Did Amelia Earhart Set Up Camp on a Remote Island After Crashing in Pacific?

An expedition seeks to unravel one of the greatest mysteries of all time.

National Geographic Channel's “Expedition Amelia" takes a journey to the remote island of Nikumaroro in the Western Pacific Ocean to try to answer the question of what really happened to Amelia Earhart.

“Her story, the woman that she was, and the pioneer that she was, has inspired so many people for so many decades, so we really want to help close the chapter on her final days,” Allison Fundis, COO of Ocean Operation Trust, told Inside Edition. 

Joining Fundis in the expedition is Dr. Bob Ballard , the famed explorer who found the wreck of the Titanic. Ballard and his team believe a photo of Nikumaroro taken by a British soldier a few months after Earhart disappeared could provide the key.

“If you enhance the small little blurry piece that we were looking at you can make it out to be landing gear of a Lockheed Electra, which she was flying with,” Fundis said. 

If that was the landing gear, the scientists believe Earhart's plane could be lying on the bottom of the ocean off the coast of Nikumaroro.

“We came with two ships, robotic vehicles, we had a land-based team, we had technology that was capable of mapping the sea floor at all depths,” Fundis said. 

They combed the ocean floor with robotic-controlled vehicles thousands of feet below the surface but were not able to find the wreckage.

However, archaeologists found artifacts leading them to believe Earhart may have set up a camp on the island after crash-landing.

“There were bones, there was a jar that was uncovered, which we think is a freckle cream jar, and she was known to use freckle cream to hide her freckles,” Fundis said. “There's still a chance that she's out there and we're gonna keep looking for her.”

RELATED STORIES