Air & Space
had a great article a while back about the search for the wreckage of
Amelia Earhart's Lockheed Electra in the Pacific. She, the plane and her
navigator, Fred Noonan, disappeared about 75 years ago while trying to
circumnavigate the world.
I probably don't have to explain that the disappearance is one of aviation's great mysteries. There was a massive search for them when they didn't arrive at their landing site, but nothing was turned up. Explanations ranged from the ridiculous--alien kidnappings and the like--to the imaginative, in which they were captured after spying on the Japanese.
In reality, they probably just crashed where no one could easily find them with the technology of the day. It's a big ocean, and the odds were always against solving the puzzle of where they ended up.
But now the search described in that Air & Space story may have come across something interesting. To my eyes, it looks like nothing:
Coral? Airplane parts? (photo from Gizmodo)
But to the search team, there is reason to be excited. I guess the more definitive proof will be when they bring some of the possible artifacts to the surface to examine. And maybe a cliffhanger whose first chapter began in 1937 can finally have a satisfactory ending.
3 comments:
this is one case that i would prefer were never solved. the mystery is much more interesting.
this is one case that i prefer remains a mystery. much more interesting that way.
I grew up a few blocks from Amelia Earhart's grandparents' house in Atchison, KS. (They raised Amelia, fwiw.) For that reason alone, I hope they will solve the mystery of her disappearance.
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