Please do not remove this as it is sourced documentation.  It is here for those who want to know more about the TIGHAR organization you so whole heartly promote.  It is by author Mike Campbell.    

The TIGHAR-Nikumaroro Fiasco
Two years of speculation and hype came to a numbing climax on
March 16, 1992, at the National Press Club in Washington,
D.C. At a crowded news conference receiving national TV
coverage, Richard Gillespie, executive director of The International
Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery [TIGHAR], unabashedly
announced that the Amelia Earhart mystery “is solved.”
Since early 1990, following the group’s first excursion to Nikumaroro,
a 3.5-mile long coral atoll in the Phoenix Islands, about 2,100 miles
southwest of Hawaii and three hundred miles south of Howland Island,
the national media had touted TIGHAR’s theory that Nikumaroro could
be the final resting place of Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan.
The “evidence” Gillespie presented included a battered piece of aluminum,
a weathered size 9 shoe sole labeled “Cat’s Paw Rubber Co.,
USA,” a small brass eyelet, and another unlabeled heel the group found
on Nikumaroro during TIGHAR’s highly publicized return there in
October 1991. These items, elaborately displayed and labeled in a glass
case, all came from Earhart or her Electra, according to Gillespie.
“There may be conflicting opinions, but there is no conflicting evidence,”
Gillespie said. “I submit that the case is solved.” Gillespie then
bit his lip and looked down at the floor — a curious yet revealing display
of body language for someone claiming to have solved one of the
20th century’s greatest mysteries.
Gillespie and Patricia R. Thrasher, TIGHAR’s husband-and-wife
team, theorize that through a navigational error, Earhart and Noonan
overflew Howland Island and landed on a reef on Nikumaroro during
low tide. There they died of dehydration a short time later. The plane,
they said, was washed over the reef when the tide came in and now lies
under 2,000 feet of ocean.
The April 1992 Life magazine featured a six-page spread penned by
Gillespie, who cites Navy pilot John Lambrecht’s July 9, 1937 report:
“Signs of recent human habitation were clearly visible [on
Nikumaroro], but “repeated circling and zooming failed to elicit any
answering wave from possible inhabitants.” Gillespie called this report
“hugely significant” and “tragically inadequate. What had not been
done in 1937 had to be done now. We would have to search
Nikumaroro.”
Gillespie credited two retired military aviators, Tom Gannon and
Tom Willi, of Fort Walton Beach, Florida, for the theory’s origin.
“Using celestial tables, Gannon pointed out that on the morning of July
2, 1937, the rising sun would have provided the precise line of position
Earhart said she was running,” Gillespie wrote in Life. “By flying
southeast along that line, Noonan could be sure that, even if he missed
Howland, he would reach an island in the Phoenix group in about two
hours. Clearly it was the safest, sanest course to follow. I traced the line
on the chart and read the name of the island: Nikumaroro.”
This supposition was convincing to some, but Devine wasn’t
impressed. “There is considerable information in Gillespie’s rendition that
can be faulted,” Devine writes. “One example is his attempt to foster a line
between Howland Island and Nikumaroro. He presents Earhart’s last message
as ‘We are on line 157/337 ... We are running on line.’
Earhart never reached Howland Island. Earhart never
saw Howland Island, therefore Howland Island is not a reference
point for a landing on Nikumaroro. Earhart’s authentic
last message received by Coast Guard personnel on board
the Itasca, and recorded by Commander Thompson, related
no reference point: ‘We are on line of position 157-337 ...
We are running north and south.’ Earhart was not flying east
toward Howland Island or Hawaii. She was on a course, a
compass course or line of position 157-337, which terminates
on the island of Saipan.1
With Our Own Eyes
– 163 –
– 164 –
Earhart was not adept at navigation, and may have stated
her reading from a pocket compass she carried on her person.
She was probably and almost certainly stressed by ensuing
events, especially if Noonan had been rendered unconscious
during the almost disastrous takeoff of the overladen plane.
If Noonan had not been incapacitated, I assure you that he,
one of the best air-and-sea navigators of that period, would
have