More than 80 years after the disappearance of the famous American Amelia Earhart, somewhere in the Pacific Ocean, a new study gathered what may be the details of the last days of the plane’s downfall.
The week following the disappearance of her aircraft, on July 2, 1937, 120 reports from around the world appeared, all claiming to pick up radio signals and distress calls from Earhart, 57 of which confirmed the credibility of her allegations.
Richard Gillespie, executive director of the International Historical Aircraft Recovery Group, analyzed the final broadcast of those distress calls and painted a regrettable picture of the increasing despair of Earhart and the accompanying navigator over seven days.
The findings of the new study claim that the Lockheed Elektra plane crashed and sank into the ocean, with distress calls indicating that Earhart and its facilities, Fred Nunan, were seriously injured and stranded on coral reefs at the mercy of tides.
The new comprehensive study within the ERHART project of the International Historical Aircraft Recovery Group summarizes all the distress calls received in the week following the pilot’s disappearance and facilities collected by marine stations and informal listeners in their homes. The results revealed a chronology of events that Signed within a week.
On Friday, July 2, an hour after the plane disappeared, one of the signals heard the sound of the lost sound. When I asked for confirmation through a series of calls, three other stations heard the answer and one of them heard the word Earhart.
Later that night, during the “active period” of signals, a Amarillo housewife in Texas heard from a radio signal that Earhart says she “fell on a small, uninhabited island.”
“Part of the plane was on land, another part fell into the water,” said the spokesman, who said that the sailor Farid Nunan was seriously injured and needed immediate medical attention.
The same night, a woman from Ashland, Kentucky, heard Earhart say the plane was “in the ocean” and “there is a small island nearby.”
“Our plane is far from gas, water is everywhere, the place is very dark,” she said, before going into a storm and wind blowing in. “You’ll have to get out of here, we can not stay here for long.”
Almost all signals, considered credible, can be traced back to Gardner Island, where Earhart and Nunan are probably stranded on the reefs there.
But, according to Gillespie, the transmission from this point is a dilemma, explaining through the research that “radios are based on aircraft batteries, and there was a need for battery power to run the engine.. If the batteries are sent and they send distress calls, they will not be able to start the engine”.
On Saturday, July 3, he heard a male voice for the first time, indicating that although he was injured, Nunan was still alive.
A station on Howland Island heard the voice of a man and woman seeking distress,
A letter of missing persons was also received at the US Naval Broadcasting Facility in Willoughby, near Honolulu, on 5 July. Betty Klink, 15, in Florida, was able to hear the discussions between the pilot and her facilities about the water, temperature and poor condition of Noonan. The girl could hear his screams and complain of his head.
The last active signal period was on Wednesday, July 7, from 12.25 to 13:30, and it is estimated that the water level has reached the cabin.
One of the last letters dated by Thelma Lovelace of St. John’s in New Brunswick says: “Can you read my note, this is Amelia Earhart, this is Amelia Earhatt?” And then Earhart continued: “The water has risen and my plane, “We’re in need of medical care and we have to get help, we can not stay longer.”
These most credible signs have left the last moments of the world’s most famous pilot a mystery until today.
Gillespie said that on Friday, July 9, the plane that fell over coral reefs and flooded the ocean was flooded. “When three US Navy search aircraft flew from the USS Colorado over Gardner Island on Friday morning, July 9, You see any plane. “
A collection of bones unearthed on Gardner Island in 1940 provided what was considered the best evidence of the ultimate fate of Earhart and her assistant.