Photo Dated After 1940, At Least Three Years After She Vanished

Investigators for the U.K. newspaper The Daily Mail say that a photograph central to a documentary which aired Sunday on cable's The History Channel about Amelia Earhart does not show the lost aviatrix about to board a boat on the island of Jaluit in the Pacific Marshall Islands.

The photo shows a group of people on a jetty on a Pacific island. It was found in the National Archives in a Navy file by Les Kenny.

But the investigators for the paper say that the photo was taken after 1940, three years after Earhart's Lockheed Electra went down with she and navigator Fred Noonan aboard. The paper says it had access to the same photo a year ago, and it was determined that it was taken well after Earhart and Noonan vanished.

The investigator also said that the body shapes of the woman and man thought to be Earhart and Noonan do not match other photos of the pair.

Another Earhart investigator, Mike Campbell, told the paper that the people in the photograph are "absolutely" not Earhart and Noonan.

Descendants of Marshall Islanders who claim to have seen to Americans being escorted onto a Japanese Ship off the island of Milli were not allowed to off the ship when it called at Jaluit.

(Image courtesy Les Kenny / National Archives)

FMI: Original Report