Finding Amelia Earhart’s Plane Seemed Impossible. Then Came a Startling Clue.
Robert Ballard has found the Titanic and other famous shipwrecks. This month his crew started trying to solve one of the 20th century’s greatest mysteries.
Robert Ballard is the finder of important lost things.
In 1985, he discovered the Titanic scattered beneath the Atlantic Ocean. He and his team also located the giant Nazi battleship Bismarck and, more recently, 18 shipwrecks in the Black Sea.
Dr. Ballard has always wanted to find the remains of the plane Amelia Earhart was flying when she disappeared in 1937. But he feared the hunt would be yet another in a long line of futile searches.
“You have it in a holding pattern in your head,” said Dr. Ballard, founder of the Ocean Exploration Trust. “You’re still saying, ‘No, no, it’s too big a search area.’”
Then, a few years ago, another group of explorers found clues so compelling that Dr. Ballard changed his mind. Now, not only is he certain he knows where the plane is, he has set course for a remote atoll in the Pacific island nation of Kiribati to recover it.
If his expedition succeeds, he’ll not only solve one of the enduring mysteries of the 20th century. The 77-year-old explorer will also be transferring his legacy of discovery to a new generation of oceanic detectives.
Until recently, Dr. Ballard accepted the Navy’s version of Earhart’s fate: On July 2, 1937, near the end of their round-the-world flight, the aviator and her navigator, Fred Noonan, vanished over the Pacific. After a lengthy and costly search, the Navy concluded on July 18, 1937, that the two died shortly after crashing into the ocean.
But in 2012, an old friend presented Dr. Ballard with a startling alternative.
Kurt M. Campbell, who served as assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs in the Obama administration, invited Dr. Ballard to a meeting. The two had known each other since their days in Naval intelligence.
Mr. Campbell ushered him into his office, Dr. Ballard recalled in a recent interview: “He closed the door, and he said, ‘I want to show you a picture.’”
First, he offered Dr. Ballard a grainy black-and-white photo. “He said, ‘What do you see?’ I said, ‘I see an island with a ship on a reef?’ And he said, ‘No, look over to the left.’”
As Dr. Ballard squinted at the blur, Mr. Campbell handed him a second, digitally enhanced image. Mr. Campbell said the smudge was landing gear from a Lockheed Model 10-E Electra. And the reef in the picture was part of tiny Nikumaroro Island, in the mostly uninhabited Phoenix Islands.
There it was, a precise place to look for Earhart’s plane.
“I went, ‘I’ll be damned,’” he said. “‘That really narrows the search, doesn’t it?’”
The old photograph was taken by Eric Bevington, a British colonial officer, in October 1937, three months after Earhart disappeared. Mr. Bevington and his team had scouted Gardner Island, now called Nikumaroro. A British freighter had run aground years before on the northwest corner of the island, and the young officer snapped a picture of it.
Mr. Bevington didn’t know he had also captured something sticking out of the water. The Bevington Object, as it became known, was less than one millimeter long — a tiny speck near the edge of the frame.
Robert Ballard is the finder of important lost things.
In 1985, he discovered the Titanic scattered beneath the Atlantic Ocean. He and his team also located the giant Nazi battleship Bismarck and, more recently, 18 shipwrecks in the Black Sea.
Dr. Ballard has always wanted to find the remains of the plane Amelia Earhart was flying when she disappeared in 1937. But he feared the hunt would be yet another in a long line of futile searches.
“You have it in a holding pattern in your head,” said Dr. Ballard, founder of the Ocean Exploration Trust. “You’re still saying, ‘No, no, it’s too big a search area.’”
Then, a few years ago, another group of explorers found clues so compelling that Dr. Ballard changed his mind. Now, not only is he certain he knows where the plane is, he has set course for a remote atoll in the Pacific island nation of Kiribati to recover it.
If his expedition succeeds, he’ll not only solve one of the enduring mysteries of the 20th century. The 77-year-old explorer will also be transferring his legacy of discovery to a new generation of oceanic detectives.
Until recently, Dr. Ballard accepted the Navy’s version of Earhart’s fate: On July 2, 1937, near the end of their round-the-world flight, the aviator and her navigator, Fred Noonan, vanished over the Pacific. After a lengthy and costly search, the Navy concluded on July 18, 1937, that the two died shortly after crashing into the ocean.
But in 2012, an old friend presented Dr. Ballard with a startling alternative.
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| Robert Ballard, lead scientist, and Allison Fundis, the expedition leader, discussing the mission at a talk last month in Beverly Hills. “I feel like Leakey handing it off to Jane Goodall,” Dr. Ballard said. |
Mr. Campbell ushered him into his office, Dr. Ballard recalled in a recent interview: “He closed the door, and he said, ‘I want to show you a picture.’”
First, he offered Dr. Ballard a grainy black-and-white photo. “He said, ‘What do you see?’ I said, ‘I see an island with a ship on a reef?’ And he said, ‘No, look over to the left.’”
As Dr. Ballard squinted at the blur, Mr. Campbell handed him a second, digitally enhanced image. Mr. Campbell said the smudge was landing gear from a Lockheed Model 10-E Electra. And the reef in the picture was part of tiny Nikumaroro Island, in the mostly uninhabited Phoenix Islands.
There it was, a precise place to look for Earhart’s plane.
“I went, ‘I’ll be damned,’” he said. “‘That really narrows the search, doesn’t it?’”
The old photograph was taken by Eric Bevington, a British colonial officer, in October 1937, three months after Earhart disappeared. Mr. Bevington and his team had scouted Gardner Island, now called Nikumaroro. A British freighter had run aground years before on the northwest corner of the island, and the young officer snapped a picture of it.
Mr. Bevington didn’t know he had also captured something sticking out of the water. The Bevington Object, as it became known, was less than one millimeter long — a tiny speck near the edge of the frame.
Amelia Earhart’s Last Flight
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Sources: The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery (Tighar); Google
By The New York Times
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Decades later, an organization called The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery, or Tighar, received Mr. Bevington’s pictures. The group is a nonprofit organization dedicated to aviation archaeology and aircraft preservation. It has been heavily involved in searching for Earhart at Nikumaroro.
