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Emilia Earhart. The mystery of Amelia Earhart's disappearance may be solved. Zenith of career: achievements, fame, social activities

American pilot Amelia Earhart dreamed of being a doctor as a child. This seemed to be where everything was heading. She worked as a nurse in a military hospital, which was located not far from the airfield. The sight of planes taking off fascinated the 19-year-old nurse, and she firmly decided to become a pilot. It took Amelia no more than a year to learn to fly. And how to fly!

RECORD BY RECORD

Very soon she set several women's records: she crossed the United States twice by air from ocean to ocean, made a long-distance non-stop flight from Mexico to New York, and was the first female pilot to rise to an altitude of more than six thousand meters. Amelia Earhart's name becomes famous. She once admitted that she would really like to fly across Atlantic Ocean, and in June 1928 her wish came true. Amelia Earhart flew not alone, but with two pilots. Starting from the island of Newfoundland, east coast Canada, their seaplane landed in England, in Wales, a day later. This was the first group flight across the ocean with a female pilot.

Do you think brave Amelia has calmed down with this? No, peace was not for her. She immediately began to prepare for an even more difficult and dangerous flight, also across the Atlantic Ocean, but alone. In May 1932, the brave pilot took off (again from Newfoundland) on a single-engine Lockheed Vega aircraft and thirteen hours later she was already in England, having conquered the Atlantic for the second time.

AROUND THE BALL

Every newspaper in the world wrote about Amelia Earhart's remarkable victory. Correspondents asked her vyingly: “What will be your next flight?” She answered: “Above Pacific Ocean, from Hawaii to California, also alone.”

This meant that the fearless pilot would have to travel about four thousand kilometers by air, and along the entire route there would not even be a piece of land for an emergency landing!

Before Amelia Earhart, ten American pilots died attempting such a flight. Only the Australian pilot Kingsford Smith finally managed to fly from Hawaii to California, a state in the western United States, in the fall of 1933. Amelia's flight was a success right away, and it was amazing.

The flights of the pilot, who seemed to know no fear, became more and more difficult and risky. When she revealed her new plan, many looked at her with surprise and concern. Of course, Earhart planned not just a long-distance, but an ultra-long-distance flight - around the globe!

No, she was not the very first one to come up with such an idea. Before her, a group of American pilots had already completed an aerial circumnavigation of the world, of course, with intermediate landings. But these were male aviators. This time around the world air travel a female pilot was about to leave.

TWO BRAVE

The long-distance flight would start from the southern American city of Miami and pass through many countries with several stops. First - in Brazil. Next - a throw across the Atlantic Ocean and two landings in Africa. Then - India, Australia, New Guinea, Howland Island near the equator, a flight across the Pacific Ocean and, finally, the finish in the USA. That's how it was intended.

The crew of the land twin-engine Lockheed 12A consisted of two people: Amelia Earhart herself and navigator Fred Nunep, an experienced air navigator. Trying to take as much fuel as possible, they gave up a lot: a rubber boat, parachutes, weapons, signal flares. Food and drinking water there was also not enough on board. They took off on June 1, 1937 and flew east, strictly adhering to the planned path.

Only a month later the pilots reached the small island of Lee off New Guinea. Amelia Earhart wrote to her husband in her last letter: “The entire space of the world is left to us, except this the last frontier- the ocean."

The weather remained clear, which promised a safe completion of the ultra-long flight. On July 2, Earhart and her companion left Lee Island and headed for Howland Island.

ALARM RADIO GRAM

Seven hours have passed. The Coast Guard cutter Ithaca, on duty off Howland, received word that Amelia Earhart's Lockheed was in the air. Attempts by the radio operator of the patrol boat to contact the aircraft were in vain. The pilots were silent. It was only late at night, from July 2 to 3, that Earhart went on the air for the first time. She said: “Cloudy. The weather is getting worse... Head wind." The audibility was disgusting, and subsequent radiograms could not be fully understood.

At about eight in the morning on July 3, an alarming message was received from the Lockheed: “Ithaca.” We are somewhere nearby, but we don’t see you. Thirty minutes of fuel left. Height 300 meters."

The plane had been in the air for 13 hours. In the last radiogram, which arrived at 8:45 a.m., Amelia Earhart shouted in a breaking voice: “Our course is 157-337. I repeat... I repeat... We are being blown to the north...” And the connection was cut off forever.

Those who followed the flight hoped that the Lockheed's empty tanks would hold it for some time after splashdown. A flying boat flew out to help. Alas, the plane in distress could not be found.

The search continued for more than two weeks. And although over a dozen ships took part in them, including the battleship Colorado and the aircraft carrier Legsington, as well as more than a hundred aircraft, they were unsuccessful. It was not possible to find even the slightest sign of a disaster.

SPY MISSION?

Hopes were dashed. One American magazine wrote in those days: “Perhaps the victims of the accident were doomed to a slow death. But I’d like to think that from the moment Lockheed’s tanks emptied, the end came very quickly, and the pilots’ torment did not last long.”

The mystery of the deaths of Amelia Earhart and Fred Nunep has not yet been clarified. But a quarter of a century after the tragedy, a new explanation for what happened has emerged. A suspicion arose that the cause of the death of the aviators was not a plane crash at all. Perhaps the Lockheed crew also had a special task - to find out the location of Japanese airfields, as well as other military installations on the Pacific islands. The Japanese were then intensively preparing for war.

Carrying out a secret mission, the American pilots first deliberately deviated to the north, and then headed towards Howland. On the way to the island, the pilots encountered a tropical storm, made an emergency landing and were captured by the Japanese. They could have been transported to Saigan Island, to the headquarters of the Japanese armed forces.

Many years later, residents of those places said that they saw two prisoners - a woman and a man. The woman allegedly died of illness, and the man was executed by the Japanese in August 1937. But these are just rumors and assumptions. Nobody still knows the truth.

Mysterious disappearances. Mysticism, secrets, clues Dmitrieva Natalia Yurievna

Amelia Earhart

More than 75 years have passed since the inexplicable disappearance of the legendary American female pilot Amelia Earhart, and interest in this strange and complicated story does not fade away, nor does interest in the very personality of this amazing woman.

When a woman becomes an aviator, this in itself is worthy of admiration. Amelia was not just one of the female pilots, but an outstanding aviator with outstanding achievements and records, thanks to which her name entered the world history aviation. She was the first in the world to fly solo from Hawaii to California and across the Atlantic Ocean. Already at the very beginning of her aviation career, in 1922, Amelia set her first world altitude record, rising to 4300 m. Her name did not leave the front pages of newspapers.

It is not surprising that such a passion for the sky inspired Amelia to more and more new exploits. She could not stop there and was always eager to break other people's records. Therefore, when the famous American pilot Willie Post flew around the globe in 1932, Amelia Earhart set out to also make a round-the-world air trip. She prepared for this flight for five years. And so, in 1937, I finally made up my mind. This flight was to be her last great record, after which Amelia intended to leave big aviation and devote herself to training young pilots at the aviation department of Purdue University.

The course was supposed to lie along the equator - this is the longest route around the world. The whole world watched with bated breath as the flight proceeded. Amelia Earhart and her navigator, experienced pilot Fred Noonan, flew in a twin-engine Lockheed Electra airplane.

At that time it was one of the most advanced aircraft. The flight was carried out with stops for refueling. It was almost finished - only three sections of the journey remained: from Papua New Guinea to Howland Island in the Pacific Ocean, then from there to Honolulu and, finally, from there to Oakland (California), where the flight was supposed to end.

The flight to Howland Island turned out to be fatal. The American maritime border guard ship Itasca, which helped guide their flight, received the last radiogram on July 2, 1937, indicating the coordinates of the airplane. It followed that the Lockheed Electra was already very close to its destination. After this, the pilots made several attempts to establish voice communication with the ship's commander. But it was not possible to do this. The antenna on board the airplane may have failed. Howland Island was only a few miles away when contact with the airplane was lost and it was lost from sight. It was never possible to establish what prevented the airplane crew from landing.

Of course, all possible measures were immediately taken to search for the missing aircraft and its crew. But it was never possible to establish their location. After an exhaustive two-week search, the plane and those on board, Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan, were declared lost at sea. The official version of what happened was that the airplane ran out of fuel and fell into the water. The crew members were declared dead.

But such search results did not satisfy the aviation community. After some time, an initiative group was formed, which included prominent aviation historians and experienced pilots. This group, which exists and continues its research to this day, is called TIGHAR ( International Group on restoration historical truth about aviation). For decades, TIGHAR searched for traces of the airplane and crew members, repeatedly sending expeditions to the Pacific Ocean.

During the research, a version was put forward that due to some inconsistencies in the map and a breakdown in communication, Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan lost their way. They mistakenly headed not to Howland, but to another island, now called Nikumaroro, located 650 km to the south. It was assumed that they even managed to land, but the airplane was severely damaged and could no longer take off.

Amelia and Fred themselves survived and spent their last days, leading the life of Robinsons on the island.

It cannot be said with certainty that all the finds discovered on Nikumaroro could only belong to the crashed pilots. The island was not uninhabited, but was inhabited by a small number of Aboriginal people. In addition, pearl divers came there every year.

This version has been carefully studied not only by the TIGHAR group itself, but also by many historians and archaeologists. The latter recognized it as unscientific. However, TIGHAR provided numerous evidence that she was right.

Here are some of their arguments.

1. After her disappearance, Amelia sent radio signals emanating from the square in which Nikumaroro Island was located for another 5 days. This suggests that the airplane did not fall to the bottom of the ocean, but was on land, albeit damaged.

2. In 1940, parts of a female skeleton were found on the island near the traces of a fire. The remains of eaten birds and turtles were scattered around. The skeleton was sent for examination, but the pathologist concluded that these were the remains of one of the aborigines who sometimes sailed to the island from neighboring inhabited islands.

3. The result of the examination did not satisfy the members of the TIGHAR group, they organized an expedition to Nikumaroro. At the site of the supposed parking lot, they found a woman's shoe, a cosmetic bag, broken lotion bottles, and a broken penknife.

What seems strange in this story is that all the finds can only be attributed to Amelia Earhart. But there is no trace of Fred Noonan being on the island. The wreckage of the airplane was also not found.

Researchers suggest that it could have been washed out to sea by tidal waves. To establish this fact, it is necessary to undertake a new expedition, which is what the members of the TIGHAR group plan to do in the near future. Their last expedition took place in 2012, the year of the seventy-fifth anniversary of the mysterious disappearance of Amelia Earhart and her navigator.

From the book 100 Great Mysteries of the 20th Century author

From the book The Greatest Mysteries of the 20th Century author Nepomnyashchiy Nikolai Nikolaevich

THE LAST FLIGHT OF AMELIA EARHART... Left behind most of journey around the world, but the most difficult thing lay ahead - a throw across the expanses of the Pacific Ocean. In the summer of 1937, American aviator Amelia Earhart flew around the Earth. She was not the first in this difficult and

From the book Phantasmagoria of Death author Lyakhova Kristina Alexandrovna

Queen of the Atlantic. Amelia Earhart The famous American aviator Amelia Earhart became famous for becoming the first woman to cross the Atlantic Ocean by air. She died tragically while trying to set a new record: to fly an airplane around everything on earth.

From the book 500 Great Journeys author Nizovsky Andrey Yurievich

Amelia Earhart: an aerial odyssey with a tragic ending By nature and by vocation, Amelia Earhart was a record holder. She crossed the US territory twice by air from ocean to ocean, made a non-stop flight from Mexico City to New York, the first female pilot

From the book Great People Who Changed the World author Grigorova Darina

Amelia Earhart - the legendary pilot Few people know about Amelia Earhart, unlike the United States and Western Europe, where she remains one of the most popular historical figures for many decades. If we draw analogies, then it

people and aviation famous aviators

Earhart Amelia

Years of life: 1897-1937

“The entire space of the world remains behind us, except for this border - the ocean...” - these words were in the last letter of the famous pilot Amelia Earhart to her husband.

The first flight around the world by a woman was coming to an end. On July 4, 1937, the Lockheed Electra, piloted by Earhart and navigator Fred Nunan, was supposed to make the last landing of this flight in Oakland (USA).

Two days earlier, July 2, A.E. (as her friends called her) and her navigator looked hopefully into the sky above the airfield on the small Pacific island of Lee. The sky is clear for the first time in last week, promised them a quick return home.

Ahead is Howland Island, 4,730 km away. Behind Florida - Brazil - Africa - India. Everything unnecessary was sacrificed to fuel reserves. 3028 liters of gasoline, 265 liters of oil, minimum food and water, rubber boat, pistol, parachutes and rocket launcher.

As they said later, the on-board chronometer worried Nunan. The chronometer lied, just a little, but it did. And absolute precision was needed. A calculation error of one degree at this distance would take the plane 45 miles away from the target. The flight, like all flights of this kind, was very difficult and unusual, and this section of Lee - Howland was the longest. Finding an island just over half a kilometer wide and 3 kilometers long is a difficult task even for such an experienced navigator as Nunan.

Seven hours later, the Coast Guard cutter Itasca, waiting for the plane at Howland, received radio confirmation from San Francisco: Earhart's plane had taken off from Lee. The Itasca commander went on the air: “Earhart, we listen to you every 15th and 45th minutes of the hour. We transmit the weather and course every half hour and hour.”

At 0112 the boat's radio operator reported to San Francisco that they still had not received anything from Earhart, and continued to transmit weather and heading. Meanwhile, the whole world was reading newspapers that described in great detail the biography of the great pilot Amelia Earhart. She was born on July 24, 1897 in the family of a lawyer. Her love for airplanes came to her during the First World War. A.E. was a nurse in a hospital near the airfield. The charm of the small, still clumsy aircraft of those times was too strong.
She was able to understand the spirit of the courageous profession of a pilot. Many young people in those years were raving about aviation, Amelia decided to learn to fly.

Shortly before her flight around the world, Earhart wrote that for a long time she had two greatest desires: to be the first woman on a transatlantic flight (at least as a passenger) and the first female pilot to cross the Atlantic. Both of her wishes came true. In June 1928, she flew on a flying boat (sitting next to the pilot!) from the USA to England. Four years later, on May 20, 1932, she, already alone, repeated the same route and landed in Londonderry 13 and a half hours later. A.E. was obviously a record holder by vocation. She made non-stop flights from Mexico City to New York and from California to the Hawaiian Islands, which was a very difficult task at that time. She was the first to reach a height of 19 thousand feet. In short, she became the most famous female pilot in the world.

So, the night of July 2-3, 1937. 2 hours 45 minutes. Amelia Earhart's voice broke the silence of the airwaves for the first time in twelve hours: "Cloudy... Bad weather... Head wind."

"Itasca" asked A.E. switch to Morse key. There was no sound in response. 3.45. Earhart's voice is in the headphones: "I'm calling Itasca, I'm calling Itasca, listen to me in an hour and a half..."

This radiogram and all subsequent ones were not fully deciphered. 7.42. A.E.’s very tired, intermittent voice: “I’m calling Itasca. We are somewhere nearby, but we don’t see you. We only have enough fuel for thirty minutes. We’ll try to reach you by radio, altitude 300 meters.”

After 16 minutes, “I’m calling Itasca, we are above you, but we can’t see you...” Itasca gave a long series of radiograms. A little later: "Itasca", we hear you, but not enough to establish... (direction?..)." The last minutes of the Lockheed Electra's flight were passing. The crew's chances of life were calculated as follows: 4730 km, 18 hours. from the moment of departure, fuel remained for 30 minutes one hundred miles from Howland...

8.45. Amelia Earhart is heard in last time, she shouts in a broken voice: “Our course is 157-337, I repeat... I repeat... It’s drifting north... south.”

The first act of the tragedy ended, the second began.

The Itasca commander hoped that perhaps the empty fuel tanks would keep the Lockheed Electra afloat for about an hour.
A seaplane was called. Newspapers published testimonies of radio operators and radio amateurs who heard the voice of A.E. the last ones.

By July 7, US Navy ships and aircraft had surveyed 100,000 square miles of ocean. Despite the participation of the aircraft carrier Lexington, neither the pilots nor even traces of the disaster were found.

This event shocked the world, which for a month followed every move of the heroic woman who was the first to travel around the world.

In a hopeless article, almost an obituary, in Flight magazine it is written: “It is impossible to imagine that pilots who crashed in the tropics are doomed to a slow death. It is better to hope that from the moment the Electra tanks are empty, the end came very quickly and their torment did not last long.”

This is all that was known about the life and death of Amelia Earhart in July 1937. A quarter of a century later, the fate of A.E. became interested again. Rumors and gossip that circulated around the death of the pilot back in 1937 surfaced. Suspicions arose that Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan did not die in a plane crash. There was an assumption that the crew of the crashed plane was carrying out a special reconnaissance mission. Having suffered an accident, they fell into the hands of the Japanese; they, apparently, were aware of the true goals of the round-the-world flight...

In 1960, the search for a needle in a haystack began. In this case, the whole of Micronesia was a haystack. Plane debris was found in Saipan harbor. It was assumed that these were parts of the twin-engine and Lockheed Electra, which Earhart flew on. But these were pieces of skin Japanese fighter. In 1964, human skeletons were discovered there. Pilots? Anthropologists answered negatively - the skeletons belong to Micronesians. People were interviewed who knew something about the crash of the plane or thought they knew something.
It was possible to establish approximately the following: from Lee, Earhart did not fly along the route that the whole world knew about. Instead of flying directly to Howland, she headed north, through the center of the Caroline Islands. Problem A.E. was, apparently, this - to clarify the location of Japanese airfields and naval supply bases in that part of the ocean that had been causing concern to the United States since the 1930s. It was known that Japanese intelligence, on the eve of an aggressive war, was intensively planting its agents and preparing landing sites for aircraft and ammunition depots on the Pacific islands. It also turned out that her plane had been re-equipped, in particular, the engines, which reached speeds of up to 315 km per hour, were replaced with more powerful ones.

Having completed the task, A.E. set course for Howland. About halfway to the target, the plane encountered a tropical storm. (By the way, the captain of the Itasca claimed that the weather in the Howland area on July 4 was excellent!)
Having lost orientation, the Lockheed Electra went first east, then north. If you calculate the speed of the aircraft and the fuel reserves, it turns out that the disaster occurred somewhere off the coast of Mili Atoll on southeast Marshall Islands. It was from there that Earhart radioed "SOS". Some radio operators heard the signals of a dying plane around this time and in this area of \u200b\u200bthe ocean.

It is also known that twelve days later a Japanese fishing schooner found some people. Locals claim: the Japanese took two European men on a seaplane to the island. Jaluit (Amelia was wearing overalls, maybe that's where the word "two men" comes from?).
There is an assumption that at the end of his odyssey A.E. and her navigator ended up on Saipan at the headquarters of the Japanese armed forces in the Pacific Ocean. Moreover, one journalist managed to find a resident of Saipan who claimed that he saw a woman and a man among the white Japanese and that the woman allegedly died of illness, and the man was executed - beheaded - in August 1937, that is, about a month later after departure. Two Marines who participated in the landing on Saipan were interviewed. They said that in 1944 they took part in the exhumation of corpses American soldiers and officers who died during the assault. Among the corpses, a man and a woman were found wearing flight suits, but without insignia. The corpses of the pilots were immediately handed over to representatives of the Army Institute of Pathology. The sailors got the impression that the pathologists seemed to be waiting for these two corpses.

This is what became known about the death of Amelia Earhart after the Second World War. Unfortunately, the only reliable thing in this system of facts and speculation is the death of A.E. Officials in America and Japan are guarded about this rather strange and tragic story silence. The only person The one who spoke out at least somehow was Admiral Chester Nimitz. In March 1965, he suggested (again a guess!) that Earhart and her navigator may have made an emergency landing in the Marshall Islands and were captured by the Japanese... The Martyrology of the Explorers differs from all other martyrologies in one feature. Against the names of people who sacrificed themselves to open new paths, there is only one date - the year of birth... The year of death is unknown, or instead of the day of death there is a question mark. Data about A. Earhart in this list looks like this: Amelia Earhart 07/24/1897-07/3/1937 (?).

It is known that Amelia Earhart went on air for the first time 12 hours after the start. How to explain such a long silence? In sport flight, it would seem that radio communication is absolutely necessary, because you can always find out the “place” of the aircraft and correct its flight. Therefore, it is easiest to assume that A.E. avoided radio contact for fear of being detected by the Japanese.
During these 12 hours, the plane flew 256 x 12 = 3072 km. On the route published in newspapers, the radio transmission would begin over the ocean at the 160th meridian, in the second case - at Truk Island, that is, immediately after completing the task, which, apparently, should have been reported by radiogram (most likely encrypted) .

The late departure - 10 a.m. can be explained by the need to be in the Caroline Islands area before sunset, when side lighting creates unmasking shadows necessary for aerial photography.

From Earhart’s last radiogram it follows that the plane was heading 157-337 to the island. Howland is SSO (south-south-east), which is almost perpendicular to the official route.

So, the version that Amelia Earhart was on a special mission is similar to the truth. Further secrecy and the refusal of officials to confirm or deny various rumors and testimonies of real and imaginary eyewitnesses also reinforce this assumption. There is also no doubt that if the plane was discovered in the air over the Caroline Islands, the Japanese tried to “remove” unnecessary witnesses to their military preparations. One might think that the Lockheed Electra was spotted immediately after the first radiogram, its course was established and the order to intercept was given... In any case, while studying aerial reconnaissance, the famous pilot and her navigator as civilians fell under charges of espionage with all the ensuing consequences. Therefore, to the question “Who knows the truth about Amelia Earhart?” the answer must be sought in the archives of the American and Japanese secret services.

The flight schedule was very tight, leaving virtually no time for proper rest. On July 2, 1937, Amelia and Fred Noonan took off from Lae, a small town on the coast of Papua New Guinea, and headed for the small island of Howland, located in the central Pacific Ocean. This stage of the flight was the longest and most dangerous. After almost 24 hours of flight in the Pacific Ocean, it was necessary to find an island that was only slightly rising above the water, which was a very difficult navigation task for the navigators of the 30s, who had very primitive instruments at their disposal.
The slightest error in the on-board chronometer at such a distance could result in missing the target by several tens or even a hundred miles.

Especially for Earhart's flight, by order of President Roosevelt, a runway was built on Howland.
The Coast Guard patrol ship Itasca was located off the coast, periodically communicating with the aircraft. Earhart reported inclement weather and poor visibility along the route. The last transmission from her plane was received 18 and a half hours after departure from Lae “Our course is 157-337... I repeat... I repeat... we are being carried north...!” Judging by the signal strength, the plane should have appeared over Howland any minute, but it never appeared; There were no new radio broadcasts.

However, according to one of the later versions, it was during this stage of the “around the world” that Earhart’s plane was supposed to carry out some kind of reconnaissance mission, deviating far from the announced route and flying over the territories controlled by the probable enemy of the United States in a future war - the Empire of Japan. The Japanese in those years prevented international control over the military construction they carried out in the former German colonies in the Pacific Ocean. Even if Earhart did not have a reconnaissance mission, her unintentionally deviated plane could still have been shot down by the vigilant Japanese, or after the accident she and the navigator could have been captured. Some indirect evidence of this development of events was found by enthusiasts, however, direct recognized evidence of this version still does not exist. The mystery of the death of the Lockheed Electra remains unsolved.

Various short and incomplete radiograms were intercepted later by Itasca from different strength signal, however, due to its brevity, their location cannot be determined. At about 19:30 GMT Itasca received the following radiogram at maximum strength:
„ KHAQQ calling Itasca. We must on you but cannot see you... gas is running low... “(KHAQQ calls Itasca. We should be above you, but we can’t see you... gas is running low). At about 20:14 GMT, 08:44 local time, Itasca receives Amelia Earhart's final position radiogram. Itasca sends signals until 21:30 GMT. When it became clear that the plane had no more fuel and it was about to collide with the water surface, they began a search, in which 9 ships and 66 aircraft took part. On July 18, the search was suspended. Amelia Earhart, Frederick Noonan and Lockheed Electra have never been found to this day...

No female aviator achieved such fame as "Lady Lindy" (nicknamed because she resembled famous pilot Charles Lindbergh both physically and in her exploits). Earhart, of course, was not the first female pilot, nor was she the best female pilot of her time, but her achievements, such as the first solo flight across the Atlantic Ocean (1932), made by a woman, and the first flight without stops from Honolulu to Oakland (1935) allowed her to become the most famous female aviator.

However, what made her a legend was her last flight: during an attempt to fly around Earth in 1937, she, along with her navigator Fred Noonan, disappeared somewhere in the Pacific Ocean, near Howland Island. Newly discovered evidence suggests that it most likely crashed into small island, located near Howland - now known as Nikumaroro. Unfortunately, she only became much more famous after her death, but such is the irony of fate.

Experts have conducted a new anthropological examination of the remains discovered in the Pacific Ocean in 1940. Experts have concluded that they belong to Amelia Earhart, the first female pilot to cross the Atlantic. She disappeared without a trace after taking off on her plane on July 2, 1937, writes Science Alert.

The search for the remains of the pilot continued for two years from the moment of her disappearance. When a skeleton was discovered on the uninhabited island of Nikumaroro in the Pacific Ocean in 1940, experts believed it belonged to a man. However, Richard Jantz, a professor of anthropology at the University of Tennessee, found that the skeleton's forearms were longer than usual. This arrangement of bones is typical for white women who were born at the end of the 19th century. The skeleton itself was not preserved, so experts carried out an examination of the fragments.

“We, of course, have not proven that the person who died on a desert island was Amelia Earhart, but this is a significant piece of data that tips the scales in this direction,” the experts noted.

On the island where the skeleton was found, several things were also found that could belong to the pilot. These are the remains of a flight jacket, a mirror, fragments of aluminum sheets and cosmetic cream for freckles. This allowed scientists to assume that Earhart spent the last days or months of her life on this island. It was previously believed that her Lockheed plane ran out of fuel and crashed into the water. Therefore, the search for remains was mainly carried out in water.

Drowned in the ocean or captured by the Japanese

The American disappeared over the Pacific Ocean along with her navigator Fred Noonan. They were flying around the world and had covered 80 percent of the route at the time of the disaster. Amelia never landed on Howland Island, where a stopover landing strip was prepared for her, although she was nearby.

The last radiogram received from her was: “We are on line 157-337... I repeat... I repeat... we are moving along the line.” Judging by the signal strength, the plane should have appeared over Howland any minute, but it never appeared. There were no new radio broadcasts.

There is also an alternative version of the death of the pilot. Witnesses claimed to have seen Amelia and her pilot captured by the Japanese on the island of Saipan. They were accused of espionage and kept in Garapan prison. Navigator Fred was allegedly killed by the Japanese shortly after his capture, and before landing American troops On Saipan, the Japanese executed Earhart along with several other American prisoners.

TO THE POINT

10 most mysterious disasters in aviation history

Gennady Chernenko

Artist A. Dzhigirey

1. 1937 Amelia Earhart.

2. 1944 Glenn Miller, the legendary American jazzman and trombonist, disappeared during a flight from England to France. He had to prepare the performance of his orchestra in liberated Paris. The plane disappeared somewhere over the English Channel. No wreckage or remains were found. Experts suggest: the small single-engine Norseman S-64 of Major Glenn Miller was shot down by mistake by the Allies.

3. 1945 Flight No. 19: Five US Air Force torpedo bombers disappeared without a trace in the area Bermuda Triangle. What marked the beginning of countless stories about mystical events in this anomalous zone. No traces of the bombers were found. The plane that was sent to search for them also disappeared.

4. 1947 Star Dust: An Avro Lancastrian transport aircraft belonging to British South American Airways went missing on a flight from Buenos Aires (Argentina) to Santiago (Chile). Before disappearing, he sent a strange message that was never deciphered.

For more than 50 years, the fate of the flight remained unknown until the wreckage of the plane was found in 1998 by climbers on Mount Tupungato in the Argentine Andes. He seemed to crash into her at full speed.

5. 1962 G. Flying Tiger Line Flight 739: A Lockheed Super Constellation with 107 passengers on board was scheduled to land in the Philippines en route to Vietnam. But he disappeared. The searches did not yield any results.

6. 1944 Antoine de Saint-Exupery - French pilot, writer and poet, author of "The Little Prince", while performing a reconnaissance flight, disappeared over Mediterranean Sea. The wreckage of his Lockheed P-38 aircraft was discovered only in 2000. In 2008, the memoirs of a German pilot appeared, who claimed that it was he who shot down Antoine in his Messerschmitt. But there were no witnesses to the military clash; the Germans were not credited with victory. And no holes were found in the wreckage of the Lockheed.

7. 2003"Boeing 727-223"

No. 844AA: The aircraft took off without permission from Luanda Airport in Angola. Dispatchers tried to establish contact with him, but no one answered. The transpoder that responds to radar signals was also silent.

The CIA and FBI searched the world for the plane, which was described as silver with blue, white and red stripes on the side. By official version, an aircraft converted for transportation diesel fuel, hijacked by flight engineer Ben Charles Padilla. He disappeared at the same time as the plane. Where did he take it? And for what?

8. 2007 Steve Fossett - famous American businessman and traveler on balloons, airplanes, airships and sailboats - crashed on a single-engine plane while flying over the Nevada desert. For a year nothing was known about his fate. Internet users joined the search by looking at satellite images. But tourists found Fossett in the rugged Minarets Mountains, about 9 kilometers west of the Mammoth ski resort area. It is unknown why the traveler crashed.

9. 2009 Air France flight number 447: disappeared over the Atlantic

Airbus A330 flying from Rio de Janeiro to Paris. And they searched for his traces for a long time and without success. The main remains were discovered at great depths a year later. All 228 people on board were killed. The plane for some reason for a mysterious reason, having gained a height of almost 12 thousand meters, crashed down.

It is believed that the crew made a mistake, not understanding the readings of the instruments recording speed and altitude.

10. 2014"Boeing 777-200": the airliner, heading from the Malaysian capital Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, disappeared on March 8 while over South China Sea. No trace of the 239 passengers and crew members and no wreckage has been found, although several dozen countries are involved in the search operation. Every day the situation only becomes more complicated: the version of the catastrophe a week later was replaced by the hypothesis of abduction. But more and more contradictory data are emerging about which direction the liner could be heading. Range - from Afghanistan to Australia.

Earhart was the first female aviator to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean. She was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross for this flight. Earhart earned numerous other awards and wrote several best-selling books about her flying adventures. She played important role in the formation of "Ninety-nine", international organization women pilots. Earhart became the organization's first president in 1931.

Amelia Mary Earhart was born on July 24, 1897 in Atchison, Kansas, in the home of her grandfather, Alfred Gideon Otis, a former federal judge. Younger sister Amelia, Grace Muriel Earhart, born in 1899. Their mother, Amy Earhart, did not want her daughters to grow up to be “pretty little girls,” so she took an unconventional approach to parenting. The sisters went on daily adventures around the area, climbed trees, hunted rats with real rifles and expanded their collections of worms, butterflies, grasshoppers and woodies.

Being a tomboy, Amelia managed to absorb a lot of literature, studied well and especially excelled in history and geography. She was 10 years old when she first saw an airplane. According to Earhart, then she was not particularly impressed by the “thing made of rusty wire and wood.” In 1909, her family moved to Des Moines, where in the fall of 1916 the sisters separated for a while when Amelia entered an elite college in Pennsylvania.

Having seen first-hand the effects of World War I, Amelia initially planned to become a doctor. She left college and got a job at a military hospital, next to which there was an airfield. Just a few air shows changed her subsequent life forever. Since 1921, Earhart attended flying lessons. To pay for expensive tuition, the adventurous girl played banjo in the music hall, was a truck driver, an auto mechanic and a teacher.

On October 22, 1922, Earhart rose to an altitude of 4,300 m, setting a new record among female pilots. She became a real star of the air rodeos and gained respect in local aviation circles. Earhart made the transatlantic flight in 1928, not yet solo. In November 1929, Amelia clocked a demo Vega at 197 mph, down from the old record of 156 mph. She then passed her exams on a Ford Trimotor passenger aircraft and received a prestigious transport license.

On February 7, 1931, Amelia married George Putnam, her press agent and business partner. In May 1932, she finally set out on her riskiest Atlantic voyage, alone. She took off from Newfoundland on a Lockheed Vega light aircraft, without radio contact, on the evening of May 20. It took her fifteen and a half hours to cross the Atlantic safely. According to Earhart, the overload was as if she was sitting in a huge drum filled with water and fighting off elephants.

On July 2, 1937, Earhart, while continuing her flight around the world in a twin-engine light aircraft, the Lockheed Model 10 Electra, went missing. She and her navigator Fred Noonan left the coast of New Guinea and headed for Howland Island, where they planned to refuel before heading to Honolulu. A large-scale and expensive search and rescue operation that lasted two weeks yielded no results.

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