By Steve Gorman
Several batches of records related to the 1937 disappearance of famed aviator Amelia Earhart over the Pacific have been released by the US National Archives after President Donald Trump’s recent order to declassify and release all such material held by the government.
The release of 4624 pages of documents, including log books of US military vessels involved in the air-and-sea search for Earhart, was announced by National Intelligence Director Tulsi Gabbard.
Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan, were last seen taking off in her twin-engine Lockheed Electra aeroplane on July 2, 1937, from Papua New Guinea en route to Howland Island, some 4000km away, during an attempt to fly around the world.
Radio contact with the plane was lost hours later, after Earhart, 39, reported running low on fuel.
A massive naval search, the most extensive ever at that time, was unsuccessful.
The Trump administration’s sudden interest in Earhart, and the president’s September 26 order to declassify and release records about her, came as he faced growing criticism for withholding files related to the late financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
The new batch of Earhart material was posted two days after a congressional panel released thousands of documents that raised new questions about Trump’s relationship with Epstein.
US Navy and Coast Guard reports about the Earhart search were accompanied by various memos, newspaper clippings, letters and telegrams.
The correspondence included a letter from a woman claiming she had deduced by telepathy that Earhart was still alive, one from a man insisting she was buried in Spain and a series of government telegrams and memos discounting rumours that Earhart had been taken captive by Japanese forces and executed.
The National Archives said more records would be digitised and posted on a rolling basis.
The fate of Earhart and Noonan remains an open question. But researchers from the International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery have pieced together evidence suggesting the pair died as castaways on the tiny coral atoll of Nikumaroro, in the Kiribati islands of the western Pacific.
A series of expeditions to that island uncovered what appeared to be a jar of anti-freckle cream from the 1930s, bits of clothing, human bone fragments and a pocket knife of the type Earhart carried.
A patch of aluminium believed to have come from their plane was also recovered.
In addition, TIGHAR said a sonar image taken from just beyond the shore of the remote atoll revealed what could be a wing or part of the fuselage of Earhart’s aircraft.
Some 80,000 records relating to the 1963 assassination of President John F Kennedy were released on Trump’s order in March.