Investigations

Amelia Earhart Plane

The Case:

July 2, 1937: newspapers all over the world report the same event: Amelia Earhart's airplane disappears over the pacific. The disaster and presumed death of the beloved 39 year-old heroine gripped the public.

For decades historians have debated how and where the aviator disappeared. Both scientific and more fanciful theories abound: some surmise she landed on uninhabited Gardner Island. Others suggest she was captured and executed by the Japanese. Less scrutinized is an accident she had four months earlier, during take-off for her around-the-world flight.

Did that crash somehow contribute to Earhart's disappearance?

Over seventy years later, History Detectives investigates whether a fragment of metal is from the missing plane.


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Aired:
Season 7, Episode 6

Detective:
Elyse Luray Location:
San Jose, California

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