Amelia Earhart Search: $2.2 Million Expedition To Find Famed Aviator’s Plane

July 24th, 2012

FAKE NEWS for the Zionist agenda

HONOLULU — A $2.2 million expedition that hoped to find wreckage from famed aviator Amelia Earhart’s final flight is on its way back to Hawaii without the dramatic, conclusive plane images searchers were hoping to attain.

But the group leading the search, The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery, still believes Earhart and her navigator crashed onto a reef off a remote island in the Pacific Ocean 75 years ago this month, its president told The Associated Press on Monday.

“This is just sort of the way things are in this world,” TIGHAR president Pat Thrasher said. “It’s not like an Indiana Jones flick where you go through a door and there it is. It’s not like that – it’s never like that.”

Thrasher said the group collected a significant amount of video and sonar data, which searchers will pore over on the return voyage to Hawaii this week and afterward to look for things that may be tough to see at first glance.

The group is also planning a voyage for next year to scour the land where it’s believed Earhart survived a short while after the crash, Thrasher said.

PHOTOS:

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Earhart

FILE – An undated file photo shows American aviatrix Amelia Earhart. A $2.2 million expedition is hoping to finally solve one of America’s most enduring mysteries. What happened to famed aviator Amelia Earhart when she went missing over the South Pacific 75 years ago? (AP Photo, File)
Ameila Earhart With Airplane

394033 03: (FILE PHOTO) Amelia Earhart stands June 14, 1928 in front of her bi-plane called ‘Friendship’ in Newfoundland. Carlene Mendieta, who is trying to recreate Earhart’s 1928 record as the first woman to fly across the US and back again, left Rye, NY on September 5, 2001. Earhart (1898 – 1937) disappeared without trace over the Pacific Ocean in her attempt to fly around the world in 1937. (Photo by Getty Images)
Amelia Earhart

FILE– An undated file photo shows Amelia Earhart, the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton is meeting Tuesday March 20, 2012, with historians and scientists from The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery, which will launch a new search in June for the wreckage of Earhart’s plane off the remote island of Nikumaroro. (AP Photo)
Amelia Earhart Photo and Crash Goggles

An original, unpublished personal photo of Amelia Earhart dated 1937, along with goggles she was wearing during her first plane crash are seen Friday, Sept. 9, 2011, at Clars Auction Gallery in Oakland, Calif. Photos of aviator Earhart, who vanished on her attempt to circumnavigate the globe in 1937, are set to be auctioned this weekend. Another set of her goggles sold several years ago for more than $100,000. (AP Photo/Ben Margot)
Amelia Earhart Head Shot

394033 01: (FILE PHOTO) American aviator Amelia Earhart smiles May 22, 1932 upon arriving in London, England having become the first woman to fly across the Atlantic alone. Carlene Mendieta, who is trying to recreate Earhart’s 1928 record as the first woman to fly across the US and back again, left Rye, NY on September 5, 2001. Earhart (1898 – 1937) disappeared without trace over the Pacific Ocean in her attempt to fly around the world in 1937. (Photo by Getty Images)
Pilot Amelia Earhart

125345 14: Photo of pilot Amelia Earhart standing by her plane. (Photo by Getty Images)
Amelia Earhart, Fred Noonan
Earhart

FILE – In a March 10, 1937 file photo American aviatrix Amelia Earhart waves from the Electra before taking off from Los Angeles, Ca., on March 10, 1937. Earhart is flying to Oakland, Ca., where she and her crew will begin their round-the-world flight to Howland Island on March 18. (AP Photo, file)
Ric Gillespie, right, founder of The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery, watches equipment testing alongside Wolfgang Burnside from aboard a ship at port in Honolulu on Sunday, July 1, 2012. Gillespie is leading a month-long voyage to find plane wreckage from Amelia Earhart’s Lockheed Electra, which disappeared over the South Pacific 75 years ago. (AP Photo/Oskar Garcia)
Wolfgang Burnside controls a remote-operated vehicle from the deck of a ship in Honolulu on Sunday, July 1, 2012. Cameras and lights on the vehicle will be used to search the ocean floor during a month-long voyage to find plane wreckage from Amelia Earhart’s Lockheed Electra, which disappeared over the South Pacific 75 years ago. (AP Photo/Oskar Garcia)
Crew members lift an autonomous underwater vehicle from a ship to dockside waters in Honolulu on Sunday, July 1, 2012. The unmanned mapping vehicle will be used as part of a month-long voyage that begins Tuesday, July 11, 2012 to find plane wreckage from Amelia Earhart’s Lockheed Electra, which disappeared over the South Pacific 75 years ago. (AP Photo/Oskar Garcia)
University of Hawaii ship Kaimikai-O-Kanaloa is anchored at harbor in Honolulu on Sunday, July 1, 2012. The ship will be used for of a month-long voyage that begins Tuesday, July 3, 2012 to attempt to find plane wreckage from Amelia Earhart’s Lockheed Electra, which disappeared over the South Pacific 75 years ago. (AP Photo/Oskar Garcia)
A statue of the famous aviatrix Amelia Earhart greets passersby at the pedestrian mall in downtown Atchison, Kan. on Wednesday, March 21, 2012. A new theory has emerged based on a photo taken three months after she disappeared in an attempt to make a flight around the world in 1937. (AP Photo/The St. Joseph News-Press, Eric Keith )
On a visit to the Amelia Earhart birthplace in Atchison, Kan., Karyn Mchorney and her daughter Emily look at photograph on Wednesday, March 21, 2012. A new theory has emerged based on a photo taken three months after she disappeared in an attempt to make a flight around the world in 1937. (AP Photo/The St. Joseph News-Press, Eric Keith )
On a visit to the Amelia Earhart birthplace in Atchison, Kan., Navy Lt. Cmndr. Kevin Mchorney shows his son Morgan a model of the Lockheed Model 10 Electra on Wednesday, March 21, 2012. A new theory has emerged based on a photo taken three months after she disappeared in an attempt to make a flight around the world in 1937. (AP Photo/The St. Joseph News-Press, Eric Keith )
A model of the Lockheed Model 10 Electra that Amelia Earhart was flying during an attempt to make a flight around the world in 1937 is shown in Atchison, Kan. on Wednesday, March 21, 2012. A new theory has emerged based on a photo taken three months after she disappeared in an attempt to make a flight around the world in 1937. (AP Photo/The St. Joseph News-Press, Eric Keith )
This image provided by The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery and displayed at a U.S. State Department news conference on Tuesday, March 20, 2012, may provide a new clue in one of the 20th century’s most enduring mysteries and could soon help uncover the fate of American aviator Amelia Earhart, who went missing without a trace over the South Pacific 75 years ago, investigators said. Enhanced analysis of a photograph taken just months after Earhart’s Lockheed Electra plane vanished shows what experts think may be the landing gear of the aircraft, the small black object on the left side of the image, protruding from the waters off the remote island of Nikumaroro, in what is now the Pacific nation of Kiribati. Armed with that analysis by the State Department, historians, scientists and salvagers from The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery, are returning to the island in July 2012 in the hope of finding the wreckage of Earhart’s plane and perhaps even the remains of the pilot and her navigator Fred Noonan. (AP Photo/The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery)
Amelia Earhart

FILE – In this undated photo, Amelia Earhart, the first woman to cross the Atlantic Ocean by plane sits on top of a plane. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton is wading into one of the 20th century’s most enduring mysteries: the fate of American aviator Amelia Earhart, disappeared over the South Pacific 75 years ago. Clinton is meeting March 20, 2012, with historians and scientists from The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery, which will launch a new search in June for the wreckage of Earhart’s plane off the remote island of Nikumaroro. (AP Photo)
Woman To Re-Create Earhart’s Flight Across America

394048 02: Dressed in historic clothing, aviatrix Carlene Mendieta checks the oil in her plane September 5, 2001 before departing Westchester County Airport in New York in an antique aircraft beginning her three-week flight in re-creating Amelia Earhart’s 1928 record-setting flight across America and back. The flight, which is being called ‘Amelia Earhart’s Flight Across America: Rediscovering a Legend’ will land in 23 cities along the historic route and cover approximately 5,500 miles at an average speed of 82 mph. (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
Undated picture taken in the 30′ s of American fem

FRANCE – JANUARY 1: Undated picture taken in the 30′ s of American female aviator Amelia Earhart beeing at the controls of her plane. Amelia Earhart was the first woman to fly the Atlantic as a passenger, in 1928, and followed this by a solo flight in 1932. In 1935 she flew solo from Hawan to Califofrnia. In 1937, with Fred Noonan, they set out to fly round the world, but their plane was lost over the Pacific, 02 July. (Photo credit should read STAFF/AFP/Getty Images)

Thrasher maintained touch throughout the search with TIGHAR founder Ric Gillespie, her husband, and posted updates about the trip to the group’s website. The updates tell of a search that was cut short because of treacherous underwater terrain and repeated, unexpected equipment mishaps that caused delays and left the group with only five days of search time rather than 10, as originally planned.

During one episode, an autonomous underwater vehicle the group was using in its search wedged itself into a narrow cave, a day after squashing its nose cone against the ocean floor. It needed to be rescued.

“The rescue mission was successful – but it was a real cliffhanger,” Gillespie wrote in an email posted online last week. “Operating literally at the end of our tether, we searched for over an hour in nightmare terrain: a vertical cliff face pockmarked with caves and covered with fern-like marine growth.”

Thrasher said the environment was tougher to navigate than searchers expected.

The U.S. State Department had encouraged the privately-funded voyage, which launched earlier this month from Honolulu using 30,000 pounds in specialized equipment and a University of Hawaii ship normally used for ocean research.

The group’s thesis is based on the idea that Earhart and navigator Fred Noonan landed on a reef near the Kiribati atoll of Nikumaroro, then survived a short time.

Previous visits to the island have recovered artifacts that could have belonged to Earhart and Noonan, and experts say an October 1937 photo of the shoreline of the island could include a blurry image of the strut and wheel of a Lockheed Electra landing gear.

The photo was enough for the State Department blessing, and led to the Kiribati government to sign a contract with the group to work together if anything is found, Gillespie said at the start of the voyage.

A separate group working under a different theory plans its third voyage later this year near Howland Island.

Earhart and Noonan were flying from New Guinea to Howland Island when they went missing July 2, 1937, during Earhart’s bid to become the first woman to circumnavigate the globe.

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