75th Anniversary of Amelia Earhart's Disappearance Prompts New Search - East Idaho News
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75th Anniversary of Amelia Earhart’s Disappearance Prompts New Search

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GETTY B 083011 AmeliaEarhart?  SQUARESPACE CACHEVERSION=1341226092770New York Times Co./Getty Images(NEW YORK) — In honor of the 75th anniversary of Amelia Earhart’s disappearance, The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery (TIGHAR) is setting out to search for Earhart’s plane, the Electra, at Nikumaroro, an island in the western Pacific Ocean where they believe Earhart was stranded and later died.

Seventy-five years ago on July 2, 1937, Earhart, the first woman to fly across the Atlantic Ocean, mysteriously vanished somewhere over the Pacific Ocean during her attempted flight around the world.  Her two-engine plane, Lockheed Electra, was never found and neither was Earhart or her navigator, Fred Noonan.

TIGHAR, with the help of FedEx, plans to travel from Honolulu on Monday to Nikumaroro.  There, they will use advanced technology to search underwater off the west coast of the island for signs of manmade objects.  They hope to find wreckage of Earhart’s plane.

“That’s what should be down there based on the research and clues we have,” Ric Gillespie, TIGHAR’s executive director, said.  “We think it should be down there, whether it thinks so is another question.”

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