Group Claims Debris Could Be Earhart Wreckage

Bethany Whitfield

Tuesday, August 21, 2012 at 08:33 PM ET

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Amelia Earhart and her Lockheed Electra

Key Takeaways:

An expedition by The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery (Tighar) claims to have found high-definition video footage of man-made debris in the area where they theorize Amelia Earhart's aircraft crash-landed.
Tighar believes Earhart made an emergency landing on Nikumaroro Island in 1937, and the newly identified debris field aligns with a 1937 photo they say might show her aircraft's landing gear.
This discovery comes after the $2.2 million search, which faced setbacks and initially reported no new evidence, with the findings emerging from a review of the collected video footage.
Despite Tighar's claims, many remain skeptical of their findings and the likelihood of solving the decades-old mystery, especially given the lack of success in prior expeditions.

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An expedition team launched last month to search for the wreckage of Amelia Earhart’s aircraft claims it has shot high-definition video that shows man-made debris in the area where organizers theorize Earhart crash-landed her Lockheed Electra 75 years ago.

The team behind the search effort is The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery (Tighar), a group comprised of researchers who believe Earhart likely made an emergency landing on the island of Nikumaroro during her attempt to circumnavigate the globe in 1937, instead of running out of fuel short of Howland Island, which remains the predominant theory.