1. The island is on the navigational line Earhart said she was
following in the last in-flight radio transmission heard by the Coast
Guard cutter Itasca.
2. Dozens of radio distress calls thought to be sent from the
missing plane were heard for three nights following the disappearance.
3. The plane’s manufacturer, Lockheed, confirmed that radio calls
could only be sent if the aircraft was on land.
4. Directional bearings taken by Pan American Airways stations
indicated that the distress calls were coming from the vicinity of
Gardner Island.
5. One week after the disappearance, three airplanes launched from
the battleship USS Colorado flew over Gardner Island. The flight leader
saw “signs of recent habitation” but did not know that the atoll had
been uninhabited since 1892. No search party was put ashore.
6. In 1940, a British Colonial Service officer found the skeletal
remains of a female castaway at a makeshift campsite on a remote part of
the island. The bones were later lost or misplaced, but measurements
taken in 1941 were evaluated in 1998 by forensic anthropologists using
current forensic databases. The results indicate that the bones belonged
to a tall white female of northern European ancestry.
