Amelia Earhart's Plane Was Finally Found

[Music] Amelia Earhart was adored as the most well-known female aviator in the world setting aerial record after aerial record her name echoed through the country and was plastered on newspapers nationwide she was the aviation pioneer of the 20s and 30s but then came the fateful day in 1937 when Amelia became famous for a very different reason her unsolvable mysterious shocking and tragic disappearance all kinds of wild theories have circulated ever since was she a spy captured by the Japanese did she sink to the bottom of the ocean did she return to the US and live a double life thanks to modern technology and the ongoing expeditions of a few dedicated individuals we finally have the answers from an early age it was clear that Amelia Mary Earhart was destined for greatness she would have been remembered as an historical icon regardless of whether or not she had disappeared all the mystery did was solidify her name and etch it even deeper into the history books as a youngster growing up in Kansas Amelia was always described as it lasts with an insatiable sense for adventure and adrenaline she'd be climbing trees exploring neighborhoods and spending as much time as she could in the great outdoors admiring the natural beauty of the world even though her appetite for adventure was second to none it wasn't until well into her early adult life that her radar locked onto a career in the skies at the age of 23 Amelia strapped into a small racer plane alongside famous flier Frank Hawks taking off from Long Beach California from that point on she was hooked that single flight lit a fire in her belly and was the first step in route to Amelia becoming just the sixteenth female pilot in history and in hindsight the most critical after young Amelia and her navigator Fred Noonan fell out of the sky into oblivion on the dunes 1937 journey she would forever be remembered however in the decade leading up to the disaster the Earhart name was already up in lights in 1927 flying across the Atlantic Ocean was all the rage pilot Charles Lindbergh had just completed the first solo feat creating a domino effect that would span over the following decade inspired by Charles's achievements a woman named Amy guests intended to be the first woman to cross the ocean by air but pulled the pin at the last moment that led to our dear Amelia getting the call so test with the of log keeper on June 17 1928 Amelia alongside pilot Wilmer Stultz and co-pilot Louis Gordon departed from tripathi Harbor and Newfoundland on the far eastern side of Canada right about here arriving in birdie port in South Wales exactly 20 hours and 40 minutes later fast-forward four years to May 20th 1932 and Amelia took the next critical step ditching Wilmer and Lewis now strapped solo into a red Lockheed Vega aircraft Earhart became the first woman in history to fly non-stop and alone across the Atlantic Ocean nobody since Charles Lindbergh had managed to do so her 15 hour achievement crossing from Harbor grace and Newfoundlands to London berry to Northern Ireland was handsomely acknowledged the accolades poured in the Distinguished Flying Cross from Congress the cross of knight of the Legion of Honour from the French government and the gold medal of the National Geographic Society it seemed as though she was setting record after record just three months later she earned the title of the first woman to fly non-stop and solo across the USA jetting from Los Angeles to New York City in a sizzling nineteen hours about four times as long as a commercial flight takes today little could go wrong in the eyes of America Amelia was a hero and then of course came the tragic events of 1937 a disappearance that would evolve into one of the greatest mysteries of the 20th and 21st centuries a mystery which has left hundreds of scientists investigators and analysts and aviation experts scratching their heads in bewilderment where did it all go wrong let's take a look with achievements and accolades to boot Amelia wanted to take it to the next level she wanted to become the first woman to fly around the world step1 California to Hawaii the flight landed safely but thereafter it was nothing but trouble her plane faced mechanical issues and both the aircraft and its adored pilot were forced to return to America the first attempt was a failure after securing additional funding amelia was ready for a second attempt this time she would circumnavigate the globe traveling west to east strapped into a twin-engine Lockheed 10e Electra and accompanied by navigator Fred Noonan Amelia set off on round two quietly making their way cross country from Oakland to Miami once they had arrived on the USA's East Coast the publicity ramped up and now the world was watching from there the flight path ran through Puerto Rico Venezuela Suriname Brazil Senegal French Sudan which is now Mali Eritrea Pakistan India Thailand Singapore the Dutch East Indies Australia and what would prove to be her final landing place lay e in Papua New Guinea the end was in sight just two thousand five hundred and fifty six nautical miles to her next stop Howland Island then 1900 to Honolulu and 2400 before landing safely in California on July 2nd 1937 in route from Papua New Guinea to Howland Island the US Coast Guard received a radio transmission the voice exclaimed we cannot see you fuel is running low been unable to reach you by radio we are flying at 1,000 feet that was the last piece of communication on record from Amelia and Fred an immediate four million-dollar search was launched to uncover the bodies or the wreckage the most expensive in history until that point but for decades leads were non-existent with no proof turning up despite authorities best efforts people started to wonder what actually happened to the plane was it all a cover-up how does it make sense that no evidence was found investigators were baffled and rightly so they legally declared Amelia and Fred deceased in 1939 but not because they had proof that they died rather because they had no proof that they survived it took three whole years for the first clue to emerge from the ashes over on this empty remote island called Nikumaroro spanning his 4.7 miles long and 1.6 miles wide a team from the Phoenix islands settlement scheme stumbled across what looks to be human bones this led to further insight including a woman's shoe still despite finding bones in a shoe no evidence of the plane on earth enter the castaway theory many believe that Amelia and Fred successfully landed somewhere only to eventually perish due to a lack of supplies and communication and the plane swept out to sea discovery of these bones excited scientists however upon analysis they were declared by this do dr. DW hoodless to have belongs to a five-foot five inch tall stocky male they just didn't match a melius description so the search hit another road and there was still no evidence of the plane over the years other theories emerged analysis became focused on one particular photograph this one which was taken in October of 1937 by a cadet named Eric Bevington three months after Earhart disappeared focus your attention toward the little black smudge on the left side of the image according to the international group for historic aircraft recovery or tiger for short that smudge may have been the landing gear from the Lockheed Electra model 10 here's the landing gear photographed after the mishap in Hawaii and here's the similar shape of the Bebbington photo what do you think a clear resemblance or too hard to tell when dr. Robert Ballard the man who found the Titanic and other famous shipwrecks got a glimpse of this photo he teamed up with Tiger and the search intensified then of course there's the spy theory allegedly Amelia Earhart wasn't just a record-breaking aviator but also an American undercover agent and her plane didn't go down it was taken down this idea suggests that she was retrieved and taken captive by the Japanese and held in Saipan it's not merely a wild conjecture a History Channel documentary was released that poses some very legitimate questions see this photo it was taken on July 8 at all in the Marshall Islands could that person on the Left be Amelia's navigator with Amelia being the figure with her back turned if that's not enough to spark interest the documentary also claims that the blurry section of the right side of the image could very well be the Electra whether true or not it begs the question why was this photo buried so deep in the National Archives for decades before surfacing in 2017 is there more to the story some say that it was hidden because in reality Amelia Earhart returned to the USA and began a new life in New Jersey we'll let you decide that one for yourself for the better part of a century investigators followed vague leads like these that were few and far between they begged for a definitive answer with little progress the official position from the US government is that Earhart and Noonan crashed into the Pacific Ocean based on assumption not proof but now with technology and analysis far more advanced than it was in the 1930s answers may finally be available let us introduce you to Ric Gillespie the of tiger in 1991 he and his team took a three-week trip to nakooma RORO and what did they find actual proof this artifact a piece of Alcoa aluminum is thought to be the first definitive piece of Earhart's plane it was the same size of a pax that had been fitted to the electorate to replace a damaged window a piece of material like this would be worth hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars to museums if proven to be entirely legitimate that piece of evidence caused Gillespie to return to the island again and again and he kept finding proof on a subsequent visit he uncovered five broken pieces of a jar when reassembled the glass fragments made up a nearly complete jar identical to the ones used to hold dr. Berry's freckle augment it's well known that Amelia Earhart was not fond of her freckles so carrying a small jar on her multiple week-long trip wasn't unlikely according to Gillespie what's more important than the exact contents of the jar was the fact that four of the five broken pieces were found in one spot the fifth shard however was discovered about 65 feet away near the bones of a turtle indicating that the piece may have been used as a cutting tool for food if this theory has any merit how long could they actually have survived a few weeks from the time they ran out of food easy but from the moment they were without water the time frame shrinks significantly to just a few days remember these stocky man's bones found in 1940 well decades later scientists were forced to rethink their earlier analysis a 20-18 DNA study on those bones conducted by University of Tennessee professor richard chance suggested that they did not belong to a man and instead were a close match to Earhart back in 1940 forensics techniques were lacking in expertise but why did it take nearly 80 years to reanalyze the bones simply put just like Amelia they went missing then they popped up in a museum on the island of Tarawa reigniting the investigation and finally leading to answers even though the massive two-week search authorized by President Franklin D Roosevelt in 1937 caused four million dollars in the time since with nonprofit organizations like Tiger doing their own digging and government's reopening the case the total cost far surpasses that initial number what do you think is the most likely explanation share your thoughts don't forget to Like subscribe and as always thanks for watching see you next time

Channel: TheRichest

Views: 1,754,699

Rating: 4.3036838 out of 5

Keywords: missing, cold case, plane, flying, investigation, fbi, deserted island, mystery, solved, evidence, proof, DNA, amelia earhart, the richest, unsolved

Id: LC5ukgIzHL0

Length: 11min 5sec (665 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 18 2020