Expedition to Verify Amelia Earharts Tinian Burial Site

The Tinian Expedition will fly to Tinian this Friday, November 12, 2004, to excavate the possible burial site of Amelia Earhart and her navigator Fred Noonan.

(PRWEB) November 10, 2004 -- July 4, 1937, the U.S. Navy in Hawaii received a garbled Morse code message on one of Amelia Earharts calling frequencies, using her call sign, KHAQQ.

The message was 281 North Howland calls KHAQQ…beyond north wont hold with us much longer...above water …shut off" which was interpreted as 281 miles north of Howland."

That is the last time she was heard from.

The Tinian Expedition will begin an archeological excavation on Friday, November 12 on the island of Tinian as they try to confirm that a site they discovered a year ago is indeed the final resting place of Amelia Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan.

A year and a half ago, radio talk show host, Jim Sullivan, launched his show The DEEP" on Guams Newstalk K-57, coincidentally, on June 2, 2003. His first topic was the Earhart mystery. One of the callers,
Jennings Bunn, was at the time, managing a U.S. Navy maritime museum and told Sullivan that had learned of a letter, sent to the Governor of Guam and military authorities by a friend of 81 year old World War II veteran, Saint John Naftel. The letter described how Naftel had been shown Earharts burial place in 1944, when he was a young USMC gunners mate stationed on Tinian.

Sullivan and Bunn then met at a local coffee shop along with marine engineer, Bob Silvers, to discuss the possibility of verifying Naftels story. They then formed the Tinian Earhart Expedition.

Sullivan and Silvers, with the help of University of Guam professor Dirk Ballendorf, prepared for aerial surveys by studying maps and charts at the UOG to verify Naftels information.

Sullivan discovered a map that showed an interment camp as described by Naftel and with the help of Joe Edhlund, president of Sky Blue Air, a Guam based charter operation, who donated his services, they flew to Tinian in fall of 2003 and began a series of trips to try and match Naftels descriptions with the terrain.

The expedition flew Naftel to Tinian on October 10-12, 2003 to search for the burial spot hed been shown 60 years ago. He remembered that it was 15 to 20 yards on the left hand side of the road hed driven up and down as a young Marine.

They kept returning to a spot that was about 150 yards from the1944 road he thought hed driven down, but the distances didnt seem to match Naftels landmarks.

After four days of tromping around in the jungle, the group was nearly ready to quit. Silvers and Sullivan felt they were close and returned to the Tinian historical preservation office to look for more clues. They dug through cobwebs to find one chart, drawn in 1944, that showed one road that had not been recorded on any of the other maps theyd studied. And it matched Naftels description.

They drove to the spot on the map, began searching through the thick jungle and indeed, found the overgrown road that Naftel remembered. Sullivan and Bunn headed towards the left side, searching for and finding the remains of the old road. Silvers and Naftel took off towards the right side and found not only the road but also two depressions in the dirt located 15 to 20 yards on the left side of the road, exactly where Naftel had remembered.

Friday morning the Tinian Expedition will be closer to solving this 70 old year mystery.

For more information, contact Sandy Frost, expedition point of contact, at 671 646 2748 or CassandraFrost@yahoo.com or Jim Sullivan, expedition member, at 671 6784796 at Oceanfriends@hotmail.com go to http://www.historicalexpeditions.org/.

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