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- NATION, Page 21American NotesAVIATIONDid She Die on Nikumaroro?
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- The ominous silence after distress calls from Amelia
- Earhart's twin-engine Lockheed 10-E Electra in the Pacific in
- 1937 touched off one of aviation's greatest mysteries. Last
- week the FBI confirmed that a likely clue to her last landing
- site had been found. It was an aluminum map case recovered by
- a group of aircraft archaeologists on Nikumaroro, an atoll 420
- miles southeast of Howland Island, her destination.
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- The FBI analysis of the breadbox-size container revealed
- that its paint was a type used at the time on civilian versions
- of a military navigator's case. The box could have fit exactly
- under the table used by Earhart's navigator, Fred Noonan.
- Richard Gillespie, executive director of the International
- Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery, which found the case,
- suggested that Earhart had landed on a reef. With temperatures
- up to 120 degrees F and no fresh water available, survival was
- virtually impossible.
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