Purdue University is launching this week on Nikumaroro Island to search for Amelia Earhart’s missing plane. The latest expedition returns to a problem that has resisted dozens of searches since Earhart disappeared on July 2, 1937.
Lae to Howland Island
Earhart was flying with Fred Noonan when the Lockheed 10E Electra took off from Lae, New Guinea, for Howland Island in the Pacific Ocean. The leg was expected to take 18 hours, but the aircraft was already 22,000 miles into the trip and still had 7,000 miles left before Earhart’s goal of becoming the first woman to fly around the world.
The Lae to Howland leg was one of 34 total legs, and the final one required finding a target only 2 miles long. The Electra carried the maximum 1,150 gallons of fuel, and the passenger seats had been removed to make room for extra tanks.
Itasca radio messages
The US Coast Guard vessel Itasca waited off Howland Island with fuel, and radio operators on the ship received messages from Earhart’s plane. Earhart said, “We must be on you, but cannot see you. Gas is running low. Been unable to reach you by radio. We are flying at 1,000 feet.”
The plane later sent a final message: “We are on the line of position 157-337. Will repeat message. We will repeat this message on 6210 kilocycles. Wait. Listening on 6210 kilocycles. We are running north and south.” Those radio reports remain the clearest record of where Earhart and Noonan were trying to reach the island.
Texas-sized search area
The United States staged an unprecedented effort to find the crew and the plane after Earhart’s disappearance, but the search area around her was about the size of Texas. Dorothy Cochrane, an Earhart expert and retired curator at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, said, “They were flying all night and then trying to pick out this tiny island. We know that there were some clouds in the area, and the sun's in her face as she's talking. It's just really, really difficult,”
That difficulty is why the newest Purdue University expedition matters now: the search is starting this week, and the survey of the island area is the next step in a decades-long effort that still has not located the aircraft. The unresolved route from Lae to Howland Island remains the fixed point, even as the plane itself has stayed out of reach for 87 years.
Will the Purdue University expedition find evidence that identifies where Earhart’s plane ended up on Nikumaroro Island?
