October 3, 2023
There is an object in the photo that appears to be a Lockheed Electra engine cowling.
Executive director of The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery (TIGHAR), Ric Gillespie, on a potential breakthrough in the nearly 90-year search for Amelia Earhart’s plane; TIGHAR leads the Earhart Project, which has been investigating Earhart’s disappearance.
Why It Matters: A 2009 photograph from an expedition in the Pacific Ocean (near Nikumaroro Island) appears to show a cowling (cowling = cover of an aircraft engine) “buried underwater that could have been part of the boundary-breaking aviator’s plane …” (New York Post). The photo is being analyzed by a specialist; if the engine cover were Earhart’s, it would not give an explanation as to why the plane crashed, but would “dispel Gillespie’s theory that Earhart and [her navigator Fred] Noonan landed and eventually died on Nikumaroro,” where no hard evidence of Earhart or Noonan has ever been found, the New York Post explains.
by Emily Hooker, based in Texas
