Search to solve 67-year-old Earhart mystery

Amelia Earhart waves to the crowd in 1932 after becoming the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic. Picture / Keystone

At 5100 metres beneath the surface, the temperature of the ocean is just above freezing, oxygen is sparse and currents are relatively calm.

In other words, ideal conditions for preserving an aeroplane that might have crashed there nearly 70 years ago, said marine explorer David Jourdan, who hopes to answer one of aviation's greatest mysteries - the fate of pilot Amelia Earhart.

Jourdan and his Maine-based company, Nauticos, plan to launch an expedition next year using sonar to sweep a 2560sq km swathe of ocean floor west of the tiny Howland Island in the Pacific Ocean.

It is the latest in a string of missions to learn what happened to Earhart when she, her navigator and their Lockheed Electra plane disappeared on a flight around the world.

"Things tend to last a time" in the deep ocean, said Jourdan. "Our expectation is the plane will be largely, if not completely, intact."

That is, if the plane is even in the ocean.

There is a host of theories about what befell Earhart and navigator Fred Noonan in 1937 as they made one of the final legs of their widely heralded flight.

Some have searched the sea, believing the plane ran out of fuel. Others think she survived a crash landing but died on a deserted island. Another theory is that the Japanese captured and executed her. The conspiracy-minded claim Earhart survived and lived out her life under an assumed name as a New Jersey housewife.

This much is agreed on: Earhart and Noonan vanished on July 2, 1937, as they approached an air strip on Howland Island, roughly midway between Australia and Hawaii. They had taken off from Papua New Guinea, just 11,000km short of their goal to make Earhart the first woman to fly around the world.

Earhart set a string of altitude, distance and endurance records in the 1920s and 1930s, proving that the still-young world of flying wasn't reserved for men. She captivated a Depression-era America eager for heroes, was feted by presidents and was compared with Charles Lindbergh.

The United States Navy launched a weeks-long search of 640,000sq km of ocean around Howland and a nearby chain of small islands. No trace was found.

Elgen Long, a former commercial pilot who has spent 30 years researching the mystery, will be part of the Nauticos mission. Long, 77, of Reno, Nevada, believes the answer to Earhart and Noonan's fate lies in their radio communications with a US Coast Guard cutter tracking their course near Howland Island.

Using Coast Guard radio operator's logs, Long concluded Earhart was perilously low on fuel because a headwind was much stronger than she had expected. One of her last radio calls said she had only a half hour of fuel left and couldn't see land. "We can follow her all the way across the Pacific," he said of the radio records. "She ran out of gas just when she said she was going to."

This is Jourdan's second search of the area; a 2002 mission was aborted because of technical problems. Another mission searched the same general area in 1999 but found nothing conclusive.

Jourdan said his new expedition, costing about US$1.5 million ($2.08 million), would use better sonar technology and more accurate information on where the plane may have crashed.

The shortage of oxygen and the still water means a metal aeroplane likely would not have completely corroded, he said.

Any human remains would have long vanished, but Jourdan hopes to find clues such as Earhart's jewellery in the pilot's seat, or perhaps even her leather jacket. "That would be eerie," he said.

If he finds the plane, Nauticos would plan another mission to raise it. Then it would become the centrepiece of a travelling exhibition on Earhart's life.

Earhart's stepson, George Putnam, was 16 when her plane disappeared. Now 83 and living in Florida, he said he supported the mission partly because it could end the wild speculation about what happened to her. He doesn't mind if Nauticos salvages the plane.

To Long, it could be his last chance to solve one of the 20th Century's biggest mysteries.

"We need the true story of what happened," he said. "The history we read needs to be correct."

Amelia Earhart

American pilot who, in 1932, became the first woman - and second person - to fly solo across the Atlantic, on the fifth anniversary of Charles Lindbergh's feat. She flew a Lockheed Vega from Harbor Grace, Newfoundland, to Londonderry, Ireland.

Disappeared crossing the Pacific Ocean with navigator Fred Noonan in 1937 on an around-the-world flight.

- NZPA