A new $2.2 million dollar search team has left Hawaii to follow Amelia Earharts past to perhaps locate her remains and wreckage.
The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery or TIGHAR for short, is a non-profit search group who’s previous searches for Amelia have turned up what the groups director Ray Gillespie believes are connected to Amelia Earhart. You can follow the search on MHTV on the TIGHARs official website, http://tighar.org/.
Richard Gillespie, executive director of The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery (TIGHAR), theorises that Ms Earhart’s plane was washed off the reef by surf days after the US aviator and her navigator, Fred Noonan, landed on Nikumaroro, about 400 miles southeast of their Howland Island destination.
The duo had departed Papua New Guinea July 2 in Earhart’s quest to circumnavigate the globe along an equatorial route. Gillespie said circumstantial evidence collected on previous trips to Nikumaroro makes a strong case for his theory that Earhart ended her days as a castaway, ultimately perishing in the island’s harsh conditions.
Discovered items include what appears to be jar of a once-popular brand of anti-freckle cream from the 1930s, a clothing zipper from the same decade, a bone-handled pocket knife of the type Earhart carried, and piles of fish and bird bones indicative of a Westerner trying to survive.
Global News Canada
Earhart research ship Kaimikai-o-Kanaloa leaving Honolulu Harbor
info sources: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amelia_Earhart
There is also a really interesting news article in The Boston Globe from a previous searcher, Jim Morrissey, who is also a great nephew to Amelia Earhart.
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, The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery, known as TIGHAR — seeking evidence that Earhart had landed and briefly lived on Nikumaroro.
“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.”
source : http://articles.boston.com/2012-07-09/lifestyle/32589354_1_nikumaroro-tighar-amelia-earhart
