Amelia Earhart's desperate pleas for help heard by dozens after she went missing, researchers say
Amelia Earhart's final calls for help were heard by dozens of people after she disappeared in July of 1937, researchers say.
What happened to the legendary American aviator remains one of the great unsolved mysteries, but the International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery (TIGHAR) claims that a series of radio messages does prove that Earhart did land and perish near a deserted island in the Pacific.
"Can you read me? Can you read me? This is Amelia Earhart. This is Amelia Earhart. Please come in," a woman named Thelma Lovelace hears in the Canadian province of New Brunswick at 1:30 a.m. on July 7.
Earhart gave her latitude and longitude, as documented by Lovelace in a book, and added, "We have taken in water, my navigator is badly hurt; (repeat) we are in need of medical care and must have help; we can't hold on much longer."
Five days earlier, Earhart and navigator Fred Noonan went missing during their historic effort to fly around the world. Their Lockheed Model 10 Electra had lost contact with the U.S. Coast Guard cutter Itasca, and they never arrived at little Howland Island in the Pacific for a refueling stop.
The U.S. Navy Hydrographic Office put out an "all ships, all stations" bulletin about Earhart on July 2, according the TIGHAR study published this week. The Navy released the aviator's primary frequencies and asked sharp ears to listen.
In all, 50 of the 57 "credible" audio reports were heard by government employees or professional commercial operators, but the quality of the signals were poor. Many stations heard only a background "carrier wave," according to TIGHAR.
_New York Daily News
