[Ski]

^ yes. TIGHAR page goes into excrutiating detail attempting to support the argument that a scrap of aluminum found near Gardner Island (Nikumaroro) is from Earhart's aircraft Wikipedia page on Gardner Island (Nikumaroro) What's not mentioned in any of this discussion are the vast distances between these tiny little "islands" in the South Pacific, many of which are not much more than skinny atolls around salt lagoons, like Nikumaroro, which is 400 miles away from Howland Island. That's about the same distance as driving from Seattle to Grants Pass, Oregon. Everything in between is ocean. Hundreds and hundreds of miles of ocean. There's a reason why the islands in the South Pacific were the last places on the planet to be populated by mammals (if any made it to them at all) or humans.

[InFlight]

[thunderhead]

[InFlight]

[gb]

Just two questions for the naysayers - What about the photo - not a digital image, a photo? I would agree that in as much as it was a photo the History Channel folks went into some dumb stuff about image noise, blah, blah, blah as if it was a digital image from 1937 or thereabouts. Question 2: Why would the Marshall Islands issue four stamps regarding Earhart 30 years ago if the Earhart story had nothing to do with the Marshall Islands.

You can dismiss the witnesses, three of whom had the same story many years ago. But that doesn't seem logical. They were flying in cloudy weather and using Noonan's sight based navigation. Could they end up far off, ? Did notes/communications from Earhart indicate she planned to turn back with four hours of fuel left?

[Backpacker Joe]

Ok, I get it. What I want to know is, what about the NEW Earhart? Flt 370? That is the new AE. hope it doesnt rain down on us one day full of explosives.

[thunderhead]

[Randito]

I think the bottom line is there isn't enough evidence to conclusively support any theory of exactly what happened. However the human mind prefers answers over uncertainty -- so the history channel executives figured they could produce a show that enough people would watch that they could sell some advertising. Next year they may very well produce a new show pursuing a different theory. If there is controversy over the theory that gets picked up in the media - well that's just free advertising for the show that will drive up ratings and ad revenue.

[Randito]

As to the eyewitness accounts, remember that there was a massive search effort following their disappearance and lots of media coverage. So the eyewitnesses may very well have been folks very willing to tell reports something they wanted to hear.

[tmatlack]

Gahhh, I am throat punching myself cuz I can't remember which book I read about the last flight. I guess it was TIGHAR and Gillispie. Anyway, in that book, a very creepy foreshadowing on the West to East trans-Atlantic hop from Brazil to Senegal. They missed the runway too far north. They got lucky, chose a southerly hunt, and found it, but on the tarmac, Earhardt asked Noonan, "Fred, why were we so far north? What put us north?" Noonan replied, "I don't know." That hop wasn't nearly as long as the Howland leg and finding the coast of continental Africa is a lot easier than finding an island with max. elevation of 20 feet! Tom PS: as I remember the book was solid until he started extrapolating his Marshall Island theory??

[gb]

[DIYSteve]

[Ski]

[DIYSteve]

[Ski]