Amelia Earhart disappeared 88 years ago, on July 2, 1937. Purdue thinks it knows where.
WEST LAFAYETTE, IN — On the 88th anniversary of Amelia Earhart's disappearance, the Purdue Research Foundation and the Archaeological Legacy Institute (ALI) announced a joint effort to locate the flight pioneer's long lost aircraft.
The official search, named the "Taraia Object Expedition," will begin on Nov. 5, PRF said in a news release Wednesday morning ahead of a press conference, when a field team organized by ALI visits the island Nikumaroro, part of the Phoenix Islands in the island nation of Kiribati, by sea.
The expedition, the release said, will determine whether a visual anomaly known as the "Taraia Object," seen in satellite and other imagery in the island's lagoon, is what remains of Earhart's Lockheed Electra 10E airplane.
Standing directly in front of the hangar Earhart once flew out of at the Purdue University Airport, Richard Pettigrew, ALI's executive director, said the expedition could be the "greatest opportunity ever" to finally close the nearly century-old mystery.
"With such a great amount of very strong evidence, we feel we have no choice but to move forward and hopefully return with proof," Pettigrew said. "I look forward to collaborating with Purdue Research Foundation in writing the final chapter in Amelia Earhart's remarkable life story.'
Earhart became a visiting professor at Purdue in 1935, and she's one of Purdue's most famous former staff members. A New York Times headline from 1936 proclaimed, "MISS EARHART TO GET 'FLYING LABORATORY'; Purdue Announces $50,000 Fund to Provide a Special Plane for Her Researches."
On July 2, 1937, she disappeared over the Pacific Ocean while attempting to become the first female pilot to circumnavigate the world.
'About nine decades ago, Amelia Earhart was recruited to Purdue, and the university president later worked with her to prepare an aircraft for her historic flight around the world,' Purdue President Mung Chiang said in the release. 'Today, as a team of experts try again to locate the plane, the Boilermaker spirit of exploration lives on.'
Steven Schultz, senior vice president and general counsel of Purdue University, said that in recognition of the foundation's contribution, Earhart and her husband, George Putnam, intended to give the plane to Purdue upon her return, where it would be used to further scientific research in aeronautics.
'Both Earhart and her husband and manager, George Putnam, expressed their intention to return the Electra to Purdue after her historic flight,' Schultz said. 'Based on the evidence, we agree with ALI that this expedition offers the best chance not only to solve perhaps the greatest mystery of the 20th century, but also to fulfill Amelia's wishes and bring the Electra home.'
The price tag of the November expedition is estimated at $900K, Schultz said. Of the total, $400K has been raised so far through efforts by ALI, Schultz said, with the remaining $500K being provided by PRF through a line of credit.
No Purdue faculty are scheduled to be included on the expedition, Schultz said, but Purdue alumnus Marc Hagle, who became the first married couple alongside his wife, Sharon, in 2022 to embark on a commercial space flight with Blue Origin, has been designated as a special emissary to the exploration.
The Electra, which disappeared on July 2, 1937, has never been recovered, but a vast amount of circumstantial evidence has been amassed, the release said, largely by The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery (TIGER) over nearly 40 years, supporting the Nikumaroro hypothesis. This idea posits that Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan, did not crash at sea but instead landed and were marooned on an uninhabited island and subsequently perished there.
The hypothesis, as updated by ALI with new evidence for the Taraia Object, is based on documentary records, photographs and satellite images, physical evidence, and personal testimony, the release said, including these highlights:
Radio bearings recorded from radio transmissions at the time by the U.S. Navy, the U.S. Coast Guard and Pan American World Airways, which converge on Nikumaroro
A 2017 analysis of human bones discovered on the island in 1940, which determined Earhart's bone lengths were more similar to the discovered bones than 99% of individuals, strongly supporting the conclusion they belong to Earhart
Artifacts including a woman's shoe, a compact case, a freckle cream jar and a medicine vial — all dating to the 1930s
The Bevington Object, a photographic anomaly captured just three months after the plane's disappearance, which appears to represent one of the Electra landing gear on the Nikumaroro reef
The Taraia Object, located in 2020, which has been in the same place in the lagoon since 1938
Schultz said in his more than 12 years as general counsel for the university, Purdue and PRF have been contacted "several" times with claims that the plane had been located, but none had been as strong of a case as ALI's.
Some of the evidence that strengthens ALI's case, Schultz said, is evidence of directional bearings from Earhart's radio signals captured at the time. Schultz said Earhart's voice was heard on U.S. mainland over radio signals in the days following her disappearance, which could have been possible only had her plane survived.
Pettigrew said it is often misunderstood that Earhart's plane "crash landed," but he said that couldn't have been true.
"We're talking about a successful landing on the reef with an intact aircraft," Pettigrew said. "I think it's likely that Amelia was planning to be rescued, refueled, take off again and make it to Hawaii and continue on to California to complete her journey. That was her hope. And for a period of maybe five days, that hope remained alive."
But in the days that followed Earhart's landing on the remote island, Pettigrew said, the tide would have risen, causing the airplane, which had been completely depleted of fuel, to be lifted off its landing place.
"In this concept, the plane would have been rolled and crashed up against the reef as a consequence of the surf and would have broken up," Pettigrew said. "The outer wings would have come off first, then the engine, the landing gear … And remember, it was full of empty gas tanks, so it would be very buoyant."
In early 2024, Deep Sea Vision, a marine robotics company in South Carolina, made headlines when it reported that scans of a blurry sonar image could be the missing Electra plane deep in the Pacific Ocean. Schultz said that claim has since been debunked, and that while Deep Sea Vision's thought-to-be location was deep under water, ALI's location is in very shallow water.
Ric Gillespie, an author and expedition leader of 12 searches in the South Pacific for Earhart's plane, said in an interview Wednesday morning for the TODAY Show that he is skeptical of the satellite photos of the proposed site. Gillespie said in the interview his team had previously searched the proposed site, but found nothing, noting it could be a "coconut tree complete with root ball."
But Schultz said the university and ALI have strong reasons to believe it's not a tree stuck in the water. With the evidence produced, Schultz said, if Purdue and ALI don't pursue the possibility of finding the long lost Electra plane, then who will?
"Purdue is known for calculated risks, and this is a calculated risk," Schultz said. "We feel like we owe it to the legacy to take it."
ALI plans to post project updates, beginning soon, on its subscription video platform, Heritage Broadcasting Service, the release said. If the initial expedition proves successful in confirming the identity of the aircraft, PRF and ALI plan to return for larger excavation efforts in 2026 to uncover and help return what remains of Earhart's plane.
Schultz said at this time, no money has been set aside for if the plane is found and returned to the university.
If the plane is found through this expedition, Schultz said, Purdue has the strongest equitable claim to the remains of the Electra.
"That's based on the clear intent, the donated intent, of Amelia and her husband to bring the plane back to Purdue, and the fact that we facilitated it," Schultz said. "Obviously there are a lot of stakeholders now involved in this, not the least of which is Rick and Ali, but also the people of the Republic of Kiribati, and their views on this matter is very important."
Jillian Ellison is a reporter for the Journal & Courier. She can be reached via email at jellison@gannett.com.
This article originally appeared on Lafayette Journal & Courier: Purdue Research Foundation says it plans to locate Amelia Earhart's plane
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"With such a great amount of very strong evidence, we feel we have no choice but to move forward and hopefully return with proof," said Richard Pettigrew, Archaeological Legacy Institute's executive director, in a statement. "I look forward to collaborating with Purdue Research Foundation in writing the final chapter in Amelia Earhart's remarkable life story.' Evidence suggests Earhart landed on Nikumaroro, researchers say The organizers of the expedition have pointed to the long-running theory that Earhart and Noonan did not crash into the ocean but instead landed on the uninhabited of Nikumaroro and later perished there. Evidence of this theory includes radio bearings that converge on Nikumaroro, an analysis of human bones discovered on the island that are similar to Earhart's bone-lengths, and a number of artifacts including a woman's shoe, a compact case and a medicine vial that have also been discovered there, according to the Purdue Research Foundation. Additionally, a photographic anomaly captured three months after the plane vanished in 1937 appears to show a landing gear on the Nikumaroro reef. More recently in 2020, researchers managed to again spot the "Taraia Object," which has been in the same place on the island's lagoon since 1938. For nearly a century, Earhart's disappearance has been subject to a wide variety of theories, the most widely accepted explanation being that Earhart and Noonan ran out of fuel and crashed in the ocean. Some of the more implausible and disputed theories posit that the flight was part of a secret spy mission, that Earhart assumed another identity or that Earhart and Noonan were captured by a foreign government. The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery, a nonprofit organization based in Pennsylvania, is responsible for collecting much of the evidence supporting the Nikumaroro hypothesis. The upcoming expedition will depart from Majuro in the Marshall Islands on Nov. 5 and spend five days on Nikumaroro inspecting the "Taraia Object," according to the Purdue Research Foundation. If the initial expedition proves successful, the field team plans to return in 2026 to uncover and help return what remains of Earhart's plane, the foundation said. Who was Amelia Earhart? Earhart was born in Atchison, Kansas, on July 24, 1897. She rode in an airplane for the first time in 1920 and soon began taking flying lessons. Within a year, she obtained a pilot's license and went on to set a women's altitude record, reaching the height of 14,000 feet in October 1922. A decade later, she became the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean, journeying from Newfoundland to Northern Ireland. She then ventured on a solo flight across the United States. It was in 1936 that she began planning her most ambitious journey yet – a flight around the world. According to the Purdue Research Foundation, Earhart, who was a visiting adviser and counselor at the university, had prepared for the historic trip with the help of Purdue's then-president Edward Elliott. The university's research foundation also helped fund the Lockheed Electra 10E plane that was specifically outfitted for Earhart's global trip. Earhart had intended to give the plane to Purdue after her historic flight so it could be used to further scientific research in aeronautics, the foundation said. Amelia Earhart's final flight Earhart and Noonan departed from Oakland, California, on May 20, 1937. According to the International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery, they made 29 additional stops, including their last known refuel stop in Lae, Papua New Guinea, on July 2 at 10 a.m. Nearing the end of their historic trip, Earhart and Noonan were due on Howland Island – about 2,500 miles away from Lae and set between Australia and Hawaii – where U.S. Coast Guard cutter Itasca was waiting with fuel. Itasca received intermittent voice messages from Earhart as her signal increased. But neither Earhart nor Noonan knew Morse code, so there was no two-way contact, according to the Smithsonian Institute's analysis of government records. After losing contact, the Navy and Coast Guard searched about 250,000 square miles of ocean in search of Earhart and Noonan. On Jan. 5, 1939, they were declared legally dead. Now, with the joint expedition on the horizon, university leaders and researchers are hopeful they'll be able to definitively answer the question, "What happened to Amelia Earhart?" 'Based on the evidence, we agree with (Archaeological Legacy Institute) that this expedition offers the best chance not only to solve perhaps the greatest mystery of the 20th century, but also to fulfill Amelia's wishes and bring the Electra home," said Steven Schultz, senior vice president and general counsel of Purdue University. Contributing: Jillian Ellison, Lafayette Journal & Courier; Clare Mulroy and Samantha Shafiq, USA TODAY
