Nearly 90 years after Amelia Earhart disappeared over the Pacific, newly released historical photographs are offering a glimpse of an island that may hold clues to her fate.
Amelia Mary Earhart, 24 Jul 1897 / Smithsonian / Unsplash
The Air Force Museum of New Zealand has released 47 high-resolution photographs of Nikumaroro, a remote atoll in Kiribati. Taken during an aerial survey on 1 December 1938, the images show the island’s coastline, lagoon and vegetation just over a year after the American aviator vanished.
For researchers investigating one of aviation’s greatest mysteries, the photographs offer a rare look at the island as it appeared in the late 1930s.
The island that could hold answers
Earhart disappeared on 2 July 1937 while attempting to fly around the world with navigator Fred Noonan. Their aircraft was lost somewhere over the Pacific, and despite decades of searches, neither the plane nor the pair has been conclusively found.
One theory suggests they may have landed on Nikumaroro, then known as Gardner Island, and survived there as castaways. However, the theory remains unproven.
The photographs were taken by a New Zealand amphibious aircraft surveying Pacific islands for potential airbase locations. The original negatives were discovered more than a decade ago by Matthew O’Sullivan, a photographic archivist at the museum in Christchurch.
Could there be clues beneath the water?
Interest in Nikumaroro has grown following investigations into a submerged shape in it’s lagoon, identified in satellite imagery in 2020. Known as the Taraia Object, it has sparked speculation that it could be part of Earhart’s missing Lockheed Electra aircraft.
Researchers associated with Purdue University and the Archaeological Legacy Institute have been investigating the object, although it’s identity remains uncertain. Some experts believe it could simply be a fallen pandanus tree.
The historical photographs offer another way to study the island and compare it’s landscape with what researchers see today. They do not confirm that Earhart landed there, but they add to the material available to those searching for answers.
For now, what happened to Earhart and Noonan remains unknown. But on a remote Pacific island, nearly nine decades of unanswered questions continue to draw researchers back to the same possibility: that the clues to their disappearance may still be out there.
Source (The Guardian)
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