All language subtitles for Expedition Amelia (2019) [720p] WEBRip [VIP](eng)

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NARRATOR: It's not every
day one gets a chance to
make the find of a century,

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let alone two.

CREW (off-screen):
Ok, you ready?

NARRATOR: But that's exactly
what National Geographic's

Bob Ballard, is
setting off to do.

The man who discovered the
Titanic has now set sights
on another of the world's

most renowned mysteries.

BALLARD: This is a good
story that needs to be told,
I mean, it's a sad story,

but it's a good sad story.

NARRATOR: The story takes
us back to July 2, 1937.

Coast Guard cutter
Itasca is anchored
off of Howland Island,

a tiny dot in the Pacific,
about halfway between
New Guinea and Hawaii.

Any moment now, the world's
most adored aviator, having
flown more than halfway around

the world, is expected
to emerge from the clouds and
land on an airstrip specially

built for the occasion.

The sailors are here to
guide her in and witness
history in the making.

But so far, she's
nowhere to be seen.

Throughout the long night,
they have caught snippets
of her radio transmissions.

EARHART (over radio): Go ahead
on 7500 with a long count.

NARRATOR: But there's
no indication she has
heard their responses.

CANDACE: They were
sweating blood.

They were horrified of the
fact that they could hear her,

but she couldn't hear them,

that they just could
not communicate.

EARHART (over radio): KHAQQ.

NARRATOR: Then, at 7:42 AM.

NARRATOR: The signal is
so strong, the radiomen
run out on deck,

convinced the plane
is directly overhead.

But as another hour passes,
the sky remains empty.

8:43 a.m.

The last confirmed
word of Amelia Earhart.

And for more than 80 years,
the world has waited, waited
for an answer about what

really happened to her and
her navigator Fred Noonan
on that fateful, summer day.

CANDACE: Suddenly,
the whole country is
completely obsessed.

Where is she?

And are not leaving
their radios.

MAN (over radio): She
was reported missing.

CANDACE: It's the greatest
mystery of the 20th century,
right, and into the 21st,

it continues to be.

NARRATOR: The disappearance
has spawned countless theories
and launched dozens of

expeditions, all seeking to
determine the truth of what
happened to this intriguing

and inspirational young
woman from Kansas.

SAMMIE (off-screen): We've seen
the most intimate details of
her life that exist,

and we still don't feel
that we know Amelia.

There's a lot of interest
in her disappearance
and what happened to her,

what happened to the plane.

But to me the biggest mystery
is who was she really.

TRACEY (off-screen): She was an
inspiration in her own lifetime.

But 80 years later she is,
in some ways,

more alive than
she was before that crash.

BALLARD (off-screen):
She was an amazing woman.

She was way ahead of her times
and taking on the world as a
woman, and she did quite well,

good Kansan.

NARRATOR: Now Ballard,
another Kansan, is adding a
new chapter to Amelia's story.

BALLARD (off-screen): Wow.
Bigger than I thought.
That's for sure.

NARRATOR: At an airplane
hangar in Amelia's
hometown of Atchison,

he sizes up the last surviving
Lockheed Electra 10E,
the very model Amelia flew.

BALLARD (off-screen): Yeah,
this is what I expect to be
the biggest surviving pieces

are these two big
Pratt Whitney engines

and the question is
attaching with my robot are

probably right around here.

NARRATOR: Bob is confident
the engines lie at
the bottom of the Pacific,

and he thinks he knows where.

CREW (over radio): Roger that.
Going in.

NARRATOR: He's setting sail on
what may be his most ambitious
expedition yet to find them.

CREW (over radio):
We are ready to launch.

NARRATOR: In the process,
he's shedding new light
on one of the world's

most captivating people.

ANNOUNCER (off-screen): In ship
number six is the world-famous
Amelia Earhart.

CREW (over radio):
It's good to go.

BALLARD (off-screen): It exists.

It's not the Lochness monster,
it's not Bigfoot.

That plane exists, which
means you can find it.

CREW (over radio): Roger that.
Goin' in.

NARRATOR: Even before
she disappeared in July 1937,
Amelia Earhart was already one

of the most famous
people in the world.

For years she pushed
the boundaries of what
was humanly possible,

shattering a dozen
records in the air, while
breaking barriers for

women on the ground.

EARHART: I hope that men and
women may achieve equally in
any endeavor they set out.

NARRATOR: Now she is
poised to push those limits
as far as they can go.

TRACEY (off-screen): She
was still a very young person,
she was still in her 30s,

right on the cusp
of turning 40.

She was really
at the peak of her
training, her expertise.

She wanted to do the
most exciting thing
she could think of.

And I think that's why she
chose flying around the world.

NARRATOR: World flights
had been done before,

but that was in
the Northern Hemisphere,

a distance of 15,000 miles.

Amelia has her sights
set nearly twice as far.

EARHART (off-screen):
The contemplated course
covers about 27,000 miles.

It will be the first
flight, if successful,

which approximates
the equator.

NARRATOR: It would be an
astonishing feat for anyone
in 1937, man or woman.

CANDACE: I didn't think
they'd actually seen a
woman that was daring,

that was entirely
in a man's world.

I mean, you're talking
about mechanics and
airplanes and being brave,

doing things that no
one else had ever done,
not men, you know,

much less women.

NARRATOR: Amelia takes off
from California in March 1937.

REPORTER (over radio):
Over San Francisco Bay
and its famous bridges,

Amelia soars.

NARRATOR: Next stop
Hawaii, then around
the world into history.

REPORTER (over radio):
She expects to make the
27,000-mile world-girdling

flight around the
equator just as easy!

NARRATOR: Under auspicious
skies, the expedition vessel
Nautilus is also setting off,

from Apia Samoa, for
what some believe is where
Amelia spent her final days.

Bob Ballard has set course for
a speck in the vast Pacific.

With a team of engineers,
oceanographers, geologists
and archaeologists,

they're banking on
the theory that Amelia
managed to land on a tiny

atoll called Nikumaroro.

BALLARD: There are
all sorts of theories.

That she was taken
prisoner by the Japanese.

That she turned
around and went back.

So you take the ones you
can throw away and you're
only left with two.

NARRATOR: That she
crashed at sea and sank
is the official explanation

for Amelia's disappearance.

That's what the Navy concluded
when she went missing in 1937.

BALLARD (off-screen):
Which is very possible,
most of this area is water.

NARRATOR: It's just not a
simple theory to search.

BALLARD: This ocean covers
a third of the earth, and
average depth in this area is

15,000 feet so good luck.

We're not doing that.

NARRATOR: Instead, Bob is
following evidence uncovered
by The International Group for

Historic Aircraft Recovery,
TIGHAR for short,

which challenges
the official verdict

while confining
the search to a much
smaller area, Nikumaroro.

Ric Gillespie is TIGHAR's
Executive Director.

GILLESPIE: I accepted what
was widely accepted as the
official explanation for what

happened to Amelia Earhart.

Until I saw evidence that
something else had happened.

And then I said,
let's look into this.

NARRATOR: TIGHAR has now
been looking into Nikumaroro
for the last 30 years.

GILLESPIE: You start on a
journey and you never know
where it's going to end.

NARRATOR: So far, they've
found no definitive proof
Amelia landed on the island,

but the clues they've amassed
are tantalizing enough
to set Bob on his quest.

BALLARD: I like
the Nikumaroro theory.

NARRATOR: And he has
a pretty good track record
of finding the unfindable,

from the Titanic in the
Atlantic to JFK's PT-109

here in the Pacific.

BALLARD: This is in my
business, a Mt. Everest.

Titanic was a Mt. Everest.

Bismarck was a Mt. Everest.

I like challenges.

And this is probably
the toughest one I've
ever had, and you know,

I'll give it everything I got.

NARRATOR: Flying westward
over the Pacific, Amelia is
also giving all she's got.

Accompanied by veteran
navigators Fred Noonan and
Harry Manning and technical

advisor Paul Mantz,
after 16 hours she
touches down on Honolulu,

exactly when and
where she intends.

“Smooth flying,” Amelia
records in her logs.

But the next leg
will not be so easy.

Just 10 seconds into takeoff,
her world flight is cut short.

REPORTER (over radio): The
16,000 pound machine crashed
on its nose and one wing when

taking off, heavily
laden with petrol.

NARRATOR: The Electra
is badly damaged,

its landing gear
left sitting on the runway.

REPORTER (over radio):
Now it's to be sent back
for extensive repairs.

NARRATOR: It will take three
months to repair the plane,

a delay that forces
some ominous changes.

The man who understands her
newfangled navigational radio,
Harry Manning, can't continue.

And when she finally takes
off again on May 20, 1937,
a seasonal shift in the

prevailing winds means
she'll have to go around the
world in the other direction.

Rather than heading west,
she must head east,

the most hazardous
part of the journey,

crossing 2500 miles of
ocean and finding Howland
Island will now be last.

NARRATOR: Two days
into his expedition,

Ballard is nearing the
waters where Amelia is

believed to have gone
missing and just so happens
to be transiting with

a compass heading of
337 degrees Northwest,

the bearing Amelia gave
on her last transmission.

BALLARD: Ironically, we're
coming up on the same bearing.

We're here heading on
337, and she was coming
down on the reciprocal.

CAPTAIN: Yeah, 157.

BALLARD (off-screen): 157.

CAPTAIN (off-screen): Yeah.

BALLARD (off-screen): It
all plays out right there.

CAPTAIN (off-screen): Yep.

NARRATOR: The Nautilus
team uses satellites
to chart its course.

In 1937, Amelia's
navigator Fred Noonan
doesn't have the luxury.

When crossing large
swaths of ocean with
no visible landmarks,

he's forced to rely
on what's called
“dead reckoning,”

constantly keeping
track of air speed

and compass headings
to find his way.

During the night, he
can then adjust with
the help of the stars,

getting a fix on
position and pointing
the way for Amelia.

If, that is, conditions allow.

GILLESPIE (off-screen):
There's good evidence
that during the night,

there was an overcast
that prevented Fred
from getting celestial

observations from stars.

NARRATOR: Without stars,
Fred would presumably await
the next available sighting,

just as navigators do today.

He'd measure the angle of
the sun with a modified
mariner's sextant,

note the time and calculate
a line of position.

In this case, an estimate
of longitude, not latitude.

GILLESPIE (off-screen): Noonan
knows that he is somewhere on
this line and that line is

90 degrees to the rising sun,

the sun rises at 67
degrees, the line goes
337 degrees this way,

157 degrees this way.

I don't know if I'm up here
or down here or right here on
course, but I'm on this line.

NARRATOR: Fred can then use
airspeed to determine when
that North-South line will

cross through Howland
and radio an ETA, but as the
plane wings its way eastward,

without latitude,
he still can't know
where he is on that line.

As Itasca waits and waits
for their arrival that morning,
it becomes clear they are not

where they should be.

NARRATOR: They are supposed
to home in on Howland using
a new radio direction finder,

when close enough, but
neither Fred nor Amelia
are very familiar with it,

and the man who is,
Harry Manning, dropped out
after the Hawaii disaster.

GILLESPIE: They're not gettin'
any help from the direction
finder, now it's up to Fred.

And Fred says,

"Ok. It's either that
way or this way."

NARRATOR: Their
transmissions indicate they

try both ways.

GILLESPIE (off-screen):
As Earhart said,

“We are running on the
line north and south.”

There's nothin' this way till
you get to Siberia.

NARRATOR: But if you follow
the 337-157 line a few
hundred miles the other way,

southeast from Howland,
there is something,
a 4.7- mile-long,

1.6-mile wide atoll, which
at low tide, just happens
to have an expansive,

exposed coral reef.

Not a bad place
to land a plane.

GILLESPIE: And by this
time they're getting really
worried about the fuel.

And they look
around and they see,

well the best place to land
is this flat area near this,

this old shipwreck.

NARRATOR: The SS Norwich City,

a British freighter that ran
aground eight years earlier.

GILLESPIE: And so,
they set up and she
bump-bump-bump, lands.

NARRATOR: It was called
Gardner Island in 1937;
today it's Nikumaroro.

And 52 hours after leaving
Samoa, that's exactly where
Nautilus is approaching now.

CREW: Yeah, I can
see it from here.

BALLARD (off-screen): Alright.

NARRATOR: The island offers
Bob and Expedition Leader
Allison Fundis a narrow search

area relative to
the vast Pacific.

But with just two weeks
to find small pieces
of a metal plane,

scattered among the metal
debris of the Norwich City,

they waste no
time getting started.

ALLISON (off-screen):
So, we're standing
right off Nikumaroro Island.

We're at the entrance to
the lagoon where we think
that is the general area

where Amelia Earhart
would've taken
her final approach.

NARRATOR: Previous attempts
here, including modest imaging
work and rudimentary mapping,

have come up short.

But they don't compare
to Bob's multi-layered,
battery of testing:

Multi-beam sonar
that can produce detailed

3D maps of
the deep-water terrain.

An Autonomous Surface
Vessel, or ASV, to scan
along the shallows.

High flying drones to image
and map the reef where
Amelia would have landed.

And finally,
the jewels in the crown,

a pair of state of
the art ROVs that can

image the seafloor
down to 13,000 feet.

ALLISON: We've brought a
lot of toys to the game, so
we're really trying to cover

everything from, from the
beach to, to the depths.

NARRATOR: And the search won't
stop at the water's edge.

The Nautilus team will soon
be joined by archaeologists to
discover whether Amelia really

could have lived out
her final days here.

Intriguing evidence found
on the island just three
years after she went missing

suggests she may have.

By 1940, the British, in
their last gasp attempts
to expand their empire,

try to start a colony here.

The officer in charge,
Gerald Gallagher, reports
a startling discovery.

On the Southeast corner,
under a “ren” tree, colonists
had uncovered bones with what

appeared to be a woman's shoe.

He cables headquarters with
a fascinating conjecture.

GILLESPIE: Oh, my God.

September 23rd, 1940,
“just might be Amelia Earhart.”
And he misspells Earhart,

you know, you know, with
a "d" in it, Earhardt.

NARRATOR: Thirteen
bones are found in all,
including some long bones,

part of a pelvis, ribs,
vertebra, mandible and a skull.

GILLESPIE: This was a whole
episode in the Earhart story
that nobody knew about.

NARRATOR: Nobody knew about
because the bones were packed
up and sent to the colonial

capitol in Fiji, where a
doctor named DW Hoodless
analyzes them,

disputes Gallagher's assertion,

and dismisses
the bones as male.

They're eventually
lost and forgotten.

GILLESPIE: Like the Ark of
the Covenant in the last scene
of Raiders of the Lost Ark.

NARRATOR: Until recently.

National Geographic
archaeologist Fred Hiebert,
along with forensic

anthropologist Erin Kimmerle,
and cultural anthropologist
Jaime Bach have followed

Gallagher's paper trail to the
capitol of Kiribati, Tarawa,
which won independence from

Britain in 1979,
and inherited all of the
related Colonial archives.

HIEBERT: I had
no idea they had such
comprehensive documents.

NARRATOR: The teams here based
on a recent reevaluation of
the written description of the

bones that suggests
Dr. Hoodless got it wrong.

KIMMERLE (off-screen):
Dr. Hoodless made some errors.

He didn't take a long bone
measurement of the femur.

That is really the absolute
best bone that we could
measure for an accurate

stature estimate.

He says that he can't estimate
ancestry, but then goes on
to say it's probably a mixed

ancestry of European
and Polynesian.

Where I think he really got
it off was the sex estimation.

He takes a couple of
measurements that he doesn't
provide those metrics and says

that based on this ratio
um it's more likely male.

NARRATOR: By entering
Hoodless' measurements
of the bones into a

modern forensic database,

the new study
found that the castaway
wasn't male, but female,

about 5 feet 6 inches tall,
right around Amelia's height.

KIMMERLE (off-screen): What
it means is that those remains
should not have been excluded.

At a minimum, they should
have been analyzed further.

NARRATOR: The question now
is, if the paper archives
wound up here on Tarawa,

might the bones
be here as well, and
could they be Amelia's?

NARRATOR: Tarawa is
the capital of Kirbati,
which spreads across more than

30 islands in the central
Pacific, including Nikumaroro.

The National Geographic
team believes if the British
telegrams ended up here,

then the associated 13 bones
discovered on Nikumaroro
should be here too.

JAMIE (off-screen):
The people of Kiribati
have a high respect for

Human life if
they didn't know whose bones

they were or what they
should do with them;

they would
still hold on to them,
they wouldn't be discarded.

NARRATOR: The challenge
is they've been holding
on to many unidentified

remains on Tarawa.

It witnessed one of
the bloodiest battles
of World War II.

HIEBERT: Thousands of
servicemen from the Japanese
side and the US side perished.

NARRATOR: Many of those
remains are now housed
in Tarawa's archives,

and there's no obvious
box of 13 lying around.

If the team has
any chance of finding
the Nikumaroro bones,

they will have to comb through

hundreds of fragments for
bones that match Hoodless'
descriptions or match Amelia.

KIMMERLE: Amelia
had a couple of really unique
characteristics on her skull,

and with her dentition.

One of those features
is called a diastema.

It's a small space
between your teeth.

NARRATOR: She also had
repeated surgeries throughout
her life due to crippling

sinus pain.

KIMMERLE (off-screen):
They drilled a puncture
hole to relieve the sinuses.

So, seeing that evidence
of surgery and the diastema
would be great indicators

that this could be her.

NARRATOR: The
team meticulously
studies each bone,

eliminating them one by one.

KIMMERLE (off-screen):
This box has three skulls.

HIEBERT (off-screen): Wow.

KIMMERLE: This is
a male individual.

HIEBERT: So, this one also
checked off the list.

NARRATOR: They search through
more than 600 bone fragments,

including 7 skulls.

They're all male.

HIEBERT: This is
pretty much it.

NARRATOR: Until, at
the end of the last day,
in the very last box.

KIMMERLE: Here.

Look at, this is
the frontal bone.

HIEBERT: Yeah.

KIMMERLE: So, see how slight?

That's a female, and you
can see a huge difference.

HIEBERT: This one
is really special.

We're looking at a
female all of a sudden,
that's a game-changer.

NARRATOR: A female
that may even bear some of
Amelia's telltale markings.

KIMMERLE: We can see a
little bit of remodeling and
something was going on with

the nasal area.

If we reconstruct this, we'll
be able to just to visualize
it a little bit better.

NARRATOR: The team
now arranges to get the skull
back to Erin's lab in Florida,

reconstruct it in 3D and see
how it compares to Amelia.

They'll then try to
extract some DNA.

HIEBERT: The ultimate 100%
for this project is comparing
the DNA from these bones to

relatives of Amelia Earhart.

Now, honestly, that is a long
shot, but I love long shots.

NARRATOR: In another long shot,
Fred and Jaime will join
Ballard in Nikumaroro to dig

where the 13 bones
may have originated.

HIEBERT (off-screen):
It's hard to imagine
Amelia Earhart on Nikumaroro,

but this is where the
evidence is leading us.

NARRATOR: If Amelia did end
up here, it's a world away
from where she started.

Amelia Mary Earhart
was born overlooking
the Missouri River in

Atchison, Kansas in 1897 right
here in her Grandma Otis' house.

And from her earliest
days, her rebellious
spirit was on full display.

CANDACE (off-screen): Grandma
Otis was big on deportment,
lady-like deportment,

and so she was always
constantly catching
Amelia doing things

that were not lady-like,

hopping over the fence
and wanting to learn to
play basketball or using a

boy's sled instead of a girl's
sled to slide down, you know,
the hill, the Second Avenue,

which is just out here.

NARRATOR: Whether joyriding
down Second Avenue,
headfirst like the boys did,

building a roller coaster
in the backyard to thrill
the neighborhood kids,

or leading her friends on
pretend expeditions through
Asia and Africa from the

carriage in the barn, Amelia
was always up for adventure.

That she was a girl never
entered the equation.

CANDACE (off-screen):
She was always being caught
and always being scolded.

It didn't, obviously
didn't change Amelia's
behavior at all,

but what it did was
force Amelia to think
about the rules between

girls and boys
and why do girls have to act
certain ways and why do boys

get all the freedom and they
get all the fun?

NARRATOR: Amelia's parents
don't exactly discourage
the Tomboyishness.

Mom outfits her and her
sister Muriel with bloomers.

ANN (off-screen): Every dress
she was in she would rip to
pieces so her mother had

play clothes made for,
both her and Muriel.

NARRATOR:
Dad buys her footballs,
even a rifle.

ANN (off-screen): She
got a 22-rifle for her
12th or 14th birthday.

She got to shoot the
rats in the barn.

She was an
adventurer even then.

NARRATOR: Amelia paints a rosy
picture of this time, but her
privileged life in Atchison

turns challenging when
her father begins drinking
and can't hold down

a job as a lawyer.

CANDACE: Dad's sickness as
they refer to it, Mm-hm.

NARRATOR: They struggle
financially and are forced
to move around the country.

CANDACE: She told us
herself how it shaped her.

She said that one had to
depend on oneself, even the
person that you thought was

most dependable, your
father, could change.

She learned that early on.

NARRATOR: Those difficult
lessons would influence
Amelia her entire life.

Back on Nautilus, the
search for Amelia's Lockheed
Electra is in full swing.

The ship completed
a circumnavigation of
the island overnight,

scanning the seafloor with
its multi-beam sonar and
generating a detailed 3D

picture of the island's
deep-water terrain.

With some daylight, it's
now safer to edge closer
to the jagged reef where

Amelia would have landed.

To do it, they launch
this contraption, the ASV, a
self-driving powerboat tricked

out with sensors and cameras
that can scan back and
forth along the breakers.

ALLISON (off-screen): We're
pretty much getting to the
reef break, which is excellent.

That means between the
ship system and this system
we'll be able to map up and

to the reef.

CREW: Begin logging.
Logging data.

ERIN: It's got too
high a frequency in
too deep of water.

NARRATOR: Navigator Erin
Heffron can then crunch the
data and home in on the most

likely spots to hide a plane.

ERIN: We've been
focusing our energies up
here in the northwest.

So, the colored stuff
you're seeing here is
the ASV bathymetry.

So, I'm gonna just
turn it into 3D.

So that we can
get perspective.

NARRATOR: The slope beneath
the waves turns out to be
steeper than anyone predicted.

ERIN: We're not making it
look more dramatic than it is,

this is actually
what it looks like.

NARRATOR: Bob thinks
that the plane, if here,

would have sat precariously
just yards from the edge,

before rising tides and rougher
seas dragged it over the cliff,

likely shattering
it into pieces.

If so, the pieces should be
waiting for him at the bottom.

BALLARD (off-screen):
There's no sense of
searching a vertical wall.

It's not gonna be there.

So, what'll probably happen
is either it's here, slight
possibility it's something on

a bench, but more than likely
we'll have to go and do the
deeper region and search down

here where things would
finally come to rest.

NARRATOR:
However deep the plane ended
up, there's reason to believe

it did not sink immediately.

On July 2, 1937, hours
after Amelia went missing,
mysterious radio signals were

detected across the Pacific,
signals that could only have
come from Amelia's plane.

NARRATOR: Throughout
her record-breaking
flight around the world,

Amelia Earhart would
transmit radio messages on
just a couple of frequencies,

62-10 during the day and 31-05
at night, frequencies that
no one else in the

Central Pacific was
supposed to be using.

GILLESPIE: So, for somebody
to hear a signal, it's
like "khhhh," on 31-05,

there's only one airplane
that can be coming from.

NARRATOR: And on Friday,
July 2, just hours after
Amelia went missing en route

to Howland Island, those
frequencies were detected
by an unlikely source.

MAN (over radio):
Pan Pacific express planes
are built...

NARRATOR: Pan American Airways,
which had just begun flying
passengers across the Northern

Pacific, hopping from
one island to the next.

GILLESPIE: And at each of
these stops along the way,
they had radio-direction

finding stations that
would guide the planes in.

NARRATOR: The Pan Am stations
tune their direction finders
to Amelia's frequency,

and they detect signals.

Assuming the plane could no
longer be flying, the signals
have to be coming from land.

GILLESPIE: It's on land,
and it's on its wheels, cause
they've gotta run an engine to

recharge the battery that
the radio depends on.

NARRATOR: Pan Am reports
the signals to the Navy which
plots the bearings on this map

acquired by Ric Gillespie.

GILLESPIE: So, you can see
that there was a bearing taken
from Makapuu there on Hawaii,

that went down this way.

There's another one
taken from Wake Island,
comes down this way.

And there was another one
taken from Midway that came
down through here and a fourth

one taken by the Coast
Guard on Howland Island that
came down through there.

NARRATOR: If you extend
all the lines down and
plot where they cross.

GILLESPIE (off-screen):
They all converge in this area,
and they had to be coming from

a signal transmitted from land

and the only land there
is Gardner Island.

NARRATOR: It's those
signals that are keeping
Bob going out here.

BALLARD (off-screen):
The radio evidence is so
compelling that she was

sitting on or near that island
transmitting without moving.

You can't take
that off the table.

NARRATOR: Not just
the Pan Am signals, which
could only take bearings,

but dozens of distressing
accounts of Amelia's
verbal cries for help,

reported by people
much farther away.

None more provocatively
perhaps than 15-year-old
Betty Klenck,

who recorded the
calls in her notebook.

BALLARD (off-screen): A young
lady in St. Petersburg, Florida,

sittin' there with a souped-up
HAM set that her father
built a very large antenna for.

GILLESPIE (off-screen):
She would sit at
the radio and cruise the dial

and she would jot down the
lyrics of her favorite songs.

Make sketches of
cowboys, glamorous women.

And suddenly she hears
a woman's voice saying,
“This is Amelia Earhart.

Please help me.” And
she starts transcribing
what, what she hears.

NARRATOR: She writes the
word Howland and describes
a man who sounds injured.

GILLESPIE: And the man is
trying to get out of wherever
they are and she's trying to

talk him out of that
and keep him calm.

NARRATOR: Ric thinks
it's Fred Noonan.

GILLESPIE (off-screen):
It reads like the transcript
from a modern 9-1-1 call.

NARRATOR: Throughout,
she continually jots
down the letters “NY, NY.”

GILLESPIE (off-screen):
And I asked her about that, I
said, "Betty, what's NY, NY."

She says, "Well,
that's New York City, that's
how I write New York City."

Well the shipwreck that's on the
island that British shipwreck
was the SS Norwich City.

Norwich City.
New York City.
Norwich City.

NARRATOR: 80 years ago,
the Norwich City would have
still been largely intact.

GILLESPIE: It still
makes the hair on the
back of my neck stand up.

And Betty wasn't the only one
who heard this kind of thing.

NARRATOR: TIGHAR uncovered
57 credible transmissions,
officially reported to local

police stations or newspapers
across the country.

It then took the reports a
step further, correlating when
they were received with the

tides on the
island at the time.

All of the calls came in
during low tide, the only
time Amelia could spin the

propellers and transmit.

BALLARD (off-screen):
When they match the
tide that's actually on the

island to those messages,
wow, that's pretty convincing.

NARRATOR: As the sun sets
on day two of his search,

Bob is getting ready
to see if her plane

was washed over
the edge of the reef, just
north of the Norwich City,

where TIGHAR says would have
been the best place to land.

CREW (over radio):
Ready to launch.

NARRATOR: If so, it's battered
and broken in pieces on the
bottom and there's only one

set of tools in Bob's arsenal
capable of reaching it.

CREW (over radio):
Roger that, going in.

Okay, you see the can,
you can start driving.

NARRATOR: The crew first
deploys ROV Hercules, a small
but sophisticated robot that

will serve as their main
set of eyes on the seafloor.

CREW (over radio): Ok,
tether is in the water,
everything looks good back here.

CREW 2 (off-screen):
Okay, let him out.

NARRATOR: The larger Argus
ROV will keep an eye on Herc,

while buffering the
motion of the ship.

CREW (over radio):
Ok, Argus is going down.

BALLARD: We're at
309 meters right now.

CREW: Can you put camera?
BALLARD: Yeah. Ok, I see it.

NARRATOR: In the control van,

Bob and the team can
then watch the live
feeds from both ROVs,

their first
up-close-and-personal
look at the bottom.

BALLARD: So this is
Hercules going up slope,

sliding along in the area
where we think she landed.

NARRATOR: They position
Herc around 1,000 feet down,
where the slope levels off,

and is most likely to catch
falling debris from above.

They then start sweeping
in long parallel lines
back and forth from about the

Norwich City to the
Northwest tip of the island,

gradually climbing
up slope as they go.

BALLARD: Every one of those
could be a piece of a plane.

NARRATOR: In years of searching,

no one has ever been
able to find a single
piece of Amelia's Electra.

But Bob will be looking
deeper than anyone
has ever gone before.

BALLARD (off-screen): So,
this is just the way you do it,

pop some popcorn
and go to the movies.

Yeah, I think we're binge
this for the next couple
of weeks, whaddya think?

NARRATOR: As Bob goes in
search of Amelia's plane,
in the early part of the

twentieth century, Amelia
is finding herself.

And there is no
lack of inspiration.

TRACEY (off-screen):
Amelia Earhart was very much
a person of her generation.

NARRATOR: She's 6 years old
when the Wright Brothers defy
gravity at Kitty Hawk in 1903.

She's 16 during the Suffrage
March on Washington in 1913.

MAN (over radio):
Susan B. Anthony and

her followers have won
for women the right to vote.

NARRATOR: And 23 when
women are granted the vote.

TRACEY: Which means she was
in the first cohort of women
able to vote in this country.

NARRATOR: In her twenties,
Amelia explores all kinds of
roles, as a telephone clerk,

a truck driver, a stenographer,
a photographer.

It was while working as a
nurse's aide to World War I
vets in Toronto when she

finally discovers
her one true passion.

CANDACE (off-screen): She would
go out to the Canadian airfield,
which was nearby,

and she would watch
those World War I pilots, out
there flying their airplanes,

and she was
fascinated by them.

NARRATOR: One day, a
pilot gives Amelia and
her friend a thrill,

buzzing them on the airfield.

CANDACE (off-screen):
And her girlfriend
screams and runs away,

and Amelia stands there and

everything flies back and
she's in love, you know,
she's in love with flying.

NARRATOR: A few years later,
in Long Beach California,

she finally gets a
chance to fly herself,

10 minutes that
would set the course for
the rest of her life.

On Nikumaroro, Fred Hiebert
and a team of archaeologists,
with guidance from an eager

pair of forensic
advisors, are hunting
for her remains on land.

The discovery of the
female skeletal fragments
on Tarawa has them more

optimistic than ever.

HIEBERT: What we want to do is
link them here to Nikumaroro
and that's what we're going to

do with the forensic dogs.

NARRATOR: The telegrams
sent by Gallagher indicate
only 13 bones were unearthed

from the island in 1940.

The scientists are hoping
that Berkeley and Ruby
will lead them to more.

And thanks to Gallagher,
they already have some good
leads on where to look.

On the far side of the
island from where Amelia
is thought to have landed.

TOM (off-screen):
She's a smart woman.

She lands, she knows
she's got a problem.

She knows water is
one of the problems.

So, go explore the island.

NARRATOR: Archaeologist Tom King
has been exploring the island
himself since 1989 and,

inspired by the telegrams,
has been focusing his team
on one particular tree.

GALLAGHER (off-screen):
Body had obviously been lying

under a ‘ren' tree and
remains of fire,

turtle and dead birds
appear to indicate life.

NARRATOR: Over five
excavations TIGHAR
has uncovered many of the

items Gallagher
described, the campfire,

cooked bird and
turtle remains.

There's just been one piece
evading them, the human bones.

That's where the dogs come in.

They've been trained
to zero in specifically
on human remains.

TOM: The dogs are employing
a very sophisticated
instrument in their nose.

They not only find bones,
but they find decomposition.

NARRATOR: In a 2017
expedition, four different
dogs, including Berkeley,

alerted right near the
scientists' chosen ren tree,
a good sign that someone did

in fact die here.

ANDREW (off-screen):
Of all the millions
of trees in the South Pacific

they alerted under this one.

It confirmed, certainly for me,
that this in fact is the tree
where that castaway died.

NARRATOR: Unfortunately,
that expedition
didn't yield any bones.

They may have dissolved into
the island's acidic soil.

But they're banking on another
possibility, that the bones
were carried off by some of

the island's
insidious inhabitants.

If so, the dogs may be able
to lead the way right to them.

NARRATOR: If Amelia did
survive on this island, there
would be no avoiding this

formidable creature.

Up to three feet
across and weighing in
at over nine pounds,

coconut crabs are the largest
on earth, and many thousands
of them team

over tiny Nikumaroro.

HIEBERT (off-screen):
They're just amazing.

Their pinchers are so strong
that they can climb trees
and grab a bird and,

you know, kill it.

NARRATOR: They're
also voracious scavengers, as
demonstrated by TIGHAR in 2007

with half a pig carcass.

TOM (off-screen): This
creature that was laid out.

And they set up time lapse
cameras in the trees.

And the results are
about the most disgusting
thing you've ever seen.

But it is very enlightening.

NARRATOR: With help from
their smaller strawberry
hermit crab cousins,

they devour the
carcass within a week,

carrying the bones every
which way into their lairs.

The scientists are
now thinking something similar
would have happened to whoever

died at the ren.

HIEBERT (off-screen):
So right now,

the biggest hypothesis is to see
if we can find a crab burrow

with the remains of some human,
right at the site.

That would be
like, unbelievable.

NARRATOR: As they unleash the
dogs to sniff out remains,
they've already found some

tantalizing clues here
over the decades suggesting
that person was Amelia.

Most are now under the
care of Ric Gillespie
at TIGHAR headquarters,

in Oxford, Pennsylvania.

There's a zipper pull.

GILLESPIE (off-screen):
A tab and a slider, that
because of the markings on it,

we know was made in the
United States between
1933 and 1936.

Perfect time period.

NARRATOR: There's a
small, glass cosmetic jar.

GILLESPIE: The technical name
for it is an ointment pot.

And we're able to determine
that that particular style
of ointment pot contained

Dr. Berry's freckle cream.

NARRATOR: An ointment women
used to fade their freckles.

GILLESPIE: It made the
freckles fade because it
was 11% mercury, I mean,

it's horrible stuff.

NARRATOR: Amelia was famous
for her freckles, and it's
widely accepted that she

didn't like them.

GILLESPIE: We don't
know whether she
used freckle cream.

But we do know, we
have a jar of freckle
cream on the island.

What's it doing there?

NARRATOR: And then there are
two pieces of plate glass from
what appears to be a woman's

compact, found near
flecks of dried make-up.

GILLESPIE: Little wafers of
red stuff that tests out to
be early 20th century makeup,

it's rouge.

NARRATOR: From her first
flying lessons with another
pioneering aviatrix,

Neta Snook, we know Amelia
was always conscious
of her appearance,

even after a plane crash.

CANDACE: They climb out of
this plane and Amelia pulls
out her compact and begins

powdering her nose and
Neta wants to know,
what is she doing.

And Amelia says, you never
know when the newspaper
guys might turn up.

So you gotta look good,
even if you've crashed
your plane, you know?

NARRATOR: Yet another added
pressure for female aviators.

There's no way of knowing
whether the compact was
Amelia's but Ric hasn't found

a better explanation either.

GILLESPIE: So yeah, these
things start to add up.

REPORTER (over radio): Just
regular girls after all, but
now they're ready to

do or die.

TOM (off-screen): Add all that
up and the evidence suggests

in total is that there was an
American woman who camped at

the southeast end
of the island in the
late 1930s and died there.

NARRATOR: Beyond the
personal items at the
campsite, in 1991,

during one of TIGHAR's
earliest expeditions, Ric
found a scrap of aluminum

closer to the spot where
he thinks Amelia landed.

GILLESPIE (off-screen): That
is clearly a section of skin,

aluminum exterior
covering of an airplane.

It's the right kind of
aluminum, it's the right
kind of rivet for

a Lockheed Electra.

NARRATOR: Problem
was he could never match
it to any of the few

surviving Lockheed Electras.

GILLESPIE: So, we said,
it must be from some
other kind of airplane.

NARRATOR: But it didn't fit
any other planes either.

GILLESPIE: I've been
living with this piece
of metal since 1991,

and it has driven me nuts!

NARRATOR: Ric has been
exploring a new theory.

On the third leg of her
World Flight, Amelia made a
particularly hard landing in

Miami, cracking the Electra's
rear, passenger window.

GILLESPIE: They took the
window out and they just
put up this aluminum patch.

NARRATOR: Ric now thinks
that the patch they put on,

the only piece
of aluminum not
part of Amelia's Electra,

may be the one
piece of her plane he's
been holding onto all

these years, convenient
as it sounds.

GILLESPIE: C'mon, yeah.

But there's a way that
that could've happened.

She's on the reef, it's
un-Godly hot in the airplane

so maybe Earhart and Noonan

knock this piece of the
patch out of the airplane
to get more ventilation.

NARRATOR: The patch gets
washed ashore, while the rest
of the plane gets carried by

the surf and tides
into the abyss.

GILLESPIE: That's why the
only piece that survived
on the island is the patch.

NARRATOR: It's a nice story,
but like all of the other
evidence obtained here over

the decades, there's
no provable link to
Amelia or her plane,

something this team
is looking to change.

The dogs are troopers.

Hot, humid islands are
not exactly their ideal
working conditions.

LYNNE (off-screen):
Check it out.

NARRATOR: Ruby shows some
interest and doesn't commit
to an alert, but Berkeley.

LYNNE (off-screen): He
keeps going back to it.

So, he smells
something down there.

Good job.

HIEBERT: Berkeley alerted
right at the center of our
proposed “X marks the spot.”

NARRATOR: Right in the center
of the ren tree, where they've
been digging for years.

They don't know
whether he's detecting trace
remains that seeped into the

soil long ago, or actual
bones dragged deep into a
burrow by a coconut crab.

But they're confident
something must be here.

TOM (off-screen): The dogs
right now are telling us that

right under the big
ren is where to look.

So, we're putting our
eggs in that basket.

NARRATOR: As often happens
out here, while they search,
the reality of what they're

searching for sets in, that
this is where Amelia may
have spent her final days.

TOM (off-screen): I think she
probably started out thinking,

“I'll get rescued
and fly out.

The Itasca will get here,
we'll fix the wheel.”
And then as days pass,

and it looks like that's not
happening, she begins to lose
hope for that possibility.

And she's got to
figure out how to live.

NARRATOR: It's a fate
almost impossible to imagine,

especially for a
figure so full of life.

After a few
flying lessons in 1920,
Amelia buys a plane,

gets her pilot's license,
only the 16th woman in
the country ever to do so,

and works any job she can
to pay for flights and fuel.

Within two years she
sets her first record.

TRACEY (off-screen): She said
that she believes women are
bred for timidity.

You know, bred to be afraid
and that was the one thing
she did not want to be.

She was determined that she
would not be afraid to do the
scariest thing you could do

which is really to
take these pretty
rickety primitive machines

as high as she
could possibly go.

So, her very first
record that she breaks
is an altitude record.

She goes to 14,000 feet.

And no woman had
done that before.

NARRATOR: When Amelia
wasn't flying, she'd
watch as others did.

CANDACE (off-screen):
One day she goes out and um,

a female pilot is out
there doing demonstrations
and has an accident.

Doesn't kill herself but
crashes the plane and people
are saying, do you see?

This is the perfect example.

Women cannot fly airplanes.

And what does
Amelia Earhart do?

She races into one of
the hangars and basically
jumps into a plane.

NARRATOR: She wows the crowd
with stunts and a beautiful
landing, then meets the press.

CANDACE (off-screen):
"Why did you do it?"

"I did this to show
you that women are as
good as pilots as men."

And not long afterwards,
someone's looking for a female
pilot on the East Coast and lo

and behold the name that
they know, Amelia Earhart.

NARRATOR: That one
bold move is about to
put Amelia on the map.

CREW (off-screen):
Are you wide on Argus?

MAN (off-screen):
Yeah, I'm wide.

NARRATOR: On Nikumaroro,
Bob is following Amelia's
lead and making a rather

risky move of his own.

BALLARD: Yeah.

Alright let's step
in with the ship.

CREW: Bridge, Nav.

Ten meters, due east.

NARRATOR: For the last
six days, he has been slowly

maneuvering the Nautilus
back and forth along the
island's Northwest corner,

guiding the ROVs up
the island's steep slope,

and in towards
the reef break, near
the Norwich City and where

Amelia may have landed.

BALLARD (off-screen):
We're trying to
get as shallow as we dare.

This is the diciest part.

‘Cause we don't wanna be
sitting next to this wreck.

WOMAN: Starting to sweat?

MAN: A little bit.

NARRATOR: Bob doesn't
want to risk missing
an inch of this area.

Beyond it being one of
the most likely spots to
land a plane it's also the

exact site of another
tantalizing clue.

Where on October 13, 1937,
just months after the
Electra disappeared,

this picture was taken by
a British colonial officer
named Eric Bevington.

The Norwich City still
dominates the background.

Ric Gillespie first came
across the photo in 1992, but
he was so focused on the ship,

he cropped out the rest
of the print until nearly 20
years later he got a call from

TIGHAR's forensic imaging
analyst, Jeff Glickman.

GILLESPIE (off-screen): Jeff
calls me up and he says, um,

"You know, the picture
of the western end of the
island with the shipwreck?

What's the thing sticking up
out of the water on the reef?"

I said, "There's nothin'
sticking up out of the water."
I get the full frame which I

hadn't seen in years.

And yeah, it's obvious,
there's something stickin'
up out of the water.

I had cropped it out
when I blew it up.

I said, "Well what
the heck is that?"

NARRATOR: The pair headed
to Oxford University, where
Bevington's archives are

housed, to analyze
the original print.

Sure enough
something was there.

And by scaling it against
the Norwich City, they
could estimate its size.

GILLESPIE (off-screen): The
black thing is 36 inches and I
can scale the other stuff and

it's like this fork-shaped
thing and I said, "Whoa.

This is starting to sound like
landing gear components" and
it just happens to be the same

size and shape of a Lockheed
Electra landing gear.

NARRATOR: Acknowledging the
image is nebulous enough
to evoke comparisons to the

Lochness Monster,

they enlisted specialists
at the US State
Department who concurred,

it appeared
to be a match.

BALLARD (off-screen):
They had that image enhanced
and it was a landing gear;

that's what
got me to come here.

That was so compelling.

NARRATOR: So why would
the landing gear survive
on the reef and not the

rest of the plane?

Ric believes it may
have been knocked loose
during the rough landing,

similar to what happened
on takeoff in Hawaii.

GILLESPIE (off-screen): In
Hawaii, the right main landing
gear separated from the airplane

and it came apart just like we
see in the Bevington photo.

NARRATOR: By the time
Bevington took his picture,

Ric says the plane
would have washed off the reef

with only the landing
gear left peeking
above the surface.

If so, it could still be here.

With Nautilus' stern now a
little too close to the reef,

to find the alleged
landing gear,

Bob is going to need
some different tools.

BALLARD: We're not
gonna go any further.

So we have a
100-meter gap to fill.

Probably half of it will
be solved by drones.

NARRATOR: The drones'
high-resolution cameras can
image from the reef to several

feet into the shallows.

BALLARD (off-screen): And
then we've got divers taking
it deeper to where they meet up

with our ROVs.

NARRATOR: But though
Nikumaroro's reef is protected
and teeming with life,

there's no trace of
the Bevington object.

ALLISON: A lot of great
coral and great fish.

But, nothing shiny or
metal or nothing manmade.

SAMANTHA: Really interesting
kind of near the surge.

Lot of, lot of wave action.

So, if, if there
was anything there.

It's probably been
blasted to smithereens.

NARRATOR: It's another blow,

but as Amelia liked
to say, adventure is
worthwhile in itself.

No doubt she'd be
pleased by the attempt.

By Spring, 1928, Amelia is a
social worker for immigrant
families when her legacy of

adventure is
about to take off.

One year has passed since
Charles Lindberg flew
his Spirit of St. Louis

from New York to Paris.

REPORTER (over radio):
He had completed his historic
3600-mile flight in 34 hours.

NARRATOR: He became an
instant celebrity, and now,

the man who
published Lindbergh's

blockbuster biography,
George Putnam, is leading
a new search to find

his female equivalent.

CANDACE (off-screen):
She needs to be attractive,
college educated, female

and a good pilot.

And the first name that
comes up is Amelia Earhart.

TRACEY (off-screen):
She looked middle class
enough, wholesome enough,

she had the right
kind of background.

She was the image of
the modern woman that
they wanted to project.

NARRATOR: Putnam arranges
the flight for June 1928,
one year after Lindbergh.

But as her plane
readies for takeoff,
there's one small catch.

SAMMIE: What no one told
Amelia was that she wasn't
going to be flying the plane.

NARRATOR: The pilot
would be Wilmer Stoltz.

Amelia would be
relegated to commander,
or to use her words,

“A sack of potatoes.”

No matter.

20 hours, 40 minutes after
taking off from Newfoundland,
despite missing their mark by

nearly 200 miles, she's
greeted as if she'd
landed on the moon.

REPORTER (over radio): Her
reception is overwhelming.

SAMMIE (off-screen): There was
some embarrassment on her part
that she suddenly was the first

woman to fly across
the Atlantic but
she didn't pilot it.

REPORTER (over radio):
Two months before she had
been saving her money for

brief weekend joyrides.

Today she is hailed
Queen of the Air.

NARRATOR: The year
after Amelia's first
Atlantic crossing,

the Norwich City ran
aground on Nikumaroro.

BALLARD: Now wait a minute.

That looks like a propeller.

WOMAN (off-screen):
That looks like a propeller.

BALLARD: Doesn't that
look like a propeller?

WOMAN (off-screen):
That looks like a propeller.

NARRATOR: And so far, Bob has
been doing his best to avoid
its disintegrating remains.

BALLARD (off-screen): Doesn't
look like the propeller off
an airplane, does it?

MAN (off-screen): No.
BALLARD (off-screen): Rats.

NARRATOR: By day eight he's
found plenty of iron from
the ship but not a single

piece of aluminum
from Amelia's plane.

CREW (off-screen): I've
got samples here at 0-9.

That looks hard.

BALLARD (off-screen): Yeah,
it's from the Norwich City.

NARRATOR: Now he's trying
a new strategy, following the
river of debris down slope in

the hope that debris from
the Electra will have
followed a similar trail.

BALLARD (off-screen): We can see
the drainage pattern of all the
debris coming off the

Norwich City and
you have rivers of that
material flowing downslope.

NARRATOR: They trace
the iron debris down
to about 1,300 feet,

to where the trail
finally peters out.

Now Bob can start looking for
lighter, aluminum fragments
from Amelia's plane farther

from the shipwreck.

BALLARD: If that's from
the Norwich City, it tells
us she's more than likely

upslope, so, that
was very useful.

All we need is one piece.

We get one piece,
we get all of it.

NARRATOR: Halfway up the wall.

CREW (off-screen): Uh,
look left for a second.

Roger, look left.

See that black?

BALLARD: Alright, can we come
in and take a peek at that?

CREW (off-screen):
Zoom in please. Comin' in.

NARRATOR:
Bob may get his wish.

BALLARD (off-screen):
That looks interesting.

NARRATOR: A piece of metal
not from the Norwich City.

NARRATOR: After her
Transatlantic crossing in
1928, Amelia is unstoppable.

And practically before the
last ticker tape falls,
she sets out to prove

that she's much more
than “a sack of potatoes.”

She sets speed records.

And yet another
altitude record.

She's the
first woman ever to fly
solo across the country.

EARHART (off-screen):
It took me about
19 hours and a few minutes.

I wish I could have
done it faster.

NARRATOR: And the first
person to fly solo from
Hawaii to the mainland.

ANN (off-screen): You have
to remember, women didn't
even drive cars back then,

much less fly airplanes,
so this was a big deal.

NARRATOR: Along the way,

George Putnam works
behind the scenes to keep
her in the spotlight.

And in 1931, Amelia
agrees to marry him.

CANDACE: He asked her numerous
times to marry him and
she said, no, no-no, no-no.

Because she always saw
marriage as this cage,

once a woman got
married you were stuck,

you were in the house,
you were having kids,

that was it,
your life was over.

NARRATOR:
But even in marriage,

Amelia wasn't about to
conform to social norms.

On the morning of
their wedding, draped
in brown, not white,

she hands George a letter,

now at Purdue University
along with many
of her other belongings,

laying down her terms.

SAMMIE: According to George,

she handed him
this letter silently and
waited for him to read it.

EARHART: Dear GPP,
You must know again my
reluctance to marry.

I want you to understand
I shall not hold you to any
medieval code of faithfulness

to me nor shall I consider
myself bound to you similarly.

I must exact a cruel
promise and that is you
will let me go in a year if

we find no happiness together.

NARRATOR: George
accepts her terms and
they vow to love, honor,

and omit the word “obey.”

TRACEY: It is absolute proof
that Amelia Earhart did not

intend either in her personal
life or her professional life
to concede to conventions that

would limit women in any way.

NARRATOR: The following year,
on May 20, 1932,

Amelia climbs into her
red Lockheed Vega and proves

she knows no limits.

REPORTER (over radio):
Blazing a trail
of feminine glory,

the dauntless courage
of an indomitable soul

was not to be denied.

NARRATOR: She becomes
the first woman to fly
solo across the Atlantic

not as passenger, but as pilot.

REPORTER (over radio):
14 hours later she brought her
Lockheed monoplane safely down

on the barren fields of
Londonderry, Ireland, hailed
as the first woman to fly the

ocean alone.

NARRATOR: She may have
planned on landing in Paris
as Lindbergh had but nothing

could dampen her reception.

REPORTER (over radio):
As they have Lindbergh,
New Yorkers took

Lady Lindy to their hearts.

NARRATOR: Eighty plus
years later, Lady Lindy has
outshined Lindbergh himself.

And her mystique continues
to entice explorers
like Bob Ballard.

BALLARD (off-screen):
Pick it up.

CREW (off-screen): My go.

NARRATOR: The round-the-clock
search on Nautilus
goes on and the ROV cameras

focus in on something unusual.

BALLARD (off-screen):
Zoom in on it.

NARRATOR: They can't tell
if it's a plane part.

But it's a welcome sign.

CREW (off-screen):
Doesn't have a ton of growth.

Does it look like aluminum?

BALLARD (off-screen): It's
got some holes at the end.

CREW (off-screen): Yeah.

BALLARD (off-screen): Yep, guys.
Put in the box.

NARRATOR: For now, they tuck
it away and keep on searching.

CREW (off-screen): Yeah.
BALLARD (off-screen):
Looks like aluminum.

NARRATOR: As the hours pass
and the watches change.

CREW: Go ahead and zoom in
a little bit there, video.

Zooming in.

NARRATOR: More
interesting bits of metal.

CREW: That's good.

NARRATOR: Even a piece
of aluminum, their first.

CREW (off-screen): Try
grabbing it by the lip here.

NARRATOR: Then, just before
sun-up, Herc's lights spy
something that clearly doesn't

belong down here.

CREW (off-screen): What is that?
What is that?

It looks kinda weird, huh?

It looks freshly, oh my Gosh,
it's your hat! Lindsey!

LINDSEY: Oh, my hat!
CREW: It's your hat.

NARRATOR: All of the
specimens, and navigator
Lindsay Gee's hat,

are stowed away and
will be examined once
Hercules surfaces,

on the hope that one
of them happens to be a
piece of Lockheed Electra.

BALLARD (off-screen):
It's just hours and
hours and hours and hours,

searching at night
with a flashlight.

You never know.

NARRATOR: If the
ROV's spot-lights has
found no sign of Amelia,

there was no
escaping the spotlight

after her solo
transatlantic flight.

Mixing it up with the
likes of Cary Grant,

Marlene Dietrich,
Harpo Marx,

even First Lady
Eleanor Roosevelt, her
star shines ever brighter.

And she takes full
advantage of the fame.

TRACEY (off-screen): She wanted
to be a symbol of what women

could do when they were
not being held back.

NARRATOR: She pens stories
for Cosmopolitan Magazine.

Produces her own
brand of luggage.

She even comes out with
her own fashion line,

designed to give women
a greater sense of

mobility and freedom.

EARHART: I carried
a sandwich in case, I
didn't eat it though.

NARRATOR: Empowering as she
tries to be, she also knows
how to play the charming

feminine role as well.

REPORTER: What kind
of sandwich was it?

EARHART: A chicken sandwich.

CANDACE (off-screen): She
would act like she was kind
of demure and not particularly,

opinionated when we
know that she had very,
very definite opinions.

She would tell people
that that tousled hairdo is
just, she'd just let it go,

and in fact she took a
curling iron to it to make
it a little more tousled.

EARHART: I christen
thee Resolute.

MAN: It gets
better every time!

TRACEY: She knows that
she's got a lot riding
on this public persona

that she's crafting.

And that there's a purpose
that is a bit bigger than
selling luggage

or setting records.

NARRATOR: In 1935, Amelia
finds the perfect place to
combine her love of flying

with her goal of championing
women, as a live-in faculty
mentor at Purdue University,

a role Gender Studies
Professor TJ Boisseau
recently revived.

TRACEY: Oh, she
is one upping you!

She was here to inspire
women, give them a sense of
confidence that you were gonna

be allowed to have careers
after college and to even
instill that confidence in

students was a revolutionary
act at that moment.

SAMMIE (off-screen):
There's a rumor that some
of the fraternities were

very concerned
the women wouldn't
want to marry them

after hearing Amelia
talk that she was giving them

all these radical ideas like,
maybe you don't have to
be a wife and mother.

REPORTER (over radio):
It's the world-famous
Amelia Earhart,

first woman to fly across
the Atlantic Ocean.

NARRATOR: Through it all
Amelia continues flying.

And in 1936, Purdue,
helps raise the $80,000
for her to build the

plane of her dreams.

Whether or not that plane,

or Amelia, ever
made it to Nikumaroro
remains to be seen.

Day 10 and the archaeology
team continues to
dig at the base of the big

ren where the forensic dogs
first alerted.

They're searching for bones
that may have been left
behind eighty years ago,

in a seemingly
endless sea of coral.

TOM (off-screen):
Millions and millions and
millions of pieces of coral.

And coral looks a lot
like bone, bone looks
a lot like coral,

bone and coral look a
lot like other things.

NARRATOR: For the
last few days they've been
on the trail of what they

think may be a crab burrow.

TOM (off-screen): We know the
crabs tend to establish burrows
under trees among the roots.

The thought is that perhaps
a crab dragged part of
the skeleton into his hole.

NARRATOR: Nobody knows how
deep they'll need to go.

TOM: That's where
the bone would be.

NARRATOR: But they
keep on digging.

TOM (off-screen):
That's a big if.

ANDREW: Into the hole we go.

DAWN: You know, every now
and then you just find a gem
and that's enough to feed the

addiction and keep
you digging for many,
many, many more hours.

BALLARD (off-screen): See
that guy there with the holes?

Zoom in on that.

CREW (off-screen):
Okay. Standby video.

NARRATOR: On Nautilus, they've
also been going for hours.

BALLARD: Whoa, whoa.

It looks like coral
but it's got a hole.

NARRATOR: And there's lots
of tempting pieces here too.

CREW (off-screen):
It's got a perfect hole.

Want to sample it?

BALLARD: Yeah,
just flip it over.

CREW: Just a piece of coral.

BALLARD: That's
a piece of coral.

NARRATOR: Coral everywhere,
but not a plane part in sight.

BALLARD (off-screen):
Coral, coral, coral, coral.

That's nothing.

CREW (over radio):
Okay, securing deck.

NARRATOR: After 48 straight
hours Bob pulls the ROVs.

He can now get his
hands on some of those
promising bits of metal.

BALLARD: This is
stainless steel.

NARRATOR: But one by
one, hopes are dashed.

MEAGHAN: It does look like
some sort of part or ring.

But when you flip
it over it's pretty
clearly a Coke can, so.

NARRATOR: This is not the
aluminum they're looking for.

MEAGHAN: There's a lot
of rocks that look like
a lot of other things,

and a lot of other things
that look like airplane parts.

LINDSAY: I have a hat.

And it's my hat!

NARRATOR: The dive wasn't
a total loss though.

BALLARD: If we can
find his hat in over
1000 feet of water,

I think we can find anything.

NARRATOR: With precious
few days left, Bob decides
to throw a much larger net.

Rather than searching for
tiny metal fragments, he's now
going to look for one big one.

BALLARD: There
are two fundamental
options for the plane.

One is that it slipped off the
reef and did a very traumatic
trip over giant cliffs,

banging on rocks,
clearly breaking up.

Which is more than
likely what happened.

But then there's
the other possibility
that the plane floated.

And then was drifting to sea,
sank and literally flew down
to the bottom of the ocean.

NARRATOR: If so, the plane could
have glided miles offshore,
likely landing intact.

And over the next two
days, far from the falling
debris of the island,

Argus' side scan sonar
will try to find it.

BALLARD (off-screen):
When you get way out
away from the island,

all the big
objects have dropped out.

So, you get very few targets
on them, which is good because
then if you see a target,

you have a good chance
of seeing her plane.

It just takes patience.

I don't normally have
patience on land.

But I learned a long time ago
to develop patience out here.

NARRATOR: Patience was
never Amelia's strong suit.

By June 1937, with her
Lockheed Electra repaired,
once again she'll attempt to

fly further than anyone
has flown before,
around the world.

NARRATOR: Amelia's Electra
isn't any off the shelf plane.

It's been retrofitted
and reinforced for a
one-of-a-kind journey.

CANDACE: She was unbelievably
proud of that plane.

You know by the pictures
where she stands there
in front of the plane.

I mean, well think
about this, this is cutting
edge technology and they've

given it to her.

Men have basically
raised money for her
to take it on this,

this trip that no one
else has ever done before.

REPORTER (over radio):
Always daring and courageous,
Amelia never hesitated.

Taking off in her
flying laboratory, the
last word in planes.

CANDACE (off-screen):
It's an unbelievably risky,
unbelievably big venture and

I think she thought, this is it,
so I'm gonna do it big.

And big is around the world.

NARRATOR: From
Oakland to Miami,

down to South America
and across to Africa,

Asia and the Pacific,

the pair has nearly two
months and more than 2 dozen

remote stopovers ahead of them.

SAMMIE (off-screen): We have
the manuscript, the handwritten
pages where she's talking

about all of these accounts
and we just have hundreds of
telegrams that she was sending

back to the newspapers.

NARRATOR: Telegrams,
and at least 100 photos,

documenting the entire journey.

NARRATOR: It's not
all smooth sailing.

In Africa, she misses
her intended landfall
by 163 miles,

an ominous sign for
upcoming targets with
less room for error.

But for Amelia, Africa
is a dream come true.

CANDACE (off-screen): She'd
dreamed of being in Africa
as a child in Atchison

and there she was
flying over Africa.

NARRATOR:
After 6 straight
weeks and 29 stops,

on July 1,
Amelia finally touches
down in Lae, New Guinea.

Exhausted, she sends a
long telegram back home.

SAMMIE (off-screen): She
was talking about personnel
problems which, you know,

people assume was referring
to Fred Noonan's drinking,
problems with the plane and

the weather.

But at that point they
were so close to finishing
and George Putnam wanted them

to come back by Fourth of July.

NARRATOR: Not wanting
to get off schedule, at
10 a.m., July 2, 1937,

a camera catches Amelia and
Fred Noonan climbing into
their Lockheed Electra and

setting off one last time.

EARHART (off-screen):
The whole width of the
world has passed behind us,

except this broad ocean.

I shall be glad when we
have the hazards of its
navigation behind us.

NARRATOR: On Nautilus, Bob
is still plumbing the depths
of that broad ocean to see if

Amelia's plane glided
down to the bottom.

They search more than a
mile and a half off the
coast of Nikumaroro,

but the side-scans
come up empty.

BALLARD (off-screen): So,
we've pretty well taken in all

the easy space you
can do with sonar.

So, check that box.

And now it's back to
hand-to-hand combat.

NARRATOR: Back to the primary
target area, the idea that the
plane broke up into pieces,

and one last visual
sweep with Hercules.

CREW: Good, good.

NARRATOR: Putting his geology
hat on, Bob's been scanning
for places he may have missed,

eyeing the dozens of
volcanic chutes and valleys,

channeling rocks
and debris down the

slope of the island.

BALLARD: There's the
chutes, see them?

Bam, bam, bam, bam.

There they are,
can't miss them.

NARRATOR: They may
be channeling, and hiding,
fragments of plane as well.

CREW (off-screen): Do
you want me to keep turning?

BALLARD (off-screen): Yeah.

We should be moving away
from the wall, actually.

NARRATOR: With a day and a
half to go, Bob's well aware
that this is his last chance.

CREW (off-screen):
Let's keep an eye on that.

Come up.

BALLARD (off-screen): I
now understand my opponent.

I think I know what to do.

NARRATOR: On the island,
the archaeologists are
also running low on time.

And unfortunately, at the
big ren, there's still
not a bone in sight.

JOHN (off-screen):
There's nothing to
get out of here anymore.

NARRATOR: The dig is over.

Whatever the dogs alerted
on must have been dispersed
by crabs or decomposed.

But Fred Hiebert isn't
ready to give up.

If the dogs are alerting
on chemical traces, he thinks
there must be DNA here as well

and collects several soil
samples for later analysis.

HIEBERT (off-screen):
An exceptional story,

like the search
for Amelia Earhart,
deserves exceptional evidence.

If the remnant human DNA
is the same as what came over

from Gallagher and the
British mandate and matches
the family of Amelia Earhart.

That is what we call
exceptional data.

NARRATOR: In Florida, Erin
Kimmerle has been working up
some exceptional data of her

own, analyzing the
female skeleton she and
Fred collected on Tarawa.

She's reassembled
the skull,
scanned it in 3D and

is now trying to
determine whether it matches

the one found in
1940 and was described
by Dr. Hoodless.

KIMMERLE: Hoodless
took four measurements.

Two are in the area of the
eye orbit and then two are
basically the length and

breadth of the skull.

NARRATOR: When Erin took
those same measurements
on the Tarawa skull,

she found 3 out
of 4 were a match.

KIMMERLE: It's interesting
because, if we just use the
three measurements that are

consistent with Hoodless, then
it comes up as a white female.

NARRATOR: But when she added
in that fourth measurement
plus a few more commonly used

for identification today?

KIMMERLE: We find that this
skull classifies most closely
with local populations to the

South Pacific and that
the European ancestry
falls pretty low.

Based on just
those measurements, I
wouldn't rule this out.

NARRATOR: But does
it match Amelia?

The markers she'd
hoped would tie to Amelia,

the gap in the teeth
and the sinus surgery,

are missing on the skull,
so Erin is left to rely on a

technique called
superimposition.

KIMMERLE:
So, you want to look at
the corner of the eyes.

The eyebrow, which
you notice on her, are
pretty low over the eye.

NARRATOR: Amelia's brow,
eye shape and spacing match
the skull pretty closely.

Her nasal openings,
not so much.

KIMMERLE: And so,
it's complicated.

Because there's
certain things that are very
consistent and then of course,

there's other things that
are just less diagnostic.

So, we're not sure.

NARRATOR: There's one way to
find out if this was Amelia's.

Just as Fred extracted
DNA from the soil,

Erin will now attempt
the same for the skull,

to see if it matches
one of Amelia's relatives.

BALLARD (off-screen):
Wait a minute, wait a minute.

Zoom in a little tighter.
I see that edge.

Down below.

CREW: The shell?
BALLARD: Those are shells, ok.
CREW (off-screen): Yeah.

BALLARD (off-screen):
Ok, zoom out and rise up.

And look up.

See if a Pratt-Whitney
engine is jamming us.

NARRATOR: As Bob races to
find traces of Amelia's plane
on this tiny Pacific atoll,

on July 2, 1937, Amelia is
flying somewhere over that
same vast ocean in search of

Howland Island,
which is even tinier.

The 2,500 mile flight
from Lae is expected
to take about 18 hours.

But as Itasca awaits her
arrival that morning,
it becomes clear,

that's not to be.

With overcast skies,
stronger than expected
winds and no luck with the

direction-finding radio, her
Electra has veered off course.

CANDACE (off-screen):
The most frustrating
thing about that last hop to

Howland was that she had her

salvation right at her
fingertips, if she'd known
how to use that radio.

GILLESPIE (off-screen): The mood
on Itasca at first is exciting.

Amelia Earhart is on her way.

That turns into
alarm when she says,

"We've been unable
to reach you by radio
and we must be on you,"

and she's not.

CANDACE (off-screen):
They could hear
her growing realization that

obviously something was wrong,

that there was something that
was keeping them from finding
each other and the realization

that she wasn't
gonna find them.

NARRATOR: At 8:43 a.m.,
Itasca receives its final
radio message from Amelia.

NARRATOR: They make dozens
of transmission attempts
over the next several hours,

until finally, at 1:03 issue
an all-emergency broadcast.

"All ships, all stations.

Amelia Earhart plane
apparently down at
sea, position unknown."

So would begin the largest
search ever undertaken
in Naval history.

For more than two weeks,

as Pan Am takes radio
bearings on Amelia's
frequencies and

people like Betty Klenck
report distress calls,

seven US ships
cover more than

250,000 square miles of ocean.

REPORTER (over radio):
The battleship, Colorado,

reports planes
being catapulted to

scour the South Pacific
from dawn to dusk.

NARRATOR: Aircraft
carriers launch dozens
of search planes.

On July 9, one week
after Amelia goes missing,

one even snaps this
photo over Gardner Island.

The pilot reports signs
of recent habitation,
but no plane.

It's perhaps the
strongest evidence against
the Nikumaroro theory.

But Ric argues by then
the Electra was already
washed off the reef.

GILLESPIE (off-screen):
The tide was high and there
was a heavy surf running.

We can see that
in the photograph.

NARRATOR: As the Navy
searches, the world
holds its breath.

REPORTER (over radio): On
the chance that she might be
safe on some remote island.

CANDACE (off-screen):
I think people fully
expected her to be found.

They sat by that
radio and they waited and
they expected her to come

and she didn't come.

She didn't come.

REPORTER (over radio): Some
200,000 square miles of ocean
and nearby islands were to be

searched but to no avail.

NARRATOR: 17 days
and $4 million later,
the Navy declares,

“All search for
Earhart, terminated.”

And the theories
about what really happened to
Amelia arise almost immediately.

REPORTER (over radio): Whether
she and her navigator had
been lost at sea or had been

captured and executed by the
Japanese, no one has been
able to prove conclusively.

NARRATOR: From spying for the
U.S Government and getting
captured by the Japanese,

to assuming a new identity
and living out her days as
a housewife in New Jersey.

REPORTER (over radio): Her
fate still remains a mystery.

CANDACE: We don't want
to believe that she's gone,

we don't wanna
believe that she died.

She did amazing things
and survived, you know,
over and over again.

So, it's hard to imagine that
she would've just dropped into
the ocean and disappeared.

NARRATOR: After 14 days of
searching Nikumaroro, Bob is
starting to think maybe Amelia

did just drop into the ocean.

BALLARD (off-screen): Oh my God.

Haul me out of here.

NARRATOR:
But as so often happens
as expeditions wind down,

they find one more
promising piece.

CREW: Can you zoom in?

WOMAN (off-screen): Zooming in.

Has holes in it.

Bob.

It doesn't look rusty either.

NARRATOR: It's the
last day on Nikumaroro.

And the last chance for
Herc to deliver a piece
of Amelia's airplane.

CREW: Sure looked like
aluminum underwater.

BALLARD: Yeah, it sure did.

It's an interesting thing
adhering to it, like wood.

NARRATOR:
It's not looking good.

BALLARD: Yeah. Nice holes, but.

No, it's not her plane.

NARRATOR: With five full
passes around the island,
nearly 150 miles back and

forth with the ASV and ROVs,
nearly total aerial drone
coverage of the reef-line,

and hundreds of hours
of imagery recorded, Bob
Ballard's search for Amelia's

plane seems to
rival the Navy's.

And after two full weeks,
he too is calling it quits.

BALLARD (off-screen): We
spent hundreds and hundreds
of hours underwater researching

all the primary sites.

And we saw nothing that
suggested that her plane
landed, went off that reef,

and tumbled down that hill.

NARRATOR: He's not
ruling this place out.

There's still a lot
of data to pore over
and samples to check.

And Bob's still haunted by
those radio transmissions that
triangulate right around here.

BALLARD: The radio evidence,
that's the one piece
that's just gnawingly there.

NARRATOR: But for
now he's moving on.

As Nautilus bids farewell to
Nikumaroro, its next leg just
happens to be Howland Island,

Amelia's intended target.

BALLARD (off-screen):
We're off to Howland.

We have been tasked
by our government to map
the area around Howland.

It will come.

Titanic took four expeditions,
Bismarck took two expeditions.

That plane is somewhere.

So, stay tuned.

MIGUEL (over phone): 14,766.

FRANKIE (over phone):
And you said 766.

NARRATOR: In Florida,
Fred Hiebert and Erin Kimmerle
aren't losing hope either,

even as their highly
anticipated DNA results from
the Tarawa skull come in.

FRANKIE (over phone):
Actually at this particular
locus, I do have a T,

so I would be able to say
that that is a possible,
a possible match there.

NARRATOR: But while they can
identify some key markers.

FRANKIE (over phone): These
samples underwent a lot of
degradation over the years.

NARRATOR: Much of the
sample is unreadable.

FRANKIE (over phone): My
suggestion would be to do
some targeted re-sequencing.

NARRATOR: For the moment, it's
another inconclusive result.

But Fred is forever
the optimist.

HIEBERT:
There's something there.
KIMMERLE: Yeah.

HIEBERT: Well, perfection
in science doesn't always
happen and it's so rare.

I thought maybe we had that,
but that simply isn't going
to stop this amazing story of

searching for
Amelia Earhart, right?

I think it's worth keep
going and going and going.

NARRATOR: There's no
doubt Ric Gillespie and
TIGHAR, will keep going.

They recently acquired a new
piece of film that may help
determine whether the rivet

holes on their prized
scrap of metal match
those on the aluminum

patch put on Amelia's Electra.

They're not about to be
dissuaded by DNA results
or the lack of a plane.

GILLESPIE (off-screen):
Whether the magical
smoking gun ever shows up.

Well, that would be nice.

And maybe it can be found
and I sure hope it is.

But it's also possible that
the best we're gonna get
is what we already have,

which ain't half bad.

NARRATOR: Whether the film
will add another piece
to the Nikumaroro saga,

time will tell.

But already, it holds
something special
in its final frames.

GILLESPIE: And there's Amelia.

NARRATOR: Another haunting
glimpse of Amelia, posing
with an airline worker,

just a day before
she goes missing.

With a figure this
iconic, it's no wonder
the search will go on.

BALLARD (off-screen):
She was a dreamer
and she had the guts to try.

She paid for it, but, boy,
people remember her.

TRACEY (off-screen):
Fortunately, her getting lost in
the Pacific, because it was such

an ambitious undertaking,
and because she had already
proven herself in so many ways,

her legacy was intact.

Women could do whatever
men could do and were willing
to take the risk and

enjoy the adventure.

CANDACE: It's not how she died
that's important, I think.

It's really how she lived
because she showed us through
her own example that one

doesn't have to accept what
society says you are, that
one can follow their dreams,

that one can live
big, live bold.

All they have to do
is seize it, you know.

That's what
Amelia's taught us.

NARRATOR: It's a sentiment
best captured by Amelia
herself in a letter she left

for her sister Muriel
on the chance she
didn't return from her

first transatlantic flight.

EARHART (off-screen):
"I have tried to play
for a large stake and if

I succeed all will be well.

If I don't, I shall
be happy to pop off in the
midst of such an adventure."

NARRATOR: Adventure did
finally claim Amelia Earhart,

but her spirit continues
to lift us all.

Captioned by Cotter
Captioning Services.