American Notes

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.

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.