October 21, 2026, 8:11 am | Read time: 9 minutes
Eighty-nine years ago, the legendary American pilot Amelia Earhart disappeared over the Pacific and was declared dead. Some say she died when her plane crashed into the ocean, while others believe she was captured by Japanese soldiers. Hope for answers resurfaced this month: A research team set out for a remote atoll in the South Pacific, where a satellite image was thought to show Earhart’s plane and solve the mystery of her disappearance. However, it has now been confirmed that the promising discovery was merely driftwood.
Amelia Earhart was the first woman to fly across the Atlantic and was already an idol for American women during her lifetime. In 1937, at just 39 years old, she aimed to be the first woman to circumnavigate the globe at the equator by plane. But during this endeavor, she mysteriously vanished. For the searchers, this is the second setback in a short time: In 2024, a sonar image of the supposed plane of the pioneer turned out to be a rock.
Overview
Six Years of Hope–and in the End Just Driftwood
The new expedition was triggered by a satellite image from 2020. It showed a long, metallic outline in the lagoon of the uninhabited Nikumaroro Atoll in the island nation of Kiribati. According to BILD, it was about 12 to 13 meters long, almost the size of the fuselage and tail of Earhart’s Lockheed Electra 10-E. The “Taraia Object” was named after the peninsula where it was discovered.
The expedition was led by Purdue University in Indiana. Earhart once worked there, and a university foundation financed her “flying laboratory.” After the circumnavigation, the plane was supposed to return to the university.
The search expedition was initially planned for November 2025. However, it was postponed due to a lack of permission from Kiribati and the onset of cyclone season. According to the “Times of India,” the costs were around $900,000. Compared to the $11 million for the sonar search in 2023 (which we report on further below), it’s almost a bargain.
The Purdue University reports: In early October, the 17-member team set out from Tarawa, covering about 1,500 kilometers over rough seas. On Nikumaroro Island, they had to hack their way to the lagoon with machetes and chainsaws. Then, bad weather kept the researchers from the shore for three days. After seven days on site, the result was clear: The object was nothing more than driftwood. Only a Y-shaped piece remained, resembling a branch more than an aircraft tail. The shine apparently came from hardened coral sand. The team still refuses to give up.
Ric Gillespie was likely not surprised. The co-founder of the organization TIGHAR has been searching for Earhart on Nikumaroro for decades and had already scanned the area twice with metal detectors. According to the “Guardian,” he suspected a tree even before departure.
A Lot of Findings on Nikumaroro
Gillespie believes the island itself holds the key to the mystery. Earhart’s intended destination for her penultimate leg was Howland Island, a tiny island in the middle of the Pacific where she planned to refuel. However, she never arrived there. Gillespie’s theory: Amelia Earhart did not crash into the ocean but managed to make an emergency landing on Nikumaroro, about 650 kilometers southeast of Howland. The atoll is barely above sea level, only 6 kilometers long and 2 kilometers wide. The small island is completely surrounded by a coral reef. According to Gillespie’s theory, Earhart landed on this reef, made it ashore, and survived there for a few days.
Several clues support this theory: A week after Earhart’s disappearance, Navy pilots found signs that someone had recently set up camp on the coast. A year after Earhart vanished, a small group of Britons settled on the previously uninhabited island. In 1940, these settlers found parts of a woman’s shoe, an empty sextant box (navigation devices also used in aircraft), and a bottle of a French liqueur brand that Earhart reportedly enjoyed. The shoe was later linked to a brand Earhart wore.
In the same year, a human skull and skeleton were found on the island. A doctor in Fiji examined the bones and believed they belonged to a man, after which they were lost. In 2018, U.S. anthropologist Richard Jantz re-evaluated the old measurements using modern methods and concluded that the bones could indeed be Earhart’s. However, the study faced criticism, as old photos were not considered sufficient evidence.
The Purdue team did not return empty-handed either: In the lagoon, they found a steel pipe about 76 centimeters long, which is now being examined. Others are searching for the plane where Earhart was supposed to land: on the ocean floor near Howland Island.
Setback Already in 2024 During Expensive Sonar Search
Among them is amateur researcher Tony Romeo. For a brief moment, it seemed he had succeeded in finding Earhart’s unmistakable plane. He returned from a roughly 100-day sea voyage in December 2023 with a sonar image that he believed showed the lost plane in the depths of the ocean. In an interview with “Business Insider,” the former U.S. Air Force intelligence officer revealed that he had always been fascinated by Amelia Earhart’s story.
Romeo’s expedition began in September 2023 in Tarawa, another atoll in the Pacific Ocean. The 16-member research crew used a $9 million unmanned high-tech diving drone to explore an area of the seabed over 13,000 square kilometers. About a month into the journey, the drone captured a sonar image of an aircraft-shaped object–approximately 160 kilometers off Howland Island. However, the team only discovered the image on the 90th day of the journey, making a return for closer inspection impractical.
On November 1, 2024, Tony Romeo confirmed to the “New York Post” that the supposed breakthrough was merely a rock formation shaped like an airplane after new sonar images were taken. Romeo, who had sold all his commercial properties to fund the search, remains optimistic despite the setback. “The worldwide response to our initial discovery was truly inspiring, a testament to Amelia and the allure of her incredible story.”
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Earhart’s route was supposed to take her from Miami through Puerto Rico, Venezuela, and Brazil across the Atlantic to Senegal. It was then to continue through Sudan, Ethiopia, India, Myanmar, and Papua New Guinea, always along the equator. The final leg to her ultimate destination, Hawaii, was to be the most dangerous, as the route was entirely over the Pacific Ocean. On her journey across the vast waters, Earhart planned to stop only once, on Howland Island, which was then a U.S. territory near present-day Kiribati. But the pilot never reached her destination.
Her last radio transmissions were desperate: She and her navigator Noonan couldn’t find the island’s coordinates, fuel was running low, and radio contact was lost. When no ship in the vicinity managed to re-establish contact, a massive fleet was immediately dispatched to search for Earhart. At the time, it was the most expensive and extensive rescue operation in U.S. Navy history, with dozens of warships and aircraft deployed. But it was in vain. A few weeks later, Earhart was declared dead by her husband. The most likely cause of death: The plane crashed into the Pacific, and the two pilots died on impact or drowned. Some adventurous theories suggest Earhart and Noonan were captured by Japanese soldiers (the Pacific War was already underway in 1937). However, there is no evidence to support this. The third theory remains: the emergency landing on Nikumaroro.
Gillespie believes Earhart managed to save herself from the reef and survived on land for a few days. At night, when the tide receded, she supposedly swam to the plane and tried to send distress signals for several days.
Earhart’s Calls for Help on the Radio
These transmissions are not Gillespie’s speculation but were reportedly received at several U.S. military stations and heard on U.S. radio according to numerous reports. Several women reported hearing Earhart’s calls for help during a radio broadcast at home in their living rooms. Authorities received more than 120 such reports from private households and official search teams, more than half of which were deemed credible and consistent. There are careful, written transcriptions of all the heard transmissions. Several military stations at the time believed the transmissions originated from Nikumaroro–then known as Gardner Island. Gillespie has collected and extensively analyzed all the transmissions over the years. He has made the report on his findings freely accessible online.
The transmissions paint a picture of Earhart’s desperate situation: In one transmission, she reports how the water around the plane is rising and that she can’t hold out much longer. In another, she states that her companion is severely injured and urgently needs medical help. In yet another transmission, Earhart allegedly even gave her coordinates. The listener who accidentally picked this up reportedly lost the note.
Gillespie organizes the transmissions in his report and concludes that the intervals in which Earhart remained silent and those in which she transmitted indicate that Earhart only turned on the plane’s engines during low tide to be able to transmit. Additionally, the transmissions given in the first few days described the plane as “surrounded by water,” while the next transmissions were calls for help, reporting that the plane was half on land, half underwater. In the last recorded transmissions, it was testified that the plane was almost completely submerged in the ocean.