Amelia Earhart. Photo / AP
New forensic imaging techniques are being used to solve the mystery of the final resting place of Amelia Earhart, whose plane vanished over the Pacific as she tried to become the first woman pilot to circumnavigate the globe.
Photographic analysts are poring over a high-resolution computer enhancement of a 1937
picture of Earhart's plane to try to establish whether a distinctive area of repaired metal sheeting matches a piece of wreckage recovered from an uninhabited atoll in Micronesia.
A leading Earhart researcher believes that a match of the rivet patterns would provide "conclusive proof" that the aviator was not, as was widely believed, lost at sea, but instead landed on Gardner Island, now Nikumaroro in the archipelago of Kiribati, 3,200 kilometres west of Mexico.
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That forensic breakthrough would in turn indicate that the aviator may have died of starvation, illness or thirst, instead of being killed when her plane crashed into the ocean as she and her navigator, Fred Noonan, desperately searched for land. The picture of Earhart's Electra aircraft was taken on June 1, 1937, as she prepared to take off for Puerto Rico during her second attempt to fly around the world. She had spent eight days in Miami while the plane had repairs and the photograph shows a distinctive shiny rectangular patch towards the back of the plane that clearly stands out from the rest of the fuselage.
