"New Earhart search in works" March 21, 2012|Matthew Lee, Associated Press
WASHINGTON - Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton had encouraging words Tuesday for a new investigation into one of the 20th century’s most enduring mysteries: the fate of American aviator Amelia Earhart, who disappeared without a trace over the South Pacific 75 years ago....
Pfffft!
Yes, a nice, safe, uncontroversial mystery that, with all due respect, no one gives a shit.
Earhart was an inspiration to Americans in difficult times as the nation struggled to emerge from the Great Depression, Clinton said, adding that her legacy can serve as a model for the country now.
That is SO RANK, readers. This CONDESCENDING CRAPOLA served up by our leaders has really become sickening.
“Amelia Earhart may have been a unlikely heroine for a nation down on its luck, but she embodies the spirit of an America coming of age and increasingly confident, ready to lead in a quite uncertain and dangerous world,’’ Clinton said at a State Department event to announce the new search. “She gave people hope and she inspired them to dream bigger and bolder.’’
Yes, and she was apparently an AGENT of EMPIRE!!
“After a long decade of war, terrorism, and recession, there are some who are asking whether we still have what it takes to lead, and like that earlier generation we too could use some of Amelia’s spirit,’’ she said.
Earhart and her navigator Fred Noonan disappeared July 2, 1937, while flying from New Guinea to Howland Island as part of her attempt to become the first female pilot to circumnavigate the globe.
Extensive searches at the time uncovered nothing and many historians are convinced they crashed into the ocean.
But the aircraft recovery group believes Earhart and Noonan may have managed to land on a reef abutting the atoll and survived for a short time. They surmise that the plane was washed off the reef by high tides shortly after the landing and that the wreckage may be found in the deep waters nearby.
Their previous visits to the island have recovered artifacts that could have belonged to Earhart and Noonan and suggest they might have lived for days or weeks. Now, they are armed with new analysis of an October 1937 photo of the shoreline of the island. That analysis shows what government specialists believe may be a strut and wheel of a Lockheed Electra landing gear protruding from the water.
Renowned oceanographer Robert Ballard, who discovered the wreckage of the Titanic and is advising the Earhart expedition, said the new analysis of the photograph could be the equivalent of a “smoking gun’’ as it narrows the search area.
Ric Gillespie, executive director of the group, said the search is scheduled to last for 10 days in July and will use underwater robotic submarines and mapping equipment. The Discovery Channel will film the expedition for a documentary, he said.
The Obama administration takes no position on any purported evidence. But Clinton, who noted that the State Department and other federal agencies had actively supported Earhart’s flight, cheered the searchers on.
So she was a U.S. spy mapping the Pacific?
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"Amelia Earhart’s life, final mission explored; D.C. show marks 75th year missing" Associated Press, July 03, 2012
WASHINGTON — The National Portrait Gallery in Washington is exploring the life of aviation pioneer Amelia Earhart and a new scientific expedition is being launched to find out what happened to her, 75 years after she vanished on her final flight.
The exhibit, which opened last week, covers all aspects of Earhart’s biography, from her flying to her advocacy for women’s rights.
Her story is told through photographs, paintings and drawings, and objects including her pilot’s license and leather flying helmet. The exhibit will run through May 2013.
The expedition to track down the aviator will be launched from Hawaii on Tuesday, 75 years to the day after rescue crews set off to find her after she disappeared during her last flight.
Researchers plan to dive near the uninhabited Pacific island of Nikumaroro looking for clues to her final days. They will use robots equipped with sonar and high-definition cameras.
Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan, disappeared over the Pacific while attempting to make the first round-the-world flight along the equator. They took off from Papua New Guinea in a Lockheed Electra 10E, destined for Howland Island.
Many researchers believe the plane ran out of fuel over the sea because of a navigational error....
Me, too.
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We're going down, readers:
"Amelia Earhart search revives her local connections" by Joseph P. Kahn | Globe Staff, July 09, 2012
Growing up in Lynn, Jim Morrissey dreamed of two events happening in his lifetime: He wanted to see the Red Sox win a World Series, and he wanted someone to solve the disappearance of his great-aunt, Amelia Earhart.
The Sox took care of business in 2004. This month, on the 75th anniversary of Earhart’s doomed attempt to fly around the globe, Morrissey just might see his second wish granted. Last week an expedition left Hawaii for Nikumaroro, a tiny, uninhabited South Pacific atoll where some researchers think there is a good chance of locating the remains of Earhart’s airplane.
Morrissey knows that atoll well. Ten years ago he joined a search expedition led by the organization conducting the current one....
Apart from signs of a primitive campsite, little was found to support that theory. However, new technologies, supported by $2.2 million in private funding, hold the promise of different results this time, or so hope The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery -- known as TIGHAR -- team members and a Discovery Channel crew documenting the mission.
“I’m curious to see what happens. It would be great if they did find something,” said Morrissey, 52, a paramedic who lives in Oakland, Calif. “But I’m not holding my breath.”
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Earhart’s plane was lost on July 2, 1937....
Particular interest is focused on an autonomous underwater vehicle, or AUV, that could play a vital role in the mission. Designed and built by Bluefin Robotics, a Quincy company, the 16-foot-long, torpedo-shaped AUV is capable of diving to depths approaching 15,000 feet and will take sonar scannings of the atoll’s coral reef. These scannings could yield evidence of plane fragments.
By one scenario, Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan, ditched their Lockheed Electra on Nikumororo, after which the aircraft was swept offshore. The pair presumably perished soon thereafter. A decades-old photo taken on the atoll shows what could be a portion of the plane’s landing gear, bolstering the theory that it went down on the atoll.
Should any remnants be located, another, larger submersible will take high-definition pictures of whatever lies below. Two Bluefin technicians are also on board to provide technical assistance. The vessel is expected to reach Nikumororo this week.
The AUV was manufactured not far from the Quincy airstrip where Earhart often flew in the mid-1920s — Dennison Airport, later renamed Squantum Naval Air Station — while working and living in the Boston area, before she became internationally famous for her flying exploits....
Meanwhile, the Ninety-Nines, an international organization of female pilots, will hold its annual conference in Providence beginning Wednesday. Earhart was the group’s first president. With nearly 5,000 members in 35 countries, and 145 members in its three New England chapters, the Ninety-Nines are a living memorial to Earhart’s pioneering achievements as an aviator, adventurer, public figure, and staunch advocate for women’s rights.
“We all feel a connection to Amelia Earhart,” said conference co-chair Glenna Blackwood, who lives in (and flies out of) Great Barrington. “We keep up with today’s happening, too, like the release of the ‘Amelia’ movie three years ago. But mostly we reflect on the past and what she did for all of us.”
Some Ninety-Niners prefer Earhart’s fate to remain a mystery, feeling that it only enhances the mystique that has surrounded Earhart since her death. But Blackwood is not among them. “Personally, I’d like to have closure,” she said. “So I’m excited about this latest expedition. And I do feel they’ll find something.”
Earhart’s past — revered by Blackwood and countless others — is celebrated in biographies, films, museum exhibits, and other media. It includes the years Earhart spent largely in Massachusetts, not long before she became a global figure and pop culture icon....
In 1928, Earhart was invited to join a male pilot and copilot on a trans-Atlantic flight that would make her the first woman to accomplish such a feat. Upon its completion, the media likened her to flying hero Charles Lindbergh, nicknaming her “Lady Lindy.”
Lindbergh was later shunned because he was antiwar, and thus tagged as an antisemite.
Four years later — not long after her marriage to publisher George Putnam — Earhart flew across the Atlantic solo, the first woman to do that, too.
“Boston was a turning point in her life,” says Earhart biographer Susan Butler, for it was here that Earhart gained both the flying experience and media presence that carried her into the history books....
Butler believes Earhart crash-landed at sea, her plane resting at a depth that makes finding it unlikely.
Still, said Butler, when and if the mystery is solved, “I’d hope the emphasis would be placed on her extraordinary life and not on her death.”
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Update: Amelia Earhart search ends without photos of wreckage
