Search for Amelia Earhart's wrecked plane off Nikumaroro

The American Rick Pettigrew and his colleagues at the Archaeological Legacy Institute (ALI) in Oregon expect an “incomparable discovery”. Together with marine archaeologists from Purdue University and a film crew, the seventy-eight-year-old will set off by ship from the Pacific island of Tarawa to Nikumaroro next Wednesday to solve one of the most spectacular missing person cases in the United States. In front of the atoll, like Tarawa, part of the island state of Kiribati, Pettigrew suspects the wreck of the Lockheed Model 10E Electra, with which Amelia Earhart disappeared almost 90 years ago.

The aviation pioneer, who worked as an advisor to the Department of Aviation at Purdue University, attempted to become the first woman to circumnavigate the world. After almost 40,000 kilometers, on the route from Papua New Guinea to Howland Island, radio contact with Earhart's Electra was suddenly lost at the beginning of July 1937. Since then, Americans have been concerned about the fate of “America's favorite missing person” and the navigator Fred Noonan who went missing with her. “We could be solving one of the greatest mysteries of all time in the next few weeks,” says Pettigrew.

For the archaeologist, the solution depends on “Object Taraia”. Six years ago, Pettigrew became aware of the approximately ten meter long object in a lagoon near Nikumaroro through a satellite photo. The analysis of further aerial photographs revealed that “Object Taraia” was already in the water in 1938, a few months after Earhart's disappearance. "The item in the pictures is exactly the size of the hull and tail of the Electra. It also looks like it is made of metal," ALI summarized.

Were Earhart and Noonan off course?

More than 20 years ago, the International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery (TIGHAR) had put forward the theory that Earhart and Noonan had lost their course in dense clouds and had accidentally headed for Nikumaroro, about 600 kilometers south, instead of Howland Island. As TIGHAR founder Richard Gillespie told the F.A.Z. 2023 said Earhart probably made an emergency landing on a reef and, like Noonan, later died on the uninhabited island.

There had already been several unsuccessful expeditions to the atoll between Hawaii and Australia. Also involved with Gillespie was the discoverer of the wreck of the RMS Titanic, Robert Ballard. Now Pettigrew, the Archeological Legacy Institute and Purdue are embracing technology. Using underwater drones, sonar devices and magnetometer, a sensor that measures magnetic flux density, in the first phase they will try to clearly identify “Object Taraia” as part of the wreckage of Earhart's Electra. If, as expected, it turns out to be a relic of the thirty-nine-year-old's last flight, Pettigrew plans to use a pump to suck out sediment and expose the wreckage.

Archaeologists are planning to excavate the Electra for the second phase of the expedition next year. If the wreck can be recovered and transported, it will be exhibited in a museum at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana. “We will also describe and document ‘Object Taraia’ if it is not a remnant of the Electra,” Pettigrew announced. "We would be disappointed, but we could at least rule out the possibility that Earhart's plane was in the lagoon off Nikumaroro."