Early in the morning on the last day of the expedition to find Amelia Earhart’s plane, the crew of the E/V Nautilus pulled Hercules, a remotely operated vehicle (ROV), out of the ocean. As Hercules streamed water onto the deck, Robert Ballard, the chief scientist on the expedition, went to check the last samples that the ROV brought up. Nautilus was scheduled to leave Nikumaroro for Samoa in an hour.
Donning black plastic gloves, Ballard slid a container out of the front of the ROV. Inside the seawater-filled bin was a laptop-size silver sheet and a crumbling black fragment that was part of something that looked like a barrel.
Ballard examined the items in the ship’s lab. The black fragment wasn’t aluminum so it couldn’t come from Earhart’s Lockheed Electra 10e. The silver sheet was more promising, especially since it appeared to have rivet holes. “It sure looked like aluminum underwater,” said Megan Lubetkin, a member of Nautilus’s science crew.
Ballard picked up the piece. “It’s not her plane,” he said. “It bends too much.”
This was a fitting end to what in many respects was a successful expedition (filmed by National Geographic for a two-hour special airing October 20). Something intriguing was recovered from the ocean floor with technology beyond any that had ever been used in the search for Amelia Earhart. Yet it wasn’t what Ballard and his team were looking for.
Ballard was drawn to this uninhabited island by evidence collected by the International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery (TIGHAR). Based on Earhart’s last message and radio signals after she disappeared, the group believes that Earhart and navigator Fred Noonan may have landed on Nikumaroro in 1937 after they couldn’t find tiny Howland Island, the next stop on her world flight.
The theory goes that Earhart set down during low tide on the reef that surrounds Nikumaroro. After a few days, the tide lifted the plane off the reef, where it was dashed to bits—or where it floated for a while, then sank to the depths.
TIGHAR pinpoints the northwest side of the island as the site of the plane’s landing, where a ship called the S.S. Norwich City wrecked in 1929 and where the island’s lagoon opens to the sea in high tide. Three months after Earhart and Noonan’s disappearance, a British officer scouting the island for colonization took a photograph of the shipwreck—various analysts claim that a blurry shape to the left of it could be the Electra’s landing gear. People who lived on the island after it was colonized later told TIGHAR investigators that they had found aluminum wreckage near the lagoon’s entrance.
That northwest segment—from the lagoon’s opening to the island’s tip—became the expedition’s main search zone. “The goal is to find it in the primary place,” Ballard said midway through the expedition, “or to prove it’s not there.”
To do that, Ballard, a geologist, had to get to know Nikumaroro. He sent the ship five times around the island, which is four-and-a-half miles long, to map with multibeam sonar. He sent the autonomous surface vehicle (ASV) around the island twice to map the shallower areas close to the reef. He sent drones flying over the island to peer into the water where the surf breaks over the reef. He sent Argus, another ROV, into deeper water to do side scan sonar. And he sent both Argus and Hercules around the island to look for airplane wreckage with their cameras, which are monitored by his science team standing round-the-clock watches. “We did the whole enchilada,” says Ballard. “That’s total coverage.”
What he learned is that Nikumaroro is a tiny island at the peak of a massive seamount. It drops down to the ocean floor in a series of steep cliffs and ramps, most dramatically in the primary search zone. And like a mountain’s streams, chutes funnel debris down the slopes. Those chutes collect wreckage.

Earhart Mystery
On May 20, 1937, Amelia Earhart and navigator Fred Noonan took off from Oakland, California on the first leg of their historic round-the-world flight. They disappeared 43 days later while trying to locate tiny Howland Island in the remote Pacific.
The flight plan
After a westbound attempt in March that failed with a crash in Hawaii, Earhart decided on an eastbound route that would cover nearly 29,000 miles.
Oakland, Calif.
May 20
May 22
May 21
U.S.
Saint-Louis
June 8
June 1
May 23
June 2
June 4
June 3
June 6
June 7
Saint-Louis
June 8
June 19
June 18
June 13
June 20
June 11
June 14
June 17
June 10
June 15
Bangkok
SIAM
June 20
June 12
June 13
Oakland, Calif.
Bangkok
SIAM
June 20
Honolulu, Hawaii
(U.S.)
June 21
Lae
N.E. NEW GUINEA
(AUS.)
July 2
June 24,27
Howland I. (U.S.)
June 25
Gardner I.
(Nikumaroro)
(U.K.)
June 28
June 29
Missed rendezvous
Howland Island, with its rudimentary airstrip, was Earhart’s next stop. U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Itasca was on station, receiving the pilot’s last radio transmissions. In her last heard in-flight message, Earhart reported flying along the 157°/337° line. Nikumaroro is southeast of Howland Island along it.
Last reported navigational line
Howland
I.
U.S.C.G.C. Itasca
N.E.
NEW
GUINEA
(U.S.)
EQUATOR
Gardner I.
(Nikumaroro)
(AUS.)
(U.K.)
PACIFIC
OCEAN
Lae
New Guinea
Enlarged
BELOW
PAPUA
(AUS.)
400 mi
AUSTRALIA
400 km
Earhart’s final landing?
S.S.
Norwich City
wreck
Years of research and many archaeological expeditions strengthen the case that Earhart landed on this isolated atoll.
Nikumaroro
Beach
Reef
Castaway
camp
Aircraft wreckage
MATTHEW W. CHWASTYK, NGM STAFF.
BOUNDARIES AS OF 1937 ARE SHOWN.
SOURCES: THE INTERNATIONAL GROUP FOR HISTORIC AIRCRAFT RECOVERY; NASA, LANDSAT; U.S. STATE DEPARTMENT

Earhart Mystery
On May 20, 1937, Amelia Earhart and navigator Fred Noonan took off from Oakland, California on the first leg of their historic round-the-world flight. They disappeared 43 days later while trying to locate tiny Howland Island in the remote Pacific.
Missed rendezvous
Howland Island, with its rudimentary airstrip, was Earhart’s next stop. U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Itasca was on station, receiving the pilot’s last radio transmissions.
Saint-Louis
FR.W. AFRICA
June 8
Calcutta
June 18
Karachi
June 17
Khartoum
June 13
Gao June 11
INDIA
(U.K.)
Dakar
FR.W.AF.
June 10
Assab, June 15
Massawa
ITALIAN W. AF.
June 14
Akyab
(Sittwe)
BURMA
(U.K.)
June 19
Oakland, Calif.
Oakland, Calif. May 20
Akyab (Sittwe)
BURMA (U.K.)
June 19
Fort Lamy
(N’Djamena)
FR.EQUA.AF.
June 12
U.S.
Saint-Louis
FR.W. AFRICA
June 8
Tucson, Ariz. May 22
Burbank,
Calif.
May 21
El Fasher
ANGLO-EGYPTIAN
SUDAN
June 13
Rangoon June 20
Honolulu, Hawaii
(U.S.)
Miami, Fla. June 1
Bangkok SIAM
June 20
New Orleans, La.
May 23
San Juan, P.R.
June 2
Singapore (U.K.)
June 21
Fortaleza
June 6
Fortaleza
June 6
Caripito
VENEZUELA
June 3
Bandung NETH. INDIES
June 24,27
Howland I. (U.S.)
Surabaya
June 25
Natal
June 7
Gardner I.
(Nikumaroro)
(U.K.)
Paramaribo
SURINAME (NETH.)
June 4
Darwin
June 29
Lae
N.E. NEW GUINEA
(AUS.)
July 2
The flight plan
Kupang
(PORT.)
June 28
After a westbound attempt in March that failed with a crash in Hawaii, Earhart decided on an eastbound route that would cover nearly 29,000 miles.
AUSTRALIA
BRAZIL
Last reported
navigational line
500 mi
Gilbert
Islands
Earhart’s final landing?
S.S.
Norwich City
wreck
500 km
U.S.C.G.C. Itasca
Howland Island
(U.S.)
Years of research and many archaeological expeditions strengthen the case that Earhart landed on this isolated atoll.
(U.K.)
EQUATOR
Baker Island
(U.S.)
Nauru
(U.K.)
Phoenix
Islands
Bismarck
Archipelago
N.E.
NEW
GUINEA
(U.K.)
Nikumaroro
Enlarged
at right
Gardner I.
(Nikumaroro)
(AUS.)
Beach
(U.K.)
Lae
(U.K.)
PACIFIC
OCEAN
(U.K.)
Tokelau
Islands
PAPUA
Reef
Santa
Cruz Is.
Castaway
camp
(AUS.)
(N.Z.)
(U.K.)
(U.K.)
Clues from final radio contact
(U.S.)
Wallis I.
Savaii
(FRANCE)
In her last in-flight radio message heard by Itasca, Earhart reported flying along the 157°/337° line.
Nikumaroro is southeast of Howland Island along it.
Aircraft wreckage
Samoa
Islands
Fiji
(U.K.)
MATTHEW W. CHWASTYK, NGM STAFF. BOUNDARIES AS OF 1937 ARE SHOWN.
SOURCES: THE INTERNATIONAL GROUP FOR HISTORIC AIRCRAFT RECOVERY; NASA, LANDSAT; U.S. STATE DEPARTMENT
Viti Levu
(U.K. &
FR.)
Hercules and Argus combed the chutes from top to bottom. Below the wreck of the Norwich City, the ROVs illuminated propellers, boilers, and other bits of ship for the watching science team. "I’ve learned a tremendous amount from the Norwich City” about how objects drain off the reef, says Ballard.
It was a different story in the primary search zone, the site of the supposed landing gear in the photo. “If the plane was up there, pieces would be moving down slope,” says Ballard, but the ROVs and the watching scientists found nothing.
“We visually examined 100 percent of the island down to 750 meters [2,400 feet] and did not see evidence of the plane,” says Ballard. “We did 100 percent of the primary zone visually down to 900 meters [3,000 feet].”
No plane.
Ballard is not disappointed in this result. "This has been fun,” he says. “It called upon everything we’ve got.”
And he doesn’t consider the search to be over. Indeed, after this expedition, Nautilus is heading to Howland and Baker islands to map the waters off of these U.S. Territories for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Perhaps something will be discovered off the shore of the island where Earhart intended to land.
Ballard doesn’t plan on returning to Nikumaroro unless the land team finds definitive evidence that Earhart and Noonan perished there. Yet he already knows where he’d search if he did go back to the island: Beaches further south where it’s flat enough to land and the underwater topography is much smoother—perfect for sonar, he says.
Amelia Earhart stands by her Lockheed Electra at Parnamirim Airfield, Natal, Brazil in June 1937. Navigator Fred Noonan is in the background.
Photograph by ART Collection, AlamyThat may happen sooner than expected. In 1940 a colonial administrator found bones, including a skull, on Nikumaroro, and sent them to Fiji, where they were lost. At the time, there was some speculation that the bones were Earhart’s. An expedition land team led by National Geographic Society archaeologist Fredrik Hiebert may have found fragments of the skull in the Te Umwanibong Museum and Cultural Centre in Tarawa, Kiribati.
According to Erin Kimmerle, a forensic anthropologist at the University of South Florida, the skull belonged to an adult female. “We don’t know if it’s her or not but all lines of evidence point to the 1940 bones being in this museum,” she says. They’ll know more when the skull has been reconstructed and its DNA tested, which should happen in the next few months.
This, too, is a fitting end to an Earhart expedition. Just when it seems to be over, a tantalizing clue appears to lure the searchers onward.
Ocean explorer Robert Ballard, discoverer of the Titanic, is searching for Amelia Earhart’s airplane. Watch a preview of the two-hour National Geographic special premiering October 20, 2019.