All language subtitles for Expedition.unknown.S01E01.SPASM.English-WWW.MY-SUBS.CO

WWW.MY-SUBS.CO

GATES: Amelia Earhart is on one of the final legs

of her historic flight around the world

when something goes terribly wrong.

[Airplane engine roars]

She is never seen again.

Today, more than 75 years after her disappearance,

new leads send me across the
world in search of answers.

JACK: If you want to get more information,

head down to Rabaul.

Get to Rabaul. Yeah.

[Ground rumbling]

Earthquake. Whoa. [Children screaming]

Holy [bleep]

We heard that your tribe has
found wreckage in the jungles.

Look at this. Rob, come here.

September 1940 ...

a man named Gerald Gallagher
found a partial skeleton.

This might be Amelia Earhart.

Did they go through the underside of this house

with a fine-tooth comb?

Nope, no further investigation.

We've heard reports of some aircraft wreckage.

They think it may be Earhart's plane.

And the only way to know is to go out

and see what we can find.

Oh! Rod, I got a plane!

Rod, I got a plane, for sure! Come here!

Look at that. That's a [bleep] plane.

It all leads to a series of amazing discoveries.

It's an airplane engine, yeah?

Oh, definitely an airplane engine, yeah.

Unbelievable.

[Radio beeps]

Definitely an airplane. Look at that.

This does not look like coral to me.

I got a bone down here.

[Birds squawking]

My name is Josh Gates.

With a degree in archaeology
and a passion for exploration,

I have a tendency to end up in
some very strange situations.

There has got to be a better way to make a living.

My travels have taken me to the ends of the Earth

as I investigate the greatest legends in history.

We're good to fly. Let's go.

This is...

Every year, thousands of people go missing,

never to be seen again.

But there is one cold case that
looms above all the rest ...

Amelia Earhart.

Just the name evokes a sense of wonder.

Her disappearance during her attempt

to circumnavigate the globe in 1937

is perhaps the most iconic
unsolved mystery in the world.

Now, with breakthroughs in technology

and the discovery of new evidence,

we may be close to solving
the puzzle once and for all.

[Crowd cheering]

1937 ...

Amelia Earhart is arguably

the most famous woman in America,

a pioneer in the field of
aviation and a living legend.

On July 2nd, Earhart and
her navigator, Fred Noonan,

are set to make history

as they begin one of the last legs

of their daring trans-world flight.

They take off from an airfield
in Lae, Papua New Guinea,

bound for remote Howland Island in the Pacific.

Along the way, Earhart, her navigator,

and the famed Lockheed Electra vanish.

[Airplane engine roars]

In the last 75 years, there
have been countless dead ends,

false leads, and wild conspiracy theories,

but no answers.

Well, all that may be about to change,

because recent developments in
two different parts of the world

may finally crack the case.

Theory one ...

a team of experts recently identified

a piece of aluminum debris

on the Pacific atoll of Nikumaroro,

just south of Howland,

which they believe may be
a part of Earhart's Electra.

Human bones were also discovered
on this same deserted island

in 1940, only to be shipped to Fiji and lost.

Could these be the bones of Amelia Earhart?

A new search is currently under way in Fiji

to locate the remains and identify them.

Theory two ...

Earhart circled back toward Papua New Guinea

and crashed on or around the
island nation she took off from.

It's a long-standing hypothesis

that's never been fully explored.

But now one local tribe
claims to have found wreckage

deep in the jungle,

and there are new reports that there's also

an underwater wreck just offshore.

Either could be Amelia's plane.

I have been fascinated with Amelia Earhart

for my entire life,

and I'm eager to know if these new leads

may bring us closer to the truth,

or whether the world is
looking in the wrong place.

The only way to find out is to join the search.

There is new evidence that Amelia Earhart's plane

may have crashed in the
nation she last took off from,

so I'm here to investigate.

Wheels down, Papua New Guinea ...
or "PNG," as the locals call it.

Inside the terminal,

the local baggage claim is less of a belt

and more of a deli counter.

Order up!

This is an interesting system, but it works.

Thank God my umbrella made it.

Oh, sorry.

What are the odds?

Two guys with the same umbrella.

Mine must still be coming.

While I wait, it's clear that
some of my other equipment

may not have made it here, either.

I'm missing 799 and 872.

At least it's not warm in here.

That would really make this frustrating.

Perhaps the customer-service
reps know where my bag is.

Looking good.

Perhaps not.

Eventually, I'm resigned to
never seeing my extra underwear,

sensible evening shoes, and
whatever else was in case 799.

Well, time to hit the streets.

There are international capitals in the world

with worse reputations, but not many.

This is Port Moresby, capital of Papua New Guinea,

also the largest city in the South Pacific.

Has kind of a rough reputation.

Can be a little dangerous, a little gritty.

But if you can look past its imperfections,

it's actually a pretty cool spot.

I like to think of Port Moresby

as the Mos Eisley spaceport from "Star Wars."

On one hand, the cantina
bar has a good happy hour.

On the other hand, Han Solo
might shoot you in the face.

In other words, it pays to watch your back,

which is exactly what these guys are here to do.

Hey, Josh.

Are you Dean? I am.

Nice to meet you. Good to meet you.

Yeah, good to meet you, too. Hi. I'm Jack.

Hey, Jack. How are you? Nice to meet you.

Good, thank you. Yourself?

I'm good. How are things here in PNG?

Good, thanks.

Looking safe and secure?

As safe as PNG can be.

Yeah? How safe is that?

In case it's not safe. Yes.

Great, perfect.

So, why the muscle?

Well, with rampant political corruption

and gang-controlled neighborhoods,

the capital can get a little interesting.

But I like interesting,

and Port Moresby is the gateway

to one of the wildest nations on Earth.

It's made up of 1,000 different ethnic tribes,

speaking more than 800 languages.

Even the National Parliament House is diverse ...

a modern government building

fused with an ancient tribal spirit house.

The people here, generally speaking,

are fiercely independent.

Locals are more apt to identify with their clan

than with their fellow countrymen.

Case in point ... the Asaro Mudmen.

Legend has it that this tribe

was once on the cusp of defeat in battle

and retreated into the nearby river.

When they emerged, caked in dried white mud,

their enemies believed they were
evil spirits and fled in terror.

I can't say I blame them.

Hi.

Not very talkative.

[Conversing in native language]

Oh, it's heavy.

Those are real teeth?

I'm not gonna ask where those came from.

Today, thousands of years later,

they still pay homage to that legendary battle,

and the tradition continues with me.

It's okay?

Yeah?

MAN: Yeah.

What do you think?

[Laughs]

I think I'm an honorary Mudman now.

This vast melting pot of Papua New Guinea

played center stage as one of the last stops

on Earhart's
'round-the-world flight.

But I'm not just here for nostalgia purposes.

There are those who believe that Earhart

didn't just take off from PNG,

but that she may have circled back here.

Newly discovered wreckage in
the jungles and in the ocean

are waiting to be examined.

So from the capital,

I'm boarding a flight to investigate

the last documented sighting of Earhart's Electra.

It's a 45-minute trip from Port Moresby to Lae,

where Earhart began one of the final legs

of her fateful journey.

Lae is a bustling industrial port

that links the coastal waters of PNG

to the wild highlands of the interior.

I'm here to meet with a local tribe

who has information on a recently found wreck.

But first I have an important stop to make.

In the middle of town,

this narrow field of grass is today an empty lot,

a place to stack shipping containers.

Its true significance has been overgrown

by the dense wilderness of history.

Doesn't look like much today,

but this is the old Lae airfield.

This is the very last place

that anybody saw Amelia Earhart alive.

On May 21, 1937, Amelia Earhart
departs Oakland, California,

in an audacious attempt to
be the first woman in history

to circumnavigate the globe.

Over 21 days and 25,000 miles,

Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan,

make stops along the top of South America

before crossing central
Africa, the Middle East, India,

and southeast Asia.

Finally, she lands in Papua New Guinea.

It was here, on July 2, 1937, in this very spot,

that a fuel-heavy Lockheed Electra plane

gained momentum and took off into the blue

for the very last time.

Whole world was watching,

and that shiny Lockheed Electra
would have come right down here,

taken off right over the
Pacific, never to be seen again.

I don't know.

For me, as someone who loves Earhart,

who really has been obsessed
with her for a long time,

to be here in this spot is kind of...

I don't know, emotional.

It's kind of a powerful place.

With only 7,000 miles left to go,

it's easy to imagine the excitement

she must have felt at being in the home stretch.

But she still had to face her
most difficult challenge ...

crossing the immense Pacific Ocean.

Amelia's next stop is Howland Island,

about 2,500 miles and 18 long hours away.

Howland is merely a speck in
the vast South Pacific Ocean.

But the plane must land and refuel

for the final onward flights
to Honolulu and Oakland.

Earhart transmits one of her last radio messages

to the United States Coast Guard ship Itasca,

which is stationed offshore to
help guide her to the island.

The Itasca receives the transmission,

but Amelia apparently can't
hear the Coast Guard's response.

Her radio is likely damaged.

Soon after, Earhart, her navigator, Fred Noonan,

and the Electra disappear.

[Airplane engine roars]

The only evidence here in Lae
of that historic flight is this,

a weathered and, by the looks
of it, mostly forgotten memorial

to a woman whose daring adventure

still soars in our imaginations.

Having made the pilgrimage here,

I feel even more inspired to search for answers.

To find them, I've arranged
a meeting with a tribal chief

to discuss the news reports
of a recently found wreck

in the jungles to the north.

At the end of a long dirt road,

I'm walked to a makeshift wall

of what looks like jungle fronds.

[People singing, drums banging]

13-year-old boy, you find
human bones under your house?

It freaked me out.

It never, ever came back into my life

until I read this thing about Amelia Earhart.

Was the rest of that crawl space under the house

thoroughly explored?

No, not at all.

Really? Never.

I got a bone down here.

My goodness.

There's more down here. There's more down here.

It's everywhere I look.

I mean, I'm putting a skeleton together down here.

GATES: I'm in Papua New
Guinea, in the South Pacific,

following new leads in the
search for Amelia Earhart.

I've come to a local village to meet with a chief

who has information about a wreck

that's recently been found in the jungles.

He leads me to what appears
to be a wall of palm fronds.

[People singing, drums banging]

This is the craziest welcome I've ever seen.

And I assume it's a welcome.

I... could be murdered in the next 10 minutes.

I don't know.

This is not a tourist attraction.

This is not a theme park. This is the real deal.

It's called a sing-sing,

a ritual in which villages come
together through song and dance.

Reasonably certain

that I'm not gonna end up as a human pincushion,

I relax and enjoy the welcome.

Like many other tribes in Papua New Guinea,

its people are caught between
the past and the present.

It seems only fitting that I meet them halfway.

Good look for me, right?

[People singing]

[Singing, drumming stops]

[Laughter] Thank you! Good night!

Thank you, Lae!

We'll be here all week!

Okay, I may not be Ringo Starr,

but my drumming is good enough

that my crew and I have been invited

to don the tribe's colors and join the clan.

It's a genuine honor,

though something tells me

that they use more than food coloring

in the strong-smelling paint.

Saliva? Is there saliva?

Yeah.

Great.

What do these markings mean?

[Speaking native language]

Brave warrior? Yeah.

Yeah, right.

Village idiot, probably.

Is that it?

MAN: Yeah.

Okay, how do I look?

[Crowd cheers]

I am joining the tribe.

Once the sing-sing winds down,

I'm granted an audience with
the village elder, named Iru,

while my security guard serves as translator.

So, how many people live here in the village?

[Speaking native language]

More than 2,500.

More than 2,500? Wow.

2,500, because it's a very big village.

Yeah.

GATES: I'm not the first Westerner to come here.

These are the direct descendents of the tribes

that Earhart met in 1937.

Through oral tradition,

they have preserved the memory of her time in PNG.

So, listen, you know, we're very
interested in Amelia Earhart,

and I've been told that you have some knowledge,

some stories about her.

What can you tell me?

[Speaking native language]

INTERPRETER: According to our elders,

when she landed here,

it was very exciting for our village

and for Papua New Guinea.

At that time, airplanes were very uncommon.

Most people had never seen a plane.

Some had never seen a white woman.

It was a big event when she took off.

But other tribes say that she circled back here,

that the plane crashed not far form their village.

GATES: Those tribes weren't the only ones

who thought she'd crashed in PNG.

In 1945,

an Australian corporal was
on patrol in the same jungles

and stumbled upon something
that has baffled experts ...

a rusted and badly damaged airplane engine.

Though he didn't know his exact position,

he did jot down a partial
serial number on a weathered map.

Intriguingly, S3H1 is the same
model series as the Electra,

and 1055 matches the construction number

of her plane.

And has anybody since then
been able to find the wreck?

[Speaking native language]

INTERPRETER: Just a few weeks ago,

we heard from the village that
the Baining tribe in Rabaul

found the wreckage.

They think it might be a plane ... her plane.

GATES: Due to the largely impenetrable jungles,

the plane spotted in 1945
has never been relocated.

But now it sounds like this remote tribe

may have finally stumbled
across the mysterious wreck.

So why wasn't anyone searching here earlier?

Within hours of Earhart's disappearance,

the U.S. launched

one of the most extensive manhunts in history,

but based on fuel calculations,

only searched a four-hour
flight radius from Howland,

which included the nearby
Gilbert and Phoenix islands.

But some experts believe
those calculations are wrong.

To keep the plane as light as possible,

Earhart left key navigational instruments behind.

Though she should have had only
four hours of fuel remaining

when she reached Howland, if she was off course,

and if she flew conservatively,

researchers have argued that the Electra

could have limped back to PNG,
only to crash before landing.

JACK: He says that if you
want to get more information,

head down to Rabaul,

and then check the people
up in the tribes out there.

Go for the search.

Get to Rabaul?

Yeah. Okay.

And...

and the tribe in Rabaul, they're friendly?

They can be aggressive, but you'll be okay.

I'll be okay?

You'll be okay.

Thank you very much.

Your village is incredible.

[Children screaming]

Whoa. Earthquake.

[Ground rumbling]

Whoa. Whoa!

Whoa! Watch out.

Whoa! Holy [bleep]

GATES: I'm in Papua New Guinea,

investigating the theory that
famed pilot Amelia Earhart

could have crash-landed here.

One of the villagers has new information

that a fellow tribe to the north
has found a wreck in the jungle

that could be her missing aircraft.

JACK: He says that if you
want to get more information,

head down to Rabaul,

and then check the people
up in the tribes out there.

Go for the search.

Get to Rabaul?

Yeah.

[Children screaming]

Whoa. Earthquake. Whoa.

[Ground rumbling]

Whoa!

Watch out. Whoa! Whoa!

Holy [bleep]

Whoa! Holy [bleep]

[Rumbling stops]

That was insane.

It happens a lot. It happens a lot here.

That happens a lot here?

Yeah, yeah.

I mean, that was like

the whole planet just went went like this.

[Laughter]

Massive earthquake during an interview ... check.

I made it through unscathed,

and so did the rest of the village ...

even the pigs.

Life goes on, and so does my search for Earhart.

With a substantial lead in
the jungles to the northeast,

I'm carrying on with my investigation.

From Lae,

I'm traveling about 400 miles
to the island of New Britain

and touching down in the former capital of Rabaul.

The island, like much of PNG,
looks to be a paradise on Earth,

and it is.

But it also has a dark history.

Just beneath the jungle canopy,

long-silenced anti-aircraft
guns still point to the skies,

a reminder that this paradise was once a war zone.

PNG's strategic location just north of Australia

made it prime real estate for the Japanese

during World War II.

If you look closely along the side of the road,

you can still catch site of foreboding tunnels

that bore into the mountains.

Inside is another world.

This is actually remains of an
underground Japanese hospital.

All told, there are more than 500 miles of tunnels

underneath Rabaul,

and a lot of them are filled
with bats and creepy-crawlies.

After capturing Rabaul in 1942,

the Japanese Empire immediately
set their army to work

digging miles and miles of serpentine tunnels

to shelter their forces from Allied attacks.

By 1943, Rabaul was home to
over 100,000 Japanese troops.

Ghosts of the past are everywhere...

... tanks, weapons, bombs.

One tunnel even contains the decomposing remains

of massive Japanese landing barges.

I have to wonder ... with all
these abandoned relics of war,

there must have been hundreds
of downed planes here,

which makes the hunt for
Earhart's Electra a nightmare.

Nearby, I descend into one
of the most historic bunkers

in the world.

This fortification was the base of operations

for the commander in chief
of the Imperial Japanese Navy.

This is Admiral Yamamoto's
bunker from World War II.

He's the guy who orchestrated

the attack on Pearl Harbor at Midway,

and this was the Japanese base of naval operations

in World War II.

You can still see writing on the walls.

It's all perfectly preserved
under all this concrete ...

absolutely astounding piece
of World War II history.

From this austere war room,

Admiral Yamamoto's forces

coordinated the theater of war in the Pacific

until his plane was shot
down leaving Rabaul in 1943.

Back above ground,

I make my way to a nearby market to meet with

a World War II aviation expert and PNG historian

who can shed more light on the rumors of a wreck

in the jungles of Rabaul.

While I wait for him to arrive,

I have time to sample PNG's favorite addiction.

You may notice that nearly everyone here

has a red-stained mouth.

That's because of this.

Buai is a seemingly random recipe of betel nut,

mustard stick, and lime.

GATES: Show me how I do this.

I use my teeth to open it? Yeah.

Already, it doesn't seem like a good idea.

That's not good for your teeth.

Okay.

Oh, I need ... I want the middle piece.

I see. Soft piece. Boom.

The whole thing?

Yeah.

Okay. Ugh, it's bitter.

Now what?

Small one, in the lime?

The ingredients are combined and chewed,

producing torrential
amounts of bright-red saliva,

which Papuans spit on just
about every surface in sight.

No, that's enough.

Believe it or not,

this is the fourth-most-consumed
drug in the world

after nicotine, booze, and coffee.

It is definitely not recommended by

the American Dental Association,
and for the uninitiated,

the chemical combination can be a little intense.

Whoo!

Starting to feel a little dizzy.

[Women singing in native language]

It's good. What does it do?

Your eyes open. I don't know about that.

My eyes are about to close.

[Laughter]

Whoo!

Hoo!

Where'd all these people come from?

Okay, I'm just gonna lay here for a while

until the world stops spinning.

Moments later, I'm back on my feet, sort of.

Apologies ... just give me a moment, here.

It wears off fast.

I'm good. Let's go.

Finally feeling less dizzy,

I'm ready to meet up with historian Rob Rowenson.

As an aircraft expert with the
Organization of Pacific Wrecks,

Rob lives here and speaks Papuan dialects,

making him a critical intermediary

between outside investigators and the remote tribe

that claims to have found a
downed plane in the jungle.

We've had someone report,
say there was an engine there,

and some parts of an airplane.

Of course, you get these reports,

and then you have to go there yourself

and try and determine what
sort of airplane it was.

Yeah. What's the road like out to this village?

It's rough.

You need vehicles that can
handle those sort of conditions.

I do know of a vehicle that might help you out.

Okay. [Chuckles]

Once airborne, we loft up
over the island of New Britain

and head toward the unknown.

The helicopter will fly us 40 miles inland,

to the remote village of Vunalama.

Below us are some of the wildest
and least-explored jungles

on Earth.

Papua New Guinea is often
referred to as "the lost world,"

and for good reason.

More new species are discovered here

than anywhere else on Earth,
an average of two a week.

The tribes that live in these
jungles exist off the grid

and far from the reach of modern laws.

There are still isolated
reports of murder, cannibalism,

and sacrifice associated with
sorcery and tribal beliefs.

Rob's contacts have given us the rough location

of the Baining village that
reported the wrecked plane.

But all we're seeing is jungle.

I'm genuinely concerned here,

since landing in the wrong tribe's territory

could be a fatal mistake.

But with the weather worsening,
we've got one shot at this,

so we touch down in a nearby clearing.

We're good. We're down.

My cameraman leaps out first to film the landing,

and before I can unhook my harness,

he realizes that we've got company.

They're here to meet us?

With my helicopter pilot

not sticking around to see how this turns out,

we are on our own.

Wait, wait! Wait, wait, hey, hey!

GATES: I've just been dropped into
the jungles of Papua New Guinea,

looking for a local tribe with
information about a plane wreck

that could be Amelia Earhart's.

Good. We're down.

I'm not sure if this is a
welcome crew or a war party,

but at 6'3",

I'm a pretty easy target
for a well-aimed projectile.

Wait, wait! Wait, wait, hey, hey!

How are you? Good. All right.

Nice to meet you. What's your name?

Uh, Bill. Bill?

Yes.

You don't look like a Bill.

[Both laugh]

Nice to meet you!

Hello. Hello.

What's your name? Clement.

Clement, nice to meet you.

Do you have a place we can get out of the rain?

Yeah? Someplace with cover?

[Speaking native language]

Yeah. Yeah?

[Conversing in native language]

Okay, great. Let's go.

It turns out that Bill and Clement

are more likely to offer me tea

than the pointy end of their spears.

[Laughing] I don't know.

That was a little touch-and-go
there for a minute.

You were worried they were
gonna put a spear through you?

Yeah.

The show of force is just a ritual greeting

of the Baining tribe,

and the children from the village run out

to have a good laugh at our expense.

Evan, I found an umbrella for your camera.

I mean, what kind of "Land
of the Lost" leaf is this?

Here you go. Stay dry.

With the rain coming down,

we need to get to the
village as quickly as possible

before the downpour destroys our camera equipment.

Did you catch Rob's translation?

The Baining tribe, like many Papuans, speak pidgin

that consists largely of English and German words

repurposed into a unique language.

Though the vocabulary is familiar,

it sounds like total gibberish.

This is the first time they've ever had any people

out here with cameras.

Really? Yeah.

Wow. That's what I was asking.

I'm thankful when we finally
arrive at the village,

and even more thankful that
these jawbones aren't human.

Okay, first order of business is just to get dry,

to get the equipment dry, yeah?

It looks like they are, like,
in real time, making a shelter.

Can I help? What can I do?

These first? Up, up, up?

Yeah.

We're in the middle of the
jungle, but in no time at all,

our new friends have built us a cozy guest house.

This is now a couch they've made,

and they're adding banana
leaves as cushions. Amazing.

This is the fastest
construction crew I've ever met.

Five minutes flat ... addition to your house.

This jungle is their home,

and the tribe has welcomed me
with five-star accommodations...

and a complimentary beverage.

I'm anxious to speak to the chief

about the wreck they discovered.

But first, the tribe insists on welcoming us

with a sacred fire dance.

This is a seldom-seen ritual.

So, the women ... the women have gone away?

Why's that?

Wow.

Only men are allowed to participate or watch.

If any women in the village were to witness this,

they would be killed.

The men tend the fire,

feeding it until the flames
begin to devour the darkness...

[Staves pounding rhythmically]

... at which point, the dance begins.

[Men chanting]

The dancers are completely barefoot

and attempt to ward off evil spirits

by passing directly through the flames and embers.

He goes right into the fire.

Yeah. That's amazing.

The dance is performed

to initiate young men into
adulthood, or, in this case,

to celebrate visiting outsiders.

The dance itself is frenetic, wild,

and not for the faint of heart.

And I feel totally overwhelmed

at being able to witness it firsthand.

With the ceremony complete and my eyebrows singed,

I'm granted access to the chief

to discuss the plane wreck in the jungle,

which could be Earhart's lost Electra.

That was incredible.

I've never seen anything like that.

Thank you for welcoming us here.

Thank you.

[Speaking native language]

We heard these stories

that your tribe has found wreckage in the jungles.

[Speaking native language]

Yeah, there's some wreckage in the bush.

Yeah.

They don't know who it came from.

Is the wreckage definitely from an airplane?

[Speaking native language]

It's from a plane.

It's from a plane? From a plane.

How far is the wreckage from the village?

[Speaking native language]

He says the wreckage is close by here.

And could we have permission to
go and to look at the wreckage?

Can you guide us and show us where it is?

[Speaking native language]

People who know exactly where
it is ... they will guide us.

Terrific.

Let's do it. Come on.

Okay.

GATES: The jungles of New Britain are no joke,

especially at night,

but some believe that Earhart's
Electra could be out here,

waiting in the darkness.

[Exhales sharply]

These are real-deal jungles.

A lot of predators out
here ... snakes, spiders ...

and we're very far from a hospital,

so we have to be very, very
careful going through here.

Ooh, big hole right here.
Whoa, whoa, whoa, big hole.

Drops down.

What do you think, impact point?

Could be, yeah.

In 1945, in these very jungles,

an Australian army patrol stumbled on a crash site

they believed was Earhart's,
but no one ever found it again.

Could this be the same wreck?

Well, that's a piece of wreckage for sure.

Look at this. Rob, come here.

It's an airplane engine, yeah?

Oh, definitely an airplane engine, yeah.

They've taken propellers off.

Let's get the vines off it.

Earhart's Electra was a twin-prop plane.

We've found one engine, and
I'm desperate to find another.

The problem is the wreckage is
scattered all over the jungle.

Rob, check this out.

There's an interlocking piece there.

It looks like a fold.

Maybe this is the strut? Part of the strut.

Part of the strut for the wheel, maybe?

Yeah.

This like looks ... What do you think,

part of the exhaust or something?

Exhaust, or something like that, yeah.

Yeah.

I would say that

when the plane came in, it burned.

It burned quite severely.

Something over there?

MAN: Yeah.

Let's go look. More.

Rob, we got more over here.

Unbelievable. Look at this.

GATES: I'm in the jungles of Papua New Guinea,

investigating a wreck that could
be Amelia Earhart's lost plane.

Suddenly, we find a crucial piece of evidence.

Something over there?

More. Rob, we got more over here.

Unbelievable. Look at this.

What is this part? It's not the landing gear.

Is it part of the undercarriage?

ROWENSON: It's undercarriage, yeah.

So we're looking at part of the wing, yeah?

Yeah, this'll be part of the wing.

And it's been fairly badly burnt, too.

Yeah, it looks very burned.

All right, let's pull out
that schematic of the Electra.

So, Electra's a twin-engine Lockheed.

This looks like a twin or a single to you?

Well, I think it's a twin.

And what leads you to believe
that it's a twin engine?

Because this is a very strong undercarriage.

Right.

On a single-engine airplane,
it's usually just the one strut.

Right.

We have a twin strut here.

It's a radial engine, too.

Same type of engine design, right?

Same type of engine design.

All right, well, she's still a candidate, then.

There should be another engine here somewhere.

Have you found a second engine?

MAN: No.

One only?

I mean, if it hit so hard,
I mean, it could have gone

200 meters down the bloody shore.

Electra had Pratt & Whitney
engines. That's right, yeah.

Can you tell if that's a Pratt & Whitney or not?

Well, I can't. That's the problem.

It may well be a Pratt & Whitney.

Well, if we can get close and
see some identification on it.

Let's see if we can get some identifying marks

off the engines.

GATES: In 1945,

an Australian army patrol
found a Pratt & Whitney engine

here in this jungle,

and they were convinced it
belonged to Earhart's Electra.

If this is the same engine,
we might have struck gold.

God, I wish we had a propeller
or something like that,

'cause on propellers, you had dates on them.

Someone's taken a lot of the stuff away from here.

Although Rabaul is littered with wrecks,

Earhart's plane has features that distinguish it

from most World War II aircraft.

It was designed with a unique twin tail,

unpainted aluminum body,

and was packed with a dozen fuel
tanks in the fuselage and wings

to feed the twin Pratt & Whitney
Wasp engines on her long flight.

Any tags or identifiable parts with serial numbers

have either been stolen or destroyed.

Most of what looters left behind
is burned beyond recognition.

So we can't really tell if
it's a Pratt & Whitney or not.

Maybe, because we can't find
any identifying marks on it.

Right.

There's got to be something we're missing.

I've just realized something.

This is the undercarriage leg
of a dual-leg undercarriage.

The undercarriage on an
Electra is a single oleo leg

with a wishbone on the bottom
and the wheel between them.

Forks over the wheel.

That's right, it forks over the wheel.

It indicates to me a much heavier aircraft.

This wreck has two full struts
on each side of the wheels,

but Earhart's Lockheed Electra

had a single strut for each wheel,

with a wishbone that wrapped around the tire ...

a subtle but damning piece of evidence.

My opinion is, at present, it's not an Electra.

Now, what I think it is
... it's probably Japanese,

and the only way to identify
that is to take this information

that I have now and compare
it with information that I have

back in Rabaul.

So, wheel structure doesn't match the Electra,

so we know it's not Earhart's plane.

Definitely not.

But still a mystery.

Still a mystery.

And an important mystery.

Yeah, well, people died here,

so it deserves our attention, most certainly.

It's not Earhart's plane, but
with further investigation,

this wreck will solve a different mystery

and answer questions about the
demise of another downed pilot.

Thank you very much for showing us this.

Also, we're gonna need somewhere to sleep.

[Laughs]

[Chuckles]

Helicopter will be back in the morning.

All right, we're down to
our very last torches, here.

Let's get back to the village.

Otherwise, we're gonna be like this plane ...

we're gonna be out here forever. [Chuckles]

By the light of a new day,

we leave the jungle behind
and head back to Rabaul.

The wreck may or may not

be the same one that the
Australians found in 1945.

Either way, we know that it isn't Earhart's plane.

But this isn't the only
developing lead here in PNG.

Locals believe that
unidentified underwater wreckage

off the coast of Rabaul may
in fact be the missing Electra.

After grabbing a set of wheels,

I'm rumbling my way over
to where Rabaul used to be.

Back on the ground, headed over to Old Rabaul,

or what's left of it.

That is an active volcano named Vulcan.

Still active, very much alive, very dangerous.

This is one of two very
pissed-off-looking volcanos

that loom over Rabaul.

But its twin brother, Tavurvur,
is the one to keep an eye on.

In 1937, an eruption killed more than 500 people,

and less than a month before my arrival,

it decided to wake up again.

MAN #1: Oh, geez!

MAN #2: Holy smokin' Toledos.

Along the side of the road
here, you see this big wall ...

it's just 10 feet tall ... of ash,

and we're just driving over volcanic ash.

All of this is just from the most recent eruption.

Looking up at the hills,

nearly every palm tree in
sight is scorched to bits.

Okay, we should be coming into Rabaul.

As I approach the crater and
the coordinates of Old Rabaul,

it might seem like I'm in the wrong spot.

But the town is here, I'm
just driving on top of it.

Peeking up from the ash

are the ghostly remains of an entire city,

destroyed by the volcanos in 1994.

Motels, night clubs, banks,

entire city streets ... gone.

Perched atop the Ring of Fire,

PNG is one of the most
volcanic nations in the world.

The earthquake I felt in Lae is not a good sign,

and judging by the billowing
smoke rising from Tavurvur

and the boiling water coming up by my feet,

I'm suddenly struck by a question ...

What the hell am I doing here?

Well, nobody said

looking for Earhart was going to be easy or safe,

so I'm challenging my inner explorer

and pressing on with the search.

The wreck in the jungle was one of two leads here.

Next, I'm going to explore
another promising theory ...

that Earhart crashed in the
waters off Papua New Guinea.

Next stop here is to meet with a guy named Rod,

a dive expert and a World War II historian,

and he knows more about downed aircraft

in these parts of the waters than anybody.

Recently, local divers reported
seeing wreckage off of Rabaul

that they believe looks like the Electra.

To check out the report, I
make my way down to the harbor,

which is today, home to a listing collection

of ghost ships decimated by the volcano.

But amidst the waterlogged fleet
are a few seaworthy vessels,

one of which is captained by Rod Pierce.

Hey. How are you? Are you Rod?

Josh, g'day. Yep.

Yeah, nice to meet you. Pleasure.

So, I hear you're the man in
the know about airplane wrecks.

Yes, yes. Been researching them since the '70s,

and there's a lot of them here.

From World War II,

there's over 500 in the Gazelle area alone.

Amazing.

I look for MIAs.

Uh-huh.

Seek closure to a lot of people,

from pilots of all nations ...

Japanese, Australians, Americans.

How do you locate these wrecks?

Basically with sonar. Mm-hmm.

And that will draw you an outline of a plane,

or a wreck, or whatever you're looking for.

We've heard reports, recent reports,

of some aircraft wreckage out here near Rabaul,

and some people sort of whispering

that they think it may be Earhart's plane

that may have come back here.

Have you heard those stories?

I've also heard that.

Do you think it could be her plane?

Anything's possible.

The only way to know is to go out, investigate it,

and see what we can find.

As we head out to sea to search the coordinates

where divers claim to see a
wreck matching the Electra,

I'm captivated by the possibility

of finding the plane, but also a bit unnerved.

After all, we're cruising in the
shadow of two active volcanos,

one of which is still smoking.

Even more alarming, the entire
harbor is a volcanic caldera.

1,500 years ago, this bay exploded.

The ash cloud was so huge it
darkened the skies of Europe

for a year.

Rod, walk me through this.
This looks like a missile.

Okay, this is ... This is a towfish.

The idea is to run it about 5
to 10 meters above the bottom

to get ideal footage.

Cool.

Looks like a pretty serious piece of equipment.

Very serious piece of equipment,

capable of picking up a nipple on a mermaid.

[Laughs]

But it will do the job, I can assure you.

I'm just hoping for the nipple
on a mermaid at this point.

Okay, Rod, here we go.

Here we go. She's gone.

All right.

Keep it going.

Okay, she's out. Let's see what she sees.

With the sonar in the water, the search begins.

We're scanning a largely unexplored area

near where the divers reported seeing a wreck.

Lockheed only produced 147 Model 10 Electras.

Only four ever visited Papua New Guinea,

and three are accounted for.

So if Rod and I find an Electra
in this harbor, it's Earhart's.

This kind of a waiting game now.

We've got this side-scan sonar in the water.

We're towing it behind the
boat, and it's just giving us

a beautiful image of the ocean floor,

and we're just kind of ...
we're going back and forth,

eliminating each sector as we go through it,

and looking for wreckage while we go.

Rod has been investigating
Papua New Guinea's waters

for over 30 years.

Needless to say, he calls the shots...

and I take beverage orders.

Josh, do you know how to make tea?

Cup of tea coming up.

And I want it before Christmas.

Aye-aye.

It's like I'm with Quint from "Jaws."

Oh, for a splash of rum.

Don't have to take this abuse much longer.

I got the kettle on, so
let's see what we got here.

Peanut butter...

... baked beans...

... condensed milk.

[Whistling]

Okay, tea coming up.

Okay, cup o' tea coming up.

Oh, thanks, Josh.

There you go. Cheers, mate.

Cheers. All the best.

Hows it looking up here?

Good, good.

All right, I'm headed back to my station.

Not the manliest mug.

Oh, Rod! Got something!

Rod, come here! Off the starboard side!

PIERCE: Coming.

Something big right off the starboard side.

See it? Oh, yes, yes.

Oh, that's nice.

That's a big ship.

You think so?

Yeah, that's a big ship.

Okay.

World War II...

How big do you think ... what's the scale?

It's probably around about 3,000, 4,000 tons.

[Exhales sharply] Unbelievable.

Lying upright.

Crazy.

Okay, so, not a plane, but we got a wreck.

Not a plane, unfortunately.

Okay. All right.

We'll keep going, but we're hot to trot.

Keep going. Hot to trot.

We're on it. We're finding wrecks.

The harbor is eight miles long and six miles wide,

and slowly but surely, we're
scanning every inch of it.

Oh! Rod, I got a plane!

Rod, I got a plane, for sure! Come here!

Look at that. Look at that.

That's a [bleep] plane.

GATES: I'm in Papua New Guinea,

using side-scan sonar
equipment to scan Rabaul harbor

for Amelia Earhart's missing plane,

and we just got a major hit.

Oh! Rod, I got a plane!

Rod, I got a plane, for sure! Come here!

Look at that. Look at that.

That's a [bleep] plane. That's a plane, right?

Now, that is definitely a plane.

Great.

That's amazing.

One wing's buried in the sand.

Or missing.

Or missing.

Look at that. That's a plane.

We'll put the anchor down. Let's do it.

That's a plane! Let's get wet.

Based on the sonar readings,

there may be multiple wrecks
scattered beneath the boat,

and we descend into the murky
depths to investigate them.

[Radio beeps]

The million-dollar question

is whether this could be the Electra.

As we scour the wreckage,
vital clues come into focus,

including a slot on the bottom of the plane.

From 1940 to 1945,

the Mitsubishi A6M Zero was the infamous symbol

of Japan's air power.

A legendary long-range fighter

responsible for the attack on Pearl Harbor,

the Zero was light, fast, and deadly.

If this is a Zero, we may
be able to find the Hinomaru,

the red, circular sun that adorned the wings

of Japanese warplanes.

The second sonar hit is
located only a short distance

from the Japanese Zero,

and it's another shot at finding Earhart's plane.

Rod and I scour the wreck

to look for more identifying markers,

but this plane is badly mangled.

The cockpit on the Electra
had a wide field of view,

but short, narrow windows.

The cockpit area here looks
like a much more open design.

Based on the configuration,

Rod believes that this is a Grumman TBF Avenger,

an Allied torpedo bomber that proved indispensable

in defeating the Japanese.

Shockingly, it appears the three-person crew

are still trapped in the cockpit.

The plane and the soldiers inside are likely

either from New Zealand or the United States.

Even though this isn't the
Electra, it's a major find,

since Rod and his team can
now begin the important work

of identifying the servicemen who died here,

and having these heroes repatriated home.

Perhaps in time this will bring closure

to someone searching for these missing pilots.

It's time for me to bid farewell

to the exotic shores of Papua New Guinea.

After exploring the jungles of New Britain

and scanning the harbor of Rabaul,

we've eliminated two
high-profile leads in the case.

With so many aircraft wrecks
yet to be identified here,

it's easy to see why people believe

Earhart's could be among them.

But at the end of the day,

I don't believe there's enough physical evidence

to support the theory.

Furthermore,

I remain personally doubtful

that she could have had enough fuel

to limp all the way back here.

But my search for answers has just begun.

There's another breaking lead in the case ...

one that's so compelling,

it has recently captured worldwide attention.

There's stunning new evidence to suggest

that once Earhart failed to locate Howland Island,

she headed someplace much closer than PNG,

just 400 miles south of her target,

crash-landing on the
uninhabited island of Nikumaroro.

A renowned expert believes she may have died

on this lonely island as a castaway.

And the kicker ...

he may actually have a piece
of her plane to prove it.

13-year-old boy, you find
human bones under your house?

It never, ever came back into my life

until I read this thing about Amelia Earhart.

Was the rest of that crawl space under the house

thoroughly explored?

No, not at all.

Really? Never.

I got a bone down here.

There's more down here. There's more down here.

It might be time to call the police department

to come over here and take a look,

'cause a couple of them
could be human. I don't know.

GATES: I'm flying at about 35,000 feet

and headed to Wilmington, Delaware,

to interview an expert on the
disappearance of Amelia Earhart.

On one of the last legs
of her trans-world flight,

Earhart was supposed to travel 2,500 miles

from Lae, Papua New Guinea,

to tiny Howland Island in the
middle of the South Pacific.

But she never reached her destination...

and vanished without a trace...

or so we all thought.

Ric Gillespie is the executive director of TIGHAR,

an organization dedicated
to finding Earhart's Electra.

He believes that Earhart missed Howland Island

and crashed on the nearby atoll of Nikumaroro.

When we started this organization,

my attitude toward looking for Amelia Earhart was,

"Look, she probably just got lost

looking for a tiny island in a big ocean,

ran out of gas, crashed at the sea.

The technology doesn't exist
to find such a small target

in such a big ocean."

And it wasn't until two of our members,

who were retired military aerial navigators,

came to us and said,

"The things that Earhart is
known to have said on the radio

"make perfect sense to a navigator.

"She was doing exactly what she should have done,

"and that should have brought
her to one of two islands

that she had enough fuel to get to."

And nobody ever looked there.

Earhart's final transmissions
indicate that her and Noonan

believed they were in the right
spot but couldn't see Howland.

If, in fact, Earhart followed that line,

it would have likely passed
near the Phoenix group,

leading straight to Gardner Island,

known today as Nikumaroro.

Okay, if all those radio signals
people thought were genuine

were real, then the airplane
would have to be on land.

"But we've looked on the land,

"and there's no airplane on the land.

"Therefore, the radio
signals must be somehow bogus.

Let's go look in the ocean
for a floating airplane."

And that's what they did,
and they didn't find one.

They didn't find anything.

How many times have you been out to Nikumaroro?

I've been to Nikumaroro 10 times.

10 times.

And not an easy island to reach.

No, it's one of the most remote places on Earth.

And what's your level of confidence

that that's where she set that plane down?

100%. 100%?

100%.

No doubt in your mind.

We just established last week

that a piece of aluminum

that we found on that island in 1991

matches in every respect a unique part

of Earhart's airplane.

When Earhart was in Miami...

... she had a special custom-made window

on the right side of the airplane replaced

with a plain aluminum patch.

It has a unique rivet pattern,

unique proportions dictated by the size

of the hole it was covering

and the structure of the airplane.

Right.

So a piece of Amelia Earhart's airplane

ended up on that island.

Critics will say, "Yeah, well,
it could have floated up there,"

'cause we found it washed up.

Mm-hmm.

And if that was the only thing
we'd ever found on Nikumaroro,

you could say, "Yeah, well, maybe."

But it's not the only thing we've ever found.

September 1940 ... there's
a man named Gerald Gallagher.

He went down there and found a partial skeleton.

Total of 13 bones,

and it looked like this person
had been lying under a tree

and had died there.

And he looked at this, and he said,

"This might be Amelia Earhart."

Gallagher was a colonial
soldier who landed on Nikumaroro

as part of a British settlement.

He packed the skeleton he discovered into a box

and took it back to Fiji for analysis.

The bones were sent to the School of Medicine

and given only a cursory examination,

in which the doctor concluded
they were from a male.

Before anyone could test to see if they belonged

to Earhart's navigator,

the bones disappeared somewhere
in the island's archives.

But we have the notes the doctor took

of the measurements of those bones,

and we've given those measurements

to two independent forensic anthropologists.

Plugs it into the databases available now.

What comes out of the computer

is "white female of Northern European descent

who stood 5'7", 5'8"."

Well, there's nobody else
like that missing out there.

That's a description of Amelia Earhart.

It's an amazing lead.

But the question remains
... what became of the bones?

Fiji's main newspaper is now reporting a new lead

in the case.

If the bones can be found,

it may finally close

the greatest missing-persons case in history.

Time for me to head back to the skies,

get to Fiji, and join the search.

Since the dawn of aviation,

every pilot and passenger has seen this view ...

the endless cloudscape that swaddles planet Earth.

It was just over a century ago,

on a windy stretch of beach in North Carolina,

that the Wright brothers

launched the first powered aircraft ...

the fragile-looking Wright Flyer I.

The plane may have only flown for 12 seconds,

but humanity's terrestrial
shackles were finally broken.

The world would never be the same.

It's hard to know to what extent

early aviation pioneers like Earhart

envisioned what would follow,

but she probably never imagined
Richard Branson, seat-back TVs,

or double-decker jumbo jets.

And yet,

despite this technological golden age of aviation,

some things haven't changed.

We still lose planes.

In fact, more than 80 aircraft
have completely vanished

since the end of World War II.

Many aspects of Earhart's disappearance

seem eerily relevant with the recent loss

of Malaysia Flight 370.

It serves to remind us that
our dominion over the skies

is not absolute,

and that an awe-inspiring
90% of the world's oceans

remain unexplored.

Thanks to brave aviation pioneers like Earhart,

my modern jumbo jet will make the 5,000-mile trip

across the Pacific in a matter of hours.

I touch down in the Fijian capital of Suva,

a bustling and cosmopolitan town
with a laid-back island charm.

This is the last place the missing remains

from Nikumaroro were taken.

Exploring a new culture

is always an eye-opening experience,

and Suva is no exception ...

like seeing these authentic Fijian recliners.

I like your chairs.

Do you mind? May I?

Oh, this is very nice.

Oh, yeah.

You guys got it all figured out here.

Are you guys working right now? Yeah.

Yeah? You are?

You're not allowed to drink
beer when you're working?

Yeah. Are you allowed to sit in a wheelbarrow?

[Laughs] [Laughs]

I'm in town to meet with Nemani Delaibatiki,

the editor in chief of the Fiji Sun.

His paper recently published a new report

on the missing bones that
came to Fiji from Nikumaroro,

where Earhart may have perished.

According to the article, a Dr. Kenneth Gilchrist,

the former head of the Fiji Medical School,

may have been in possession of the bones.

The doctor has passed away,

but three Fijian employees
were named as beneficiaries

in his will.

All three men have also died,

and investigators believe that the box of bones

may have been inherited by
one of their family members.

There was three Fijians
who were close to the doctor

and apparently had knowledge of the box.

The mystery is, which one got the box?

Two of the men's families
have already been interviewed,

and neither have the bones.

The third man's son has yet to be found.

If I can find him, and the box,

DNA testing could prove whether the bones

are the remains of Earhart or her navigator.

We heard that one of the
three people lives in Navala,

a remote village.

Navala.

Navala village, on the western side of Fiji.

With no time to lose,

I'm heading to the village to investigate.

Since I'll be showing up uninvited,

it's important that I don't go empty-handed,

so I'm heading to the market to pick up a gift.

We got spices. We got beans. We got...

whatever that is.

Since I'm not seeing any Starbucks cards

or vanilla-scented candles,

I decide to go with a Fijian classic.

Kava ... you have lots of kava.

Yeah.

I need to buy some.

The roots of the kava plant are mashed

and turned into an intoxicating sedative

that's wildly popular in this part of the world.

How much is it?

35 a kilo.

35 a kilo?

Yeah.

Sounds like a fair price.

Yeah.

I don't know how much kava's supposed to cost,

so I trust you.

[Speaking native language]

Okay, I'll take a kilo.

Do you drink kava?

Yeah.

Does he drink Kava?

No.

No? He doesn't like it? No.

It's an acquired taste.

Look at that. That looks amazing.

Could play Quidditch with this thing.

Thank you.

Bye.

With my offering in hand,

I'm starting my journey to the village.

I'm hopeful to find the
man who may be in possession

of the missing bones.

Here, in Fiji's rugged backcountry,

may be the answers

to one of the world's greatest unsolved mysteries.

This is where it happened?

Right there.

There's got to be a better way to make a living.

When you found the box... Yes.

... did they go through the underside of this house

with a fine-tooth comb?

No.

This looks like bone.

It might be time to call the police department

to come over here and take a look.

We don't need any cameras. Leave those cameras.

GATES: I'm on the island of Viti Levu in Fiji,

searching for a man who may
be in possession of bones

that were brought here from a
remote Pacific island in 1945,

and which could be the remains of Amelia Earhart.

After picking up a traditional
offering of kava plant,

I'm heading off the grid
to search a remote village

where the man was last known to live.

Beyond the capital, Fiji reveals her true colors.

These islands are an undeveloped wonderland

brimming with stunning natural beauty.

While the small village of Navala

is just 55 miles northeast of Suva,

the road system isn't
exactly state-of-the-art.

Fiji's rustic charm may be pleasing to the eye,

but it does come with some minor drawbacks.

No rush.

[Goat bleats]

Okay, that may be the end of this road.

Hopefully the village is not too far from here.

Here we go.

In this part of the world,

reaching a remote village involves more than just

a bumpy ride down a dirt road.

In this case,

I'll have to channel my inner Huck Finn

to reach my destination.

Bula!

MAN: Bula, bula!

Are you going to the village?

To the village?

Yeah. Can I have a ride?

Okay.

Think I'm about to sink your boat.

All right, we're floating.

A few generations ago,

an outsider like myself arriving uninvited

at some Fijian villages could have become

the main course in a cannibalistic feast.

While I'm not afraid of winding
up on the menu these days,

I am worried that it's going to take me a month

to paddle there on what the
locals call a bilibili raft.

This is the 2014 model of the bilibili raft.

Comes with full bamboo.

Sunroof, obviously.

Natural air-conditioning.

Manual transmission.

Here? Village? Yeah?

Okay.

I don't really know where the emergency brake is

on this thing,

so I'm just gonna smash it into the rocks here.

Okay, my friend.

Vinaka vakalevu.

Vinaka.

Bye.

It wasn't exactly an express trip,

but the journey comes with an instant reward.

The traditional village is beautiful beyond words,

and the brilliant smiles of its youngest residents

make the journey well worth the effort.

Bula.

This village is reportedly home
to a man who may have inherited

the possible remains of Amelia Earhart.

But an outsider doesn't just waltz in

and start snooping around.

First, I'll need to get
approval from the village chief.

[Women singing in native language]

I'm immediately led to the chief's hut.

His word is law here.

With the future of my investigation

riding on winning him over,

I'm hoping my kilo of kava
helps grease the wheels.

[Men and women singing]

Uh-huh.

BULIWA: Now the sevusevu.

The men take away the root,

mash it, and turn it into a drink.

Though it's consumed by millions of people

throughout the Pacific, to outsiders,

kava is an acquired taste.

Yes, it's bitter, gritty,
and resembles muddy water,

but it also comes with a warm wave of euphoria,

thanks to its properties as a natural sedative.

I pass to you? Or this way?

I have to finish it? Yeah.

Kava is more than a drink. It's ceremonial.

Not finishing every last
drop is considered an insult.

So bottoms up.

Vinaka.

And now it all comes down to the chief.

His is the final approval.

GATES: I'm in a small Fijian village,

looking for answers to the
disappearance of Amelia Earhart.

A recent news story reported
that a man in this village

may have a box containing her bones.

If I can find these remains,

it may solve one of the greatest
puzzles in modern human history.

But first I need to win over the chief,

who is the absolute authority here.

Without his permission,

I won't be able to stay in the village

and continue my investigation.

After downing a few cups of ceremonial kava,

the chief is ready to make his decision.

Hopefully, he thinks I'm a good drinking buddy.

Oh, that's very nice to hear.
Thank you very much. Vinaka.

Thank you very much for allowing me to come here

and for accepting the kava and
for sharing the drink with me.

I appreciate it. Thank you. Vinaka.

Let's get some pizzas up in here, huh?

Mnh.

If I give you one inch...

Yeah?

... don't take one mile.

[Laughs] Okay. Sounds good.

[Speaking native language]

Bula.

[Laughs]

Okay? Yes.

The chief thinks I need one for the road.

After obliging,

I head out into the village
to begin my hut-to-hut search

for the man who might have the mysterious box

that experts believe could contain the bones

of Amelia Earhart.

Bula.

How are you? Good, thank you. And you?

I'm good.

Bula.

Hello. Hello.

Listen, I'm trying to find these men.

Do you know these men? Do you know these names?

Do any of them live here?

No. No?

Strike one. Okay. Next.

No. No?

None of them live here? No.

Vinaka.

Strike two.

Just as I'm about to give up,

I meet with one last man in the village.

Bula. Bula.

How are you? I'm good, I'm good.

I'm looking for these three men.

Do any of these names look familiar to you?

Uh-huh. Kalaviti.

He was in the village, but he passed away.

He passed away?

Passed away.

Does he have any family here still?

Uh, no,

not what I know.

And we're looking for these
men because they may have been

in possession of a box with human bones.

When this man died,

did he have any possessions
here in the village ...

a box, maybe?

Kalaviti doesn't have any
belongings when he passed away.

Right.

There wasn't any box.

Okay.

I think there's another man you should see.

He's staying in Suva.

In Suva? In Suva.

Who is that?

His name is John Grey.

John Grey? That's a familiar name to me.

John Grey is who?

He was the one who found some bones in the box.

Yes, many years ago he found bones, right?

Yeah.

The name John Grey has long been
linked to the Earhart mystery.

As a boy in 1968,

he was exploring a crawl space
underneath his home in Fiji

when he made a startling discovery.

He found a box of bones
that included a human skull.

Furthermore, the house had previously belonged

to an employee from the Fiji School of Medicine.

Some believe that these bones
could be the very same ones

that went missing from Nikumaroro.

But in a maddening twist,
these bones have also been lost.

My trip to the village has confirmed

that the last man mentioned in the article

didn't have the bones.

But a new lead is drawing me back to Suva.

Could John Grey provide any new insight

about the bones he found nearly 50 years ago?

Perhaps he holds the key to
solving this epic mystery.

So, you were about how old when this happened? 13.

And so 13-year-old boy, you find
human bones under your house?

How did you come to be digging under your house?

Me and my cousins decided that

we needed to go and check the place out.

And I crawled under this house and looked,

and lo and behold, there was this box under there.

As we took off part of the covering,

we saw this roundish, whitish-brownish thing.

And then, having pulled it out
and seen what was the skull,

it freaked me out. Yeah.

[Laughs]

And it's buried under your house. Absolutely!

I mean, this is, like ...
this is like "Poltergeist."

This is like a horror movie.

Yeah.

And then what became of the box and the bones?

It was all given to the Fiji Museum.

I just really didn't want to have anything to do

with that skull again. Right.

So, it never, ever came back into my life

until I read this thing about Amelia Earhart.

Something clicked in my mind, to say,

"John, that skull that you had is, perhaps, that."

Do you think there's a chance
that it's still in the museum?

Well, I hope so.

Was the rest of that crawl space under the house

thoroughly explored?

No, not at all.

Really? Never.

Even if I did want to, I couldn't,

'cause someone else owned it.

Now, though, it is a possibility?

The current owner is amenable to us going in there

and excavating if we need to.

And you do think it's possible there could be

other material remains under the house?

Absolutely.

You do?

Absolutely.

She needs closure.

Hm.

Amelia needs closure.

John made arrangements for us to
search the crawl space tonight.

In the meantime, I want to further investigate

his claim that the bones he found

could still be in the archives at the Fiji Museum.

The museum boasts an impressive collection

that spans nearly 4,000 years.

There are authentic Fijian rafts,

and even the rudder

from the infamously mutineered HMS Bounty.

But much of the collection is devoted

to Fiji's violent cannibal past.

These islands were once a
hotbed of human consumption.

One missionary was even eaten

right down to the soles of his shoes ...

the one part the natives found too tough to eat.

In a museum brimming with human remains,

I'm not feeling very optimistic

about finding a single box of bones

handed over by a teenage boy in the 1960s.

But I've come this far and plan to leave no stone,

or bone, unturned.

I'm fortunate to be granted
access to the museum's archives.

However, what little hope I have shrinks

as I realize that this place
is essentially that room

at the end of "Raiders of the Lost Ark."

This might take a while.

I comb through row after row of
jumbled, disintegrating files.

Eventually, I do manage to turn up

some intriguing reports about Earhart...

... but no potential remains.

As I continue to comb through
the museum's collection,

I find countless weapons and relics,

but they're not what I'm looking for.

Ooh. Box. Check this out.

That kind of fits the description.

As he said, it's got clasps on the front.

GATES: I'm at the Fiji museum,
looking for a lost box of bones

that some think can be traced to Amelia Earhart.

Ooh, box.

After scouring the archives,

I've come upon a box that matches the description.

Nothing.

Can't win 'em all.

My search through the museum's archives

doesn't turn up the remains.

It costs me the day, but I haven't lost all hope.

I'm traveling to the childhood home

where John Grey found a box
of bones over 40 years ago.

The police never searched the crawl space

after John made his discovery,

so there could still be more
evidence buried in the dirt.

GATES: This is it? GREY: This is it.

This is your childhood home. This is the home.

Does it look the same?

A little overgrown with
shrubs and things like that,

but the house looks exactly the same.

All right. Well, here we go.

So, this is where it happened.

This is the entry. Right there.

Okay, so,
13-year-old boy ...

You decide you're gonna go into that crawl space.

Yep. I got into that, crawled under the house,

and there it was ... this box.

Do you think anybody has
been under here since 1968?

By the looks of things, no.

The box of bones that John found in 1968

was strikingly similar

to the one that went missing decades before.

If there are any more remains
buried under this house,

they very well could be Earhart's.

I'm not thrilled about poking
around under an old house,

looking for Earhart's bones in the dark,

but I've come this far,

and there's no way I'm turning back now.

Where under here did you find the box?

Right in there, where that timber stump is.

I see it, yeah ... about
halfway back. That's correct.

And it was just sitting there, or
it was buried? It was sitting there,

so if you get there, that's where the box was.

Well, that seems like that's
our spot to start digging around.

Here we go.

So, please, just ... caution as you go through.

Uh, okay.

Definitely some spiders. God.

So, John, you're talking about that post there?

Correct, right in the middle of the house.

If I find any money under here, I keep it, right?

[Laughs]

[Exhales sharply]

Doesn't look like anyone's really been down here

in the past 40 years.

I found a button.

Looks like a button off a piece of clothing.

This is the first thing
I've really found down here

that looks from the human world.

Lots of broken bits of pottery.

[Clink]

Some glass.

Looks like a child's marble.

Yeah, we used to play with
those things in the younger days.

You've lost your marbles, John. [Laughs]

Okay, John, I'm pushing over

toward the area where you found the box.

[Sighing] Oh, boy.

There has got to be a better way to make a living.

Is it this beam right here, this
small one? Yep, you're there.

You're right there. That's it?

That's it. Okay.

So this was where the box was.

[Sighs]

Lot of coral down here.

They must have, when they were building the house,

used this as part of the landfill.

John? Yeah?

Just making sure you didn't go home.

When you found the box... Yes?

... did they go through the underside of this house

with a fine-tooth comb? No.

I just wanted to get rid of the box.

But the police didn't come down here. No.

You would think after they
found this box filled with bones,

they would have come down here

and done a more thorough search, but...

I don't see anything around there

other than a lot of dirt and some of this coral.

Hold on. Let me see what's down here.

This does not look like coral to me.

This looks a lot like bone.

Hold on. Let me see what's down here.

GATES: I'm in Fiji, searching underneath a home

for bones that some believe

may be the remains of Amelia Earhart.

After a bit of digging, I
may have found something.

This does not look like coral to me.

This looks a lot like bone.

I got a bone down here, for sure ...

a big piece of bone.

I don't know if it's human or not, but...

this is definitely bone. Wow.

That is a bone. I mean, that
looks like a human bone to me.

Another one ... part of a vertebrae.

My goodness.

More.

In a million years, I didn't think

I was gonna actually find bones under this house,

but I'm looking at a handful of them right here,

and I'm just barely scratching
the surface. Amazing.

There's more down here. There's more down here.

I mean [bleep]

There's a [bleep] skeleton down here.

There's bits of bone all over the place down here.

More bones. I mean, what is that from?

It's everywhere I look.

I mean, I'm putting a skeleton together down here.

It might be time to call the police department

to come over here and take a look,

'cause a couple of them
could be human. I don't know.

All right, I'm coming out.

Oh, my goodness.

[Sighs]

Well, there's more under the house, John.

Vertebrae. This, obviously ...

This could be a chicken
bone, something much smaller.

This could be a cow bone.

But this ... I mean, things
like this, I don't know.

That could be human.

We assumed that what was in the box

was all that there was.

And for a 13-year-old kid,
you'd never want to go back in

to find out if there's anything else.

[Siren wailing]

Yeah, okay. I got to ... I got to ...

Please, we don't need any cameras at the moment.

Oh, yeah?

Yeah. No cameras. Okay.

GATES: The bones that I found under the house

transformed our television production

into a criminal investigation.

After lengthy questioning at the police station,

the Fiji CSI unit has bagged
the evidence for review,

and I've got no choice

but to head back to my hotel
for a much-needed shower.

The next morning, I return
to the scene of the crime,

only to find more investigators
crawling under the house.

Hazmat suits.

Why didn't I think of that?

[Police radio chatter]

The police tape says it all.

The case is now out of my hands,

and I'm told that analysis and
DNA testing could take months.

However, the lab has already confirmed

that at least one of the bones is human ...

a revelation that turns
out to be front-page news.

As I make my way back to the airport

to bring my expedition to a close,

I have a lot to reflect on.

The shocking discovery of human remains

beneath John Grey's house

is a genuinely newsworthy lead

in the search for the queen of the skies.

In addition, the potential identification

of the aluminum panel from
the island of Nikumaroro

makes it tempting to conclude

that Earhart did indeed crash
on or around the remote island.

But much of the evidence,
though hugely compelling,

is still circumstantial.

Until her bones

or the full wreckage of the Electra is identified,

no one can say for certain.

Back in Papua New Guinea, the
overgrown World War II wreckage

that we found in the jungle,

and the eerie wrecks beneath the waves,

are, in a sense, every bit as
important as Earhart's plane.

After all, pilots went missing. Lives were lost.

My hope is that the bones
from the sunken Allied plane

can be identified and repatriated home

for the burial they deserve.

At the heart of Earhart's world flight

was a commitment to opening new frontiers,

and to unite the many cultures of the world.

In that regard, her mission has been a success.

She helped herald in the modern age of aviation,

which now serves to connect every nation on Earth.

In the end, I'm most drawn
to the unanswered question ...

Why do we continue the search?

To me, the magnificent thing about Amelia

is that in the eyes of the
world, she never died ...

her fear never witnessed,
her failure never recorded.

Earhart's legacy of inspiration is amplified

because her adventure is
perpetual, unbroken by gravity.

We simply think of her as missing.

And perhaps that's where she belongs ...

somewhere over that limitless blue horizon.