Earhart’s pleas for help were heard by dozens

Amelia Earhart’s final calls for help were heard by dozens of people after she disappeared in July of 1937, researchers say.

What happened to the legendary American aviator remains one of the great unsolved mysteries, but the InternationalGroup for Historic Aircraft Recovery claims that a series of radio messages does prove that Earhart did land and perish near a desertedisland in the Pacific.

“Can you read me? Can you read me? This is Amelia Earhart. This is Amelia Earhart. Please come in,” a woman named Thelma Lovelace hears in the Canadian province of New Brunswick at 1:30 a.m. on July 7.

Earhart gave her latitude and longitude, as documented by Lovelace in a book, and added, “We have taken in water, my navigator is badly hurt; (repeat) we are in need of medical care and must have help; we can’t hold on much longer.”

Five days earlier, Earhart and navigator Fred Noonan went missing during their historic effort to fly around the world. Their Lockheed Model 10 Electra had lost contact with the U.S. Coast Guard cutter Itasca, and they never arrived at little Howland Island in the Pacific for a refueling stop.

The U.S. Navy Hydrographic Office put out a bulletin about Earhart on July 2, according the TIGHAR study published this week. The Navy released the aviator’s primary frequencies and askedsharp ears to listen.

In all, 50 of the 57 “credible” audio reports were heard by government employees or professional commercial operators, but the quality of the signals was poor. Some stumbled upon Earhart’s calls for help by accident. Some were found to be believable, others weredismissed.

The commanding officer of the Itasca “categorically dismissed all of the reported postloss signals,” according to TIGHAR,and he even ignored receptionsheard by radiomen on his own ship. He asserted that “all available land areas were searched therefore Earhartplane was not on land.”

However, researchers at TIGHAR and others believe that the pair landed near Gardner Island, also in the Pacific. The radio messages paint a desperate picture of Earhart’s final days.