During Francis Dryden’s term as Rotary president (1929 – 1930), one of the highlights of his year was the visit of Amelia Earhart who flew to Salisbury to address the Salisbury Rotary Club with over 250 in attendance.
Tonight’s speaker addresses Ms. Earhart’s disappearance. After over 80 years, one of the greatest mysteries of all times still remains unsolved, but Bill Snavely may be getting close to solving the mystery of what happened to renown female aviatrix Amelia Earhart.
To understand her story, this week’s cog writer did some research on this fascinating person. Amelia Earhart was born in 1897, disappeared in 1937 and declared dead in 1939. She set many aviation records.
During her attempt to be the first woman to circumnavigate the world, considered the longest around-the-world flight of 29,000 miles in 1937, Amelia Earhart and her navigator Fred Noonan disappeared somewhere over the central Pacific Ocean near what is thought to be Howland Island. Her last land stop was Lae, New Guinea. The flight began in Miami, FL on June 1 with stops in South America, Africa, the
Indian subcontinent and Southeast Asia, arriving in
Lae,
New Guinea, on June 29, 1937. She had completed 22,000 miles of the journey, with 7,000 miles remaining over the Pacific Ocean which would take about 20 hours.
The US Coast Guard sent the cutter
USCGC Itasca to the island to assist with communication and navigation functions and to guide them to the island once they arrived in the vicinity, but all navigation methods would fail. Her plane’s two-way radio communications failed to establish communication with
USCGC Itasca. The
Itasca used her oil-fired boilers to generate smoke for a period of time, but possibly due to scattered clouds in the area, the fliers apparently did not see it.
Air and sea search and rescue parties through the US Coast Guard and Navy lasted until July 19, 1937. What was considered one of the most costly and intensive searches at that time, no physical evidence of Earhart, Noonan or the Electra 10E was found. It is believed that Earhart and Noonan ran out of fuel while searching for Howland Island, ditched at sea, and died.
More recently, Bill Snavely, the author of Tracking Amelia Earhart Her Flight Path to the End, and director of Project Blue Angel, has been researching her disappearance with the finding of an aircraft wreck site in Buka Island near Papua New Guinea which appears to be consistent with Earhart’s Lockheed Electra 10E plane. Mr. Snavely’s theory is that after 12 hours, due to low fuel and possible strong headwinds, the flight was rerouted flying toward Buka which had the closest known runway. Earhart and Noonan may have turned around. Mr. Snavely feels the Electra’s gas tank wasn’t filled to full capacity when they took off from Papua New Guinea due to weight capacity.
In the late 1930s, a little boy on a Papua New Guinean Island saw a plane — its left wing engulfed in flames and watched the plan crash onto the beach where it later floated out to sea with the tide.
In 2005, Mr. Snavely flew to Rabaul, Papua New Guinea, where he met a corrections officer who had knowledge of a crash that the little boy saw. Another man free diving for sponges spotted the wreck in 1995, verifying the boy's account.
In August 2018, Mr. Snavely and his team went to Buka to investigate the site. Tracy Wildrix, an aircraft pilot, dive master, boat captain and metals expert led the expedition. The plane found at 125 feet underwater is embedded in coral. Divers found a piece of glass that may have been part of the landing light of the plane along with shapes and parts of the plane which appear to be consistent with the Lockheed Electra 10E that Earhart flew.
Though the mystery continues, Mr. Snavely and Mr. Wildrix continue their mission of solving the disappearance of Amelia Earhart.
Bill Snavely, guest speaker.
Tracy Wildrix, guest speaker
50/50 drawing: The following members each won $16, Joe Stefursky and AB Brown.
Next meeting May 12 speaker to be announced.
