Maybe Coconut Crabs at Nikumaroro Island Really Know Where Amelia Earhart Is
October 27, 2009
Just as a biopic of her life is released, a group of researchers claim to have found the spot in the western Pacific where Amelia Earhart disappeared on an attempted round-the-world flight in 1937. As the Discovery Channel points out, the awkwardly-acronymed The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery (TIGHAR) said it has evidence that Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan, made a forced landing on a coral atoll called Nikumaroro – part of the Phoenix Islands, Kiribati with a lot of giant coconut crab – and became castaways and eventually succumbed to disease, thirst, hunger, or injury.
Exhibit A, according to TIGHAR, are human bones that were recovered from Nikumaroro in 1940 by a British Colonial Service Officer named Gerald Gallagher. Sadly, those bones have been lost, but records of the discovery indicate they matched Earhart’s physical characteristics. Whatever other skeletal remains might have been on the island, though, have likely been plundered by the thousands of terrifying coconut crabs in the area.
Other physical evidence includes a “woman’s shoe, an empty bottle and a sextant box whose serial numbers are consistent with a type known to have been carried by Noonan,” as well as reports that radio signals had been picked up for several days after the disappearance that could have only been transmitted from land.
Executive director Richard Gillespie is planning a $500,000 research expedition next summer to gather more evidence for his theory. If he does, then one of the most enduring mysteries of early 20th century aviation might be solved. If only the coconut crabs could talk.
[Photo: Discovery News] taken from Jaunted
Tags: amelia earhart, coconut crab, coconut crab attacks, kiribati, nikumaroro, nikumaroro island
6 Responses to “Maybe Coconut Crabs at Nikumaroro Island Really Know Where Amelia Earhart Is”
By David Billings on Oct 28, 2009 | Reply
Gillespie’s Nikumaroro Hypothesis is just that, a hypothesis. The Hypothesis was first mooted by two serving American Military Officers but Gillespie took it over. There is no evidence whatsoever on his claim that Earhart and Noonan ran down a sunline to the then Gardner Island. There are several reasons for this and reasons “why” she would not go there.
1. Earhart already had a contingency plan before she set off from Lae. If she could not find Howland, this plan was to turn back for the spread of the Gilbert Islands which she had passed during the night. On not finding Howland she would do a 180 and head back for the 500 mile spread of the Gilberts. The spread is hard to miss. Why would she change this dedicated plan if she could not find Howland, was unsure of her position and ready to turn back ?
2. The radio call at 1912GMT, “We are on the line 157-337″ is in TRUE degrees and aviators never have worked in True degrees, aviators always work in Magnetic. Even if Noonan was working on a line through Howland he would have converted the TRUE degrees to MAGNETIC degrees and told her to fly on that line which would have been 148-328. If she had called 148-328 we would know that is a Magnetic line. A MAGNETIC line 157-337 through Howland would not run close to Nikumaroro. Earhart said, “We are on the line…” NOT, “We are on the sunline”.
3. Clarence William’s strip map prepared for Earhart for the flight from LAE-HOW shows an approach MAGNETIC heading of 068 degrees as the last heading into HOW, NIL wind. We know the wind was from slightly North-East out at HOW at the time, Noonan could have had Earhart lay-off into the wind by steering 067 in the stage of the flight approaching the island to as near as they got. 90 degrees either side of 067 is 157-337, the “Line of Position” or “we are on the line” was nothing more than that, a MAG line at 157-337 at right angles to their last heading. It was not a sunline. It is just pure coincidence that the numbers are the same.
4. You cannot navigate from an “unknown position” to a “known position” you have no way of navigating. Earhart’s 1912GMT “Must be on you but cannot see you” says that “they” THOUGHT they were there, they were not sure they were there. They could have been lateral to the island but could also have been many miles short of the island. They only “Thought” they were there. In other words, they were “lost”. You cannot navigate from “Lost” to “Known”, you have no means of navigating.
5. If Noonan did know “where” they were, why then did he not pass a heading to Earhart and say, “Fly this heading it leads to Howland”, there would be no need to go to Gardner and I would not be writing this……
6. The Tighar Hypothesis totally neglects to say that 11 crewmen from the S.S. Norwich City perished in the surf when the ship ran aground on the reef there at Gardner in 1928. Some of the bodies (not all were found) were buried in shallow coral graves. Some bodies could have been carried by the sea to “anywhere” and one could have been swirled around the island and dumped on the north shore. The bones found could also have been from a lost Pacific fisherman. We read stories of them drifting for weeks on end. Gillespie makes big licks about the presence of the crabs on Niku and these crabs could have unearthed the bones or eaten the cadavers. There are other reports of bones strewed on the beach from later visitors. Undoubtedly the bones found in 1940 came from the S.S. Norwich City.
7. The bones found in 1940 eventually got to Fiji where they were examined by a senior medical staffer there, a Dr. Hoodless. Hoodless pronounced them to be from a Male person of mixed race origin. He examined the bones, they were right in front of him. Tighar, without seeing the bones now says that the bones came from a white Nordic female person. How that can happen with out actually having the bones is astounding.
8. After a zillion trips to Gardner, Gillespie has tried to pass off the slightest whiff of gunsmoke as “real” evidence. Hence the attempt one time to pass of bronze bearing bushes found in an old Carpenter’s shack on the island as “could be bushes from the engines”…. or words to that effect when it is known that carts were used to collect Coconuts in the Copra experiment there. Carts need bushings for the axle bearings on simple carts. The shoe he proudly did proclaim as Earhart’s is about a size ten “man’s” shoe. Not one piece of supposed evidence Gillespie has brought back with him has been proven to have come from the Electra or from Earhart and Noonan.
Despite all this and US$5M of OPM spent already, the shells are being shuffled again…..
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