Amelia Earhart Nikumaroro Island photos released by New Zealand museum
The Air Force Museum of New Zealand has released nearly 50 black-and-white photos from a 1938 aerial survey of Nikumaroro Island, where Amelia Earhart is believed to have crash-landed. The 47 high-resolution images went online after several requests and renewed interest sparked by a US expedition to the island.
Amelia Earhart Nikumaroro Island photos released by New Zealand museum
Photos found in Christchurch archives
Nearly 50 black-and-white photos from a 1938 aerial survey of the island where Amelia Earhart is believed to have crash-landed have been made public by the Air Force Museum of New Zealand, which had received several requests for them. The full set of 47 images is now online in high-resolution digital format, although lower-quality versions had already appeared on blogs. The negatives were found more than a decade ago by Matthew O'Sullivan, the keeper of photographs at the museum in Christchurch.
A 'goldmine' from 1 December 1938
Ric Gillespie, Earhart's most prominent investigator, described the images as a "goldmine" in his blog. According to Gillespie, they form a complete set of aerial photos taken on 1 December 1938 by an amphibious biplane during a New Zealand survey seeking airbase locations. The images are some of the earliest photographic evidence of the island.
The island at the centre of the Earhart mystery
Earhart and her navigator Fred Noonan disappeared on 2 July 1937 during an attempt to circumnavigate the globe at the equator, prompting a stop-and-start search that has run for eight decades. Before that flight, she had broken several records, including becoming the first woman to fly a nonstop solo trip across the Atlantic.
One explanation for her fate says her aircraft ran dry of fuel and she became stranded on Nikumaroro, then called Gardner Island. Supporters of the hypothesis point to traces of a castaway's campsite and artefacts, among them glass from a jar believed to have held cosmetic cream, and suggest she lived for a time on rainwater, fish and turtles. The island, which belongs to Kiribati, has seen dozens of visits.
Purdue team hunting the Taraia Object
A Purdue University team of archaeologists and scientists, based in Indianapolis, is combing a section of the atoll this week for the "Taraia Object", an elongated form in the lagoon that surfaced in a satellite image taken in 2020. Gillespie and other veteran Earhart researchers are sceptical: in their view the shape is more likely a toppled tree than the remains of her Lockheed Model 10-E Electra. The new photographs, for now, show nothing in the Taraia area.
Conditions have not helped. The expedition said severe weather had interfered with its metal-detecting work. Rick Pettigrew, the expedition lead and executive director of the Archaeological Legacy Institute, cautioned that identification takes time:
This is a complex scientific process. You don't simply arrive at a site and immediately identify what's there.
Purdue University said in a statement that, even with Thursday's weather hold-up, field operations will run for two more days as planned, and word on whether the Taraia Object has been identified is expected within 48 hours.
