Just kidding. April Fools!

Still, according to a story appearing this morning via the Associated Press, the seventy-year-old mystery surrounding Amelia Earhart’s disappearance may soon be put to rest thanks to “new perspectives” provided by a recently discovered diary. The article reports that The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery (TIGHAR), which for years has been leading efforts to confirm Earhart’s crash site on an uninhabited atoll, recently acquired the diary once belonging to James W. Carey. Carey was an AP reporter who had been dispatched to the south Pacific in 1937 to cover the flight of Earhart and co-pilot Fred J. Noonan from New Guinea to Howland Island — one of the last and most dangerous legs of their around the world flight. Of course, Earhart and Noonan never arrived on Howland. Instead, they disappeared somewhere over the ocean.

It turns out that Carey was aboard the US Coast Guard cutter Itasca anchored off Howland. From there he was able to listen in on the radio reports dispatched from Earhart’s Lockheed Electra. The contents of the radio messages and Carey’s radiograms to the AP have long been available to investigators. The personal diary that Carey kept while on board the cutter was previously unknown.

Although TIGHAR executive director Ron Gillespie acknowledges that the diary doesn’t provide any new information about the content of Earhart’s radio messages, he notes that

[it] is the first document that puts a real person aboard Itasca and tells us something from a firsthand witness about what went on during those desperate hours and days.”

TIGHAR members are convinced that Earhart and Noonan crash-landed on a flat reef 350 miles south of Howland where they survived for some time on scant food and rainwater. If they can raise sufficient funds, the group hopes this summer to dispatch its ninth expedition to the south Pacific to locate Earhart’s crash. Previous trips have turned up a number of tantalizing clues, including shoe heels, Plexiglass pieces, and an aluminum panel that may have come from an Electra aircraft. However, definitive evidence has yet eluded the organization.

So how did Carey’s diary surface? A TIGHAR volunteer who trolls the Internet for Earhart memorabilia spotted it for sale on E-Bay.

Cost of the diary? $26.

Sailing along with this summer’s TIGHAR expedition? $50,000

Viewing the following video of The Handsome Family’s “Amelia Earhart versus the Dancing Bear?” Priceless…

ScP