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Amelia Earhart pictured at Long Beach, California
Donald Trump has said he will order his administration to declassify secret government records related to the 1937 disappearance of Amelia Earhart.
The story of the American aviation pioneer, who vanished while flying over the Pacific Ocean, “has captivated millions”, the US president wrote on social media on Friday.
Earhart’s disappearance during an attempt to circumnavigate the globe spawned numerous theories – from a simple crash due to fuel exhaustion to more elaborate claims of Japanese capture or US government espionage.
While some FBI files and Navy search reports have been declassified over the decades, some records have remained inaccessible, fuelling speculation about a cover-up.
The enduring mystery of Amelia Earhart
Earhart disappeared while trying to reach Howland Island, a remote, uninhabited coral island owned by the US, to refuel.
She had already flown westward from Oakland, California to Lae in Papua New Guinea in her twin-engine Electra plane, before she and navigator Fred Noonan vanished somewhere over the Pacific.
The official explanation is that the plane suffered communication problems while the two struggled to find the island, and Earheart eventually crashed into the ocean when she ran out of fuel.
While this version of events is largely accepted, no physical evidence – such as debris – has ever been found to back it up.
“She disappeared in the South Pacific while trying to become the first woman to fly around the World,” Trump said.
“Amelia made it almost three quarters around the world before she suddenly, and without notice, vanished, never to be seen again.”
The two other prominent theories are that Earhart crash-landed on or near the then-Japanese Marshall Islands, or that she made it to Nikumaroro Island near Kiribati and died a castaway there.
There is no conclusive evidence for either of these theories – but that has not stopped amateur and professional historians from digging into them.
Parts of a skeleton found on Nikumaroro in 1940 were initially thought to have been hers, but doctors at the time decided they belonged to a male body.
The documents due to be declassified and released will include “all government records related to Amelia Earhart, her final trip, and everything else about her”, according to Trump.
In her own voice: Amelia Earhart talked to BBC in 1933
Interest in her case – including efforts to locate the wreckage of Earhart’s plane – has remained strong eight decades on.
Last year, a group of researchers said they might have found Earhart’s long-lost plane.
They used sonar imaging to map the ocean floor around Howland Island, leading them to what they said could be a small aircraft lying around 4,877m (16,000ft) below the surface.
In 2022, a series of events took place in Londonderry to commemorate the 90th anniversary of Earhart’s historic transatlantic landing.
