Where’s Amelia?: The fate of Amelia Earhart and her navigator Fred Noonan, who disappeared in the Pacific in 1937 while circumnavigating the globe, is one of the adventure world’s greatest mysteries. Now, following a tip from an 81-year old WWII veteran, an archeological team will excavate a potential grave site on the island of Tinian. According to the vet, Saint John Naftel, he was approached in 1944 while stationed at Tinian by a local man who said that he had helped bury a white woman and a white man–both wearing aviation suits–in 1937. The man had been working as a laborer for the Japanese in the Marianas at the time, and went on to show Naftel the alleged burial ground. Naftel tried to tell his story after the war, but was repeatedly dismissed by archaeologists and historians, because Earhart was not believed to be anywhere near the Marianas when her plane went down, and it seemed doubtful that the Japanese, if they found her body, would have brought her to Tinian. But after multiple failed expeditions to try and find Earhart, historians are willing to take even a long shot. If it pays off, it will be a story to rival the discovery a few years ago of George Mallory’s body on Everest….

Earhart’s unorthodox piloting position may have had something to do with the crash…..

(Photo: ameliaearhart.com)