The U.S. government gave up searching for the wreckage of Amelia Earhart’s Lockheed Model 10 Electra a little more than two weeks after the airplane disappeared in the Central Pacific near Howland Island on July 2, 1937. Now, 75 years later, the State Department is reopening the case.
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood took part in a ceremony at the State Department on Tuesday morning announcing a new joint public-private search for Earhart’s airplane. Financed completely with private funds, a search team in July will begin concentrating on the deep waters near the Pacific atoll Nikumaroro, the site of a 2010 search that focused on coral reefs and nearby shallow waters. The search organizing team, The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery, believes Earhart and navigator Fred Noonan ended up on or near the west coast of the atoll, formerly known as Gardner Island.
