Phoenix Islands

Okay.

The expedition, it was postponed for a couple of years because one of the nations that includes this island that they're looking for, Nica, Morocco, Morono, and other islands of the Phoenix Islands, the cabinet of those, the people in charge, the politics and everything, they wouldn't let them do it.

It finally was, they were able to get official permission to go.

Okay, it's going to investigate what they call the Tayara object, a visual anomaly located in a lagoon on Nica Umaromaro.

A few years ago, we had some of the leaders of an organization called the International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery.

We had them on the program, and they talked about some of the things they discovered on Nikumaroro Island, which is part of a chain of islands called the Phoenix Islands in the Republic of Kiribati.

They think this is where Amelia Earhart set her plane down, on this atoll island in the middle of nowhere, roughly 400 miles off course from where was- where she was supposed to be.

In case you don't know the, the real backstory of how this all kind of unfolded, on the morning of July 2nd in 1937, they were supposed to refuel on this flight around the world in her Lockheed Electra, which is a spectacular, beautiful airplane, by the way.

I do have to point out, though, that although I was privileged to be able to come in alongside Rick Pettigrew and kind of marshal the resources of Purdue to be a good partner in this effort, the credit really has to go to Dr. Rick Pettigrew of Archaeological Legacy Institute based in Eugene, Oregon.

He became aware of this thing that we'll talk about called the Turaya object in the lagoon of Nicomororo, which is in the Phoenix Islands in the Republic of Kiribati.

First became aware of it when a man named Michael Ashmore brought this satellite image of it to his attention.

By the way, the only reason why people are even looking at Nekomororo relates to the work that also deserves credit, and that's the International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery, led by Rick Gillespie.

Earhart and Noonan presumed to have plunged into the Pacific.

These are the Phoenix Islands, and right in the middle of that is Nikumaroro Island.

Richard Pettigrew from the Archaeological Legacy Institute has his own hypothesis.

She would've landed her plane here and probably camped on the island nearby.

And by the way, this was the last place in the world that the British tried to colonize.

Between 1945 after the war and 1963, they actually tried to establish a coconut-growing plantation on the island, and that was something called the Phoenix Islands Settlement Scheme.

In any event, those files were lost, and TIGHAR dug those up 60 miles north of London, and sure enough, there was a file, "Bones Discovered on Gardner Island." And a 2017 or '18 study by a professor at the University of Tennessee found that the dimensions reflected in that report, and by the way, he looked at pictures of Amelia and pictures of her clothes from the Purdue archives and concluded that they were a very close match to Amelia.

Amelia.That is fascinating

And then we have- One yet to be named as of today's date.

We still are trying to figure out who the final representative from the government's going to be, although we think it will be a representative of something called the LINPHX Ministry.

And LINPHX is a portmanteau standing for the Line Islands and the Phoenix Islands.

The Line Islands are the easternmost group of islands that I mentioned, and the Phoenix Islands is that central island group where Niku is.