Josh Gates Investigates Amelia Earhart ✈️ | Expedition Unknown

1937. Amelia Heheart is arguably the most famous woman in America. A pioneer in the field of aviation and a living legend.
On July 2nd, Hehheart and her navigator Fred Nunan are set to make history as they begin one of the last legs of their daring transworld flight. They take off from an airfield in Lelay Papa New Guinea, bound for remote Howland Island in the Pacific. Along the way, Hehheart, her navigator, and the famed Lockheed Electra vanish.
In the last 75 years, there have been countless dead ends, false leads, and wild conspiracy theories, but no answers. Well, all that may be about to change because recent developments in two different parts of the world may finally crack the case.
I’m in Papa New Guinea investigating the theory that famed pilot Amelia Heheart could have crashlanded here. One of the villagers has new information that a fellow tribe to the north has found a wreck in the jungle that could be her missing aircraft.
>> He says that if you want to get more information to head down to Robal and then uh check the people up in the tribes out there and go for the search.
>> Get to Robal.
>> Yeah. [screaming] >> Earthquake.
be aggressive.
>> Oh, watch out.
>> Oh. Oh.
>> Holy.
>> That was insane.
>> It happens a lot. It happens a lot.
Yeah, >> I [laughter] was like the whole planet just went like this.
>> Massive earthquake during an interview.
Check. I made it through unscathed and so [music] did the rest of the village.
even the pigs. Life goes on and so does my search for Airheart.
I’m at a local market to meet with an aviation expert who can take me to the jungle wreck found by the Baining Tribe.
While I wait for him to arrive, I have time to sample PNG’s favorite addiction.
Buy is a seemingly random recipe of beetle nut, mustard stick, and lime.
The ingredients are combined and chewed, producing torrential amounts of bright red saliva.
>> One more.
>> No, that’s enough.
>> It is definitely not recommended by the American Dental Association. And for the uninitiated, the chemical combination can be a little intense.
Starting to feel a little dizzy.
>> Where all these people come from?
Okay, I’m just gonna I’m good. Let’s go.
Finally feeling less dizzy, I’m ready to meet up with historian Rob Rowensson. As an aircraft expert with the organization Pacific Rex, Rob lives here and speaks Papo in dialects, making him a critical intermediary between outside investigators and the remote tribe that claims to have found a downed plane in the jungle.
>> We’ve had someone report say there was an engine there in some parts of of an airplane. Of course, you get these reports and then you have to go there yourself and and try and determine what sort of airplane it was.
>> Yeah. What’s the road like out to this village?
>> It’s rough. You need vehicles that can handle those sort of conditions. I do know of a vehicle that might help you out.
>> Okay.
>> Once airborne, we loft up over the island of New Britain and head toward the unknown.
The helicopter will fly us 40 m inland to the remote village of Vuna Lama.
Below us are some of the wildest and least explored jungles on Earth.
>> Rob, there’s supposed to be a village at these coordinates. Yes, >> I’m not seeing guns right now. We’ll find out when we get on the ground.
>> I’m genuinely concerned here since landing in the wrong trib’s territory could be a fatal mistake.
>> Good. We’re down.
>> My cameraman leaps out first to film the landing. And before I can unhook my harness, he realizes that we’ve got company.
over there. Angry looking, bro. They’re here to meet us. Look >> over there on the other side.
>> With my helicopter pilot not sticking around to see how this turns out. We’re on our own.
>> Wait, wait, wait, wait. Hey.
>> How are you? Fine.
>> All right.
>> Nice to meet you. What’s your name?
>> Uh, Bill.
>> Bill?
>> Yes.
>> You don’t look like a Bill. [laughter] Nice to meet you.
>> Hello.
>> Hello.
>> What’s your name?
>> Clement.
>> Clement. Nice to meet you. Do you have a place we can get out of the rain?
>> Yeah. Some place to with cover.
>> You may go along place in rain to stop.
>> Okay, great. Let’s go. It turns out that Bill and Clement are more likely to offer me tea than the pointy end of their spears. Evan, I found a umbrella for your camera. I mean, what kind of land of the lost leaf is this? Here you go. Stay dry.
We heard these stories [music] that your tribe has found wreckage in the in the jungles.
>> Yeah, there’s some wreckage in the bush.
>> They don’t know who who it came from.
>> Is the wreckage definitely from an airplane?
>> It’s from a plane.
>> It’s from a plane.
>> From a plane.
>> How far is the wreckage from the village?
>> He says the wreckage is close by. Yeah.
>> And could we have permission to go and to look at the wreckage? Can you guide us and show us where it is?
>> No.
people who know exactly where it is.
They will guide us.
>> Terrific.
>> Yeah, let’s do it.
>> Okay, come on.
>> Okay. Okay.
>> Oh, that’s a piece of wreckage for sure.
Look at this. Rob, come here.
>> It’s an airplane engine. Yeah.
>> Oh, definitely an airplane engine. Yeah.
>> Can you tell if it’s a Prattton Whitney or not?
>> Well, I can’t. That’s the problem. I wish we had a propeller or something like that, cuz on propellers you have dates on them. Someone’s taking a lot of the stuff away from here. Although Rabal is littered with wrecks, Airheart’s plane has features that distinguish it from most World War II aircraft. It was designed with a unique twin tail, unpainted aluminum body, and was [music] packed with a dozen fuel tanks in the fuselage and wings to feed the twin Prattton Whitney Wasp engines on her long flight.
>> So, we can’t really tell if it’s a Prattton Whitney or not, >> maybe because we can’t find any identifying marks on it.
>> Right.
>> There’s got to be something we’re missing.
>> I’ve just realized something. This is the undercarriage leg of a dual leg undercarriage. The undercarriage on an Electra is a single olio leg with a wishbone on the bottom [music] and the wheel between them.
>> Forks over the wheel.
>> That’s right. Forks over the wheel. It indicates to me a a much heavier aircraft.
>> This wreck has two full struts on each side of the wheels. But Airheart’s Lockheed Electra had a single strut for each wheel with a wishbone that wrapped around the tire. A subtle but damning piece of evidence.
>> My opinion is at present it’s not an Electra.
By the light of a new day, we leave the jungle behind and head back to Rabal.
The wreck may or may not be the same one that the Australians found in 1945.
Either way, we know that it isn’t Hehart’s plane.
But this isn’t the only developing lead here in PNG. Locals believe that unidentified underwater wreckage off the coast of Grabal may in fact be the missing Electra. After grabbing a set of wheels, I’m rumbling my way over to where Rabal used to be. Back on the ground, headed over to old Rabbal, or what’s left of it. That is an active volcano named Vulcan.
Still active, very much alive, very dangerous. This is one of two very pissed-off looking volcanoes that loom over Rabal. But its twin brother, Tarvore, is the one to keep an eye on.
In 1937, an eruption killed more than 500 people. And less than a month before my arrival, it decided to wake up again.
Oh jeez.
As I approached the crater and the coordinates of old Rabal, it might seem like I’m in the wrong spot, but the town is here. I’m [music] just driving on top of it.
Peeking up from the ash are the ghostly remains of an entire city destroyed by the volcanoes in 1994.
Motel, nightclubs, banks, entire city streets gone.
It’s a little unnerving to think that this volcano could erupt again at any moment. Well, nobody said that looking for Hehheart was going to be easy or safe, [music] but I’m pressing on. I’m in Papa New Guinea using Sidescan sonar equipment to scan Rabal Harbor for Amelia Heheart’s missing plane. And we just got a major hit. OH, ROD, I GOT A PLANE. ROD, I GOT A PLANE FOR SURE. COME HERE. Look at that. That’s a plane right >> now. That is definitely a plane.
>> Great.
That’s amazing.
>> One wing is buried in the sand >> or missing.
>> Or missing. We’ll put the anchor down.
>> Let’s do it.
That’s a plane. Let’s get wet.
>> Okay, we’re heading down the line.
>> Based on the sonar reading, there could be a wreck scattered beneath the boat.
And we descend into the murky depths to investigate.
>> Coming up on almost 60 ft down here.
Pretty murky conditions. Visibility is not very good.
Definitely see something. Seeing something in the darkness there.
Definitely a shape.
Definitely an airplane. Look at that.
Unbelievable.
>> This plane looks like it’s in pretty bad shape.
>> Yeah.
>> Rod and I scour the wreck to look for any identifying markers, but the plane is badly mangled.
>> What type of aircraft do you think we’re looking at here? Is the touch condition on top?
>> The cockpit on the Electra had a wide field of view, but short narrow windows.
The cockpit area here looks like a much more open design.
>> Let’s get around to the front here and see if we can get into the cockpit area at all.
>> A scenario. Looks like an American plane. Single engine or twin? It’s hard to tell.
>> I would have it against single engine.
Based on the configuration, Rod believes that this is a Grumman TBF Avenger, an Allied torpedo bomber that proved indispensable in defeating the Japanese.
>> This is where the cocky should be, but it’s just about covered over. Going to assist this lightly, trying not to disturb anything too much in here. See if we can see anything very dark in here.
I think we have human remains here. We have a bone down here. Looks like there may be human remains in the cockpit still.
>> Shockingly, it appears the threeperson crew are still trapped in the cockpit.
>> That certainly remains. Certainly.
How many crew would have been aboard this type of plane, do you think?
>> If it was a TDN, TDF, it would be three.
>> Want to leave this and tag it for for further analysis. Certainly don’t want to disturb what’s in here.
Yep, let’s do that.
Let’s make our way back to the surface and uh continue from there.
[music] >> The plane and the soldiers inside are likely either from New Zealand or the United States. Even [music] though this isn’t the Electra, it’s a major find since Rod and his team can now begin the important work of identifying the servicemen who died here and having these heroes repatriated at home.
Perhaps in time, this will bring closure to someone searching for these missing pilots.
There’s another breaking lead in the case, one that’s so compelling it has recently captured worldwide attention.
There’s stunning new evidence to suggest that once Hehart failed to locate Howland Island, she headed someplace much closer than PNG, just 400 m south of her target, crash landing on the uninhabited island of Nicaro.
An aviation research and recovery organization has recently claimed that a piece of aluminum found on the atole is in fact a custom-made patch that had installed on the Electra during her Transworld flight.
An older clue makes this new evidence even more compelling. In 1940, a British officer discovered 13 human bones on Nicaro. He packed the partial skeleton into a box and took it back to Fiji for analysis. The bones were sent to the School of Medicine and given only a cursory examination before they disappeared somewhere in the island’s archives. It’s a fascinating lead, but the question remains, what became of the bones, [music] I touch down in the Fijian capital of Suva, a bustling and cosmopolitan town with a laid-back island charm. There’s nothing more I’d rather do than sip some rum on the beach and set my watch to island time. But I’m here on business.
The box of bones John Gray found under his house could be the pivotal clue that solves this tragic mystery.
>> So you were about how old when this happened?
>> 13.
>> And so 13-year-old boy, you find human bones under your house. How did you come to be digging under your house?
>> Me and my cousins decided that we needed to go and check the place out.
And I crawled under this house and looked and lo and behold, there was this box under there. As we took off part of the covering, um, we saw this roundish, whitish brownish thing.
And then having pulled it out and seen what was the skull, uh, it freaked me out.
>> Yeah. And it’s buried under your house.
>> Absolutely.
>> I mean, this is like the this is like poltergeist. This is this is like a horror movie.
>> Yeah. And then what became of the box and the bones?
>> It was all given to the Fiji Museum.
>> I just really didn’t want to have anything to do with that skull again.
>> So, um, it never ever came back into into my life until um, I read this thing about Amelia Earhart. [snorts] >> Something clicked in my mind to say, John, [music] that skull that you had is perhaps that >> the museum says they don’t have them. Do you think they may have been lost in the archives or thrown out? more lost in the archive.
>> Yeah.
>> Unfortunately, the Fiji Museum has no record of the box or the bones. So, there’s only one other place to look.
Was the rest of that crawl space under the house thoroughly explored?
>> No, not at all.
>> Really?
>> Never. Even if I did want to, I couldn’t cuz someone someone else owned it.
>> Now though, it is a possibility.
>> The current owner is amanable to us going in there and and excavating if we need to.
>> And you do think it’s possible there could be other material remains under the house.
>> Absolutely. You do?
>> Absolutely.
>> The police never searched the crawl space after Jon made his discovery, which leaves the possibility that there is still evidence hidden in the dirt.
She needs [music] closure. Amelia needs closure.
Hold on. Let me see what’s down here.
>> I’m in Fiji searching underneath a home for bones that some believe may be the remains of Amelia Heheart. After a bit of digging, I may have found something.
This does not look like coral to me.
This looks a lot like bone.
I got a bone down here for sure. A big piece of bone. I don’t know if it’s human or not, but this is definitely bone.
>> Wow.
>> That is a bone. I mean, that looks like a human bone to me.
>> Another one. Part of a vertebrae.
>> My goodness.
>> More.
In a million years, I didn’t think I was going to actually find bones under this house, but I’m looking at a handful of them right here, and I’m just barely scratching the surface.
>> Amazing.
>> There’s more down here. There’s more down here.
>> I mean, there’s a skeleton down here.
There’s a There’s bits of bone all over the place down here.
More bones.
>> I mean, what is that from?
>> I It’s everywhere I look. I mean, I’m I’m putting the skeleton together down here. It might be time to call the police department to come over here and take a look cuz a couple of them could be human. I don’t know.
All right, I’m coming out.
Oh my goodness.
Well, there’s more under the house, John. Vertebrae. This obviously this could be a chicken bone, something much smaller. This could be a cowbone. But this, I mean, things like this, I don’t know. That could be human.
We assume that what was in the box was all that there was. And for a 13year-old kid, you never want to go back in to find out if there’s anything else.
>> We don’t need any cameras at the moment.
Okay. No cameras. Okay.
The next morning, I returned [music] to the scene of the crime only to find the Fiji CSI unit crawling under the house.
Hazmat suits.
Why didn’t I think of that?
The police tape and I’m told that analysis and DNA testing could take months. However, the lab has already confirmed that at least one of the bones is human.
A revelation that turns out to be front page news.