“Finding Amelia” A Podcast Miniseries About the Search for Amelia Earhart’s Missing Plane

In 1935, at the height of her celebrity, Amelia Earhart began her unprecedented work at Purdue University as a career counselor for women and advisor to the Department of Aeronautics. Almost 90 years later, her presence is still felt across campus.  

From the Amelia Earhart Faculty-in-Residence Program, to the Amelia Earhart Scholarship, to a statue of her nestled in front of Earhart dining court. And now we’re preparing to add a new chapter to the decades long connection between the legendary aviator and our University, which sponsored her 1937 attempt to become the first woman to fly around the world.  

On that flight, Amelia, her navigator Fred Noonan, and the Lockheed Electra 10E that produced supporters helped her purchase went missing while trying to reach Howland Island. Their disappearance has remained a mystery ever since, despite several search attempts over the decades. But this fate may soon change.  

Nearly nine decades after Amelia’s disappearance in the South Pacific. Purdue University is working alongside the Archeological Legacy Institute and Purdue Research Foundation to identify her lost plane and help complete her historic journey. Now the eyes of the world are on us to help solve this decades long mystery.  

Hi, I’m Kate Young, and you’re listening to Finding Amelia, a mini-series from This is Purdue, the official podcast of Purdue University. Like so many throughout history, we at This is Purdue have been captivated by Amelia’s Boilermaker story and legacy of persistence and excellence.  

Her contributions to women’s education and aviation have shaped our University. Ahead of Purdue University, Purdue Research Foundation and Archeological Legacy Institute led expedition to potentially identify Amelia’s plane. This is Purdue is diving into the story of Amelia and her historic ties to Purdue.  

In this four part series, we’re featuring Boilermaker experts who will help us explore Amelia’s life, dreams and influential relationships. The history behind the Purdue funded plane she was flying when she went missing, and a special deep dive into items from University archives that her husband gifted to Purdue. We’ll also dig into why people have continued to search for her for nearly 90 years.  

Today, in this first episode, we’re joined by Kelly Hiller, Chief Marketing Officer at Purdue University. During her over 20 years at Purdue, Kelly has led several marketing campaigns inspired by Amelia’s persistence. She is also inspired by Amelia as a fellow Boilermaker and has a deep commitment to celebrating female trailblazers.  

We’re going to examine who Amelia was before she became a famed aviator, her journey to Purdue and what’s made her so captivating across generations. This is part one, Who was Amelia Earhart Kelly, welcome.  

Thank you for having me.  

I think it’s important to be up front with our listeners and viewers. The expedition was first announced in July of 2025 and it’s been postponed. The Purdue team had to wait while final approvals were sought from the government of Kiribati, the Pacific Ocean island nation that includes Nikumaroro, and that’s the island where the expedition will take place.  

Yes, that’s exactly right. So we then were able to announce on what would have been Amelia’s 129th birthday, that we were moving forward with the expedition with our lead Archeological Legacy Institute, alongside the Purdue Research Foundation, that we had acquired the necessary approvals from the country of Kiribati to move forward with what we’re calling the Taraia Object expedition.  

Now, when I refer to the Taraia Object, what is that? That is the object that has been identified through satellite imagery that is right off the Coast of Nikumaroro that closely matches the configuration of Amelia Earhart’s plane.  

So now that we do have that approval and we’re very, very grateful to the country of Kiribati and working with us. That was definitely important to us that we go through that process, that we do it the right way out of respect for not only the country, but their environment. To ensure that when we went on the expedition, that not only were we doing it safely, we were doing it in a way that respected the country and its people, was definitely important to us.  

So we really appreciate those who remained engaged the supporters, the Amelia enthusiasts, the researchers. As the timeline shifted, many people still remained engaged, like I said, throughout this process. So we will be moving forward and going on that expedition soon.  

So one year later, here we are. We’re back and we’re ready to go  

We’re back.  

Why do you think it’s so important for Purdue to have this strong connection to Amelia’s name and legacy?  

She’s one of our own. So the plane that she flew as part of her around the world flight was purchased by the Purdue Research Foundation, and her intent was always to bring that plane back to Purdue University. She called it her flying laboratory, and it was really important for her to bring that plane back and use it as a teaching tool for students.  

But beyond that, her legacy is still felt very much at Purdue University today. We have the Amelia Earhart Terminal that’s at the Purdue University airport. We have Earhart Hall, which ironically, I moved my daughter into. And it was a lot of fun just to walk through Earhart Hall and see all the memorabilia, her photos, really talking about her story of persistence, of innovation. Her spirit for adventure, which are very much resonate with the essence of a Boilermaker.  

And her statue stands outside Earhart Hall, which is definitely a symbol. Probably the most notable thing that’s still at Purdue today, though in her spirit, is the Ninety-Nines which Amelia founded. That chapter is still at Purdue University today. So there’s still so many touch points. And of course, we have so much in our archives about her.  

But overall, her story is still so timely. When we announced back in July of 2025 that this expedition was happening, it was the greatest earned media day in Purdue history, which is just wild, right? But we also can see it in our own storytelling.  

Whenever our profile, we posted of Amelia stills, one of our top stories on our Purdue stories hub and our Amelia keywords, we still rank really, really high. All these data points show us that the public is still very, very, very engaged in her story. And almost 90 years later, that level of engagement has not wavered.  

And I think it’s even more poignant that we’re going on this expedition close to the 250th anniversary of our country, because Americans don’t like to leave a mystery unsolved. And so we want to move forward and hopefully solve that mystery and tell that story to the world. We believe we owe it to Amelia I’m so excited to see how this story unfolds.  

I think that’s a really important context, so thank you. People are still interested in Amelia, so let’s dive into Amelia herself growing up and then up until the point where she disappeared on this flight. But at the time when she was at Purdue, she was an international celebrity. When she became one of the first professional female pilots to fly across the Atlantic. What led up to this big culmination?  

Well, let’s start at the beginning. I mean, she grew up in Kansas with a sister, her parents surrounded by cousins. But even from an early age, she was very much a tomboy, had that sense of adventure.  

And that was fueled when in 1920, in Long Beach, California, she took a flight with Frank Hawks, and that really inspired her love of flying. At that point, there was the flying circuses, so almost like Carnival-esque type of experiences. But even then, like, she saw the potential of what this could be and what this could unlock for her.  

So she left home in search of that adventure. And she started taking flying lessons, but she did a lot more than that. She was a social worker, she was a nurse’s aide, she did stenography, photography, she was a truck driver.  

So in current day, we might refer to her as she had the hustle to make her dreams come true in order to afford her flying lessons. And in 1923, she was the 16th woman to get her pilot’s license. And that’s when I think her journey really, really started.  

From then on out she went on to meet George Putnam, her future husband, in 1931. And they met when he recruited her to participate in the friendship flight. And that’s really where she gained notoriety. And that was just as a passenger. She made it across the US, but then continued from then on out her transatlantic flight was in 1932, and that’s really when I think her fame started to peak.  

And when she earned the Distinguished Flying Cross, which was the first time that a female had earned that type of honor. And she went on to have more solo flights, three different flights going across the Pacific. She went from Honolulu to Los Angeles, Los Angeles to Mexico City, Mexico City to Newark. All these different points, all continuing to be firsts. So, definitely a trailblazer and just more and more notoriety as her career progressed, and as she took more risks in her flying career.  

Why do you think Amelia kept pushing herself and pushing other women aviators forward?  

It was really, I would say, kind of a personal mission of Amelia to prove that women were just as capable of men. This was a time when many women were housewives, and she wanted to get women out of the kitchen and into the cockpit. She wanted to demonstrate that she could indeed have a career outside of marriage, and it was important to her to prove that. So with each first she took, she continued to cement that reality.  

That was very inspirational, but that doesn’t mean that it was easy. It was not easy at all. I think it’s important to level set that this was a time when flying was really dangerous. You had very rudimentary tools, the cockpit was very noisy, very, very loud.  

Just to give a couple moments of context when Amelia flew, you’re cruising altitude a lot of times was 10,000 feet. Whereas nowadays, it’s usually like anywhere from 30 to 42,000 feet. So you can imagine the turbulence that you are going to experience in those types of conditions, which takes an element of physical strength.  

And in that time too, there wasn’t any tools or anyone telling you that you were about ready to approach tough weather. So you had to make a call in that moment to either try to go around it or go through it. And those conditions posed lots and lots of different challenges along the way.  

And during her 1932 transatlantic flight, another example, is that she encountered a lot of bad weather. Which she made the flight, but ultimately her destination was supposed to be Paris, but instead she landed in Northern Ireland due to those weather complications. Even though it was successful, she had to pivot and make a different call, all of those things indicate how hard it was, how physical it had to be.  

So her trying to prove that equality, I think even more stands out to me of not only were you trying to achieve these firsts, but there was a lot of physical, mental, technological challenges that she had to overcome as a part of that journey.  

And at a time, too, when air races were gaining more and more notoriety, that was another challenge for her. She would enter these races and a lot of times the restrictions, the opportunities were different for men than they were for women, which she found very challenging and was very vocal about and openly shared her thoughts and opinions on how that was structured.  

But I think one of the most powerful examples of the biases that she was fighting at the time in 1935. So this would have been just a little bit prior to her around the world flight. There was actually a recommendation that was passed by the Civil Aeronautics Administration, which was the predecessor to the Federal Aviation Administration.  

That stated that women should not fly near or during their menstrual cycles because they could have fainting spells and it could cause fatal results. Like, can you even imagine that was an official recommendation.  

So despite all of– whether it be in an air race, whether it be these types of recommendations, she just kept persisting. And I think that definitely speaks to the strength of a Boilermaker in that essence, is that she just kept going, no matter the obstacle for what she believed in.  

Absolutely. And you and I are both Boilermakers. So I’m curious how Amelia came to Purdue and just her journey as a Boilermaker.  

Definitely well, she attended a conference with President Edward Elliott at the time in 1934 was called Women in the Changing World Conference. And it was really talking about how things were changing and they were both speakers.  

And the reason President Elliott was there, he was observing that women were enrolling at Purdue, but not many were finishing their degrees. And so they were choosing to get married, have children, go along that kind of traditional path. And he was really looking for solutions of how can I encourage women to continue their education and get their degrees.  

And when he saw Amelia, that was a perfect time to have a conversation, right? So he approached her and they talked about what would it look like for her to come to Purdue. Of course, at the time, we were the only University with an airport. So he knew he automatically had an item that she would be interested in.  

But above that, he took a pioneering approach. He proposed to her that she serve as a career counselor for women, and no other role was like that at a University, so really out of the box thinking. But that she could also be an advisor to the Department of Aeronautics and use her expertise to train students and advise faculty and those types of things.  

And they agreed to those terms and before she even stepped foot on campus, female enrollment at the University increased by 50%. Because at that point, she was a celebrity. People heard that she was going to be coming to Purdue, so more women enrolled in the University.  

And when she arrived, we have lots of photos in our archives of her sitting around talking with women, students at the time. About what is definitely noticeable in those photographs is that she’s wearing pants and she’s the only woman wearing pants. And that’s just another example of how she was kind of willing to go against the societal norms.  

We have photos walking across campus. Again, she’s the only one in pants other women are not. There’s these photos of her with just women gathered around her, listening to what she had to say. So she definitely had a voice and women responded.  

And one of the first things she did when she arrived on campus was survey women of why they were here and did they want a career. And 92% of them said yes. So it showed that the intent was there, just maybe needed more of what she was there to do. Encourage, mentor, council for them to find a way to complete their studies.  

So when she was here, she stayed at Windsor in Dombey Hall. She’d usually be here for a few weeks at a time because she had other endeavors. She worked in the Dean of Students and got to know Dorothy Stratten, which is another Purdue icon. Dorothy Stratten also worked with Helen Schliemann.  

So they continued to live out Amelia’s legacy even when she wasn’t with us anymore. And I would say that legacy is definitely still felt today. She was very passionate about helping women, about helping them see the possibilities and serving as a really valuable mentor.  

So in 1936, Amelia starts planning for this flight around the world. Purdue was helping her with that, and we’ll cover more of that in episode two. But walk us through a little bit of President Elliott and Purdue Research Foundation’s help with this planning of this flight.  

They were very supportive of the flight. President Elliott was very supportive of the flight, hoping with the flying laboratory, Purdue could take an active role. The Purdue Research Foundation helped fund the plane that she flew in that flight. So it’s origin started here at Purdue. Purdue had direct ties. And as I stated, she was hoping to eventually bring that plane back to Purdue University so that it could serve as a teaching tool. She knew the risks, she still wanted to move forward.  

And what I love is you go back and you can see this in multiple accounts. When people would ask, why do you want to take this flight? She would say, because I want to do it. And she would just leave it at that.  

And that’s pretty bold for a woman at that time to state such a short, succinct answer to not justify her decision, try to convince all the naysayers why, she just presented herself with astute confidence. This is something that she wanted to do. But I also think it’s really important to point out that even though she was confident, she wasn’t naive. She knew there were risks to this journey, that it was going to be really, really hard.  

Her navigator was Fred Noonan, and there was the times that they communicated some of the different things that they were experiencing that were tough. We talked earlier about how loud it was in the cockpit, and there are documents talking about her and Fred had to communicate using a stick and a piece of paper to go back and forth because you couldn’t even talk and communicate to each other in that environment.  

Now, that plane was modified with additional fuel tanks and all those types of things, as you can imagine, to get through that journey. That is how they communicated during that flight, was simply passing notes. She knew there were going to be challenges.  

And as they were going through that journey, they got to about 22,000 miles out of that 29,000 mile journey and started to experience radio issues, severe weather. This started to appear mainly as they were traveling to Howland Island. And there’s even some video evidence that when she was taking off from New Guinea, that they lost part of an antenna. The radio transmissions indicated that were trouble, which she knew could have happened. And I think that is really important to talk about.  

In fact, she left a letter for her husband that was to be opened in the event that she didn’t return it. And I just want to read it because I think it’s some really powerful words in her own voice. And again, this was to her husband, George Putnam.  

“Please know that I’m quite aware of the hazards of the trip. I want to do it because I want to do it. Women must try to do things as men have tried. When they fail, their failures must be a challenge to others.” And those are just such powerful words. It shows she was bold, she was strong. But again, she was not naive of how this could have and unfortunately did play out.  

And to think that was in 1937, that quote is so central to her legacy. Why do you think Amelia, being a pioneering woman in this male dominated STEM field, continues to matter to Purdue today?  

I think the first example of why it matters to today, it’s something that’s still living and breathing her legacy on campus is the Ninety-Nine. She was a founding member, there’s still a chapter that’s very active at Purdue today.  

In fact, one of my favorite moments from the dedication of the Amelia Earhart terminal at the Purdue University airport last year was when the president of the Ninety-Nines addressed the group. And you could just hear Amelia’s influence in her comments and how much that Amelia’s legacy still is a living and breathing factor within that group today. So I think that chapter, that organization definitely represents her legacy.  

But then there’s other visible ways to particularly in the STEM fields. We have the Women in Science Group at Purdue University that’s really rooted in mentorship. So how those first year students coming in, partnering them with upperclassmen to form those relationships early, to help them navigate, to answer questions and just to be a resource, a point of encouragement.  

That same spirit is in the Women in Engineering Group. We have the first group like that in the nation at Purdue University, so it’s been around a really long time. And that group has the same spirit of mentoring, being there for women, encouraging them to pursue fields that are not primarily female driven. So being alongside of them and mentoring them.  

And that’s really what Amelia was all about during her time at Purdue University. And all that she was looking to accomplish, she was set out in to prove equality, to inspire others to see themselves and what she was doing. And so those programs here today at Purdue still represent that legacy.  

People have been searching for Amelia for nearly 90 years, and now we have the opportunity to embrace the challenge of recovering her plane. So it’s a really exciting time for Purdue University to wrap up her historic journey.  

I agree, it is a really exciting time. I mean, when I think about it, honestly, just gives me chills. We’ve talked a lot about the Taraia Object, which is the focal point of the expedition and all measurements, all indicators are really strongly aligned with her plane. But the reality is we just don’t know.  

And so somebody has to go there and take a look. And that’s exactly what we’re going to do. We’re really grateful to be along on the Archeological Legacy Institute’s expedition and bring our expertise, our knowledge of Amelia, our connections to the plane and of course, the many experts that we have here at Purdue University to take part in that expedition to go and see.  

And hopefully, it is her plane, and we can close the chapter. And we can do right by her– do right by her legacy, and bring the plane home just as she intended.  

Well, we can’t thank you enough for joining us today, Kelly, and walking us through the early days and Amelia’s historic journey as a Boilermaker too.  

For sure.  

Remember, you can tune in to Finding Amelia part two right now on your favorite podcast app or on YouTube. Part two covers more about the Purdue funded plane Amelia was flying when she disappeared on her around the world flight attempts in 1937.  

Chad Pittman, the president and CEO of Purdue Research Foundation, joins us to discuss Amelia’s flying laboratory and her plans to further aeronautical research after her around the world flight.  

Listen today, you can also learn more about this upcoming expedition at amelia.prf.org. Finding Amelia is a mini-series by This is Purdue, Purdue’s official University podcast. It’s brought to you by Purdue Brand Studio.  

The podcast is hosted and produced by me, Kate Young. The creative team behind the shows videography, design and writing and research includes: Thad Boone, Jon Garcia, Jason Doty, Cheryl Glotzbach, Ashvini Mulshi, John Underwood, and Dalani Young. Social media marketing is led by Maria Welch, and our project manager is Rain Gu.  

You can check out purdue.edu/podcast, to learn more and subscribe on your favorite podcast platform.

Amelia Earhart’s Purdue story began in 1935 and has captivated Boilermakers ever since. Just a few years after becoming the first woman to fly across the Atlantic, the celebrated aviator made even more history by coming to Purdue as the nation’s first career counselor for University Women and advisor to the Department of Aeronautics.  

Here, she pushed the boundaries as an educator and aviator, encouraging women to think differently about their lives after college and offering her expertise to faculty research efforts. The university later supported her 1937 attempt to become the first woman to fly around the world, including her dreams of advancing aeronautical research while on board.  

However, during that famed flight, Amelia, her navigator Fred Noonan, and the Purdue-funded Lockheed Electra 10E tragically disappeared while trying to reach Howland Island in the Southwestern Pacific Ocean. This disappearance has remained a mystery ever since.  

But now Purdue has the chance to solve this mystery. Nearly nine decades after Amelia’s disappearance in the South Pacific, Purdue University is working alongside the Archaeological Legacy Institute and Purdue Research Foundation to identify her lost plane and help complete her historic journey.  

But what was special about this specific plane, and what were Amelia’s research and aviation goals when it came to flying this plane around the world, in this episode, we’re exploring the flying laboratory. Hi, I’m Kate Young, and you’re listening to Finding Amelia, a miniseries from This Is Purdue, the official podcast of Purdue University.  

During part 1 of Finding Amelia, we discussed who Amelia was as a person beyond being a famed aviator and Purdue advisor. So be sure to go back and listen to that first if you haven’t already. In this episode, we’re joined by Chad Pittman, the President and CEO of Purdue Research Foundation, to discuss this famed Lockheed Electra 10E airplane.  

See, Amelia had always planned on this Purdue-funded plane returning to its home in West Lafayette once her around-the-world flight was complete. However, she never returned, and neither did the plane. But Chad is sharing why we may be closer than ever to making that happen. This is part 2, Amelia Earhart’s Plane. Chad, thank you for joining us.  

Kate, thanks for having me in today.  

So let’s talk about Amelia’s plane. Why was it special? Why was it unique? And how did Purdue Research Foundation get involved?  

I’ll start with that first part. Purdue Research Foundation was formed in 1930s by David Ross and Josiah Lilly. And they formed it for the purposes of bridging the university and all of its capabilities, from research labs to, most importantly, the people inside the university, the faculty and the students, with industry. The idea was to match industry with its contemporary problems it was working on as part of that land grant mission of Purdue with the contemporary university faculty so that the faculty are working on most current problems and the industry gets the benefit of those solution sets.  

And I would say that this opportunity that Amelia Earhart brought in those early days was one of the early endeavors that has really anchored Purdue and set the foundation in its aviation prominence for the almost 100 years that PRF has been here.  

The way that the Amelia Earhart, and Purdue Research Foundation, and the Purdue University Act connected was, Amelia had just completed her Atlantic crossing and had become somewhat of an international celebrity. And she was doing speeches and giving presentations around the country and came across, at the time, Purdue President Edward Elliott, and then captured the imagination of David Ross and Josiah Lilly.  

David Ross, he was an incredible Greater Lafayette resident, inventor himself, and very accomplished businessperson. And he never had any kids. So his passion was Purdue. And he played a lot of roles at Purdue. But one thing that I think people often know about David Ross is the Ross-Ade stadium. One of the first things Research Foundation did was raise funding to help Amelia acquire the Lockheed Electra 10E that served as that flying laboratory. They raised, in today’s dollars, over a million dollars to make that mission possible, and then with all the intellectual talent at the university, again, with the contemporary industry, cutting-edge technologies to outfit her flying laboratory.  

So let’s dig into why the plane was outfitted the way it was, what were Amelia’s goals, and what did this flight mean to Purdue?  

For Purdue, it was a means to advance the technology to better understand the problem set with long-distance flying, but also capture the imagination of future aviators and people to join the aerospace industry to push the industry along. So I’ll focus first on the education mission of Purdue, and then we’ll get into the technology side.  

On the education mission, if you go back in time, it was before a lot of universities allowed women to even enter into STEM education. And Purdue was very ahead of its time in this space and understood, again, part of that land grant mission was to allow all people to have an opportunity to advance their skill sets to make an impact on humankind.  

But with Amelia, she was passionate to encourage and inspire young women that they too could have careers in the STEM field. When she wasn’t flying, she would live in residence halls here on campus. She would mentor and counsel female students, and help them along their career path, and encourage and again, inspire.  

On the technology side, she understood and the industry understood, in order to take this flight concept from more of a nascent capability that was maybe elusive to the common, average person, that a lot of innovations need to happen in distance flight.  

So one of those was having the technologies to really understand what is the impact on vibrations, and sound, and all those things on the flight crew and their ability to be focused and sustain longer hours of operation. One of the things they did, they soundproofed the cockpit. Another thing they did was testing fuel. And so they removed passenger seats to outfit it for more fuel tanks to gain range. Innovations like radio navigation technology was also something that Lockheed Electra 10E incorporated into its avionics. De-icing, another thing maybe we take for granted today, was another innovation that she incorporated into that platform.  

So again, a lot of those things at the time that we take for granted today. I mean, just think about, in the passenger compartments today, the fuselages, how relatively comfortable those experiences are for passengers, let alone the crew. Not the case in her time. These were cutting-edge things.  

Absolutely. It was very primitive then. They said that they did different experiments that involved the fatigue, the eye strain, even testing how you could fly under the influence of alcohol, right?  

Yeah, that’s right. I would imagine things like the appropriate amount of crew rest to hours flying, I bet you could see the foundational data in that. Turns out if people are sleeping just out of sheer exhaustion, risk is greatly up. But what is that right amount of trade-offs.  

Absolutely. So before her tragic disappearance, what were Amelia’s plans for the plane after her around-the-world attempt?  

Yep. So one of the things that Amelia wanted to do was use this trip– besides the learning from the scientific laboratory experiments, in essence, that they were conducting, was to use it as a catalyst to inspire new innovations and recruit great minds to want to pursue the solutions to the problems that were limiting aviation at the time.  

One of her goals was to use this plane as a centerpiece to drive the conversation to inspire. And the goal was to bring that back to Purdue and use it as a centerpiece here to inspire people to come visit. Purdue is the first university to have its own airport and leverage that asset in a way that maybe couldn’t be done in other places. And that certainly would have been a centerpiece of that story.  

So fast forward to today, how does PRF support aviation, and how is the work being done by PRF furthering aeronautical research overall?  

Yeah, so kind of exciting. My predecessor, almost 100 years ago, would have been maybe sitting in a radio station or something like that, I don’t know, but having a similar conversation perhaps. And here we are today. The Purdue Research Foundation is the organization for Purdue that is, in essence, chartering this mission, similar to in those days. We’re still involved in those things. We’re still involved in the Amelia Earhart Expedition to try to help her conclude at least the journey of that airplane to circumnavigate the world, hopefully, but also continue to tell that story.  

Other things that Purdue Research Foundation is doing in aviation as we continue that mission. We do it differently today, I’m pretty sure, than we did in 1935 or ’36, ’37. As the world’s evolved, we have internet and all kinds of stuff that they did not have. But the mission hasn’t changed. That mission to bridge and connect the industry, capture imaginations, drive technology, get those technologies into the hands of folks that will do great things with it.  

Today, if you go out and buy the airport in the Discovery Park District, you will see a Rolls Royce facility in which testing is done in development by our partners at Rolls Royce on different modules to help fuel engines at all kinds of different environments. And that testing, evaluation, and development is happening every day just right there on campus. I’m sure Amelia would have liked to be able to do that ground testing before she was in the air to mitigate some of the challenges.  

We have a new Rolls Royce facility that is opening up right now. It’s a one-of-a-kind facility to do propulsion testing at incredible scale right across from Zucrow Labs in Saab. If you continue down the road there, you’ll be on your way back to the Zucrow Labs. You’ll see a Saab facility that they make fighter jet trainers for the military. Again, state-of-the-art innovation how they manufacture the materials, the processes to deliver, again, those capabilities to train future aviators right there in our own park.  

So those are just a few of the ways that PRF is still involved in bridging. We could talk about the SK Hynix project, how does that relate to aviation. Well, they’ll be packaging the state-of-the-art high-bandwidth memory chips in the world here in a couple of years that will allow the processing powers to solve problems that were unimaginable to solve 100 years ago, let alone today. So all that ties together. And our mission, again, hasn’t changed, to bridge talent and problems on both sides of the academy and industry.  

OK, so thanks for walking us through the details about Amelia’s plane. But I think the big question on everyone’s mind is, what happens if this plane is recovered in the search efforts?  

Yeah. So there’s a lot of ifs in that, if it’s the object that could potentially be, if it can be recovered and moved and so forth. There’s a lot of unknowns, right? Which makes it exciting, makes it an adventure. There’s two things I want to address with this, is, one, if they find it and if it can be relocated, a goal would be to relocate it here, per Amelia’s original vision, again, to serve as a centerpiece of telling part of the aviation history story and Purdue’s story in it.  

But I’ll tell you the other thing, too, is I think this mission is a success as soon as they push off. And I was meeting with the team in Eugene, Oregon, about a month or so ago. I know that for them, they are obviously determined that this is the object and to be able to recover it and all those things.  

And what I’ve encouraged them is, just like Amelia Earhart, and like any great adventure, when they get on that landing craft, sail four or five days into the unknown to go onto an island, which is very hard to get to. And if they confirm it’s her plane, success. If they don’t, well, we’re a step closer to understanding. There’ll be a lot of other things that are learned in that mission. And when they get back onto the landing craft to return on their way back, they should feel very good about however this story plays out.  

I’m very excited that this will be a successful mission regardless of what the object is or isn’t. I know we’re all very confident that it has a lot of the elements to be Amelia’s airplane. But nonetheless, what has driven PRF to do, how it’s made us better, I think those are all things that Amelia would say her trip did continues to inspire us to think differently, to think about using satellite imagery and stuff. A little bit of her innovations made it possible to have satellites to image the actual object so we can get out there.  

Yes. And we owe it to Amelia and to her legacy to go search and find out, right?  

That’s right.  

Thank you so much for joining us today. Chad, is there anything I missed?  

No, I appreciate you telling the story. I know Amelia would appreciate it. And I think what you’re doing here is to, again, get that story out. And hopefully, a few people learn this and maybe inspires them to pursue careers in STEM, pursue careers in storytelling, and be a part of the aviation future of our country and our world. Thank you.  

I love that. Thank you. Remember, you can tune in to Finding Amelia part 3 right now on your favorite podcast app or on YouTube. Our third episode takes listeners on a journey through the world’s largest compilation of Amelia-related papers, memorabilia, and artifacts at Purdue University Archives and Special Collections.  

Katey Watson, the France A. Córdova archivist, joins us for this special conversation. Listen to part 3 today. You can also learn more about this upcoming expedition at amelia.prf.org.  

[STIRRING MUSIC]  

Finding Amelia is a miniseries by This Is Purdue, Purdue’s official university podcast. It’s brought to you by Purdue Brand Studio. The podcast is hosted and produced by me, Kate Young. The creative team behind the shows videography, design, and writing and research includes Thad Boone, Jon Garcia, Jason Doty, Cheryl Glotzbach, Ashvini Malshe, John Underwood, and Dalani Young. Social media marketing is led by Maria Welch. And our project manager is Rain Gu. You can check out Purdue.edu/podcasts to learn more and subscribe on your favorite podcast platform.

In 1937, Amelia Earhart attempted to become the first woman to fly around the Earth’s equator, an incredibly courageous, unprecedented goal in those early days of aviation. At the same time, she was also Purdue’s first career counselor to women, an advisor to the Department of Aeronautics. About 3/4 of the way through her journey, Amelia tragically disappeared, along with her navigator, Fred Noonan, and her Purdue-funded Lockheed Electra 10-E.  

It’s a mystery that’s captivated generations. But now, Purdue is setting out to find answers. Nearly nine decades after Amelia’s disappearance, Purdue University is working alongside the Archeological Legacy Institute and Purdue Research Foundation to identify her lost plane and help complete her historic journey after finding new evidence that an object near Nikumaroro island in the Western Pacific Ocean may be the missing plane.  

Amelia’s goal was always to return the plane to Purdue, where she found a sense of purpose in her work. In fact, she loved Purdue and appreciated its generosity towards her flight so much that her husband, George Putnam, donated thousands of her personal items to the University in 1940 after her disappearance. In 2002, her granddaughter, Sally Putman Chapman, donated even more. Today, Purdue is home to the world’s largest compilation of Amelia-related papers, memorabilia and artifacts, making it one of the top destinations to research the legendary aviator’s life.  

But what are some of these unique historic items? And how do they inspire people today? In this episode, we’re examining some of the rare artifacts and memorabilia that are part of Purdue’s Amelia Earhart collection. Hi, I’m Kate Young, and you’re listening to Finding Amelia, a miniseries from This is Purdue, the official podcast of Purdue University.  

During part 2 of Finding Amelia, we explored her famed airplane, nicknamed the “flying laboratory,” and the Purdue Research Foundation support of her around the world flight attempt. Check out that episode first, if you haven’t already. In this episode, we’re joined by Katie Watson, the France A. Cordova archivist of Purdue Archives and Special Collections, who manages Purdue’s Amelia Earhart collection.  

Katie is helping us pull back the curtain on the personal items Amelia left behind, including her famous Aviator goggles, leather flight helmet, and brown suede jacket, all of which are part of Purdue’s incredible collection. Plus, we’re diving into why Amelia’s husband, George, along with his granddaughter, Sally, chose to donate these significant historical items to Purdue. This is part 3, uncovering Amelia Earhart’s rare artifacts and memorabilia.  

[MUSIC PLAYING]  

Welcome, Katie. It’s so great to have you. Thanks for coming.  

Thanks so much. I’m excited to talk to you about the collection.  

I think you’re going to bring to light a lot of things that Amelia Earhart’s even biggest fans and people who respect her don’t know. So I’m really excited for this conversation. I think it’s really cool, too. Purdue is home to the world’s largest collection of Amelia Earhart papers, so you’re here to tell us more about that. Tell us about this collection and a little bit about your role here at Purdue.  

In Amelia Earhart papers that we have here at Purdue, we have about 5,000 items. This is one of the collections that I oversee. I oversee the women’s archives, which is a special collecting area at the Purdue University Archives and Special Collections. So I oversee about 200 collections. The Amelia Earhart papers, as I mentioned. So we have about 5,000 items that belong to Amelia Earhart.  

We received the vast majority of these in 1940 from her husband, George Palmer Putnam, but his stipulation was that he really wanted a place that would safeguard and care for the collections to make sure that they lasted as long as possible, but also to ensure that they could be made available for research use. And so the Purdue Libraries and Archives has been doing that ever since 1940.  

And tell us about, later, George Putnam’s granddaughter, Sally Putman Chapman, donated more items to archives.  

Yeah. So in 2002, Sally Putnam Chapman donated about, I think it was 492 additional items. And so these were more of Amelia’s personal papers, like poems, childhood notes, also the famed prenuptial agreement between Amelia Earhart and George Palmer Putnam.  

Wow.  

Yeah. And so that’s really interesting. So in it– so this was just before they got married, so 1931. And in it, she kind of lays out some expectations for the relationship. She didn’t want to be bound to a medieval code of faithfulness during the relationship. She wanted to make sure that they wouldn’t interfere with each other’s work because she did have a very promising and robust career. And one thing I also found really interesting about it is she says that if they didn’t find happiness together in a year, that they would let each other go. But obviously, they did, as they were together until her disappearance.  

Wow that is fascinating.  

Yeah. And we do have another collection, too. We have a collection of papers related to her time at Purdue. These didn’t come from the Putnams. They were actually found at the Purdue University Airport, which is where she planned her world flight. In that collection, we have correspondence between Amelia Earhart, George Palmer Putnam, and President Elliott. We have speeches that she gave on campus. We have itineraries from her visits here and a lot of photographs of her on campus as well.  

OK, Katie, let’s dig into the collection itself. Tell us about some of the most historically significant items. I’d love for you to share some of your personal favorites as well.  

I think some of her most iconic items that we have are the artifacts, particularly those that are related to her flying career. We have her goggles. One pair of her flight goggles are from– we really don’t have that much information about them. They’re from about the 1930s, and we have a couple photographs of her wearing them. They are also one of the most fragile artifacts that we have in the collection.  

We also have two of her pilot’s licenses, one from 1928 and one from 1930s, though she actually got her pilot’s license back in 1923. In a couple sources, you’ll see her credited as being the first US woman pilot to receive a pilot’s license from the National Aeronautic Association, though she was definitely not the first woman pilot in the US to earn a pilot’s license. The first one is Harriet Quimby in 1911.  

Some of my favorite, but also the materials a lot of people are most interested in, are some of those artifacts from her 1932 solo Atlantic flight. So we have her leather flight helmet that she wore on that flight as well. We have smelling salts, which she would use to keep herself awake during the flight. The flight started in Harbor Grace, Newfoundland, and she landed in Londonderry, Ireland in 1932. The flight took just under 15 hours, so she had to stay awake for that entire time since she was doing it by herself.  

We also have a passport that she had signed when she arrived in London, England, and then we also have her suede jacket and pants as well, which she wore on that flight. Those would have been worn underneath her flight suit.  

OK.  

We also have her flying log, which is really interesting. She would take notes throughout the flight. And as you know, there were a couple issues that she ran into during that flight. She was obviously exhausted. She was nauseous. She had a leaky fuel tank. She also had a crack in the manifold on her plane that started spewing flames at one point during the flight. So in this flight log, there’s a couple times she notes some issues that she was coming up against. So in one part she states that if anyone finds this wreck, please know that I got lost because of the storm.  

She also writes just that she was exhausted and that she had to crawl near the water for hours because she was scared of the flames coming out near her engine. So it must have been a really terrifying flight. But it’s so fascinating to have that firsthand documentation of her experience during that flight.  

So you have a pair of her trousers as well? I want to touch on that because when she was at Purdue, women back then were expected to wear skirts and dresses. Tell us about the significance of her wearing trousers and what that meant to the women at Purdue at the time.  

It was pretty typical for female pilots to wear them while flying, but she wore them off plane all the time as well. On campus, she’d wear her slacks here. And as you mentioned, it was pretty atypical at the time. We have video interview with Dean Emerita Dorothy Stratton, who was Dean of women at the time that Earhart was here. And she recalls that when Amelia started here, she’d be seen wearing trousers across campus, and then women students would start wearing trousers on campus as well, which was really not typical at the time.  

There were some other great stories that she recounts as well, just like Amelia’s influence on students on campus, particularly women students. When she was here, she stayed at Duhme residence hall, and in some of the residence halls, they’d have these formal dinners all together. During the dinners, women students weren’t allowed to have their elbows on the table– it was like an etiquette thing, so elbows off the table– while Amelia Earhart always sat with her elbows on the table listening to students.  

And so some of the women students went to the Director of the residence halls at the time, Helen Schliemann, were like, well, Ms Earhart has her elbows on the table. Why can’t we? And the response that they got was, well, when you fly solo across the Atlantic, you can put your elbows on the table.  

Wow, I love that story.  

Yeah. Everything that Amelia Earhart did on campus, the women students wanted to do as well.  

She was just so respected and revered here on campus.  

Yeah, she was really, really influential.  

So I know there’s different poems, there’s news clippings, there’s photos. Dig into some of those papers and artifacts within the collection as well.  

Yeah, sure. So Amelia Earhart was an amateur poet, so we do have a fair amount of her poems that she wrote. She did submit some of these to Poetry magazine and other magazines under a pseudonym, Emil Hart. And this was before she was famous. I think this was like the early 1920s. Unfortunately, none of those were published. The only published poem that we have or that she had published was Courage, and that was in 1928 after the friendship flight.  

But we do have several other really interesting paper-based documents that are some of my favorites. We have a questionnaire from women students. So when she first got here, one of the very first things that she did in her position as career counselor for women was to survey the students about their career aspirations– so the women students. She sent out this survey to get feedback on whether or not women students were planning on pursuing a career after graduating. Wasn’t necessarily typical at the time.  

A lot of women would get married during the degree or right after, and then wouldn’t go into whatever field that they were studying. She asked what their aspiration was like, what job they were interested in, whether they would continue that job after getting married, and then also, whether they thought that if they were working and their husband was also working, whether they should share household responsibilities equitably.  

Which was not common back then.  

No, not at all. She collated– compiled– all of this survey data. And in 1935, Purdue had its first career conference for women here at the University, and she reported back on some of this data. So 92% of women did say that they were planning on pursuing a career after getting their degree. The most common reasons for why they wanted to do this were personal interest. They wanted to find a career that they were really interested in, but also financial necessity was another one.  

But during this talk to women students, she also made sure to encourage them to pursue careers that they wanted, not what was expected of them. So one thing that Amelia Earhart mentions throughout a lot of her papers is that people should pursue careers that they’re interested in, or have an aptitude for. That career shouldn’t be defined based on your gender. And so that’s something that she really encouraged the students to do in her time here.  

I love this storytelling around what she did here on campus at Purdue. There’s so many nuggets to dig into there.  

Yeah, there really is. And then another one of my favorite items are the materials that she sent back during her world flight. So one thing that I didn’t realize before working here at Purdue Archives was that during her world flight, her and Putnam were actually planning on writing a book about the world flight. So throughout the trip and stops that she made, she was taking notes and taking photographs and sending them back to George.  

And so we have all of those. We have notes and photographs up until her very last stop in Lae, New Guinea. And so we have the notes of her experience. We have candid shots, some that are kind of like touristy shots. So she took photographs of the landscape and the people that she met. We even have a photograph of her riding a camel in India that I think is really cool.  

Amazing, wow. What about some of the photography that included her taking off for this around-the-world flight attempt?  

We have a lot of photographs from campus of when she got her Lockheed Electra, also with her students. We have photographs of her taking off on the first attempt in Hawaii and then the second attempt as well. So those are some of our most highly requested materials.  

OK. So let’s dig into some of those news clippings. At this point, Amelia was world famous when she was attempting to fly around the world. What kind of items and clippings and papers does the Purdue Archives Collection have when it comes to that?  

We have about 22 scrapbooks that contain newspaper clippings from the early 1920s up until her disappearance in 1937. So these are all digitized and available online, and they mostly include articles about her various flights, about her career at Purdue, and of course, about the world flight as well.  

So many people use this special collection to this day– historians, writers, students. You and I were talking before this, and you said, since this expedition was announced, you’ve gotten many more inquiries, too. So tell us a little bit about all the people who get to use this, see it, utilize it as a resource.  

Since the expedition was announced, we’ve had an uptick in research requests, requests for photographs, interview requests with our archivists. So it’s been really fascinating to learn more about the things that people are interested in. But even before this, the Earhart collection is really one of our most highly used collections in the archives. That just this past year we have digitized the vast majority of the materials within her papers, and those are available online.  

In the past year, we’ve had about 90,000 views of those materials online. We also field dozens of research requests every year, photo requests from a wide variety of researchers. We’re contacted by historians, documentary filmmakers, reporters, from people at the Purdue Exponent up to national news organizations like NPR. One thing that I find really interesting is we work with artists. So composers or visual artists who look at parts of her career as inspiration for their artwork. We work with children’s authors, as well as many students from grade school up to graduate students as well.  

Yeah. I think that’s super important because Amelia’s legacy is felt on campus here still, but also across the world. You talked about children’s books. It spanned so many generations at this point.  

Yeah. Her impact is still felt around the world as well. So one thing that I find really fascinating is every year, I’ll get at least one or two people from another country, students usually, who are doing a project on somebody who inspired them, and they’re reaching out to get an interview about and find out more about Amelia Earhart and her career. And that has happened every year since I started here six years ago.  

OK, Katie. So you were just saying that researchers are reaching out, students, people from all across the world. Have there been any kind of misconceptions about Amelia as a person that you’ve noticed throughout all these requests?  

I wouldn’t necessarily say misconceptions, though I think everyone interprets things a little differently. But also, I have read from a couple different people that they interpreted the world flight as George Palmer Putnam pushing her to go into the world flight. But there’s this really great note that we have in her papers where she writes to George about the reason why she wanted to go on the world flight.  

And in it, she writes that she’s completely aware of the risks and dangers of it and that she wants to do it because she wants to do it. It’s one of her dreams. And that if anything happens to her on it, it should just be a challenge to other people to try it as well. And so I think that’s one of the misconceptions that I’ve come across.  

That’s a great example. You’ve had the opportunity to read and pore through all of these different papers and personal artifacts. How do you feel about Amelia and her legacy and who she was as a Boilermaker?  

I think for me, particularly with the area that I oversee– the women’s archives– she really was a strong advocate for women. For women to have financial independence, for women to pursue careers that they were interested in. She spoke in many different avenues, encouraging women to do what they were interested in.  

She had such a non-traditional career for a woman at the time, and that’s really something that she just repeatedly during these public events, public speeches, and articles was really encouraging women to do as well. And we still hear from students today, women students in the Aeronautics program, that she’s still one of the inspirations and people that they felt encouraged them into these careers.  

That’s incredible. I just think it’s so cool that Purdue Archives has this rich collection of artifacts from so many iconic people– Neil Armstrong, Amelia, so many others. So thank you so much for joining us today and walking us through this.  

Yeah, of course. And I mean, we have a lot of big names at Purdue, but we have so much more, too. So the archives has over 1,300 collections with thousands of documents from various alumni, faculty, staff, students, student organizations, programs on campus. So it’s such a great career and job because you’re just learning something new every day.  

Where can people find more, view some of these incredible items?  

So on our website, we have descriptions of our collections. We’ve digitized a lot of materials as well, so those are freely available online. Just Purdue University Archives and Special Collections should pull up our web page and you can learn a lot.  

Katie, what is this expedition mean to you within your role at Purdue and as a Boilermaker yourself?  

Really interested to see what comes of it. And it would be so great to actually find out what happened to her. It’s been such a mystery and would really just put that final puzzle piece of her life into place. So I’m really interested and hopeful to see what comes from it.  

Absolutely. Well, we can’t thank you enough for joining us. It’s been a total pleasure.  

Well, thanks so much for having me.  

Remember, you can tune in to Finding Amelia part 4 right now on your favorite podcast app or on YouTube. Our fourth episode of this miniseries covers more about the search for Amelia’s plane and why people are still looking for answers to this decades-old mystery. We’ll be having an exciting conversation with Steve Schultz, Senior Vice President and General Counsel of Purdue, who will be joining the expedition to potentially identify Amelia’s lost plane. Listen today. You can also learn more about this upcoming expedition on amelia.prf.org.  

And if you’d like to check out the Purdue University Archives and Special Collections Amelia Earhart collection, we have that link for you in our show notes. Finding Amelia is a miniseries by This is Purdue, Purdue’s official University podcast. It’s brought to you by Purdue Brand Studio. The podcast is hosted and produced by me, Kate Young.  

The creative team behind the shows videography, design and writing, and research includes Thad Boone, Jon Garcia, Jason Doty, Cheryl Glotzbach, Ashvini Malshe, John Underwood, and Dalani Young. Social media marketing is led by Maria Welch, and our project manager is Rain Gu. You can check out purdue.edu/podcast to learn more and subscribe on your favorite podcast platform.

For nearly a century, Amelia Earhart’s story has lived at the intersection of history, mystery, and legend. In 1937, a period where she worked at Purdue as the nation’s first career advisor to women, having already become an international celebrity by flying across the Atlantic, Amelia attempted to become the first woman to fly around the world. Though she disappeared during this flight, along with her navigator Fred Noonan and her Lockheed Electra 10-E, her aviation breakthroughs and bravery have inspired generations to follow in her footsteps, and the mystery of her disappearance continues to capture public interest and launch search expeditions.  

But now Purdue may be closer than ever to finally finding answers. Nearly nine decades after Amelia’s disappearance in the South Pacific, Purdue University is working alongside the Archaeological Legacy Institute and Purdue Research Foundation to identify her lost plane and help complete her historic journey. Now, a search team will set off an expedition with the goal of locating and analyzing suspected plane wreckage near the Pacific island of Nikumaroro. This is roughly 400 miles southeast of Howland Island, where Amelia was heading when she disappeared.  

What makes this new search different from those in the past? What challenges will the team face? And how does it feel to have the eyes of the world watching their every move? In this episode, we’re getting the details of the search for Amelia’s plane that could change everything directly from a Purdue Boilermaker who will be on the trip. Hi, I’m Kate Young, and you’re listening to Finding Amelia, a miniseries from This Is Purdue, the official podcast of Purdue University.  

During part three of Finding Amelia, we took a deep dive into the world’s largest compilation of Amelia Earhart-related papers, memorabilia, and artifacts, which is maintained by Purdue Archives and Special Collections. Be sure to go back and listen to that first if you haven’t already. In this final episode of the series, we’re joined by Steve Schultz, Senior Vice President and General Counsel of Purdue University.  

Steve will be a research assistant on the expedition to search for Amelia’s plane. If all goes according to plan, he might have a first-hand role in helping to solve one of the greatest mysteries of all time. Steve actually broke the news about the expedition on The Today Show back in 2025, so he’s the perfect person to cap off our series and dive into this upcoming incredible journey. He’s also going to explain why the initial search was postponed, the obstacles the team had to overcome to make this trip a reality, and why Purdue is more determined than ever to complete this search to add to Amelia’s legacy. This is part four, The Search for Amelia Earhart’s Missing Plane.  

[MUSIC PLAYING]  

Steve, welcome.  

Thanks, Kate. It’s good to see you.  

Good to see you. Now, we discussed this with Kelly Hiller in episode one, but there were some pivots that the team had to make between last year and right now. But a search team, including yourself, will be traveling to Kiribati to explore if the Taraia Object is indeed Amelia’s plane. So let’s dive into some of the pivots that you all had to make. I know it wasn’t always easy.  

Sure. Well, we’ll start from where we last paused, I guess, our effort. We were planning to depart from Marshall Islands, actually, on November 4 last year. It was right at the end of the safe window to go to that part of the South Pacific in terms of weather and sea conditions. And right down to the 11th hour, we thought everything was a go, and then we realized that our research permit to go to Nikumaroro had not come through in time. It was in process, but we ran out of time for us to get the final approval. And then we pressed pause, and regrouped, and rededicated ourselves to planning the process for this year.  

Over the course of the winter months, we realized that it wasn’t just going to be enough to get the clearance from the research permit committee, something called the NRCC, in the country of Kiribati we’re dealing with. But this was a project of such significance to the country of Kiribati that we actually needed a higher level approval, and that was from the cabinet level, which is their highest form of government. They have a president, but the president is a member of the cabinet. It’s pretty much like the British system of government.  

And so with the help of some very great folks at the State Department, and specifically our Fiji embassy, we started conversations and essentially tried to get an audience with any cabinet ministers who would listen to us, who would come to understand who Purdue University is, our relationship to Archaeological Legacy Institute and Dr. Pettigrew, but more importantly, what Amelia meant to us and what we could do together to benefit Kiribati.  

And so eventually, in April, we were invited to go to Tarawa, the capital of Kiribati, and we had an eventful dinner there where we laid the groundwork for a proposal essentially, explaining just exactly what we were going to do. And, by the way, our premise is very straightforward. We’ll talk about that.  

It’s a science project. We’re going to look at something very specific on that island, and that’s really what we’re asking for permission to do. But we also couched it in terms of a larger collaboration with Kiribati, one that maybe could last generations depending on what we find there. And so on the basis of that, the cabinet ministers with whom we established this collaboration took it forward. And ultimately, we received word in the middle of July that we got cabinet approval.  

Amazing. And I think it’s important. Here we are a year later, doing exactly what we said we were going to do. And you all are going to explore if the Taraia Object is indeed Amelia’s plane.  

That’s right. That’s right.  

So let’s dive into the evidence that has been uncovered so far.  

Sure. We are building our efforts on prior work principally by a group called TIGHAR, which stands for the International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery, an organization founded and led by someone named Rick Gillespie, based in Wilmington, Delaware. They got a clue in the late 1980s. They were already a nonprofit that specialized in finding and identifying lost aircraft.  

But they got a clue from a couple of gentleman in Florida who suggested that a new theory might be looked at. The prevailing theories of what happened to Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan were, of course, the official line, which is the– let’s just call it the crash-and-sink theory. That is what the US Navy and Coast Guard concluded after the exhaustive more than two-week search for them in the first half of July 1937, after their disappearance on July 2, 1937.  

Another theory has become popular, and you can see it in YouTube videos and other documentaries. And that’s essentially the Japanese capture theory that they were apprehended by Japanese bent on occupying some of those islands and they were taken to Saipan, where they were subsequently executed. So that’s the Japanese capture theory. That one has pretty much been debunked in recent years and certainly doesn’t have the evidence that our theory has.  

So back to the TIGHAR story. So the clue was that we think you ought to look at the very last radio transmission that was heard from Amelia and Fred in the morning of July 2, around 8:45 in the morning. They said, we’re flying north and south on the line 137, 557.  

Now, what is that? Turns out that that’s a line of position– roughly a longitudinal line– running northwest to southeast. And if you follow that line dissecting Howland Island, which they were trying to find, and follow in that direction on that line of position, in about 400 miles, it runs directly into Nikumaroro Island, which was then called Gardner Island. So the theory was that Amelia and Fred would have had enough fuel to make it to Nikumaroro.  

And Niku is sort of a classic South Pacific atoll. It’s got a very high reef that rims it. And at low tide, the reef flat sort of resembles a tarmac. And so the theory is that they actually landed on dry ground on Nikumaroro and essentially became castaways there and later succumbed to the elements. There’s a theory that Fred may have been injured in the landing and subsequent attempt to get on shore from the reef. That’s based on some things that were heard on radio transmissions.  

So that takes us back to TIGHAR and the case that they’ve built. Since 1989, they’ve really built what I consider as a lawyer to be an incredible circumstantial case– different types of evidence that they’ve collected to support this hypothesis. Pretty convincing. So, for example, in addition to the line of position argument, there were radio direction bearings that were taken on the radio communications that were heard in the days following the July 2 disappearance.  

Radio stations at Midway on Wake Island and in Honolulu, operated by both US Navy and Pan Am Airways, heard these transmissions and through radio direction bearing technology were able to track the direction from which they were coming. If you look at a majority of those that are found to be the most compelling, three of them converge directly in the vicinity of Nikumaroro Island– again, then called Gardner Island. So that’s the bearings evidence and is contemporaneous evidence because it was collected at the time.  

In addition, there were actual shortwave radio transmissions where people in the United States swore that they heard Amelia talking over the radio in those days after July 2. Betty Klenck was a young 15-year-old in St. Petersburg, Florida, whose dad had a souped-up shortwave radio. And for 90 minutes, she wrote in her diary things that no person, let alone a 15-year-old girl, could have made up that can really be traced to things that Amelia Earhart would have said. So that’s also compelling evidence.  

And TIGHAR has done a great job of collecting all that as part of its case. In fact, Betty Klenck, who’s since passed away, was living in nearby Hoopeston, Illinois, just across the border from here, in her 80s. And she was interviewed by TIGHAR. And she said, finally, somebody’s listening to me, because this is exactly what I was hearing on the radio.  

In addition, over the course of their visits to the island, they found artifacts, including a freckle cream jar from the 1930s. Amelia was famously embarrassed about her freckles. They found rouge from a compact case. They found a compact case dating from the 1930s, pieces of a blucher shoe of the type that Amelia wore, a zipper that very closely matches the vintage of her flight jacket and the type of zipper that was on that flight jacket, an Art Deco-style flashlight from the 1930s, arguably of the type that would have been on the plane.  

And this is the most compelling to me, but a medicine vial, again, from the 1930s era that has a metal cap. Back then, they didn’t have the plastic press-on caps, but metal clasps that went over an elongated glass vial. And the first syllable of the cap is smudged out, but it says U-C-A Pharmacy. So the first part of the first word smudged out. She lived in Toluca Lakes, Los Angeles, before her departure. And there still is a Toluca Pharmacy in the Valley, in North Hollywood.  

Wow.  

Yeah.  

Wow.  

And there’s more, by the way, but that’s some of the main pieces of artifact evidence. In addition, bones were found on the island in 1940. And these were documented in an osteologist report that was lost to history until TIGHAR dug it up in the files of the British Colonial Office that maintained the files of its colonies that never quite took off. And, by the way, this was the last place in the world that the British tried to colonize. Between 1945, after the war, and 1963, they actually tried to establish a coconut growing plantation on the island, and that was something called the Phoenix Islands Settlement Scheme.  

In any event, those files were lost, and TIGHAR dug those up 60 miles north of London. And, sure enough, there was a file– bones discovered on Gardner Island. And a 2017 or ’18 study by a professor at the University of Tennessee found that the dimensions reflected in that report– and, by the way, he looked at pictures of Amelia and pictures of her clothes from the Purdue archives and concluded that they were a very close match to Amelia.  

Wow, that is fascinating.  

And so now we have the Taraia Object itself, which we can describe, but essentially it’s a visual anomaly along a landmass in a lagoon of this South Pacific atoll, Nikumaroro. And that landmass is called the Taraia Peninsula. It was discovered in 2020 during COVID by someone who was an aficionado of this castaway hypothesis and looking on Apple Maps and said, what is that along the shore of the lagoon?  

And sure enough, he took it to Dr. Rick Pettigrew, who initially took a half-hearted interest in it, as Rick tells the story, but later became pretty interested in it– and, again, combined with all the other evidence that TIGHAR had brought to bear over the years. And Rick went back and actually curated images of that spot in the lagoon going back to 2015. He’s since then put together an animation video showing the gradual appearance of the object from 2015 through the present day. It gradually appears, and then it disappears.  

Now, why would that be the case? The reason, we believe, is that it traces back to a very serious tropical storm– Tropical Cyclone Pam– that actually happened in the early spring of 2015. We believe that the storm surge from Tropical Cyclone Pam swooshed into the lagoon and washed the sediment– brushed the sediment off the object, and then it gradually accumulated again over the years. But there’s lots of reasons that we believe that the object is the electorate.  

Yeah, for nearly nine decades, there have been many search attempts. And so why do you all think that this is the one that will get it right?  

Right. So probably the biggest search attempt was the largest search-and-rescue mission in American history. I actually went to find this because I was curious how much it cost the United States to conduct that search for more than half a month in July 1937. So that involved initially a search by the US Coast Guard cutter Itasca. That was the cutter that was sitting off Howland Island, which was, again, their target. They were going to refuel in Howland and then head to Hawaii the next day.  

And the Itasca immediately began searching for her when they lost radio contact. It was soon joined by the USS Colorado, which had some planes that it launched and flew over the neighboring islands and searched the sea around Howland. And then later, the USS Lexington joined, and it had something like 65 planes that essentially, over the course of that 16-day period or so, they searched an area the size of Texas and did not find a trace of them.  

It cost $4 million at the time, and that’s $93 million in today’s money, because everybody loved Amelia and she was friends with the Roosevelts. So there was a huge outpouring in an attempt to find her. And, by the way, a huge impact when everybody realized she was lost, including here at Purdue. The records show that President Elliott and, obviously, the whole campus community was devastated by her loss. So that was the first attempt.  

And then later efforts have been really devoted– until the Nikumaroro hypothesis have been devoted to what are called deep-sea searches. Those are based, of course, on the crash-and-sink theory. The most recent ones were by Deep Sea Vision, a firm that thought that it identified, through some satellite imagery and some sonar technology, something very deep below the surface, a few hundred miles from Howland. That was announced in 2024. Upon further investigation, that ended up being a rock outcropping at the bottom of the ocean. And so that was Tony O. Romeo and Deep Sea Vision.  

And then more recently and concurrently, really, with our efforts, another deep sea theory is being searched by a company called Nauticos. And what they have done is they’ve tried to narrow that search field. So no longer thinking that we have to look around an area the size of the state of Texas. Let’s narrow that. Let’s mimic the technology that Amelia and Fred would have had. And using that, let’s try to identify a more narrow area of the ocean where they would have gone down. So they’re working on that. They’re raising funds. And that’s a competing theory right now.  

But in terms of the other efforts, I would say, for example, all of the TIGHAR efforts over its 12 or so expeditions to Nikumaroro, those have actually been successful because each in succession has added more evidence to the case. And now with the Taraia Object, which we believe could be the smoking gun, we think that Purdue owes it to Amelia and her legacy to follow the evidence where it leads us.  

Absolutely. So let’s dive into the expedition. You are going to be there with this group. How do you feel about potentially being there if they find the plane? What does that feel like to you?  

It’ll be incredible. It’s hard to describe what it will be like having a front row seat at solving one of the great mysteries in world history, certainly of the 20th century. Just in terms of my personal opportunity to be involved, it came about by happenstance. Why in the world is the lawyer for Purdue and Purdue Research Foundation going on this? So I’ve been representing Purdue and PRF for 13 and 1/2 years, but I never thought I’d be an explorer on their behalf.  

But essentially, that comes down to my being tasked over the years with going into the archives and confirming or evaluating what our claim to the plane would be if and when it were ever found. And so every time we’d get one of these claims, Mitch, and then later Mung, would say, go double check. And, of course, I always had to return to the historical record, which I think you’ve covered in a different episode, which is Purdue Research Foundation gave her the money free and clear. She then used that to develop the plane with Lockheed, her flying laboratory.  

And so our best claim, as I always say, is that we have an equitable claim. And that’s based, really, on her intent and that of her husband, George Putnam, because there are contemporaneous records at the time that said, we want to give the plane back to Purdue. Can you imagine what the students of 1977 would think about a plane of this kind that was being used 40 years prior? And so that was in their mind. And certainly, had the flight been successful, it would have made its way back to Purdue based on that.  

Anyway, so that’s why I’m on the mission, but it’s obviously a professional privilege. It’s a personal privilege. It’ll make me very proud to be a part of it. Like Amelia said– I think of one of her great quotes– “When a great adventure is offered, you don’t refuse it.” So after I built this collaboration with Dr. Pettigrew and he asked me to join, I had to say yes.  

Absolutely. It’s fairly dangerous though, right? Walk us through some of these things that you all have to do to get to the island and be where the search is happening.  

Yes, this is a place where nobody goes. Essentially, it’s been uninhabited since 1963, and it was only briefly colonized, as I mentioned, for a time. Last year, we were going to leave from the Marshall Islands. This year, we’re going to leave from Tarawa, which is the capital of Kiribati.  

Kiribati consists of three island groups primarily, about 33 islands over the expanse of its territory. By the way, it’s one of the largest countries in the world in terms of overall territory, but one of the smallest in the world in terms of landmass. It takes six days to get there, so twice as long to get to Niku as it does to get to the moon. We will have to be equally self-sufficient.  

Obviously, the vessel that we will have will have provisions, and power, and fuel, and so forth. There is no anchorage off of Nikumaroro because its slopes off the reef are very deep into the deep ocean. So we’ll essentially be not moored, but parked offshore on the island. And we will go onto the island every day.  

We will make our own power when we’re on the island. So we have a tech team. Our great alum, Sirisha Bandla, is part of the tech team that’s going to make sure everything’s working. We have solar arrays that then feed into a solar power system that will generate the power that we need to operate the equipment in terms of the undersea, the maritime archeology, and so forth. So we’ll have to do all that ourselves.  

The reef is very high, as I mentioned earlier. And as a result, the British got tired of waiting for the tide to rise every two weeks or so to get people on and off the island. You never would be able to do this under current environmental regulations, both international and domestic, but the British just dynamited a channel through the reef, and it’s called the Blasted Channel. Essentially, it’s the front door to Nikumaroro. So we will be anchored– not anchored, but stay– we will be powering ourselves to stay off the Blasted Channel.  

And every day, we will go through there. We will get to the beach. And then the first day, there, we actually have to machete our way through the jungle to get to the lagoon. And half of us will do that while another half takes our transport boat around to the opening of the lagoon on the west side of the island. And then every day, we will all go through the Blasted Channel, through the so-called Gallagher Highway. Gallagher is named for the British officer who at one point ran the colony there. The Gallagher highway is what we have to recut through the jungle.  

And then we will go from the southern part of the lagoon, across to the Taraia Peninsula every day and back. And we’ll be there for five days. So six days there, five days doing that work back and forth to the Taraia Peninsula, and six days back. There’s a chance, by the way– I was looking at the football schedule. And our last day, local time, will be October 17. And noon on October 17 will be kickoff time against the Washington Huskies in Ross-Ade Stadium. So there’s a chance that we might have news to announce–  

Wow.  

–at Ross-Ade Stadium if we’re able to have a Starlink connection, but I might be getting ahead of ourselves.  

All right, you heard it here first. Get those tickets so you can be the first to learn the news. Wow. What about food, water? What kind of things are you guys packing?  

So that is all provided by the vessel charter company. And this time around, we’ve obtained the vessel from Kiribati National Shipping Line. So that’s actually been beneficial. It’s one of the serendipities of our having postponed the expedition again. Instead of leaving from the Marshall Islands, we’re actually leaving from the capital of the country that we’re dealing with now. And so we’re able to make this investment in procuring the vessel from them.  

Captain John Rounds is the CEO of that company. He’s been a great partner. We’ve made our preparations. He will have all the provisions that we need. We even have the menu of things that we’ll be eating. On the menu, by the way, are coconut crabs. I’ve been wondering if those are the coconut crabs that we’ll actually capture– we won’t, but the ship’s crew may capture– on the island. Nikumaroro is famous for the size of its coconut crabs, which I’m told can be the size of a large dog.  

Wow.  

And, by the way, they tend to be aggressive, not during the day. But that’s in part why we leave every night. We’ll leave the island and go back to the ship. I’m told they can be pretty aggressive at nighttime.  

This is fascinating. So you have two members of Purdue’s Cradle of Astronauts joining as well, Sirisha Bandla, who you mentioned, and then Marc Hagle. What does it mean to you to have two other Boilermakers on this trip with you?  

Well, it’s a great honor to be involved with both of them. I was so happy that we were able to recruit them to the effort. Marc was actually the first. I talked to him within days after meeting Rick Pettigrew. And we were down in Naples. And I knew from President Daniels that Marc was quite the adventurer. And so when I talked to him in Naples, I floated this idea by him, and he, of course, jumped on board right away.  

Now, Mark’s been extremely valuable to us given his business acumen and advice. So he actually accompanied Rick Pettigrew and me to Tarawa when we went in April. So he’s been a great technical advisor to the team, and then Sirisha, as I mentioned, it’s going to be great to have a Purdue engineer on the team.  

In addition to Mark, and Sirisha, and me, we have 13 others that will be on the expedition team. That’s not counting the vessel’s crew that will be supporting our efforts. But on the expedition team, we have Dr. Pettigrew, of course. We have two other veterans of Nikumaroro expeditions along with Rick, and that’s Dr. Ren LaRocca, a retired cancer surgeon who’s in Louisville. And he was on a prior trip with Rick to the island.  

We also have our medic, Aaron Arrants. Aaron is an Air Force veteran whose unit in the Air Force was actually the unit that got Marcus Luttrell out of Afghanistan. He wasn’t on that mission, but his unit was. So he’s very qualified in terms of providing the safety and medical care that we need and very practical things in terms of how we’re going to get along on the island.  

In addition, we have our two maritime archaeologists from a firm called Recon Offshore in Pensacola, Florida. We just had a great half-week visit with them down in Pensacola to do some team building and some planning. And they’ll be great. And then we have four filmmakers who are going along. We have a couple of other field assistants under the auspices of ALI. Rick’s daughter, Laura Kennedy, who’s been going on archaeological digs with him since she was two or three years old, I think. And she’ll be with Sirisha on the tech team.  

And then we have a post-doc at the University of Oregon, Philippa Jorissen, who’s an expert on South Pacific atolls from an archaeological perspective. So we really have a lot of disciplines covered, and we’re going to have a very defined fieldwork plan that we’ll have lots of time to practice on the six days it takes to get there. So pretty much every minute of the day is going to be accounted for in terms of what we’re doing.  

And in addition to those folks and important to the collaboration with Kiribati, we actually have two representatives of Kiribati on the expedition team, one of whom we actually met the first trip to Tarawa in June 2025, the curator of the national museum on Tarawa. And she is going to be a great representative. And then we have one yet to be named as of today’s date. We still are trying to figure out who the final representative from the government is going to be, although we think it will be a representative of something called the Linnix Ministry.  

And Linnix is a portmanteau standing for the Line Islands and the Phoenix Islands. The Line Islands are the easternmost group of islands that I mentioned, and the Phoenix Islands is that central island group where Niku is. Those islands together have an economic development area. And actually one of the cabinet ministers with whom we have a good relationship heads that ministry. And so we believe that the final representative will come from that organization.  

What’s the consensus of the group right now? Are people a little bit nervous? What are you all feeling?  

I think we are locked in in terms of our preparations. We have a series of working groups that meet weekly. And then every other week or so, we have an all-hands meeting. I’d say the esprit de corps is quite good right now. The positive attitude is good.  

I think one thing that’s all in the back of our mind, and this is just being realistic, is that we’re all likely to suffer some seasickness. And depending on the sea state, it could be quite rough. El Niño is happening in the Pacific, of course, so that’s one consideration that we’re going to have. But other than that, I think we’re all about business right now.  

Amelia’s story and disappearance is so captivating, not only to Boilermakers like us, but to the whole world. Why do you think that is?  

For generations, Amelia has been so much more to Purdue than just a pioneering aviator. When she came here in 1935, she had an immediate and enduring impact. President Elliott invited her here, and she jumped on the opportunity so that she could be a career counselor to women students. And I was saying in an earlier interview that I still come across people whose ancestors say having the chance to meet Amelia Earhart at Purdue changed their aunts, their grandmothers, their great grandmother’s life. And such a great impact.  

So she’s really been part of the Purdue family. And, as I said, I think we owe it to her legacy, which means so much to Purdue culture, to the Purdue spirit, to follow this evidence where it leads. When we announced that we were joining ALI on this endeavor on the anniversary of her disappearance, July 2, 2025, I learned from your colleagues at Purdue Brand Studio later that it was the single largest earned media day in Purdue history, bigger than the day that we were in the national championship game on the same day as the total solar eclipse.  

So it’s a pretty big deal. And that’s because people are still captivated by Amelia. They still are captivated by the circumstances of her disappearance. And I also think, though, that’s just because of the courageous person that she was. I’ve come to the conclusion that she had to be one of the bravest Americans who ever lived. She was always striving to break the next record, to break the next barrier, see what could be done. And, indeed, her whole mission on this attempt to fly around the world at the equator was designed to study the effects on human body, on eyesight, and so forth.  

But she was just amazing. And not only was she amazing, she inspired others to dare to do great things, and that included people at Purdue. Think about our Cradle of Astronauts, who, in many ways, stood on her shoulders in terms of what she was doing here, not only advising women students, but serving as a consultant to our aeronautical engineering program.  

There’s a great quote from a letter that I have framed in my office of her to President Roosevelt. I think it’s late 1936. And she’s talking about how her preparations are coming along. I was telling my colleague, Jack, earlier that it’s weird how these things echo through history because her talking about her preparations reminds me of what we’re currently doing in terms of our preparations.  

But she said to President Roosevelt, “The flight, by the way, has no commercial implications,” highlighting the research importance of it. She continued, “The operation of my flying laboratory is under the auspices of Purdue University. Like previous flights, I’m undertaking this one solely because I want to–” And here’s the thing. “–and because I feel that women now and then have to do things to show what women can do.” And that’s who Amelia was.  

And, by the way, this is a science project. We’re not guaranteeing that we’re going to confirm that the Taraia Object is the Electra. But even if we don’t, it will still have value because we will have ruled out the hypothesis, and we’ll add to the evidence that’s been gathered over the years. So we really view this as a Purdue thing to do, a persistent pursuit of, in this case, trying to find the answers that have eluded the world for a long time. So it’ll mean a great deal. And hope we can do right by everybody and make the Boilermaker nation proud in terms of our efforts, but maybe even bring home the real answer.  

Steve, the details of this search are incredible, but what happens if the search is successful? What will happen with the plane if the team finds it?  

Well, after we get over our shock of having solved this mystery, obviously, we’ll be very gratified and joyful. But we do have active plans– and, actually, under the direction of Dr. Pettigrew at Archaeological Legacy Institute– to return to Nikumaroro within the year to do a full-scale archaeological excavation. Now, we’d have to do that with the permission of Kiribati again. But, again, that’s already been proposed to Kiribati. So they know that would be our intent. And since they’re going to be along on the mission, they’ll be part of those conversations through their representatives on the way back to Tarawa, if, again, a successful identification is made.  

Then after that, we at Purdue have a dream of bringing it back here as an exhibit. And that would be consistent with Amelia’s wishes and those of her husband, George Putnam. That’s a long-term aspiration. And, again, that would have to be done with the blessing of Kiribati.  

Now, we’ve actually proposed this idea to them as part of our proposal, consistent with our interest in a long-term collaboration with them with their blessing. And, by the way, we’d be honored to be entrusted to be the long-term custodian of this artifact that was found in their territorial waters. But if we were able to do that, we would share the benefits– whatever those benefits would be– with Kiribati because, again, it would be in recognition of the fact that they allowed us to go there and that it was found there.  

That brings up, by the way, the technological issue of how we will actually extract it from the lagoon even after the excavation. And for that, we might need some help from the US military, but that’s a whole other set of conversations down the road. Let’s first go there and find it.  

Well, this has been incredible. I could talk to you for hours longer, but you’re busy. You’re preparing to machete through the jungle.  

Right. Got to sharpen my machete.  

Is there anything I missed that you want to touch on?  

Well, one thing that I would say, you asked about the Taraia Peninsula. And one interesting tidbit that we learned in the course of our conversations with the folks in Kiribati, sometimes– you don’t hear this a lot in Boilermaker country. But as a person from Indiana, you sometimes hear, what does the word Hoosier mean? We ask, what does Taraia mean in the Gilbertese language? And, lo and behold, depending on the interpretation that you use, it actually means– or it can be interpreted in certain phrases to mean– go look at it or, in one even more amazing translation, go find it.  

Wow.  

And so we say that’s exactly what we’re intending to do. We’re going to go look at it. Hopefully, we’re going to go find it.  

How can our listeners and viewers follow along, get any updates about this exciting time?  

Well, we will be on social media via your colleagues at Purdue Brand Studio. I’m sure they will have us up on their various channels, including Life at Purdue. And that will be both in the lead-up to our departure– by the way, I think we’re going to do another project update, which is coming up pretty quickly. And then even after we depart, I think we’ll be providing updates via Starlink and so forth while we’re on the trip. So, yeah, people can follow along, and I encourage them to do that.  

That’s right. Follow along at @LifeAtPurdue on your favorite social platform of choice.  

Thanks, Kate.  

Thank you for listening to Finding Amelia, a miniseries by This is Purdue, Purdue’s official university podcast. You can revisit your favorite episodes, share with your friends and family, and join the conversation on our social media channels at @LifeAtPurdue. And this Amelia storytelling doesn’t end here. Be on the lookout for updates on the search expedition by following us on social media and visiting amelia.prf.org.  

Finding Amelia is a miniseries by This is Purdue, Purdue’s official university podcast. It’s brought to you by Purdue Brand Studio. The podcast is hosted and produced by me, Kate Young. The creative team behind the show’s videography, design and writing, and research includes Thad Boone, Jon Garcia, Jason Doty, Cheryl Glotzbach, Ashvini Malshe, John Underwood, and Dalani Young. Social media marketing is led by Maria Welch, and our project manager is Rain Gu. You can check out purdue.edu/podcast to learn more and subscribe on your favorite podcast platform.