Channel for small boats' caption in the first image.

The most reasonable lagoon landing approach would have been from the west - over the western end of the island. This would have meant the approach would have passed over the established old settlement.

Earhart's last understandable radio transmission (in which she indicated she was shifting to the north-south search line) was logged at 0843 local time. My best guess is that there were 2 - 5 hours worth of fuel remaining at best. I reckon Hull would have been on the order of 2.5 - 3 hours' flight time from the Howland vicinity. This would put an arrival at Hull sometime on the order of 1115 to 1145 local time at the very earliest (if Earhart had headed straight there after the last clear transmission) and circa 1400 at the latest (based on my estimate of remaining fuel).

Lambrecht's arrival at Hull was probably around 1500 - 1530 local time, also from the west, and he reported people on the ground were clearly watching and waving at his plane.

I agree with your assessments in all cases. Of course the really bad part of this, if true, is that ditching near the ocean access also means the most likely location for sharks. They typically hang right around river mouths and reef access points because there are prey items making their way through those points.

No doubt you're looking at my other post, but now who gets a ten year right to search and no one else can? Why does this island become abandoned: Oh yes, couldn't seem to recover a reliable water source huh? Who's using water on an atoll instead of using an osmosis system to get water from the ocean, or half a dozen other perfectly acceptable other ways?

The next thing is there's a gigantic swath of sea put off limits without a permit as a marine sanctuary. I'm not too sure that this has anything at all to do with finding Earhart's Plane any longer, or evidently ever was about finding Earhart's plane. Seems like there's a lot of suspicious activity in my opinion.
 
This is the exacting location of the plane. S 4º 29' 55" (S 4.4986º) W 172º 09' 27" (W 172.1575º). Turn off street view in the GE preferences as the "eye altitude" must be below 250 ft to get the view depicted in the image. Use the history tool to select the 2006 image. Why the aircraft does not appear in the 2015 view can be discussed later. Speculated landing approach image.
LandingatHull.png


Red is bearing(heading) 157º. Yellow is 090º.
 
The Orona Saipan theory at http://aquariusradar.com/OronaSaipanTheory.html speculates a connection between the Orona crash image of post 141 and the attached debunked Jaluit dock photo. The dock photo supposedly debunked by a Japanese blogger who found the photo in a 1935 travelogue in the Japanese national library. I am unable to believe the Japanese government when comes to questions about the events of 1937. The scene portrayed in the photo mimic the oral history of the Marshallese intact for many decades. There are details in the photo that point to Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan both being present in the image.

Jaluitdock.png
 
I think the slight man with the white headband, looking directly at the camera, is Bilimon Amaram. Bilimon's oral history, recorded decades ago, says he helped a doctor to fix Fred Noonan's leg.
 
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The think the slight man with the white headband, looking directly at the camera, is Bilimon Amaram. Bilimon's oral history, recorded decades ago, says he helped a doctor to fix Fred Noonan's leg.
Hi Tom Maxwell ... I've looked at the above picture a few times before and haven't heard of Bilimon Amaran before ? .. are people suggesting that Mr Amaran hooked up with Amelia and Fred after they were reported missing or that maybe he travelled to meet them (if this photo is of them) ?.
 
Bilimon's was one of many Marshallese who stated that Amelia and Fred were in the Marshall Islands in July 1937. I worked on Kajalein, M. I. In 1987 and the Islanders related the same story as their parents who had told investigators in the 1960s about Amelia and Fred being there on Jaluit atoll. The stories haven't changed. They consider the events as part of the islands history. The scene depicted in the photo is very much like one of the stamps issued by the Marshallese government. The two tall Marshallese at the right of the image may be witnesses (along with Bilimon) who contributed oral history that went into the making of the stamps.
 
Bilimon's was one of many Marshallese who stated that Amelia and Fred were in the Marshall Islands in July 1937. I worked on Kajalein, M. I. In 1987 and the Islanders related the same story as their parents who had told investigators in the 1960s about Amelia and Fred being there on Jaluit atoll. The stories haven't changed. They consider the events as part of the islands history. The scene depicted in the photo is very much like one of the stamps issued by the Marshallese government. The two tall Marshallese at the right of the image may be witnesses (along with Bilimon) who contributed oral history that went into the making of the stamps.

All of this is news to me and very interesting! Here's a pic of the Marshall Island stamps I dug up on the net - food for thought indeed.

35ixf5z.jpg
 
At least her car has been found.

Though her plane remains missing, Amelia Earhart's vintage car that was reported stolen on Friday night has now been found.

The car, which once belonged to the pilot who mysteriously disappeared over the Pacific Ocean in 1937, was found on Monday night, according to CBS News.

The vehicle was spotted in a Los Angeles neighbourhood after a tip from a CBS viewer who heard it was missing.

The vehicle is worth between $250,000 and $500,000 (£180,000-£360,000).

The green and black 1932 Hudson Essex Terraplane is one of only 14 models still known to exist.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-43217133
 
Although the recent documentary pointed out that internet sleuths have now found the photo in a book published two years before Earhart disappeared. Not sure if this is accurate, but if so, it means the photo has no significance:

https://edition.cnn.com/2017/07/12/asia/amelia-earhart-photo-japan/index.html

ETA: Oops, just saw Post 169 above!

I still think they were both dead as doornails within a short period of them vanishing - maybe surviving a short while. The most intriguing thing in the doc I saw this week was the mentions of people claiming to have heard Amelia's SOS radio messages, punctuated by the voice of an argumentative man...
 
This newly published analysis by a forensic anthropologist concludes that the bones found in 1941 and dismissed as being a man's remains were most likely Earhart's.

Researcher: New forensic analysis indicates bones were Amelia Earhart's
Bone measurement analysis indicates that the remains found on a remote island in the South Pacific were likely those of legendary American pilot Amelia Earhart, according to a UT researcher.

Richard Jantz, professor emeritus of anthropology and director emeritus of UT's Forensic Anthropology Center, re-examined seven bone measurements conducted in 1940 by physician D. W. Hoodless. Hoodless had concluded that the bones belonged to a man.

Jantz, using several modern quantitative techniques--including Fordisc, a computer program for estimating sex, ancestry, and stature from skeletal measurements--found that Hoodless had incorrectly determined the sex of the remains. The program, co-created by Jantz, is used by nearly every board-certified forensic anthropologist in the US and around the world.

The data revealed that the bones have more similarity to Earhart than to 99 percent of individuals in a large reference sample.

The new study is published in the journal Forensic Anthropology.

Jantz also compared the bone lengths with Earhart's. Her humerus and radius lengths were obtained from a photograph with a scalable object. The scale was provided by Jeff Glickman of Photek. Her tibia length was estimated from measurements of her clothing in the George Palmer Putnam Collection of Amelia Earhart Papers at Purdue University. A historic seamstress took the measurements, which included the inseam length and waist circumference of Earhart's trousers.

Based on this information, Jantz concludes that "until definitive evidence is presented that the remains are not those of Amelia Earhart, the most convincing argument is that they are hers."

Questioning Hoodless's analysis had less to do with his competence and more to do with the state of forensic anthropology at the time, Jantz said.

"Forensic anthropology was not well developed in the early 20th century," the paper states. "There are many examples of erroneous assessments by anthropologists of the period. We can agree that Hoodless may have done as well as most analysts of the time could have done, but this does not mean his analysis was correct." ...

SOURCE: https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2018-03/uota-rnf030718.php

JANTZ'S PUBLISHED PAPER: http://journals.upress.ufl.edu/fa/article/view/525/519
 
'Most likely' Earhart's, so it's not conclusive but probably as near as dammit... good enough for me.
 
This newly published analysis by a forensic anthropologist concludes that the bones found in 1941 and dismissed as being a man's remains were most likely Earhart's.

Richard Jantz, using ... Fordisc, a computer program...created by Jantz...”

I am by no means saying no, just pointing out an obvious conflict of interest.

maximus otter
 
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