A newly released cache of aerial photographs showing a remote South Pacific island may provide fresh leads in the enduring mystery of Amelia Earhart’s disappearance.
The pioneering aviator was 39 when she vanished in July 1937 while attempting to become the first woman to fly around the world.
After almost 90 years, investigators remain without a definitive answer. However, many believe Earhart may have crash-landed her Lockheed Electra on Nikumaroro, a remote island in the South Pacific roughly halfway between Australia and Hawaii.
In 1938, a year after her disappearance, an aerial survey of the atoll—then known as Gardner Island—produced nearly 50 high-resolution black-and-white photographs.
The Air Force Museum of New Zealand has now published the complete set of 47 images, taken on December 1, 1938, hoping online investigators may spot evidence that could help resolve the mystery.
Matthew O’Sullivan, the Christchurch museum’s keeper of photographs, discovered the negatives more than a decade ago.
Several of the pictures have previously been shared online, but the entire collection has never been made public until now.
The release comes as a renewed expedition searches for Earhart’s missing aircraft.
A cache of aerial images showing a remote South Pacific island could offer fresh clues in solving the disappearance of pioneering aviator Amelia Earhart
The Air Force Museum of New Zealand has released 47 images, taken on December 1, 1938, in the hope online detectives can help solve Earhart’s disappearance
A research team from Purdue University in Indianapolis, Earhart’s former benefactor, is investigating a ‘visual anomaly’ in Nikumaroro’s lagoon identified in 2020 satellite imagery.
Researchers have named the feature the ‘Tararia Object’. They believe it could be the wreckage of an aircraft matching Earhart’s plane, supporting the theory that she came down on the remote island.
Archaeologist Dr Richard Pettigrew, executive director of the Archaeological Legacy Institute, is leading a 17-person team on Nikumaroro, part of the archipelago nation of Kiribati.
The team arrived on Tuesday and has begun using a magnetometer to search for metal from the aircraft, along with sonar technology to locate objects concealed beneath the lagoon’s surface.
Any compelling evidence that Earhart reached the island could finally resolve a mystery that has frustrated investigators for most of a century.
It could also confirm a grim explanation for what happened to the celebrated, tousled-haired aviator.
Pettigrew has previously theorised that Earhart became lost during her round-the-world flight, ran out of fuel and landed on a small, isolated island, where she eventually died from hunger and thirst before her remains were consumed by giant 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,’ Pettigrew told the Daily Mail in 2025.
‘I don’t like thinking about it, but it’s inevitable.’
One of the images taken during an aerial survey of the atoll a year after Earhart disappeared
The negatives were discovered at the museum a decade ago, but have only just been released as a collection in high-resolution
The release of the images coincides with a renewed search to find Amelia Earhart’s missing aircraft, which is currently underway
Researchers have remained baffled for nearly 90 years, but many believe Earhart may have crash-landed her Lockheed Electra on Nikumaroro Island
It would be a macabre end to the puzzle of Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan, who disappeared in the Pacific on July 2, 1937, en route from Papua New Guinea to Howland Island.
Earhart’s bid to become the first female pilot to circumnavigate the globe ran into strong headwinds, and she radioed that she was running low on fuel.
The loss of an aviation pioneer who had inspired women to chase their dreams sent shockwaves around the world.
The US Navy scoured the area for 16 days, but found no trace of her or her plane.
The longstanding official theory is that the plane ran out of fuel, crashed and sank into deep ocean waters off Howland Island.
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But the absence of a wreckage has spawned a slew of alternate explanations about her fate.
Theories have veered into the absurd, including abduction by aliens or Earhart living in New Jersey under an alias.
Some speculate Earhart and Noonan crash-landed on Mili Atoll, 800 miles northwest of Howland, and were taken prisoner by the Japanese and transported to Saipan, where they died in captivity.
Various teams have tried to pinpoint the crash location by scanning the ocean floor or using computer models based on Earhart’s radio transmissions.
Veteran archaeologist Dr Richard Pettigrew, pictured on a previous expedition to Nikumaroro Island, is currently exploring a ‘visual anomaly’ in the atoll
Earhart was flying a Lockheed Model 10 Electra with navigator Fred Noonan (right) when their plane vanished near Howland Island
But no one has yet found a verified plane part or bone fragment.
In 2024, explorers at South Carolina firm Deep Sea Vision discovered an ‘aircraft-shaped object’ in the area of the Pacific where the legendary aviator vanished.
However, a second expedition dashed hopes, revealing the object was not an aircraft but simply rocks.
Since the late 1980s, many investigators have probed another theory: that Earhart made an emergency landing on a dry flat stretch of coral reef off what was then known as Gardner Island, southwest of Howland.
Researchers at the International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery (Tighar), point to Earhart’s last in-flight radio message heard by the Coast Guard cutter Itasca, which put her on course for Gardner.
A series of distress calls in the days after the disappearance, apparently made by Earhart from a safely-landed Electra, also point to her having landed on Gardner, though these may have been hoaxes.
However previous attempts to scour Nikumaroro Island have drawn a blank.
A multi-million-dollar search of waters off the island in August 2019, spearheaded by ocean explorer Robert Ballard, found no trace of Earhart’s twin-tailed monoplane there.
The current expedition has been hampered by severe weather, but the team is expected to release an update in the coming days.
Pettigrew said in an update on Thursday: ‘We understand the tremendous interest in what we’re doing at Nikumaroro, and we appreciate everyone’s patience.
‘This is a complex scientific process. You don’t simply arrive at a site and immediately identify what’s there.
‘We have to carefully collect the data, analyse it and reach sound conclusions.’
WHAT ARE THE THEORIES ON AMELIA EARHART’S FINAL DAYS?
Theory One: Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan crash into the Pacific a few miles short of their intended destination due to visibility and gas problems, and die instantly.
Earhart in 1928
Theory Two: Earhart and Noonan crash land on the island of Nikumaroro, where they later die and are eaten by coconut crabs, which hunt for food at night and grow up to three-feet long. The name comes from the crabs’ ability to open the hardened shells of coconuts.
Theory Three: Earhart and Noonan veer drastically off course and crash land near the Mili Atoll in the Marshall Islands. They are rescued but soon taken as prisoners of war by the Japanese and sent to a camp in Saipan. Noonan is beheaded and Earhart dies in 1939 from malaria or dysentery.
Theory Four: Earhart and Noonan make it to Howland Island as planned and are eaten by cannibals.
Theory Five: Earhart was an American spy sent to gather information on the Japanese ahead of World War II.
Theory Six: Earhart and Noonan are unable to locate Howland Island, and head toward their ‘contingency plan’. After a ten hour journey back toward the location they came from, they crash in the jungle of East New Britain Island, in what is now known as Papua New Guinea.
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