Facial recognition expert Kent Gibson, who compared known images of Noonan and Earhart with the individuals photographed on the dock, believes it’s “likely” they are the two lost aviators.
“There’s nothing that points me in another direction,” says Gibson, who adds that the figure believed to be Earhart has the “same prominent, athletic shoulders as Amelia” and the same “short, bobbed hair.”
Crash site investigator and former fighter pilot Dan Hampton traveled with Henry to the remote Mili Atoll, where it’s believed Earhart crash-landed after flying roughly 850 miles off course during her flight to tiny Howland Island. From there she planned to refuel then continue on Hawaii.
With her fuel tanks nearly empty, he believes she was forced to land on the rocky, coral-strewn atoll in the Marshall Islands.
Islanders have long maintained that the two flyers crash-landed there. And twisted scraps of aluminum found near the atoll decades later were tested and determined to be consistent with the same grade of metal used in planes from the 1930s.
“I’ve never seen a reef you could land an airplane on until I went out there,” says Hampton, who insists he was initially skeptical of claims that Earhart survived her flight.
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