Amelia Earhart DID crash on deserted island where 'her skeleton' was found decades later, say researchers who claim 50 people heard haunting distress calls saying 'we can't hold out much longer'
Amelia Earhart (inset top left) crash-landed on a partially submerged reef off Gardner Island (main) in the middle of the Pacific and survived for at least a week at the mercy of the tides, researchers claim. Analysis by The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery of 57 'credible' Earhart distress signals received in the week after she vanished on July 2, 1937, showed the island was the likely source because the signals got stronger when the listener was closer to the atoll (bottom right). Some distress signals also contained references to 'Norwich', which would be nonsense except that one of the island's few distinguishing features is that there is a wreck located on the reef of the SS Norwich City (center inset). Researchers believe the plane sat on the reef for at least seven days, covering the period of the transmissions, before an unusually high tide likely swamped the radio and may have washed the plane into the surf, where it broke up (top right).