Two Forthcoming Articles

Two New Papers

Pacific Studies, a multidisciplinary journal on the people and cultures of the Pacific, has accepted my article, “Amelia Earhart on Nikumaroro: a Summary of the Evidence.”  The article is what it’s titled: a straightforward summary of the Nikumaroro Hypothesis and the evidence we’ve gathered over the years relating to it.  Nothing new, but I thought it would be useful to put it all in one place, and a peer-reviewed journal seemed like a good venue.  Pacific Studies can be accessed at https://ojs.lib.byu.edu/spc/index.php/PacificStudies/, and the article should be out in the fall.

And for a bit of balance (or something), the Northern Mariana Islands Council for the Humanities has accepted “Amelia Earhart in the Marianas: a Consideration of the Evidence,” by Tom Roberts, Joe Cerniglia and me.  It will be published on the Council’s website -- http://www.nmihumanities.org/ -- coincident with their Marianas History Conference (“One Archipelago, Many Stories”) scheduled for June 14-16, 2012.  In this paper, we tried to take a sober, objective look at the many stories that put Earhart and Noonan in the Marianas (usually on Saipan) as a prisoner of the Japanese.  Although there are many overlapping anecdotes, reported in various ways by different authors, they essentially comprise eight stories:

• That Earhart and Noonan flew their Electra 10E directly to Saipan from Lae, New Guinea;
• That Earhart and Noonan landed elsewhere in Micronesia and were brought to Saipan by the Japanese;
• That the Electra was at Aslito Airfield (now Saipan International Airport);
• That Earhart (and in some versions, Noonan) was incarcerated at the jail at Garapan on Saipan;
• That Earhart was incarcerated or otherwise kept elsewhere on Saipan;
• That U.S. Military personnel found physical evidence of Earhart on Saipan and elsewhere in Micronesia;
• That Earhart and Noonan died or were executed on Saipan or Tinian, and were buried there; and
• That the U.S. government covered up the facts of the matter.

 We briefly examine how each story has evolved, and what evidence supports it, and then attempt to evaluate the basis for each.

One of the interesting aspects of working on this paper is that it’s caused me to dip into the extensive literature on the reliability and vagaries of eyewitness memory – an understandably hot topic in jurisprudential and law enforcement circles, and very relevant to the AE-in-the-Marianas stories, which are almost entirely based on such memories.  It was also interesting to find evidence – albeit anecdotal – that some U.S. troops as they fought their way through the islands of Micronesia were actively seeking Earhart, and in some cases believed that she was alive and feeding information to military intelligence.  And though we don’t propose an answer to the question of whether Earhart and Noonan wound up in the Marianas, we do conclude that:

“the stories of an American woman in captivity on Saipan…may well reflect something that really happened, someone who really was imprisoned and executed.  An effort to identify this shadowy person and reconstruct her story – without assuming that she must have been Earhart – could result in a valuable contribution to the history of Micronesia during the Japanese period and World War II.     

"Scientific Evidence" -- and the Search 75 Symposium

First, for anyone who’s not aware of it, let me announce the forthcoming June 1-3 Earhart Search 75 Symposium, to be held in Arlington, VA (across the river from Washington DC). This conference will feature speakers, panels, and exhibits about the Nikumaroro Hypothesis, our pursuit of it, and other Earhart-related matters. Come one, come all! Full information and registration forms can be found at www.tighar.org.

I also want to take this opportunity to comment on some articles that have appeared in various media since the announcement of the July expedition to search the deepwater face of the Nutiran reef on Nikumaroro. These articles have pooh-poohed the Nikumaroro hypothesis as something akin to Gilligan’s Island, and assured the world that no way, no how did Earhart and Noonan wind up on Niku. They may be right, of course, but they’re not proving their cases by poking fun at ours. More importantly, they’re obfuscating matters by referring to their thinking as “scientific.”

Here’s an example, from the Cedar Rapids (Iowa) Gazette – see http://easterniowalife.com/2012/04/16/local-earhart-researcher-continues-to-search-for-famed-pilot/

Robins resident and former Rockwell Collins engineer Rod Blocksome said The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery (TIGHAR) is about 350 miles off course in their search for Earhart.

‘[TIGHAR researchers] are pretty much the masters of the media and they’re very good at coming up with newsworthy things that garner some publicity,’ Blocksome said. ‘…I don’t think they’re going to find anything, though.’

Blocksome retired from Rockwell Collins in Cedar Rapids in May 2010 after 42 years as an engineer. The retired communications systems engineer has worked with Dave Jourdan, president of Nauticos LLC, in searching for Earhart’s wreckage over the past several years.

TIGHAR researchers also said they’ve found evidence – such as broken glass jars and bits of women’s makeup – that could prove Earhart and Noonan lived on the remote island.

But Blocksome said circumstantial evidence and castaway theories are not what he, Jourdan, and Nauticos researchers are looking for around Howland Island. For them, indisputable, scientific evidence is necessary.


‘[We’re looking for] some very hard evidence that’s not controversial when we find the plane,’ Blocksome said. ‘[TIGHAR] comes up with little bits and pieces … Before we get everybody all excited, we want to make sure we got something that’s very solid and holds up to scientific scrutiny.’

What I object to in the above story, and others like it, is the equation of “scientific evidence” with something that’s “not controversial,” and the denigration of “little bits and pieces. The fact is that science works with whatever evidence it can find, and applies that evidence to the testing of hypotheses. In most cases it is precisely the buildup of “little bits and pieces” that makes or breaks the case.

It would be nice to find the indisputable, obvious, no-question-about it, smoking-gun piece of evidence (i.e. the airplane), and maybe it’s there to be found – at Niku or someplace else. But there’s a real good chance that it’s not there, or at least not likely to be found, and a failure to find it doesn’t necessarily mean that TIGHAR’s hypothesis is wrong. There are still all those little bits and pieces. And whether or not we ever “prove” the hypothesis to the satisfaction of every critic, it remains a fact that science is every bit as much about the collection, analysis, and application of “little bits and pieces” as it is about finding the big, obvious, indisputable and uncontroversial piece of data (like an airplane) that in one great flash proves the case.

Archaeological and historical research are applications of science that most particularly depend on the collection and interpretation of little bits and pieces -- whether they're little bits and pieces of hominid bone and crude tools in east Africa or little pieces of jars, bottles, and cosmetics from the Seven Site on Nikumaroro.  I think it's rather sad, and a testimony to the dumbing-down of the media's handling of science stories, to imply that only the big, obvious, flash-bang discovery ("Austrolopithecus walks out of cave to greet researchers: Scientists Stunned") constitutes "science."

Summary of Data for the Nikumaroro Hypothesis

In response to the interest aroused by yesterday's (20 March 2012) US State Department event, here's an update of a summary posted here in 2010 of the evidence for the Nikumaroro Hypothesis.  The original Word file has footnotes citing the sources behind each statement, but I can't figure out how (without GREAT tedium) to get these into this sort of blog posting.  If you want a PDF of the Word version, drop me a note at tfking106@aol.com, and I'll be happy to send one along.

Aviation pioneer Amelia Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan, disappeared over the Pacific on July 2nd 1937. The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery (TIGHAR) hypothesizes that they landed and died on Nikumaroro, then called Gardner Island, an uninhabited island in what is now the Phoenix Islands Protected Area of the Republic of Kiribati. Detailed documentation of our basis for the Nikumaroro Hypothesis is found in two books published by TIGHAR members , and on TIGHAR’s worldwide web site . I have also published a novel that imagines the circumstances surrounding the discovery of what may have been Earhart’s bones . I have prepared this short paper to summarize the evidence supporting what we call “the Nikumaroro Hypothesis” regarding Earhart’s and Noonan’s fate. Here are the data:


1. In the last radio transmission that all authorities agree came from Earhart, she said she was flying "on the line 157 337” – this is generally understood to be what is known as a “line of position,” a navigational line oriented 337° (NNW) and 157° (SSE). The strength of the transmission indicated that she was relatively close to Howland Island at the time of transmission. She was not understood to say which direction she was flying on the line but U.S. Navy experts, Earhart’s husband George Putnam, and her technical advisor Paul Mantz all agreed that the flight probably proceeded southeastward in the hope of reaching land . Such a line passing through the vicinity of Howland Island also passes within visual range of Nikumaroro.

2. Nikumaroro is much easier to see from the air than Howland Island; it is bigger, tree-covered, and has a brilliant aquamarine lagoon .

3. After her disappearance, at least 121 radio messages were received by stations around the Pacific and elsewhere, most of them by professional radio operators, some of them in a voice identified as Earhart’s by operators who had heard her in past transmissions. When the U.S. Navy’s extensive search failed reveal anything, the Navy decided they were all mistakes or hoaxes. If even one of these messages was really from Earhart, she had to be on land with a fairly intact airplane capable of generating power for the radio . Detailed analysis of the messages by TIGHAR researchers suggests that at least 57 of the messages are credible as transmissions from the lost Electra

4. Radio stations at Wake Island, Midway Island, and Hawaii took radio direction finding (RDF) bearings on six of the transmissions. Four of these bearings crossed in the vicinity of Nikumaroro .

5. The only radio (other than, we suspect, Earhart’s) documented as having been in the Phoenix Islands was in the possession of John William Jones, a coconut plantation supervisor on Hull (now Orona) Island, about 150 miles east of Nikumaroro. Jones’ radio is reliably reported to have been out of order between early June and late August of 1937 .

6. TIGHAR analysis of the whole body of radio messages indicates only two plausible explanations for them. Either an extremely well-informed hoaxer with an undocumented radio was on one of the western Phoenix Islands imitating Earhart’s voice, or Earhart was there .

7. Search plane crews from USS Colorado, flying over Nikumaroro seven days after the disappearance, reported “signs of recent habitation” but, believing the island to be inhabited, concluded that they were not related to Earhart, so the Colorado did not land a search party . The island had not been officially inhabited since 1892, and we have discovered no records suggesting informal occupation.

8. British colonial officers who visited Nikumaroro in October of 1937 to see whether the island could be colonized found the island (as expected) to be uninhabited, but said they saw evidence suggesting an “overnight bivouac” (camp) .

9. A photograph taken by one of the officers shows an anomaly on the edge of the island’s northwestern reef that looks very much like an airplane’s landing gear . Detailed forensic image analysis currently underway thus far strongly suggests that the object imaged is consistent with the landing gear of Earhart’s Electra

10. Residents of the colony established on Nikumaroro in December of 1938, which lasted until 1963, report aircraft wreckage on the northwestern reef flat and in the lagoon. A US Navy pilot who visited the island during World War II reported local residents using aircraft control cable as a fishing line, which they said came from a plane wreck that had been on the island when they came .

11. TIGHAR has recovered pieces of aircraft wreckage from the remains of the colonial village on Nikumaroro; these appear to have been brought to the village to use in fabricating handicrafts. Some of these are from a B-24, probably one that crashed on Canton Island, some 230 miles to the northeast (people from Nikumaroro worked on Canton after World War II). Other pieces, including aluminum fragments and fragments of plexiglass, do not appear to match a B-24 but are consistent with a Lockheed Electra like Earhart’s .

12. In 1991, TIGHAR recovered parts of two shoes on Nikumaroro, identified by footwear specialists as a woman’s shoe and a man’s shoe. The former was identified as a “Blucher-style oxford” dating to the 1930s. Earhart wore such shoes on her flight, though the only example that can be measured in photographs appears to have been smaller than the one found by TIGHAR . Photographic evidence indicates that Earhart had at least three pairs of footgear on the plane, two of them Blucher-style oxfords, and there is documentary evidence suggesting a pair of hiking boots .

13. In 1940, the Nikumaroro colonists found thirteen bones of a human skeleton on the southeast end of the island next to the remains of a campfire with bird and turtle bones. Nearby the remains of a woman’s shoe and a man’s shoe were found, together with a sextant box and some small corks on chains. The bones were examined by two medical doctors. One said the bones came from an elderly Polynesian, the other said they were from an adult male of European or mixed race. The bone measurements taken by the second doctor have been analyzed by modern forensic anthropologists, whose studies indicate that they may more likely be those of a woman of European ethnic background, about 5’5” to 5’9” in height. Earhart would have fit this description. The bones have been lost .

14. The sextant box – which has also been lost – is recorded as having had two numbers on it: 1542 and 3500. Recent research has shown that during World War I, the U.S. Navy acquired a large number of nautical sextants, some of which were converted for aviation use. Known sextants acquired by the Navy from the Brandis Instrument Company carried serial numbers ranging from 3227 to 5760, and were assigned Navy numbers 845 through 4705; these numbers were stamped into the boxes as well as the instruments themselves. The numbers on the Nikumaroro sextant box thus suggest that it held a Brandis instrument owned for a time by the U.S. Navy.

15. The second number on the box – 3500 – is also close to the number 3547, which is written on a sextant box held by the Museum of Naval Aviation in Pensacola, Florida and is documented to have belonged to Fred Noonan . Fred Noonan is known to have used a nautical sextant as a back up and a photograph of the navigation room aboard a Pan Am clipper shows a box for a Brandis sextant. One of Noonan’s jobs in the 1930s was as a navigator trainer and a photograph of one his students shows a Brandis sextant.

16. In 1946 the late Floyd Kilts, a U.S. Coast Guardsman on duty on Nikumaroro, was told about the bones discovery by a local resident. Other Coast Guardsmen purchased wooden boxes built by the residents, with inlaid pieces of aircraft aluminum .

17. TIGHAR has identified a site on the southeast end of the island (the Seven Site) that closely matches the description given in British colonial records of the 1940 bones discovery site. Here we have found the remains of several cooking fires containing bird, fish, and turtle bones. There are also two clusters of giant clam (Tridacna sp.) shells on the site, apparently brought there so their meat could be consumed. Many of the clams in one cluster appear to have been opened by someone who tried to pry them open on the hinge side (as eastern U.S. oysters and some clams are opened); others have been opened by smashing them with rocks . Fishbones from the remains of cooking fires on the site suggest that whoever camped there was unselectively catching mostly rather small reef and lagoon fish, cooking them on the coals, and disposing of their bones in the fires; none of this behavior is consistent with fishing and fish preparation by indigenous Pacific islanders .

18. Finally, we have found a variety of artifacts at the Seven Site. Some of these are clearly of colonial or Coast Guard origin, but others are not . Among the artifacts recovered from the site in 2007 and 2010 are:

a. a broken bottle made by the Owens Illinois Glass company in New Jersey in 1933 containing traces of a substance containing oil and lanolin, probably either a skin cream or hair dressing;

b. a shattered bottle with the word “Mennen” embossed on its side in Art Deco lettering, apparently a 1930s cosmetic container of American origin;

c. a broken glass vessel identified as a small ointment pot;

d. two broken, partially melted bottles identified as dating to before World War II, found in the remains of a cooking fire where it appears they may have been used in attempts to boil water;

e. a U.S. manufactured jackknife, comparable to one carried on the Earhart Electra , that appears to have been taken apart, perhaps to re-use its parts;

f. the pull and slider from a size 06, “auto-lok” Talon brand zipper manufactured in the U.S. sometime between 1933 and 1936;

g. small fragments of red material chemically identified as probable cosmetic rouge;

h. two small pieces of thin beveled glass that match the mirror of a known 1930s vintage American woman’s compact.

Earhart is known to have carried a compact which, if it was like others of the period, would have contained rouge. U.S. Coast Guardsmen, island colonists, and British colonial officials are unlikely to have had such items. TIGHAR has found two photographs of Earhart holding rectangular objects consistent in size and shape to the sort of compact that would have held a mirror the size of the glass fragments found at the Seven Site. The apparent cosmetic containers are also more consistent with the presence of a Euroamerican woman on the site than with any of the others known to have used it. Zippers were used extensively by Earhart in her own clothing design, and by her friend Elsa Schiaparelli in designing some of Earhart’s wardrobe. The bottles in the fire suggest an effort to boil or distill drinking water – there is no fresh surface water on Nikumaroro except what can be caught during sporadic rain squalls.

Current Status of Research

TIGHAR conducted its most extensive excavation of the Seven Site in May-June 2010 , and analysis of results is currently underway. A TIGHAR team spent conducted archival research in Tarawa, the capital of Kiribati, in early 2011. Another team spent much of May 2011 in Fiji searching the Colonial War Memorial Hospital for the bones found on Nikumaroro in 1940, last reported in the Hospital in early 1942. Still another team visited the Solomon Islands and conducted oral historical research with the descendants of the Nikumaroro colonists. The data produced by these three studies are under analysis.

For further information or to join the search, please visit www.tighar.org, or contact:

• TIGHAR Executive Director Ric Gillespie at TIGHARIC@mac.com, or

• Senior Archaeologist Thomas F. King at tfking106@aol.com.

Books Related to the Research

• Amelia Earhart’s Shoes, AltaMira Press 2004; see http://www.altamirapress.com/Catalog/SingleBook.shtml?command=Search&db=^DB/CATALOG.db&eqSKUdata=0759101310

• Finding Amelia, Naval Institute Press 2007; see http://tighar.org/Projects/Earhart/Books/Books/findingamelia.htm

• Thirteen Bones, Dog Ear Press, 2009; see www.tomfking.com

(or from any bookseller)

Recent Media Coverage

The Discovery Channel aired a documentary on TIGHAR’s project on December 11, 2010.

Have We Given Up on Nikumaroro?

Since I mentioned the paper that Tom Roberts, Joe Cerniglia and I are working on, dealing with the Saipan Captivity Hypotheses for Earhart's/Noonan's disappearance, the question's understandably been raised: Are we abandoning the Nikumaroro Hypothesis?

The answer is: Certainly not.  I, at least, have three reasons for doing the paper:

1. We were asked to, by people in the Mariana Islands who think it would be useful to have a compact, critical analysis of the various "theories" that continue to prompt speculation;

2. We're sometimes criticised for not giving fair attention to hypotheses other than our own.  I don't think that criticism itself is especially fair; one can't pursue every hypothesis, and the sensible approach seems to me to be to pursue the most likely.  But it's true that we haven't spent a lot of time with the other propositions, and it's not a bad idea to do so.

3. It's an interesting exercise to try very hard, very deliberately, not simply to debunk an alternative proposition but to give it fair consideration, and that's what Tom, Joe and I intend to attempt.

So no, examining the Saipan Captivity Hypotheses doesn't reflect any falling-away from the Nikumaroro Hypothesis -- just an effort to meet what's perceived to be a need, to be fair, and to get a little brain-exercise.

We're Government Agents!

Tom Roberts, Joe Cerniglia and I are starting work on a paper for the forthcoming Marianas History Conference (June 14-16 on Saipan) -- a sober-sided analysis of the various Saipan Incarceration Hypotheses. In the course of which I just stumbled over the marvelous website at http://www.wingsoverkansas.com/earhart/article.asp?id=1325, which reveals that TIGHAR is an agent of the U.S. government in its ongoing conspiracy to conceal the truth -- ooops, Truth -- about what happened to Earhart, and that yet another book on this conspiracy will soon hit the streets.  Certainly an event worth anticipating, but I wish the government paid a bit better for the services we're providing.

Earhart Search 75 Symposium June 1-3

Commemorating the 75th anniversary of the disappearance of Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan over the Pacific in 1937, The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery (TIGHAR) is sponsoring the "Earhart Search 75" Symposium on June 1-3 at the Crystal Gateway Marriott in Arlington, VA. The symposium will include plenary sessions and break-out groups on different aspects of the Earhart/Noonan mystery and approaches to their solution, including:


Why we continue to care about the mystery after 75 years

Status of research pertaining to TIGHAR's "Nikumaroro Hypothesis," including:

Analysis of radio messages received after the disappearance

Tidal conditions on Nikumaroro during the week following the disappearance

Forensic photographic research results

Historical and oral historical research results

Archaeological research results, terrestrial and underwater

Analysis of artifacts, faunal remains, and other recovered data

Plans for deep-water search off Nikumaroro for Earhart's airplane

Plans for further terrestrial archaeological research at the possible site of Earhart's demise

Status of investigation of alternative hypotheses

A final answer to the mystery: approaches, challenges, solutions.


For further information please visit TIGHAR's website at www.tighar.org.

What’s Left on Nikumaroro?

Somebody asked me the other day: “Why do you want to go back to Nikumaroro? What’s left there besides (maybe) the airplane at the base of the reef?"  The question kind of surprised me, but it made me wonder if the perception is widespread that we’ve squeezed the island dry of information pertinent to the Earhart mystery. So let me take this opportunity to explain what I think is “left.”

1. The Airplane. Setting aside the question of plane wreckage at the base of the Nutiran reef – on which others are fixated, which will cost a lot of money to seek, and which I think is unlikely to be found (See http://ameliaearhartarchaeology.blogspot.com/2010/12/why-i-dont-think-well-find-airplane-and.html), there are other ways in which definitive piece of pieces of the airplane might be found. The colonial villagers were obviously collecting airplane parts to make into things. Some of these are clearly from a B-24/PB4Y, probably the one known to have crashed on Kanton Island, where some Nikumaroro residents worked during the War. Others are not, and are consistent with a Lockheed Electra. Somewhere in the village there could well be a piece or pieces with part numbers or other distinctive characteristics that could be tied directly to Earhart’s plane. We’ve done a good deal of searching in the Village, but Walt Holm has proposed a more detailed, focused search, perhaps using the ethnohistorical data we’ve compiled to focus in on most-likely locations, like the homesites of early (1939-42) residents, and such congregation areas as the sites of the two maneabas (meeting houses).

2. The Seven Site. Though we made a very good run at the Seven Site in 2010, there’s one portion of it that needs more examination, and could yield a real payoff. This is the area extending from the WR feature (where the two standing bottles, the snap (which, by the way, is a size match for snaps on a First Aid Kid acquired on EBay by Art Carty, of a type identified in the Luke Field inventory) and some of the probable rouge were found) to the southeast through the vicinity of the SL feature (where bottles, possible rouge, suspicious pieces of ferrous metal, buttons, pencil leads, the “gidgies” and other artifacts were recovered. We’ve never probed the area between the two features, and we should; plus, as Meg Lickliter-Mundon has argued, we need to explore the SL area itself more thoroughly, with probes to the north, southeast, and southwest, while Bill Carter has argued eloquently for Scaevola-slashing in all directions, notably toward the sea, in case the area on which we've focused is, in effect, a product of our focusing on it. Any of these initiatives might or might not produce smoking guns, but we’d almost certainly get data to help build on the evidence we’ve already acquired, and nail down just what happened at the site.

3. The LORAN Station. We suspect that some of the artifacts at the Seven Site that tend to confuse us may have come from the 1944-46 LORAN station, but we don’t really know what sorts of bottles and other such objects were there. I think we’ve figured out where the station dump was (It’s buried). An excavation there could give us useful comparative data.

4. The Aukaraime Shoe/Bivouac Site. We worked in 1997 at the site where the Shoe parts were found in 1991, which corresponds with Bevington’s 1937 “Bivouac” site. I’m not convinced that we’ve looked there carefully enough. This was a point that Kent Spading insisted upon and I rejected for a long time, but the more I think about it, the more I think he was right; this could have been an intermediate castaway camp en route to the Seven Site, and it merits a closer look.

5. Other possible campsites. The prime target here is “Camp Zero,” the location on northern Nutiran where – assuming we’re right about the landing place, and about the “Nessie” image – Earhart and Noonan would most likely have camped after getting off the plane. I’ve not been enthusiastic about this site, thinking it had been worked over pretty thoroughly both by the colonists and by storms, but studies by Art Carty have indicated that the vegetation depicted there in 1937 may essentially still be there today, suggesting that the site may not be too badly disturbed. I still think it’s a long shot, but it could reveal something. There might be other campsites “intermediate” between the landing site and the Seven Site – though Tom Roberts and Mark Smith demonstrated in 2010 that one can walk from one to another at a leisurely pace in only about four hours. If there are such sites, we don’t know where they are, but serendipity has struck before, and might again.

So I think there’s lots remaining to be done on Nikumaroro – plane search or no plane search. And while I understand that our sometime media underwriters don’t think they need any more footage of people hacking through Scaevola and scratching in the coral with Marshalltown trowels, I’m sorry, folks; that’s what we do. Archaeology is a painstaking process (my dear colleague Indy to the contrary notwithstanding), and the payoff comes in piecing together little bits of evidence – seldom in the form of obvious smoke-puffing pistolas.