Aerial footage from 1938 leaves experts claiming to have 'very strong evidence' they've found Amelia Earhart's plane
The aviation pioneer was legally declared dead in 1939
Featured Image Credit: Bettmann / Contributor / Getty
Up there with D.B. Cooper's vanishing act, what happened to Agatha Christie when she went missing for 11 days, and the tragedy of The Mary Celeste, Amelia Earhart's missing plane is one of history's great unsolved mysteries.
The aviation pioneer had been missing for 88 years, with her Lockheed Model 10-E Electra plane vanishing near Howland Island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean on July 2, 1937.
Earhart had been attempting a round-the-world expedition with navigator Fred Noonan.
Modern accounts suggest that the plane ran out of fuel and crashed into the ocean near Howland Island, with the wreckage of 'The Flying Laboratory' potentially lying up to 18,000 feet under the sea.
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There's been a recent renewed interest in Earhart's story, but with theories ranging from interference from the Bermuda Triangle to Earhart being captured by Japanese forces, there's little concrete evidence of what actually happened.
A plane discovered in July 2025 was originally thought to be the Flying Laboratory, while others have backed up this idea while claiming they can spot it on Google Earth.
With so much intrigue, an upcoming expedition hopes to finally solve the mystery, as Richard Pettigrew of the Archaeological Legacy Institute (ALI) refers to the potential wreckage as the 'discovery of a lifetime'.
West Lafayette's Purdue University has joined the ALI in the hunt for Earhart. She has ties to the university after she joined as a flight consultant in 1935, and it provided funds for her Lockheed Electra 10-E. Purdue University reports how aerial photos from 1938 show off the metallic object known as the 'Taraia Object' in the underwater lagoon on Nikumaroro.
The photos were captured just a year after Earhart's disappearance, but with her body never being found, she was officially declared dead in absentia on January 5, 1939.
A 15-person crew of Purdue researchers and those from the ALI is heading to Nikumaroro on November 4. The island is located in a remote area between Hawaii and Fiji, near the middle of the Pacific Ocean.
ALI executive director Dr. Richard Pettigrew said: "Finding Amelia Earhart’s aircraft would be the discovery of a lifetime. Other evidence already collected by the International Group of Historic Aircraft Recovery establishes an extremely persuasive, multifaceted case that the final destination for Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan, was on Nikumaroro.
"Confirming the plane wreckage there would be the smoking-gun proof.”
Although there have been previous visits to Nikumaroro, skeletal remains found in 1938 weren't linked to Earhart. The island has been home to humans on several occasions during its history, but currently, it remains uninhabited.
The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery (TIGHAR) has also made numerous trips to the island, recovering U.S. beauty and skin-care products that could be linked to the 1930s, U.S. bottles dating from before World War II, and a piece of aircraft-grade aluminum that resembles a patch on Earhart's plane.
After the Taraia Object was first discovered via satellite images in 2015, theories surrounding Nikumaroro and Earhart have ramped up.
Returning to Earhart's Purdue University ties, Steve Schultz, senior vice president and general counsel, said: "A successful identification would be the first step toward fulfilling Amelia’s original plan to return the Electra to West Lafayette after her historic flight
"Additional work would still be needed to accomplish that objective, but we feel we owe it to her legacy, which remains so strong at Purdue, to try to find a way to bring it home."