Photo offers new clue in Amelia Earhart mystery

WASHINGTON?

? A new clue in one of the 20th century's enduring mysteries could uncover the fate of American aviator Amelia Earhart, who vanished without a trace over the South Pacific 75 years ago, investigators said Tuesday.

Enhanced analysis of a 1937 photograph taken months after Earhart's Lockheed Electra plane disappeared shows what experts think may be the landing gear of the aircraft protruding from the waters off the remote island of Nikumaroro, in what is now the Pacific nation of Kiribati, they said.

Armed with that analysis by the State Department, historians, scientists and salvagers from the International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery are returning to the island in July in hopes of finding the wreckage of Earhart's plane and perhaps even the remains of the pilot and her navigator Fred Noonan.

Ric Gillespie, executive director of the group, called the evidence "circumstantial" but "strong."

Earhart and 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 the pair crashed into the ocean. In addition, conspiracy theories, including claims that Earhart and Noonan were U.S. government agents captured by the Japanese before the World War II, still abound despite having been largely debunked.

Gillespie's group believes Earhart and Noonan may have landed 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 landing and that it may be in the deep waters nearby.

At a State Department event, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood gave the privately funded project their support.

Clinton hailed Earhart as an inspiration as the nation struggled to emerge from the Great Depression and said her legacy could be a model for the country now.

"Amelia Earhart may have been an 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," she said. "She gave people hope and she inspired them to dream bigger and bolder."

Source: http://feeds.latimes.com/~r/latimes/news/science/~3/Hf-vt-0y9sI/la-na-amelia-earhart-20120321,0,711739.story

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