Long-Lost Data Fuel Debate on Earhart Puzzle

American researchers have discovered evidence, long buried in British military archives, suggesting that famed aviator Amelia Earhart died on Nikumaroro Island in the Polynesian republic of Kiribati.

Although not conclusive, the new evidence is certain to add fuel to a long-running mystery that continues to intrigue researchers and laypeople alike.

The story begins with bones that British soldiers found on the island--then called Gardner Island--in 1940. Suspecting they might be those of Earhart, the soldiers sent the bones to British headquarters in Tarawa, the Kiribati capital.

A physician there concluded that they were the bones of a male. A report was forwarded to England, but Americans were never notified of the discovery.

A member of the International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery, a nonprofit organization that has been searching for evidence of Earhart’s demise for 10 years, stumbled across some of the records in Tarawa. This prompted Richard Gillespie, the group’s director, to locate the original archival material in England.

Precise dimensions of the bones taken from the paperwork, discovered only two weeks ago, indicate that the skeleton represented the remains of a white female of northern European extraction, about 5 feet, 7 inches tall, according to two forensic anthropologists.

“We have probably the most dramatic archival and scientific evidence in 61 years to indicate that we may soon know what happened to Amelia Earhart,” Gillespie said Tuesday in a telephone interview.

The new results will be presented Friday at a meeting of the American Anthropological Assn. in Philadelphia.

Although other Earhart experts are not yet familiar with the new evidence, they cautioned that Gillespie has previously brought forward several other discoveries from Nikumaroro, only to have their authenticity questioned.

Such earlier discoveries included a piece of aluminum claimed to be from Earhart’s plane and a rubber Cat’s Paw heel allegedly from her shoes. Experts have since concluded that these artifacts were not linked to Earhart, although Gillespie remains a believer.

“I have always been skeptical about claims such as this,” said Thomas Crouch of the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum in Washington.

“When people ask me what I am looking for, I say it is fair to look for a smoking gun, something that could only have come from them [Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan],” he said. Unless the bones can be found, the new data are not a smoking gun, he added. And as of now, no one seems to know where the bones are.

Earhart’s fate has captivated the country since she and Noonan disappeared July 2, 1937, during her effort to be the first woman to fly around the world. The pair were flying from Asia to Hawaii and planned a fuel stop at tiny Howland Island. But they did not find the island and reported in their last radio messages that they were almost out of fuel.

Some experts say that Earhart and Noonan were captured by the Japanese because they were allegedly spying on Japanese naval operations. Another report had her living in New Jersey writing novels.

Most authorities, however, believe that her Lockheed A-10E Electra simply ran out of fuel and crashed in the Pacific Ocean.

Gillespie, a former charter pilot and aircraft accident investigator, was drawn to the case when some associates noted that, based on her compass headings, Earhart could have been flying over Nikumaroro when she ran out of fuel. Reports that she sent radio messages for three days after failing to reach Howland suggested she survived the crash.

U.S. planes flew over the island at the time but saw no trace of wreckage.

Gillespie and his colleagues have made five trips to Nikumaroro, about 1,700 miles southwest of Hawaii, but have not produced any definitive evidence that Earhart crashed there.

Earlier this year, Gillespie said, one of his group’s 800-odd members stumbled on records in Tarawa suggesting that the skeleton and a wooden box that once contained a nautical sextant were found on Gardner Island in 1940.

A British physician, Dr. D.W. Hoodless, examined the bones and concluded they were male. And the authorities did not think the sextant box came from Earhart’s aircraft because it was a type used on ships. Apparently they did not know that Earhart’s navigator customarily carried an old nautical sextant in addition to more modern instruments, Gillespie said.

The bones and box were ordered crated for storage and a report was forwarded to England. No one knows where that crate is now.

Gillespie went to England and ultimately located the report “in a small village 60 miles north of London.” The report gave precise bone measurements taken from the most important skeletal remains.

Forensic anthropologists Karen Ramey Burns of the University of North Carolina-Charlotte and Richard L. Jantz of the University of Tennessee at Knoxville independently studied the measurements and concluded that they were from a female and that they could have been Earhart’s.

Burns noted that Hoodless did a very careful job, but that he had to use formulas developed by anthropologist Carl Pearson--to determine gender and ethnic origins--that were the best available at the time. Newer techniques are much better.

Subtle differences in the relative sizes of individual bones are used to distinguish between the sexes, Burns said, and statistical data compiled since 1940 make it more likely that the Nikumaroro skeleton was that of a female.

“If I had used the same techniques” as Hoodless, Burns said, “I probably would have said it was a male also.”

Other Earhart aficionados are looking forward to seeing Gillespie’s evidence, while Gillespie is hoping he can eventually find the bones.

Meanwhile, the new evidence remains simply the latest chapter in the long search for a vanished icon.