Nothing To Report Yet, 'Disappointed' Amelia Earhart Searchers Say

Nothing To Report Yet, 'Disappointed' Amelia Earhart Searchers Say
July 24, 2012
by Mark Memmott - NPR

The team of searchers and scientists who were hoping to find pieces of aviator Amelia Earhart's plane off an island in the mid-Pacific report being "disappointed that we did not make a dramatic and conclusive discovery."

But Ric Gillespie and his comrades from the International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery (TIGHAR) add that while "we saw no objects that we recognized as aircraft debris ... we have volumes of sonar data and many hours of high-definition video to review before we'll know the results of this expedition definitively."

Google honors Amelia Earhart today, on her 115th birthday.

They're hoping to have more to say on a Discovery Channel special set for Aug. 19.

Back in March, we posted about TIGHAR's expedition and the big sendoff it got from Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. She called Earhart a "heroine for a nation down on its luck" because of her high-profile exploits during the Great Depression.

Earhart — the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean (in 1932) — disappeared in the mid-Pacific in July 1937, when she and navigator Fred Noonan were attempting to fly around the world. Gillespie's team thought an old photo might have been a clue. An object in it might have been a bit of wreckage off the shore of an island they went to inspect.

By the way, it's Earhart's 115th birthday. Google is honoring her on its homepage.