One Man’s Search for Amelia Earhart’s Airplane

In the summer of 1937, a nation was in mourning over a national tragedy. The world’s most famed female flyer, Amelia Earhart, had disappeared amid a riveting voyage to become the first woman aviator to circumnavigate the globe.

The 39-year-old Atchison, Kansas native already had quite a list of aerial accomplishments. In 1928, she became the first female pilot to cross the Atlantic Ocean. Four years later, she did the transatlantic flight solo and without a stop. Then, taking a giant leap forward, she attempted to become the first female aviator to fly around the world. Still more impressively, Earhart aimed to circumvent the earth at the latitude of the equator, i.e., the largest possible circle — and also the hottest. If Earhart’s aircraft happened to crash along the equatorial route, the heat could be a lethal threat to any possibility of survival. (READ MORE: Paris, 1944: Forcing the Hand of Fate)

Earhart was widely hailed for her feats of daring. She was often referred to as the “Lady Lindy,” the female equivalent of flyer Charles Lindbergh. She was a household name in the 1930s, and she is still famous. Her story is taught in schools as that of a pioneering woman, and she has made cameo appearances in contemporary Hollywood movies. Even today, in the 2020s, little girls dress like Amelia Earhart for Halloween.

What has made her memory especially notable was her utterly mysterious disappearance, which still fascinates.

It occurred on July 2, 1937. That morning, Earhart took off from Lae, New Guinea (central Pacific) in her Lockheed Model 10-E Electra with her trustworthy navigator, Fred Noonan. They left the Lae Airfield at 10:00 a.m. local time (12:00 a.m. GMT). Their destination was Howland Island, a tiny sliver of land that would be easy to miss (6,500 ft. long by 1,600 ft. wide). Howland was 2,556 miles from the Lae Airfield; the trip would take an estimated 20 hours.

But Earhart and Noonan never made it to Howland. Conventional wisdom says that the plane ran out of fuel and went down somewhere in the Pacific, fatally doomed by a failure to locate the tiny island.

Earhart’s body was never found. The plane has never been located. Perhaps until now.

Finding the Plane

One man believes he has found the plane of Amelia Earhart. His name is Tim Mellon, and he reached out to The American Spectator to share what he discovered. We communicated via multiple emails and by phone and our correspondence was supplemented by important material provided in Mellon’s just-released autobiography, titled panam.captain.

Mellon believes that Earhart’s plane went down near Nikumaroro, a tiny atoll once known as Gardner Island, one of the Phoenix Islands belonging to the island country of Kiribati. This is not an isolated opinion and has become an increasingly popular hypothesis in recent years, even as it has its doubters. The Wikipedia entry on Earhart dismisses the Nikumaroro-Gardner claim as one of several “conspiracy theories,” asserting: “Gardner island, one of the Phoenix Islands that is now known as Nikumaroro, has been the subject of inquiry as a possible crash-landing site but, despite numerous expeditions, no link between Earhart and the island has ever been found.”

That’s a rather bold dismissal and Mellon’s research seems to (pun intended) blow it out of the water.

Some 4.7 miles long by 1.6 miles wide, tiny Nikumaroro is larger than Howland, but far less hospitable; in fact, it is so inhospitable that few human beings have been able to settle there, including the British in the early 20th century, and the Allies during World War II. The temperatures are brutal and fresh water is so sparse that if Amelia Earhart’s plane had made it to the shore of the island, and she and Noonan had survived an emergency landing, they would not have survived for long, particularly if they had been badly injured in a crash.

How the plane would have ended up offshore, some 1,050 feet underwater (which is the depth at which Tim Mellon believes that crucial parts of the plane rest today), is the subject of an intriguing debate. One compelling theory is that Earhart’s plane managed to land safely during low tide on the reef on the northwest corner of Nikumaroro and from there was inoperable and washed into the ocean over several days. There have been recent reports claiming that Earhart’s bones have been identified on the island. (Still others speculate that she survived and was captured and executed as a spy by the Japanese.) For now, let us focus on the dramatic report — a potential major revelation in and of itself — that the plane, heretofore never found, has at long last been discovered. That itself would be a big deal.

This brings us to Tim Mellon’s story.

A Lifechanging Day in March 2012

For Mellon, his journey to find Earhart’s plane began one day in March 2012 while sitting at his home office in Wyoming. His wife had brought him a copy of the Casper Star-Tribune, explaining, “I thought you might be interested in this article about Amelia Earhart.” Mellon quips in his memoirs that his wife still rues that day.

Because of his own life of work in aviation —Mellon purchased Pan American Airways out of bankruptcy in 1998, among a bunch of other events linking his aerial interests to Earhart’s — Mellon was quickly seized by the newest developments in the Earhart story.

The Star-Tribune article reported on a U.S. State Department news conference held by no less than Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood. The two high-profile Obama administration officials were touting a proposed expedition to the South Pacific to explore the whereabouts of Earhart’s plane. They had been prompted by new findings reported by forensics expert Jeff Glickman and The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery (TIGHAR), a 501(c)(3) nonprofit headed by Ric Gillespie.

Gillespie and TIGHAR had done over 10 expeditions to Nikumaroro since 1982 in search of Earhart. But now, Glickman’s analysis had given the group a new lead and new hope. Glickman had found an old photograph of what some believed might be part of a landing gear protruding from the surf just months after Earhart’s disappearance. Not only were Glickman and Gillespie intrigued by the new details, but so was the State Department. And so was Tim Mellon.

Gillespie made plans for a major expedition, called “Niku VII.” He would launch from the University of Hawaii, sailing 1,800 miles and back. The crew would spend 10 days onsite deploying a sonar-using Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (“AUV”) and a Remotely Operated Vehicle (“ROV”) with high-definition underwater cameras operated by a Scotsman named Wolfgang Burnside. The search operation itself would be contracted to Phoenix International. The budget for the project exceeded $2 million. According to Tim Mellon, Gillespie had already raised about $600,000 from companies like Lockheed, FedEx, and The Discovery Channel, which envisioned a documentary. But Gillespie needed a lot more cash. Mellon stepped up to offer to fund half the budget from his own charitable contribution. It was a lifeline to the expedition.

With that, Gillespie was ready to sail and Mellon went along with him and his crew. They launched on July 3, 2012, nearly 75 years to the day and hour that Earhart vanished. The subsequent dives and details are laid out at length by Mellon in his autobiography, specifically in the chapter “TIGHAR Hunt.” The challenging mission encountered many obstacles and seemed unsuccessful, even disappointing. At least at first. Things became much more promising once Mellon settled back home and began doing his own digging into the videos from the underwater cameras. Here, too, Mellon’s details are many, and worth reading step by step in his book to see how his explorer’s curiosity was piqued and how one clue led to another.

A Breakthrough

According to Mellon, a breakthrough occurred just a month after the expedition when in August 2012, John Balderston, a Lockheed Martin employee, posted an image taken from the video that appeared to him as a painted numeral “2” on what he believed might have been the wing of the plane. Balderston also thought he saw a number “0,” though by Mellon’s estimation, perhaps not properly aligned to be an exact match. Significantly, the numbers would have fit the five-digit number code on Earhart’s aircraft: NR 16020.

This certainly caught Mellon’s attention, and he soon discerned what looked like more items that he could identify, such as the steel wheel, the actual cockpit and pilot’s seat, binoculars, and even the main landing gear with a collapsed tire. Mellon began collecting screenshots.

Most striking, these images were gleaned from merely two minutes of video that Gillespie had posted on the TIGHAR website. Mellon asked Gillespie if there was more video. Gillespie complied by sharing a longer segment — eight minutes and 33 seconds. “This, in turn,” says Mellon, “allowed me to identify yet more aircraft components.”

Unfortunately for Mellon, when he shared his thoughts, they were rejected by various dissenters, including Gillespie himself, who Mellon says, reacted with “incredulity followed not long after by outright scorn and derision.”

Ultimately this led to a major rift between Mellon and Gillespie (Mellon eventually brought a lawsuit against Gillespie for fraud and negligence). Mellon asked for more footage. He says that Gillespie refused, taking “the adamant position that whatever I was posting was pure conjecture and thus making a mockery of his supposedly scientific approach to research that had given TIGHAR its initial credibility.”

At that point, Mellon took an important step in terms of establishing the credibility of his claims: He hired his own team of forensics analysts to examine the video footage. “I needed to determine if new and independent eyes could see things that I could see,” explains Mellon, “whether there were ways to measure them reliably in such a way to be able to compare them with parts from actual existing Electra aircraft, and thereby come to see some conclusion about the actual probability of the Earhart Electra being where I had come to believe it was.”

Among Mellon’s analysts was Dr. John D. Jarrell, Ph.D., PE. Jarrell is highly accomplished, with a multidisciplinary background and expertise in several areas, including mechanical and biomedical engineering, with appointments at Brown University’s Alpert Medical School and the Weiss Center for Orthopaedic Trauma Research at Rhode Island Hospital. He founded the firm NE Finest LLC and is president of Materials Science Associates LLC, based in East Greenwich, Rhode Island.

Mellon hired Jarrell’s forensics firm. Things moved rapidly from there. Mellon said within a few short months, Jarrell’s team had reviewed enough data and accompanying graphics to (in Mellon’s words) “make a strong case in the affirmative.” That is to say, the video footage that Mellon had examined might well be debris from Amelia Earhart’s aircraft.

The Evidence

The personal rift between Mellon and Gillespie is unfortunate, but what is fortunate are the photos that were taken. Gillespie might disagree with Mellon’s interpretation of certain images, but one that jumps out is the number “2,” which seems to be visible on what likely is the top of the left rudder of the airplane. In the images that Mellon shared with The American Spectator, the wingtip lay with other debris at a depth of approximately 1,050 feet at the bottom of the water just off the northwestern tip of the Nikumaroro atoll.

Also discernible is a Hamilton Standard decal. Mellon believes he can detect a darkened image that he thinks might be the emblem of the Hamilton Standard Propellor Company (located in Hartford, Connecticut) that was placed on the propeller blade of the left engine on Earhart’s aircraft.

Of these two items in particular, Tim Mellon told us: “The ‘2’ [is] the definitive proof of the location of the Electra, to the exclusion of all other ‘theories.’ The Hamilton Standard decal [also] corroborates, only meters away from the rudder.” Mellon says that other potential findings, though interesting, “tend to cloud the picture,” especially given the sharp debate over differing interpretations. He insists, however, that the number “2” is definitive.

That image is quite striking. No argument. It likewise caught our eye at The American Spectator. The number 2 does seem to be visible and appears to be shaped very similarly to the style of the 2 on Earhart’s plane.

The position of the number 2 is also significant. Mellon explains: “The ‘2’ is the right size, in the right place relative to the trim tab, the right distance above the bottom of the trim tab, the correct font, the correct thickness of the digit, and the right color, black.”

It looks like quite the match. Mellon says of the rudder’s features: “It is hinged vertically, with a trim tab visible, and a slot wherein it rotates over the fixed portion of the horizontal stabilizer.”

If those striking images do not give pause, it is hard to imagine what would.

In all, Tim Mellon has loads of photos and videos, with very specific details on each. To cite just one recent example, which he shared with us at The American Spectator, he has located a potential debris field that Gillespie specified at 4.65711667 degrees south, 174.5475333 degrees west, between 285 to 335 meters deep.

That kind of precision is typical of his material and claims.

Deep Dive

So, what does this mean to the big picture? What does it portend for the plans to find the plane and Amelia Earhart?

If Mellon’s conclusions are accurate, they would mean that Earhart’s aircraft did not exhaust its fuel supply searching for Howland Island before crashing and sinking in some undetermined location deep in the Pacific, as many have long believed. Rather, it would mean that the plane finally has been located, just off the coast of Nikumaroro.

“It’s over,” Mellon says with confidence. “Forget about it.” To those searching elsewhere for the aircraft, he urges: “Don’t torture yourself anymore. Don’t waste another dime on a mission so fraught with impossibility. It’s okay to be wrong. You had your reasons. But visual evidence is compelling, and you have none.”

Mellon believes that he has seen the visual evidence.

To that end, Mellon credits his own “dumb” tenacity to keep searching the videos. He says of his persistence: “[I was] too dumb to give up reviewing over and over the standard and high definition videos, posting one small find at a time (this landing gear, that radio transmitter…), often the object of derision or skepticism, but never deterred from pursuing what I believed to be the ultimate truth. I take credit only for my Scottish trait of stubborn persistence.”

And despite his rift with TIGHAR founder Ric Gillespie, Mellon is charitable in giving credit. He commends Gillespie for refocusing the world’s eyes upon Nikumaroro decades ago, insisting that Gillespie “deserves abundant credit for his efforts over thirty years to develop the theory that Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan touched Earth on the reef at Nikumaroro (then named Gardner Island) instead of crashing into the ocean. The physical presence of the Electra off the Northwest coast of the island proclaims emphatically that the theory was correct.” He adds: “The notion that the crew of two perished as castaways on that remote atoll, however, remains a question for further discovery and analysis.”

It does indeed. Nonetheless, if her plane has been found off that island, then we know where she ended up. Half the puzzle is finding the plane.

The question of what happened to Amelia herself, and her navigator, lingers. “The remaining mysteries,” says Mellon, “are (1) what happened to Amelia and Fred, and (2) what are the implications about the possible spying mission by the FDR regime attendant thereto?”

As to the latter, there has long been a theory that Earhart’s mission was one on behalf of the U.S. government against the rising, ominous threat of Imperial Japan, which at that point had ferociously moved against China and was escalating a vicious path of war throughout Asia, eventually drawing in the United States. Some believe that the Japanese may have had a role in Earhart’s capture and disappearance. Yes, it is a bracing theory, but it has proponents. Whether the U.S. government had such direct involvement or not, it might well be holding information to this day regarding her final whereabouts. A Navy ship had been dispatched to the island to find Earhart and Noonan and reportedly came up empty. Is there more to that story?

To that end, Mellon offers a tantalizing recommendation: He notes that President Donald Trump had committed to releasing all data about the JFK assassination. “So shouldn’t he maybe do the same about the Earhart mission?” asks Mellon. That’s an intriguing point, especially if Trump were to be reelected in November. Donald Trump has the platform to raise the Earhart issue and get it back on the public’s radar.

We shall see. There is still much more to this mystery.

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