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The problem here is that skeletal remains were recovered in 1941, given cursory inspection, and lost during the war. There have always been questions regarding these bones and the reliability of the analysis done at the time, making this little episode a loose end.

I find reviewing the data (such as it is ... ) from a more sophisticated anthropometric perspective a constructive exercise, regardless of its results and whether those results close the case (I don't think they do ...).
 
I call "BS" on this one...

Scientist ‘99 percent’ sure bones found belong to Amelia Earhart

A scientific study claims to shed new light on the decades-long mystery of what happened to Amelia Earhart.

Richard Jantz, an emeritus anthropology professor at the University of Tennessee, argues that bones discovered on the Pacific island of Nikumaroro in 1940 were likely Earhart’s remains. The research contradicts a forensic analysis of the remains in 1941 that described the bones as belonging to a male. The bones, which were subsequently lost, continue to be a source of debate.

Hoodless used three criteria in his research: the ratio of the femur’s circumference to length, the angle of the femur and pelvis, and the subpubic angle, which is formed between two pelvis bones. The subpubic angle is wider in women than in men.

Jantz says the subpubic angle is the most reliable of Hoodless’ criteria, but even that is “subject to considerable variation, much of which was little understood in 1941.”

The scientist also compared Hoodless’ measurements to data from 2,776 other people, as well as studying photos of Earhart and her clothing measurements. “This analysis reveals that Earhart is more similar to the Nikumaroro bones than 99 percent of individuals in a large reference sample,” said Jantz. “This strongly supports the conclusion that the Nikumaroro bones belonged to Amelia Earhart.

Let's just say this would be easier to swallow if he actually had the bones.

https://nypost.com/2018/03/07/scientist-99-percent-sure-bones-found-belong-to-amelia-earhart/
 
There's tons of BS surrounding this mystery. I've read an awful lot about it, mostly during a couple of periods in the past 25 years, and I don't have an opinion of what happened to those two people. It's a fascinating mystery though. One outfit I am not impressed with is that Tighar "non profit" or whatever it is. Load of eager bleevers following a pompous asshole and paying him handsomely. There are some very funny episodes in their "adventures" over the years, none of them intended to be. They present themselves as aircraft salvagers or some such nonsense. A quick look on the interwebs at their track record in that realm is eye-opening.

The most intriguing thing for me has always been a detail in Fred Goerner's book, in which Admiral Nimitz, of all people, encourages his quest with a figurative wink, and the admonishment, "Keep digging. What you find will stagger the imagination." This is all from memory, so I may have some details and spellings wrong, but what an amazing thing for an admiral to say to a journalist. Goerner's book is a fun read. It's free of the baggage that came later, so it seems a bit naive reading it now, but it's worth hunting up.

Earhart's disappearance was the first real mystery I ever dug into in any detail, and it set the stage for me when I later decided to read a few good UFO books and try to come to my own conclusion. That was a rabbit hole!
 
The most intriguing thing for me has always been a detail in Fred Goerner's book, in which Admiral Nimitz, of all people, encourages his quest with a figurative wink, and the admonishment, "Keep digging. What you find will stagger the imagination." This is all from memory, so I may have some details and spellings wrong, but what an amazing thing for an admiral to say to a journalist.

Here's the quote from Goerner's book:
At Pillsbury’s retirement party at the Fort Mason Officers Club in San Francisco, he passed an incredible message to the KCBS newsman. “I’m officially retired now,” Pillsbury told Goerner, “so I’m going to tell you a couple of things. You’re on the right track with your Amelia Earhart investigation. Admiral Nimitz wants you to continue, and he says you’re onto something that will stagger your imagination. I’ll tell you this, too. You have the respect of a lot of people for the way you’ve stuck at this thing. Keep plugging. You’ll get the answers.”

PS: Sorry - noticed too late that story had already been posted here.
 
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This latest round of analysis and speculation over the bones once found and now lost happens to coincide with the mass market release of an Amelia commemoration - in the form of a Barbie doll.

amelia-earhart-as-barbie.jpg
This is a new addition to Mattel's Inspiring Women series.
 
This latest round of analysis and speculation over the bones once found and now lost happens to coincide with the mass market release of an Amelia commemoration - in the form of a Barbie doll.

This is a new addition to Mattel's Inspiring Women series.

Considering that the Barbie is directed to a market of girls that wouldn't even see the point in crossing the ocean piloting a plane alone, it could be an inspiration, yes.
 
This latest round of analysis and speculation over the bones once found and now lost happens to coincide with the mass market release of an Amelia commemoration - in the form of a Barbie doll.

This is a new addition to Mattel's Inspiring Women series.

Thank goodness! Now she’s famous!

maximus otter
 
UPI is reporting the release of a new(?) TIGHAR study enumerating and reviewing all the radio messages alleged to have been sent by Earhart after her disappearance. Not surprisingly, this study concludes the most reasonable interpretation is that Earhart ended up where TIGHAR has been claiming she did ...

Study: Radio signals may prove Amelia Earhart crashed on Pacific island
... A study of distress signals logged in the days after famed American pilot Amelia Earhart went missing support the theory she crash landed on a remote island in the Central Pacific, an aviation search organization said Tuesday.

Richard Gillespie, executive director of the International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery, released a report Tuesday saying Earhart's plane made 57 credible distress calls in the week after she disappeared in 1937, and he believes he can tie them to her and navigator Fred Noonan.

The report, which was not peer-reviewed, comes on the 121st anniversary of Earhart's birth in 1897. ...

SOURCE: https://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/201.../?utm_source=sec&utm_campaign=sl&utm_medium=6
 
Here's the intro text and direct link to the TIGHAR review of the radio messages. It's available as a set of inter-linked webpages on the TIGHAR site.

Catalog and Analysis of Radio Signals During The Search for Amelia Earhart in July 1937
Compiled and edited by Bob Brandenburg and Ric Gillespie, Executive Director

Introduction

In the days following Earhart’s disappearance on July 2, 1937, government and professional civilian radio operators in the Central Pacific region and on the United States Pacific coast, as well as radio amateurs and shortwave listeners in the continental United States, Hawaii, Canada and Australia reported receiving radio signals that could have been sent from the missing aircraft. Lockheed representatives authoritatively stated that transmissions from Earhart’s Electra (NR16020) were possible only if the airplane was on land. Much of the Coast Guard/Navy search was driven by signals that were considered to be genuine. However, when the search failed to find any trace of the airplane or crew, the radio signals were dismissed by authorities as having been hoaxes or misunderstandings.

Clearly, if any reported signal was genuine, the Electra did not go down at sea. A comprehensive and detailed catalog and analysis of the reported post-loss radio signals must, therefore, be an element in any informed investigation of the Earhart disappearance.

A preponderance of archival and physical evidence unrelated to the post-loss radio signals supports a hypothesis that the Earhart flight ended with a landing on the reef at Gardner Island (now Nikumaroro, part of the Republic of Kiribati), an uninhabited coral atoll in the Phoenix Group. The catalog and analysis presented here tests that hypothesis by evaluating the credibility of each reported signal as having being sent from NR16020 at Gardner. ...

FULL STUDY (IN MULTIPLE PARTS): https://tighar.org/Projects/Earhart/Archives/Research/ResearchPapers/Brandenburg/signalcatalog.html
 
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This latest round of analysis and speculation over the bones once found and now lost happens to coincide with the mass market release of an Amelia commemoration - in the form of a Barbie doll.
This is a new addition to Mattel's Inspiring Women series.​
I bought one of those but I'll be damned if I can find it.​
 
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This Live Science item provides a critical response to the latest TIGHAR release, which is after all a derivative summation of things they (TIGHAR) have been claiming for years. The bottom line is that in the absence of any compelling evidence for TIGHAR's Gardner Island / Nikumaroro theory this is basically speculation layered atop speculation.

Distress Calls Linked to Amelia Earhart Probably Don't Reveal Anything About Her Demise
The daring aviator Amelia Earhart may have sent distress calls from a tiny Pacific island by the light of the moon, talking urgently into her radio while she recharged her damaged plane at low tide, according to a new report.

But not everyone is on board with this new idea about Earhart's tragic end.

The scenario rests on a lot of assumptions about how and where Earhart's plane went down, meaning it's highly unlikely it ever happened, said John Little, an assistant curator at the Museum of Flight in Seattle, who was not involved with the report. ...

FULL STORY: https://www.livescience.com/63212-amelia-earhart-radio-distress-calls.html
 
If the DNA of the bones they found test up with 99% probability with Earhart's surviving family, that is good enough for me, provided the procedures of the DNA testing were done properly.
 
If the DNA of the bones they found test up with 99% probability with Earhart's surviving family, that is good enough for me, provided the procedures of the DNA testing were done properly.

The problem is that the bones were lost during WW2.
 
My understanding was that Josh Gates from Expedition Unknown traced the recovery of the bones from Nikumoro to the Fiji museum where they were lost. Then subsequently the descendant of one of the locals who worked at the museum came forwards to say that his relative came home with a box of bones from the museum and hid them under the house, where he had seen them when playing there as a child. Not the most reliable provenance, but the bones were recovered by Fiji police and the matter went quiet. I thought the recent hoo-haa related to that potential discovery.


Like most shows of this general class, nothing is normally resolved, but there are cases when Josh has actually found things. His hit rate is about once every season.
 
Will give that a watch this evening, thanks.
 
I think I read somewhere that Earhart and Noonan never took a life raft to save weight, reasoning that when the big fuel tank was empty it'd keep the plane afloat.
That happened with the Junkers W-33 'Esa' (below) which ditched with engine trouble during a transatlantic attempt in 1931 from Portugal, the 3-man crew clung to the wreck for 6 days before a passing ship picked them up 7 miles from Newfoundland-

ESA.jpg
 
A newly-acquired 16mm movie film of female aviator Amelia Earhart could shed light on what happened more than 80 years after she disappeared.

The footage shows Earhart's plane taking off on a test flight on the morning of 1 July 1937.Earhart and navigator Fred Noonan disappeared the following day.

19_Miamitaxi.jpg


The pair were in a Lockheed Model 10-E Electra, which had an aluminium patch attached to its fuselage in Miami to repair damage prior to their departure.

Those attempting to explain Earhart's disappearance have wondered whether a piece of metal, found washed up on Nikumaroro island in the western Pacific in 1991, is that same aluminium patch:

22V1insitu.jpg


The film, showing Earhart, Mr Noonan and the aircraft in Lae, New Guinea, could hold the clue.

TIGHAR said one image contained in the film shows the patch "from a closer distance than any photo we had yet seen", adding: "The patch was clearly visible."

It has taken TIGHAR 10 years to reach a deal with the owner of the footage.

https://www.peakfm.co.uk/news/aroun...m-patch-could-explain-fate-of-famous-aviator/

maximus otter
 
A newly-acquired 16mm movie film of female aviator Amelia Earhart could shed light on what happened more than 80 years after she disappeared.

The footage shows Earhart's plane taking off on a test flight on the morning of 1 July 1937.Earhart and navigator Fred Noonan disappeared the following day.

19_Miamitaxi.jpg


The pair were in a Lockheed Model 10-E Electra, which had an aluminium patch attached to its fuselage in Miami to repair damage prior to their departure.

Those attempting to explain Earhart's disappearance have wondered whether a piece of metal, found washed up on Nikumaroro island in the western Pacific in 1991, is that same aluminium patch:

22V1insitu.jpg


The film, showing Earhart, Mr Noonan and the aircraft in Lae, New Guinea, could hold the clue.

TIGHAR said one image contained in the film shows the patch "from a closer distance than any photo we had yet seen", adding: "The patch was clearly visible."

It has taken TIGHAR 10 years to reach a deal with the owner of the footage.

https://www.peakfm.co.uk/news/aroun...m-patch-could-explain-fate-of-famous-aviator/

maximus otter

Maximus, I think that some things should be taken in consideration about this patch :

- The second picture doesn't give a good idea of the aluminium piece found in Nikumaroro. Is it consistent with the size and the dimensions of the patch shown in the first picture ?

- Aluminium patches are not exactly the most technological items on a machine repair. I mean, an aluminium piece could have served as a patch to nearly any plane or boat that had came close to Nikumaroro.

- Debris landing on a beach can be the result of currents. It doesn't mean that the piece was separated from a major element around, or not even close to Nikumaroro.

- If, hypothetically, the piece is the patch on Earhat's Electra, the fact that it was separated from the plane could point to a major crash, even it was loosely attached to the plane. Few scenarios of the disappearance point to a serious crash. Again, hypothetically, it could open new roads to the undestanding of what happened to Earhart and Noonan.

I really hope that, one day, we can figure out what happened to aviatrixes like Amelia and Amy Johnson. I consider them some of the last heroes among the explorers of the planet.
 
I really hope that, one day, we can figure out what happened to aviatrixes like Amelia and Amy Johnson. I consider them some of the last heroes among the explorers of the planet.

Pedantry alert. If we call them aviatrices then we should also call them heroines. :) I would probably say female aviator and hero in this context, but that's me.

Someone asked further upthread whether aviatrix is a word.

The trix ending is archaic, but is perhaps still useful when talking about historical female pioneers in any field. There were many aviators between the two world wars, but only a small number of female aviators. Each time those females achieved something, it was despite the strong social conventions and pressure that went with their gender. As such, identifying them as aviatrices is reasonable, although perhaps "female aviator" would be more widely acceptable today.

When I worked in a legal department, I sometimes dealt with female executors of wills. I would never have used executrix as it is no longer a remarkable thing that a woman should perform that duty, and using a different label would have been patronising — in the same way, perhaps, as "manageress" somehow conveys less status than "manager".

Similarly, we do not hear of the solicitrix, or the orchestral conductrix, and I was a bit shocked the other day to hear the word comedienne used in cold blood. Even early female novelists such as Austen are now generally called authors rather than authoresses.
 
Pedantry alert. If we call them aviatrices then we should also call them heroines. :) I would probably say female aviator and hero in this context, but that's me.

Someone asked further upthread whether aviatrix is a word.

The trix ending is archaic, but is perhaps still useful when talking about historical female pioneers in any field. There were many aviators between the two world wars, but only a small number of female aviators. Each time those females achieved something, it was despite the strong social conventions and pressure that went with their gender. As such, identifying them as aviatrices is reasonable, although perhaps "female aviator" would be more widely acceptable today.

When I worked in a legal department, I sometimes dealt with female executors of wills. I would never have used executrix as it is no longer a remarkable thing that a woman should perform that duty, and using a different label would have been patronising — in the same way, perhaps, as "manageress" somehow conveys less status than "manager".

Similarly, we do not hear of the solicitrix, or the orchestral conductrix, and I was a bit shocked the other day to hear the word comedienne used in cold blood. Even early female novelists such as Austen are now generally called authors rather than authoresses.

The trix ending is of course still commonly used in the term dominatrix.... errm or so I've heard...
 
I'm having a hard time believing the metal fragment could be the starboard window patch installed in Miami.

Look back at post #56 (July 2014) and the photos illustrating the starboard window and patch.

The metal fragment pictured above has far too many fastener(?) holes relative to the number and spacing of rivets seen in other photos of the Electra's fuselage. The holes don't uniformly extend the full width of the metal fragment, and frankly they look square rather than round. Finally, none of the holes show the sort of distortion or tearing one would expect if all those rivets were ripped loose.
 
Robert Ballard to lead hunt for Amelia Earhart's plane

Amelia Earhart and navigator Fred Noonan disappeared more than 80 years ago, on July 2, 1937, during the second to last leg of their around-the-world flight. After taking off from Lae, New Guinea, in Earhart’s Lockheed Electra 10E, the pair aimed for tiny Howland Island, just north of the Equator. But they couldn’t find it, and despite many attempts, no one has been able to find them.
Now Robert Ballard, the man who found the Titanic, is planning to search for signs of the missing aviators. On August 7, he'll depart from Samoa for Nikumaroro, an uninhabited island that’s part of the Micronesian nation of Kiribati. The expedition will be filmed by National Geographic for a two-hour documentary airing October 20.
etc

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/...und-titanic-can-find-amelia-earhart-airplane/
 
Rather like the Titanic, Ballard is basing his search on other people's work in the desire to claim the glory.
 
Rather like the Titanic, Ballard is basing his search on other people's work in the desire to claim the glory.

I don't have an opinion on his personal motivations, but ... It's fair to say his higher profile (i.e., fame) lends at least some transient weight to the case TIGHAR has been building for years now. Insofar as the TIGHAR folks have been derided and even ridiculed for their focus on Nikumaroro I would think they'd appreciate being vindicated, even if it required being piggybacked on someone else's celebrity and connections.

I wonder how the TIGHAR crowd sees this development?
 
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