Man claiming to ‘know the truth’ about Amelia Earhart’s lost plane wants to be heard

The story of Amelia Earhart and her disappearance during her final flight remains a mystery.

She was attempting to be the first woman to fly around the world, but during her journey, she, her navigator, and her aircraft dropped off the radar and were never seen again.

Yet one man believes he knows what happened to the famous aviator and is determined to share his knowledge with the world.

Ric Gillespie, an avid history and plane enthusiast, has been studying the mystery of her disappearance for years, and he’s convinced that she didn’t die from a plane crash into the sea but instead faced a different ending.

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Amelia Earhart’s disappearance

On July 2, 1937, Earhart disappeared over the Pacific Ocean while attempting to become the first female pilot to circumnavigate the world.

She told the reporters that she was ‘tired of flying the Atlantic’ and had decided to become the first woman to fly around the world, effectively clocking up 27,000 miles in doing so.

Yet she never completed her final mission. She and co navigator Fred Noonan made their last communication at 8pm shortly after stating they were low on fuel.

The U.S. Navy and Coast Guard spent 16 days searching an area about the size of Texas for Earhart and Noonan but without any clues or evidence on what happened to the pair or their aircraft.

They were officially declared dead on January 5 1939.

Whilst her body and airplane have never been officially recovered, it’s thought her Lockheed 10-E Electra aircraft is located near Howland Island.

Reports from Deep Sea Vision, a marine robotics company in South Carolina, claim to have blurry images of the plane wreckage on the seafloor about 100 miles down.

Gillespie’s truth

Whilst the wreckage of her plane is thought to have been located, Earhart’s body has never been uncovered.

This could indicate that she never died in a plane crash, which – according to Gillespie – would fit his theory that she instead faced a different outcome.

Gillespie has become a recognized expert on Earhart, regularly appearing on news broadcasts and in documentaries.

He maintains that instead of dying in a plane crash, Amelia Earhart survived her plane coming down and became a castaway on an island.

That island is Nikumaroro, now one of the islands of the Republic of Kiribati, near Fiji.

Across variation expeditions to the Pacific Ocean island, Gillespie has found various items he believes are clues to Earhart and Noonan’s disappearance.

A bent aluminium sheet in 1991 was the first discovery and thought to be from Amelia Earhart’s aircraft.

Next came finds, including pieces of a shoe’s heel and sole, broken glass from a compact mirror, a rusted jackknife, and an empty bottle of freckle cream.

Earhart’s Electra aircraft is also thought to hold vital clues.

Gillespie, alongside other members of the International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery (TIGHAR), have discovered that there is evidence of 135 messages that Earhart allegedly sent after landing.

57 of these were sent over a period of six days, and if they came from Elektra, it would be clear that Earhart didn’t crash into the sea.

One message was recorded by 16-year-old Dana Randolph in Wyoming, who noted that Earhart sent on July 4: “This is Amelia Earhart. Ship is on reef south of the equator. Station KH9QQ.”

Gillespie said: “If even one of them is credible, she didn’t crash at sea.”

So did Amelia Earhart crash as previously presumed, did she land on an island and become a castaway or is it a different story altogether?

The search is ongoing so we’re still none the wiser.