A newly released collection of 47 aerial photographs of Nikumaroro Island could provide fresh clues in the long-running mystery surrounding Amelia Earhart’s disappearance.
The black-and-white images were taken on December 1 1938, a year after the pioneering aviator vanished while attempting to become the first woman to fly around the world. The Air Force Museum of New Zealand has now made the complete set available, in the hope that researchers and members of the public may identify details previously overlooked.
The photographs were discovered more than a decade ago by Matthew O’Sullivan, the Christchurch museum’s keeper of photographs. Although some had appeared online, the full collection had not previously been seen.
Nikumaroro, formerly known as Gardner Island, lies in the South Pacific roughly halfway between Australia and Hawaii. It is part of Kiribati and has long been at the centre of one of the leading theories about Earhart’s fate.
Supporters of the theory believe Earhart may have made an emergency landing on the island’s coral reef after failing to find Howland Island. Her Lockheed Electra has never been found, however, and previous searches of Nikumaroro have produced no verified aircraft parts or human remains.
A fresh search for Amelia Earhart’s aircraft
The release of the photographs comes as a 17-person research team investigates a suspected object in the island’s lagoon. The feature, identified in satellite imagery from 2020 and dubbed the “Tararia Object”, is being examined as a possible aircraft wreck.
The expedition is being led by archaeologist Dr Richard Pettigrew, executive director of the Archaeological Legacy Institute. The team has begun using a magnetometer to search for metal and sonar equipment to examine objects beneath or on the lagoon’s surface.
Severe weather has hampered the operation, but the researchers are expected to issue an update in the coming days. Dr Pettigrew said the investigation required careful analysis rather than an immediate conclusion.
“This is a complex scientific process. You don’t simply arrive at a site and immediately identify what’s there,” he said in an update. “We have to carefully collect the data, analyse it and reach sound conclusions.”
Dr Pettigrew has previously suggested that Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan, may have landed on Nikumaroro after running out of fuel. He believes they could have died there before their remains were consumed by coconut crabs.
“The very idea that she wasted away on the island and eventually died and got eaten by coconut crabs – that’s a horrible, horrible vision,” he said previously. “I don’t like thinking about it, but it’s inevitable.”
What happened to Amelia Earhart?
Earhart and Noonan disappeared on July 2 1937 while flying from Papua New Guinea to Howland Island. Earhart had radioed that the aircraft was running low on fuel, and a 16-day search by the US Navy found no trace of the pair or their plane.
The official theory has long been that the Electra ran out of fuel, crashed and sank in deep water near Howland Island. The lack of wreckage has nevertheless prompted a range of alternative explanations.
Some researchers believe radio messages made after the disappearance were distress calls from a safely landed aircraft on Gardner Island, although the authenticity of those transmissions has been questioned. Other theories claim the pair came down near Mili Atoll, were captured by the Japanese and taken to Saipan.
In 2024, an expedition by South Carolina-based Deep Sea Vision reported finding an aircraft-shaped object in the Pacific. A subsequent search concluded that it was rock rather than an aeroplane.
A multi-million-dollar search of waters near Nikumaroro in 2019, led by ocean explorer Robert Ballard, also failed to locate Earhart’s twin-engined aircraft. The newly released photographs may now offer investigators another opportunity to examine the island for evidence of what happened to the aviator and her navigator.
