Earhart theory to be tested

Amelia Earhart

NEW YORK - It remains one of the greatest mysteries of the Golden Age of Flight: what happened to the American pioneer aviator Amelia Earhart when she disappeared over the Pacific Ocean 72 years ago?

The question might finally be answered by a forthcoming expedition to a tiny archipelago where researchers believed Earhart might have lived as a lonely and doomed castaway on an isolated desert island.

In order to test their theory, the expedition, organised by The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery (Tighar), has obtained DNA samples from a member of the Earhart family and will compare them to any findings they make on Nikumaroro Island in the Kiribati area.

"I am quite optimistic. We have every reason to believe that we can find some material there and now we have a sample to compare it with for the first time," said Ric Gillespie, director of Tighar.

Gillespie's team has been working on Nikumaroro for almost a decade, following up reports from 1940 when British officials, who were clearing the then uninhabited island for a coconut plantation, discovered a camp site and skeletal remains of a castaway.

Those remains were lost, but their measurements indicated they could be of a European female. In 2007 Gillespie found the site and uncovered early 20th-century make-up and two pieces of broken glass that could have come from a 1930s-style compact mirror.

Gillespie said that modern DNA analysis techniques meant that any other human artefacts recovered could now be swabbed for the tiniest traces of DNA and compared to the Earhart family sample. His team will be looking for traces of mitochondrial DNA, which breaks down less easily than the chromosomal DNA of a cell's nucleus.

Gillespie said that the mission, which will begin next summer, has every chance of success: "It is the intellectual challenge of finding out what happened. It is the thrill of the search. There is rarely any chance in archaeology to have an Indiana Jones experience - it actually all happens in the lab or at your desk when you finally figure something out."

The mission is controversial with some Earhart enthusiasts. It is partly based on a theory that Earhart was able to send distress signals from somewhere on land after she had crashed her plane, the Lady Lindy. Tighar believes those signals show she ditched her plane and survived by making it to an isolated island. Others, including searchers at the time, believe that those calls were cruel hoaxes and misunderstood radio signals.

What is not in doubt is the continued fascination Earhart holds in the popular imagination. She was a character in Night at the Museum 2 and in a few months' time a biopic starring Hilary Swank will be released.

Gillespie said, "We recognise her tremendous accomplishments, but we are scientific investigators. We have to recognise her failings. She ended up where she did because she was not paying enough attention."

FLIGHT PATH

* In 1928 Amelia Earhart became the first woman to command a flight across the Atlantic, although her plane was actually piloted by a man.
* She then organised cross-country races for female pilots.
* In 1932 she duplicated Charles Lindbergh's famous solo flight over the Atlantic, becoming only the second person to fly alone from America to Europe.
* In 1937 on a round-the-world flight Earhart's plane got into trouble over the Pacific. Earhart radioed that she was running out of fuel and, it is believed, ditched her plane somewhere near Howland Island.
* A massive air and sea search turned up nothing.

- OBSERVER