Amelia Earhart found again

[Coyote Chris]

I love these kinds of stories.....who thinks this is just one of the many hundreds of WWII wrecks left over
from years of fierce fighting in the area and who thinks this is really the Holy Grail of aviation wrecks? Weigh in now!!!!!

Chris riding the Tokio Express comming "down the slot"

Earhart Wreck Found?



A report from Papua New Guinea says the wreck of an aircraft that might be the Lockheed Electra flown by Amelia Earhart and her navigator Fred Noonan has been found on a reef near Bougainville Island near Papua New Guinea. The Papua New Guinea Post Courier is reporting "armed men" are guarding the area over a reef off Matsungan Island where an aircraft matching the description of Earhart's plane has been found. Divers are now checking the wreck and inquiries are flooding in from all over the world. There is no word on whether any human remains have been recovered.



If the plane is Earhart's, it will help to solve a 78-year-old mystery surrounding her disappearance on a leg of a pan Pacific flight leg from New Guinea to Howell Island in July of 1934. Local sources told the newspaper the existence of the wreck has been known for years. Government officials say it belongs to Papua New Guinea and they'll be defending that claim.

[AirDOGGe]

Re: Amelia Earhart found again

Whenever one of these Amelia articles appear with a question mark in the title (Earhart Wreck Found?) then I know it's another one of Those.

[Pete]

Re: Amelia Earhart found again

PNG is what, 2000 miles from howland island?

She had 1930's nav equipment, not 1630's stuff. How many twin lockheeds and twin beeches went down around there in ww2?

Nope. Not her plane.

[Coyote Chris]

Re: Amelia Earhart found again

Here are some more people with sense....

Doubts Cast on Earhart Wreckage Sighting

March 3, 2011 —On the day it was announced that the latest DNA tests on a bone fragment thought to be that of Amelia Earhart were “inconclusive,” a group on the South Pacific island of Bougainville has claimed to have discovered her lost aircraft. The Papua New Guinea Post-Courier reported that armed men are guarding a wreck partially covered by a coral reef northwest of Buka Island on the north end of Bougainville. Some people are skeptical of this discovery since established research about Earhart’s last location make it unlikely that her Lockheed 10E Electra is now some 2,000 miles west of her last known position.

The wreck in question is resting in 230 feet of water near Matsungan Island, part of the Bougainville island chain. Residents have known for years that an aircraft wreck existed there and two investigators, David Mona and businessman Cletus Harepa, formed a group that began an expedition to confirm the finding in 2000.

Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan, disappeared in 1937 during an attempted circumnavigation of the world. More than 70 years later their vanishing has become arguably the last great enduring mystery of aviation. Ric Gillespie, executive director of The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery (TIGHAR) – which has been searching for evidence of their last location for 23 years - doesn’t believe that the group on Bouganville (which TIGHAR has been advising) has discovered the aircraft.

“There is physically no way that Earhart’s airplane could be anywhere near New Guinea,” Gillespie told EAA. “All researchers, regardless of what theory they ascribe to, agree that Earhart was within 200 miles of Howland Island based on the strength of the signals received by the United States Coast Guard. At that moment they (Earhart and Noonan) had no more than four hours of fuel remaining. It’s 2,000 miles from that area back to New Guinea.”

On July 2, 1937, Earhart and Noonan departed Lae, New Guinea, for a 19-hour leg to Howland Island. The proposed crash site claimed by the Bougainville group lies approximately 500 miles east of their departure point directly on the proposed flight path. Noonan used deduced reckoning and celestial navigation to get them to within approximately 200 miles of Howland, where the USCG ship Itasca would provide a radio beacon for Earhart to follow. Communication problems between Earhart and the Itasca denied Earhart the ability to use radio guidance as she approached the approximate location of Howland. Based on reports of the radio communications, most believe Earhart began flying north and south in an effort to find the island until they ran out of fuel.

TIGHAR gave Mona and Harepa an 11-item checklist a few months ago to help them identify the aircraft, and it was reported that eight of the eleven items were checked off. Gillespie said that what information the Bougainville group did share with them was either widely available or didn’t make sense, and they have so far not produced any photographs.

“They told us they found human skulls, which likely could not have survived underwater for that long,” Gillespie said. “So we decided to do our own research and we discovered that during World War II there was a Navy PV-1 Lockheed Ventura with similar features to a Electra 10E including having two engines, twin tail…and is really a bigger, faster version of the Electra.”

The discovery has whipped Bougainville into a bit of a frenzy as the island’s Minister for Culture and Tourism Joseph Egilio, in a press conference yesterday, appeared worried that the issue may get out of hand. While he commended the group’s expedition he warned that any wreckage found would be the property of the government.

[f1-69]

Re: Amelia Earhart found again

all they had to do was ask dasher where it was she knows where everything is love you dash

[Coyote Chris]

Re: Amelia Earhart found again

The truth is out there...
A businessman, Cletus Harepa, told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation yesterday that he was assembling a team of divers to inspect the coral-encrusted wreck. He said a diver who had already been down had found two skulls in the cockpit – and also three boxes of gold bullion.

The claims were greeted with scepticism – one US expert called them "silly beyond description". But PNG's Post Courier said there were "strong indications" that Earhart's plane – which set off from Lae, on the New Guinea mainland, on a 2,500-mile flight to tiny Howland Island in the central Pacific – was the one found in Bougainville.

"The crash site is in direct alignment with Earhart's flight path out of Lae, past north of Buka Island in a straight north-east direction to Howland," the paper reported.

The first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic, 41-year-old Earhart – by then an international celebrity – had completed 22,000 miles of her round-the-world journey when she arrived in Lae. All that remained for the "Queen of the Air", as she was known, was to traverse the Pacific, about 7,000 miles.

Something, though, went badly wrong on that first leg. Earhart radioed a US ship, saying: "We must be on you but cannot see you – but gas is running low. Have been unable to reach you by radio." That was the last heard from her and Noonan.

Now Mr Harepa is convinced their final resting place has been found. "Somebody saw it [the wreck] when they were diving for fish... but they didn't know the plane was Amelia's plane until I got my divers to dive 70 to 100 metres down." The discovery of the gold added weight to the theory, he said; according to rumour, female pilots used to smuggle gold out of Lae in the 1930s.

However, an Earhart expert, Ric Gillespie, dismissed the claim as highly improbable, since radio transmissions placed her and Noonan within 200 miles of Howland when they disappeared. Instead, Mr Gillespie, the executive director of the International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery, believes they landed on the remote island of Nikumaroro, where they slowly died from a lack of food and water.

His group found bone fragments on the island, now part of Kiribati, last year. However, scientists at the University of Oklahoma said this week that tests on them had proved inconclusive.

Earhart's disappearance has generated hundreds of articles and scores of books. Mr Gillespie said the PNG claims showed the enduring interest in a woman regarded as a feminist trailblazer. "I suppose it's a tribute to Amelia," he said.

What ever you do, dont go to google and put in "poop amelia earhart"

[AirDOGGe]

Re: Amelia Earhart found again

Anyone who wants to find Amelia had better save their pennies and buy a submarine.