MAINE, USA (2 Feb 2004) -- Jon Thompson is so sure Amelia Earhart's plane is going to turn up in a deep-sea search in March he's already planning the worldwide exhibit. "I feel sure we are going to find it by the third day," he said. "All studies since we were out there in 2002 are even more confirming that we are on the right track," he said. Thompson, 64, of Germantown, a fund-raising and exhibition consultant to the mission, will be aboard when the 220-foot Mt. Mitchell leaves Hawaii this spring for a 45-day second pass over the area where experts believe Earhart's 37-foot Lock heed Electra crashed after running out of fuel. The expedition leader is Elgen Long, co-author of "Amelia Earhart: The Mystery Solved." The fund-raising and technical support (the mission will cost in excess of $1.5 million) is the work of David Jourdan, president of Maine-based Nauticos, in the business of tracking sunken treasures for years. In 1999 it found the Israeli submarine Dakar in 10,000 feet of water, and helped locate wreckage from Japanese aircraft carriers sunk at the Battle of Midway in 1942. Another find, an ancient shipwreck dating to 300 BC, will be on display at the Olympic Games in Athens. If Earhart's plane is found, Thompson, who headed the Wonders exhibit series from 1992 to 1997 - including the blockbuster "Titanic" - will build an exhibit on an ocean-going barge to carry the plane and Earhart's story around the world. "It will be an incredible exhibition built on a platform that will be 240 feet by 70 feet," he said. "The plan is to have the aircraft conserved - not to fly but to display - a year to a year and a half later. Although Jourdan can't say how much the find would mean to investors, including Thompson, he has invested five years in the project and expects "a good return," much of it from the exhibit. "Jon has a great deal of experience in exhibition management. He was always a key element of our plan," Jourdan said. Based on mathematical calculations from Earhart's flight speed and the quadrants she gave the Coast Guard at the time of her last radio communication, Jourdan mapped a search area that he discusses only vaguely. The 2002 expedition searched about two-thirds (630 square miles) of the area before equipment failure ended the mission. With immersible sonar, he'll resume searching the ocean floor 18,000 feet below the surface - a mile deeper than the Titanic was found - for shadowy images that could mean immediate wealth. "We may have already found it," Jourdan said. "But we have to complete the sonar search and then map the area to reveal the targets we want to search using a robotic vehicle." | | A crowd cheers Amelia Earhart as she leaves Londonderry, Northern Ireland, in 1932. She became the first woman to fly across the Atlantic alone, and was attempting to fly around the world when she vanished in the Pacific in 1937. Including media, education team and scientific teams, the mission will carry about 40 people, who will take turns watching the sonar scope while the ship makes its 35- to 40-mile treks back and forth across the "probable area." "We call it mowing the grass," said Thompson, who was aboard the 52-day mission in 2002. The ocean bottom in the area is virtually flat, with less than 6 inches of silt and no World War II activity - which means there are few blips on the sonar screen. Anything that shows up sets off an immediate buzz. "Word filters through the whole ship," Thompson said. "You're absolutely hoping to find it on your watch." There's more than one theory about what happened to Earhart, the first woman who set out to circumnavigate the globe by air. One says that she and navigator Fred Noonan took a contingency plan when they were sure they wouldn't make Howland Island, flying to the Phoenix Islands, about 350 miles away. In fact, there was a plane wreck on the island of Nikumaroro before 1939 and descriptions of two castaways reportedly resembling Earhart and Noonan. A more conspiratorial theory says Earhart headed to the Japanese-controlled Marshall Islands, maybe as a U.S. spy. In an extension of this hypothesis, some believe Earhart returned to the United States under an assumed name, dying in New Jersey as Irene Bolam in 1982. "All evidence is arguable," says Jourdan, who says he is working off assumptions from Earhart's stated goals, radioed messages and testimony from primary participants. "We believe she was doing exactly what she was trying to do and couldn't quite make it," he said. Thompson will quickly fall into the rhythm of the search and 12-hour team shifts at the sonar screen, thinking quietly, like everyone else, about Earhart's life. "Amelia is everything we are currently interested in," Thompson said. SOURCE - Commercial Appeal |
