Military expert casts doubt over Earhart photo
A MARSHALL Islands-based military expert has cast further doubt on claims that a blurry photograph shows famed US aviatrix Amelia Earhart alive in the territory in 1937.
The fate of the legendary American and her navigator Fred Noonan during their round-theworld flight is one of aviation’s greatest mysteries, and has fascinated historians for decades.
Earhart and Noonan vanished on July 2, 1937, after taking off from Lae, Papua New Guinea, and the prevailing belief is that they ran out of fuel and ditched their twin-engine Lockheed Electra in the Pacific Ocean near remote Howland Island.
But a documentary being aired on the History Channel – Amelia Earhart: The Lost Evidence – claims to have unearthed a beguiling new clue about what happened to the pair.
The programme suggests that Earhart, who was seeking to become the first woman flier to circumnavigate the globe, and Noonan may have survived and been taken prisoner by Japanese forces. It cites a blurry black-andwhite photograph discovered in the National Archives in Washington, purportedly show- ing the pair in the Marshall Islands after their capture.
But military expert Matthew B Holly said the photo appeared to have been taken about a decade earlier.
“From the Marshallese visual background, lack of Japanese flags flying on any vessels but one, and the age configuration of the steam-driven steel vessels, the photo is closer to the late 1920s or early 1930s, not anywhere near 1937,” he said.
Holly has spent decades identifying the locations of lost US aircraft and the identities of American servicemen killed in action in the western Pacific nation. He added that by January 1937, the Japanese had closed most of Micronesia to foreign vessels, “including Marshallese commerce, which is obviously flourishing in this photo.
“Additionally, there are no Japanese sailors to be seen.”
International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery Executive Director Richard Gillespie previously said the photo was “laughable” as a piece of evidence.
“This is just a picture of some people on Jaluit wharf,” he said. “Where are the Japanese?Where are the soldiers?”