Photographic Evidence Suggests She And Fred Noonan May Have Been Captured By The Japanese

Researchers have uncovered a photograph that they say suggest Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan may have survived a crash during their around-the-world attempt, been captured by the Japanese military, and remained prisoners until they died in custody on the island of Saipan.

The investigators also claim that the U.S. Government was aware of what happened to the famous aviatrix and covered it up, suggesting she may have been on an espionage mission.

The photograph will be shown as part of a documentary "Amelia Earhart: The Lost Evidence" being telecast Sunday on The History Channel. It purports to show Earhart and Noonan, along with the Lockheed Electra airplane in Japanese hands in the Marshall Islands. The photograph is central to the investigator's theory that Earhart survived the accident on July 2, 1937.

The photograph was found in a Navy file in the National Archives by Les Kinney, a former U.S. Treasury agent. Kinney says that even though the woman in the photograph among a group of people has her back to the camera, her general build, short hair, and the fact that she's caucasian lead him to conclude that it is Earhart. Noonan is the tall man standing next to her, he says.

The plane on the barge in the photograph though to be the Electra has been tested with recognition and proportional comparison technology, according to the report.

Dorothy Cochrane, curator in the Aeronautics department of the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum told Fox News that she is not aware of any evidence that Earhart was actually on a spying mission during her famous flight. She also said no definitive evidence has ever been discovered that could point to where she and Noonan actually crashed.

This, then becomes one of several theories about one of the world's most famous missing persons cases.

(Photograph courtesy of Les Kinney/U.S. National Archives)

FMI: Original Report