New photos may finally prove what happened to Amelia Earhart: Snaps offer fresh clues over pioneering aviator’s disappearance

A cache of aerial images showing a remote South Pacific island could offer fresh clues in solving the disappearance of Amelia Earhart.

The pioneering aviator, 39, mysteriously vanished in July 1937 during her historic attempt to become the first female pilot to circumnavigate the globe. 

Researchers have remained baffled for nearly 90 years, but many believe Earhart may have crash-landed her Lockheed Electra on Nikumaroro Island, located in the South Pacific, roughly halfway between Australia and Hawaii.

A year after her disappearance, an aerial survey of the atoll – known formerly as Gardner Island – resulted in nearly 50 high-resolution, black-and-white photographs.

Now, the Air Force Museum of New Zealand has released the full set of 47 images, taken on December 1, 1938, in the hope online detectives could finally help solve the mystery.

Matthew O’Sullivan, the keeper of photographs at the Christchurch museum, discovered the negatives more than a decade ago. 

A handful of the images have since appeared online, but the full collection has never been seen until now.  

The release of the images coincides with a renewed search to find Amelia Earhart’s missing aircraft, which is currently underway. 

A research team from Purdue University in Indianapolis, Earhart’s former benefactor, is exploring a ‘visual anomaly’ in the lagoon of Nikumaroro Island captured by satellite imagery from 2020.

Earhart is thought to have crashed on the remote island, and the anomaly, dubbed the ‘Tararia Object’ by researchers, could be a plane wreck matching her aircraft. 

Archaeologist Dr Richard Pettigrew, executive director of the Archaeological Legacy Institute, is leading a 17-person team on Nikumaroro, which is part of the archipelago country of Kiribati.

The crew arrived on Tuesday and have begun using a magnetometer to detect any metal material from the plane, as well as sonar technology to find objects hidden on the lagoon surface.

If the team do find any compelling evidence of Earhart’s presence on the island, it will solve a mystery that has eluded investigators for the best part of a century.

But it could also reveal a grim truth about the tousled-haired heroine’s fate.

Pettigrew has previously theorised Earhart got lost on her round-the-world-flight, ran out of fuel, and landed on a small, isolated island, where she died, hungry and parched – before being devoured by giant crabs.

‘The very idea that she wasted away on the island and eventually died and got eaten by coconut crabs – that’s a horrible, horrible vision,’ Pettigrew previously told the Daily Mail in 2025.

‘I don’t like thinking about it, but it’s inevitable.’

It would be a macabre end to the puzzle of Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan, who disappeared in the Pacific on July 2, 1937, en route from Papua New Guinea to Howland Island.

Earhart’s bid to become the first female pilot to circumnavigate the globe ran into strong headwinds, and she radioed that she was running low on fuel.

The loss of an aviation pioneer who had inspired women to chase their dreams sent shockwaves around the world.

The US Navy scoured the area for 16 days, but found no trace of her or her plane.

The longstanding official theory is that the plane ran out of fuel, crashed and sank into deep ocean waters off Howland Island.

But the absence of a wreckage has spawned a slew of alternate explanations about her fate.

Theories have veered into the absurd, including abduction by aliens or Earhart living in New Jersey under an alias.

Some speculate Earhart and Noonan crash-landed on Mili Atoll, 800 miles northwest of Howland, and were taken prisoner by the Japanese and transported to Saipan, where they died in captivity.

Various teams have tried to pinpoint the crash location by scanning the ocean floor or using computer models based on Earhart’s radio transmissions.

But no one has yet found a verified plane part or bone fragment.

In 2024, explorers at South Carolina firm Deep Sea Vision discovered an ‘aircraft-shaped object’ in the area of the Pacific where the legendary aviator vanished.

However, a second expedition dashed hopes, revealing the object was not an aircraft but simply rocks. 

Since the late 1980s, many investigators have probed another theory: that Earhart made an emergency landing on a dry flat stretch of coral reef off what was then known as Gardner Island, southwest of Howland.

Researchers at the International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery (Tighar), point to Earhart’s last in-flight radio message heard by the Coast Guard cutter Itasca, which put her on course for Gardner. 

A series of distress calls in the days after the disappearance, apparently made by Earhart from a safely-landed Electra, also point to her having landed on Gardner, though these may have been hoaxes.

However previous attempts to scour Nikumaroro Island have drawn a blank.

A multi-million-dollar search of waters off the island in August 2019, spearheaded by ocean explorer Robert Ballard, found no trace of Earhart’s twin-tailed monoplane there.

The current expedition has been hampered by severe weather, but the team is expected to release an update in the coming days. 

Pettigrew said in an update on Thursday: ‘We understand the tremendous interest in what we’re doing at Nikumaroro, and we appreciate everyone’s patience. 

‘This is a complex scientific process. You don’t simply arrive at a site and immediately identify what’s there. 

‘We have to carefully collect the data, analyse it and reach sound conclusions.’ 

READ MORE: Never-before-seen photos show Amelia Earhart beside her plane just hours before she vanished during bid to fly around the world

READ MORE:  I know where Amelia Earhart is after tracing bombshell picture… we’re off to the island to prove my sickening crab theory