Has a forgotten photo in the archives of Naval Intelligence answered the mystery of Amelia Earhart’s disappearance?
I have no idea. Maybe it does. Maybe it doesn’t. But that’s the claim of an upcoming special on the History Channel.
The reporting on the photo hasn’t made a case for believing that the photo does what its claimants say it does. Perhaps the special will have more information, with a chain of evidence that will link this back to a specific time and a specific place and reasons for believing that two of the figures are Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan.
Right now, however, all I see is an undated photograph of people of indeterminate age and ethnicity standing on a wharf in the Pacific at some point in the past.
Update! The answer is, no, the photograph does not show Amelia Earhart. The photo, it turns out, was “first published in Palau under Japanese rule in 1935, in a photo book,” two years before Earhart and his navigator, Fred Noonan, disappeared on their round-the-world flight.
However, this raises a question in my mind. How and why did this photograph end up in the archives of Naval Intelligence? That we will likely never know.