Clinton launches new search for missing aviator

An undated file photo shows Amelia Earhart, the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean. Photo / AP

United States Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is launching a fresh effort to discover the fate of the pioneering flyer Amelia Earhart - a woman no less famous in her time than Clinton today - who vanished over the South Pacific almost 75 years ago.

The latest attempt to resolve one of America's most enduring mysteries has been sparked by fresh analysis of a photo from the time. It shows what could be a strut and wheel of Earhart's Lockheed Electra aircraft sticking up out of the water close to Nikumaroro, an island that today is part of Kiribati.

Yesterday, Clinton held a meeting with experts from the International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery, which has already carried out 10 expeditions to Nikumaroro and will conduct another one in June.

"Amelia Earhart may have been an unlikely heroine for a nation down on its luck, but she embodied the spirit of an America coming of age and increasingly confident, ready to lead in a quite uncertain and dangerous world. She gave people hope and she inspired them to dream bigger and bolder," Clinton said. "When she took off on that historic journey, she carried the aspirations of our entire country with her."

All that is known for sure is that on July 2, 1937, Earhart took off from Lae in eastern New Guinea - now Papua New Guinea - on the perilous trans-Pacific stage of her planned round-the-world flight, accompanied by her navigator, Fred Noonan.

They were aiming for tiny Howland Island, 1.5km long and 800m wide, lying some 4023km to the east. Her last confirmed position came about a third of the way along the intended route, though, apparently, she was in contact with a US coastguard vessel waiting off Howland Island. But nothing more was seen or heard of the Electra and the two people on board.

The belief was that Earhart and Noonan, using navigational equipment far less sophisticated than today's, simply could not find Howland Island, and died when their plane crashed into the sea after its fuel ran out.

Gradually, largely as a result of the recovery group's efforts, the focus has shifted to Nikumaroro, in 1937 known as Gardner Island, in the Phoenix archipelago 320km southeast of Howland. Over the past two decades, tantalising clues have emerged that she and Noonan might have made it to Gardner, an atoll of 10sq km enclosing a lagoon, where they survived for a while before succumbing to exhaustion, lack of drinking water or disease, their bodies consumed by coconut crabs.

On Nikumaroro's northwest side, the recovery group has found artefacts, including a shattered mirror from a woman's make-up compact, parts of a folding pocket knife, traces of campfires and of American bottles pre-dating World War II. The island is uninhabited today, but from 1938-1963 was an experimental British colonial settlement, which might account for some of the items found.

Earhart was declared dead in 1939.

Ric Gillespie, the recovery group's executive director, said he came across a photograph of Nikumaroro taken in 1937 by a British expedition that - not linked to the Earhart mystery - was assessing the uninhabited island for potential settlement.

Gillespie said he saw what he thought was a simple "blob" on the picture. But after a closer analysis, he said he believed it showed landing gear from the Electra.

- Independent