The Taraia Object:
Amelia Earhart’s Aircraft?

The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery (TIGHAR) proposes that Nikumaroro Island is the final destination of Amelia Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan, both of whom famously disappeared during their 1937 attempt to fly around the world (Gillespie 2024; King 2012; King et al. 2001). In support of its longstanding hypothesis, TIGHAR has compiled a huge body of evidence from many sources, including a dozen visits to the island between 1989 and 2019.

Decades of TIGHAR research on this topic are detailed on the TIGHAR website . Our research strongly suggests that the Taraia Object is the wreckage of the Lockheed Model 10E Electra aircraft that carried Earhart and Noonan during that attempt.

Click here for our references.

Satellite image of Nikumaroro

We believe it is very likely that the Taraia Object in Nikumaroro Lagoon is actually the remains of the Lockheed Model 10E Electra flown to the island by Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan. How and why would the aircraft have ended up there instead of in the deep ocean, and how would it come to appear as it does today?

Many have assumed that the Electra, after it was swept off the Nikumaroro reef by the tide and waves, moved out to sea and eventually sank in deep water. For this reason, for example, Robert Ballard in 2019, supported by National Geographic, did a systematic search of the deep waters around the island, finding no traces of the plane. However, that the plane ended up in the deep water is not actually a likely scenario, given what we know about the prevailing winds and currents along the northwestern edge of the island. The location and configuration of the Tatiman Passage, which is oriented west-east, are most likely a reflection of those prevailing winds and currents, which tend to push the water from west to east through the Passage and into the lagoon. Supporting this interpretation is the fact that debris from the Norwich City shipwreck, which was lifted onto the reef by a storm back in 1929 near the proposed Earhart landing site, is concentrated along the beaches near the Passage and even on the south (opposite) shore of the Passage. Thus, it seems most likely that the Electra and debris from it would mostly have moved southeastward toward the Tatiman Passage and even eastward all the way into the lagoon.

What follows is a proposed narrative and sequence of events that can account for the movement of much of the Electra into the lagoon, where it became what we refer to today as the Taraia Object.

Amelia and Fred land on the reef at Nikumororo on July 2, 1937. For five days, they stay close to the intact plane at Camp Zero on the northwestern shore of the island so they can send out distress calls from the plane’s radio, hoping for rescue.

After five days, the tide finally rises high enough to prevent further radio broadcasts and floats the plane away. The plane works its way southeastward, bouncing along on the rocky reef, driven by the current and the waves. It suffers severe damage from wave action and impact on the reef, and begins to break up.

First to break off the fuselage are the outer wing sections, then the engines, props, and landing gear, deposited on the reef or in the deep water or both. One of the landing gear gets stuck in the reef rock, to become the Bevington Object as photographed in October 1937. This happens very quickly, perhaps within hours after it begins to float.

Because the extra fuel tank affixed to the airplane cabin floor and the other fuel tanks are mostly empty of fuel and filled with air, the fuselage section with the tail section still attached, now more buoyant with the heavier parts removed, becomes an effective float and rides the current and the winds eastward and southward toward the Tatiman Passage. Movement into the lagoon would happen most quickly during a rising tide. This is the direction evidenced by the still-visible debris from the Norwich City. Along the way, the contents of the fuselage largely spill out onto the reef. Some of the contents wash ashore quickly, but much remains amidst the reef rocks, to wash ashore occasionally during storm events in the years to come.

The breakup and movement of the plane would make it very difficult for the rescue aircraft to recognize the plane, even if it was within their field of view. Very little of the plane is actually visible above the water. The tail is still attached, but its attachment to the fuselage has weakened, and the reef impacts twist the tail section at an acute angle to the fuselage.

Ultimately, the floating fuselage is driven through the Passage by the current and wind, which push it eastward all the way across the lagoon to the shallow water alongside the Taraia Peninsula. The clockwise vortex in that embayment moves the fuselage to a position near the sand spit that projects westward from the end of the peninsula. This movement would take very little time to run its course, perhaps hours or just several days. It probably happens during the two days after the last radio message on July 7 and before the arrival of the Navy search planes on July 9.

At some point, after the fuselage and tail have floated to the east side of the lagoon, the fuel tanks fill up with water and the fuselage, with its tail still attached, loses its buoyancy, becoming a dead weight on the sandy bottom of the lagoon in shallow water not far from the spit.

While the plane is floating away from the landing site and Camp Zero, Amelia (and Fred?) follows it, walking along the beach to the north shore of the lagoon, in hopes of still salvaging something useful from the plane. This could explain why Amelia may have chosen to camp on the north side of the lagoon at the Seven Site, so she could have easier access to the plane.

Navy search planes fly over the island on July 9, but by then the plane has been swept off the reef and become unrecognizable. They probably are looking for an intact airplane, which no longer exists. Amelia has already moved to the north side of the island, ultimately to set up shop at the Seven Site, where she meets her end before the colonists arrive in 1938.

Some movement of the Electra wreck probably takes place in the months after it settles onto the lagoon bottom. The prevailing currents and possibly storm surges would tend to push the wreck across the bottom a short distance to the edge of the Taraia sand spit, where it comes to rest and becomes entombed in water-deposited sediment. Before the pieces become fixed in place, it’s possible that the tail section breaks apart and some of its parts separate from it.

Sample of aircraft aluminum objects recovered from Nikumaroro by TIGHAR

Between 1938 and 1963, some of the colonists discover the remnants of the plane in the water and begin salvaging pieces of its aluminum, especially from the tail section (such as the elevators, rudder, fins, and trim tabs), to use as raw material for making things, such as the combs that have been found. In the process of gathering aluminum pieces, they move some of the tail section components to make them easier to pick up, but they never succeed in taking away more than a few of the smaller parts. In the process of salvaging metal, however, the colonists disturb the wreckage site. As a possible example, the dark shadow at the south end of Part A in the satellite images could be cast by a piece of metal (tail elevator?) propped up behind the fuselage section.

In the decades since 1937, the daily tidal current deposits a thick layer of sediment (maybe half a meter) on top of the remnants of the plane, which ultimately become hidden from view, even to passers-by. This large introduced object deflects the natural current and thereby accelerates the growth of the Taraia sand spit, into which it effectively is incorporated. Occasionally, a storm surge sweeps the sediment off the metal and makes it visible to those who look carefully in the right place. This is what happens in the first half of March 2015, making the pieces visible in the May 2020 Apple Maps image (reportedly shot on August 25, 2016) as well as in our series of satellite images that were shot beginning in April 2015.

Even though TIGHAR personnel on their many visits to the island prior to 2015 walked that beach with eyes open, they could not have seen the plane wreckage in the murky water and beneath a substantial layer of sediment. Metal detectors probably would not have been effective in this situation, unless people knew precisely where to look, as one cannot easily walk in that murky, quicksand-like bottom. Side-scan sonar would not have detected it, either, as it would have been beneath the sloping bottom of the lagoon very close to the beach. Only now, with its precise location known, can the Taraia Object be readily found, examined and identified.