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What Happened to Amelia Earhart?
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Donna McGuire The Kansas City Star |
| August 31, 2001 |
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Pictures of sunken ships and submarines adorn the walls at Nauticos, a Hanover, Maryland, company that performs deep-ocean searches and other operations. Nauticos has found every sunken wreck it has sought. Five years ago, for example, the Israeli government requested U.S. Navy help in locating the Dakar, a submarine that had vanished in the Mediterranean in 1968. The crew of 69 died. Nauticos, which does work for the Navy, reconstructed the sub's trail and determined that others had been searching the wrong area for 30 years. It found the Dakar nearly 10,000 feet (3,000 meters) down, then raised part of the conning tower for a memorial in Israel. Other finds include a Japanese ship lost during the battle of Midway and a gold-laden Japanese submarine that the United States sank in the Atlantic, where it was to rendezvous with a German sub. Now, Nauticos is focused on Earhart's plane. Nauticos searchers think the aluminum Electra sank in water about 17,000 feet (5,000 meters) deep, where light doesn't reach and the water temperature is 28 degrees. If that is true, the plane probably is in good condition, Nauticos president David Jourdan said. "It's like cold storage down there," said Jourdan, a 1976 graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy and a submarine veteran. Boston public television station WGBH, which produces "Nova," suggested the search to Nauticos. About U.S. $3 million in private funds is being raised to cover costs. Nauticos started by gathering and analyzing data. How much fuel did Earhart have? How far could she have flown based on her plane's weight, altitude, and headwinds? What path did she take? What did her radio signal strength say about her distance from Howland? Recovery Effort Planned Although multiple experts have provided advice, Nauticos has culled many clues from Elgen Long, a pilot who spent more than 25 years researching Earhart before writing a 1999 book on Earhart with his wife, Marie. Long thinks Earhart ran out of fuel immediately after her last transmission. He thinks her ditched plane quickly filled with water and sank. She supposedly had a life raft and emergency supplies, but she might not have been able to escape the plane. "We are going out with a very, very respectable probability (of finding the plane)," said Long, a Reno, Nevada, resident who plans to accompany Nauticos on what could be a three-month expedition this winter. The ocean floor near Howland is fairly flat and therefore well suited for a sonar search. Because the sonar equipment will trail at an angle behind the ship, six miles (ten kilometers) of cable will be used to reach the ocean floor three miles (five kilometers) below. Like mowing a lawn, the sonar will traverse long swatches of ocean floor one row at a time. Echoes from pings will be mapped into an acoustical picture showing ridges and debris. Howland is not on a major shipping route and was not involved in World War II battles, Jourdan said. Therefore, few man-made objects, which stand out on sonar, should be visible. With a 55-foot (17-meter) wingspan, the Electra is much smaller than a submarine or warship. But Nauticos sonar experts say they will be able to spot it, especially if it's intact or lying in a compact debris field. Crew members working around the clock will monitor the sonar inside an electronics-filled control center that Nauticos will take to the Pacific. After mapping roughly 600 square miles (1,500 square kilometers)—a chore that could take 40 days—Nauticos will revisit suspected targets with a remote-control vehicle equipped with lights and cameras. If successful, Nauticos will return later for additional research and then possibly make a third trip to raise the plane. It could go on tour someday. "Amelia Earhart herself was an icon, a heroine," Jourdan said. "That's why people are interested. Then you throw in a mystery, and it becomes bigger." Conflicting Conclusions Various critics of this theory say no one knows for sure when Earhart ran out of fuel. There was no mayday call. With buoyant empty fuel tanks, her plane could have floated for hours or days, drifting for miles. The Pacific is too big for a successful underwater search, they say. Drawing on his shipwreck experiences, Jourdan smiled and said the simple answer often is the most accurate. "So why don't we go look at the last place she was heard from?" he asked. How far Earhart flew is the chief point separating Nauticos from its search competitors. When Earhart reported being low on fuel, she could have meant the amount remaining before she possibly invoked a contingency plan, some say. What Happened to Amelia Earhart? Theory 1: She plunged into the sea at the place where she made her last radio contact. Theory 2: She had a contingency plan, and would have made sure she had enough fuel to find another runway. She made land, but died on an uninhabited island. Go>> Theory 3: She somehow made it to the Marshall Islands where she was photographed sitting on a beach. She was arrested by the Japanese who may have executed her for being a spy. Or she may have returned to the United States after the war under a new name. Go>> Return to the beginning of this series, the day Amelia Earhart disappeared; includes a sidebar about her life. Go>> |
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