Newly uncovered aerial photos from 1938 may finally hold the answer to one of aviation’s greatest mysteries: what happened to Amelia Earhart and her Lockheed 10-E Electra.

Researchers at Purdue University on Thursday announced the discovery of images showing a metallic anomaly in the lagoon of Nikumaroro, a remote South Pacific island more than 2,000 miles from Hawaii. The find — captured just a year after Earhart vanished during her record-setting attempt to fly around the world — has been dubbed the “Taraia Object.”

A joint Purdue and Archeological Legacy Institute (ALI) team of 15 researchers will depart Nov. 4 for a three-week expedition to the island, located near the midpoint between Hawaii and Fiji. The team believes the object could be the main body and tail of Earhart’s missing aircraft, lost since 1937.

“Finding Amelia Earhart’s aircraft would be the discovery of a lifetime,” said ALI executive director Richard Pettigrew, who has long argued that Nikumaroro holds the key to the mystery. “Confirming the plane wreckage there would be the smoking-gun proof.”

Earhart and navigator Fred Noonan disappeared on July 2, 1937, while flying from Lae, Papua New Guinea, to Howland Island — one of the final legs of a flight that would have made Earhart the first woman to circumnavigate the globe. Her radio transmissions grew faint, then fell silent. Despite a 16-day search by the U.S. Navy and Coast Guard, no trace of the pair was found.

Declared dead in 1939, Earhart has since become the subject of near-mythic speculation: shot down by the Japanese, captured as a spy, survived under a new identity, or simply swallowed by the Pacific.

Over the decades, dozens of expeditions have scoured the ocean floor and surrounding islands. Just last year, a million-dollar hunt led by South Carolina deep-sea explorer Tony Romero generated headlines when sonar scans revealed an aircraft-shaped image — later confirmed to be a rock formation.

The new Purdue-led mission, Pettigrew insists, is different. Unlike sonar anomalies, the 1938 photos show an object above water, visible to the naked eye, at a site where other evidence — including anecdotal reports of radio transmissions and remnants of a female castaway — has long pointed.

Purdue University’s involvement is more than academic. Earhart joined the school’s faculty in 1935, advising female students and working on aviation programs. Her Electra, financed in part through Purdue donations, was intended to be returned to Indiana after her historic flight.

“A successful identification would be the first step toward fulfilling Amelia’s original plan to return the Electra to West Lafayette,” said Steve Schultz, Purdue senior vice president and general counsel. “We feel we owe it to her legacy, which remains so strong at Purdue, to bring it home.”

The research team plans to focus on the Taraia Object, first noticed in satellite images of Nikumaroro in 2015. The November mission will use drones, divers, and remote-operated vehicles to verify whether the shadowy shape is indeed Earhart’s plane.

The team is expected to return Nov. 21, with analysis to follow.

If successful, the mission would cap nearly nine decades of false starts, sensational claims, and frustrated searches. It would also intersect with political intrigue: President Donald Trump announced last month he would declassify government records tied to Earhart’s final flight, raising expectations that fresh revelations may soon emerge from U.S. archives.

(YWN World Headquarters – NYC)