Er Earhart gåten nærmere løsning?

Photo may be key to finding what happened to aviator Amelia Earhart

By Brad Lendon, CNN

March 20, 2012 -- Updated 1747 GMT (0147 HKT)

(CNN) -- Investigators think they've uncovered a key clue that will lead them to solve the mystery of what happened to legendary aviator Amelia Earhart, who disappeared on a trans-Pacific flight 75 years ago.

Ric Gillespie, executive director of The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery, said a new enhanced analysis of a photo taken on the Pacific atoll of Nikumaroro, formerly Gardner Island, three months after Earhart and navigator Fred Noonan disappeared may show the landing gear of her Lockheed Electra protruding from a reef.

"We found some really fascinating and compelling evidence," Gillespie said at a news conference in Washington on Tuesday. "Finding the airplane would be the thing that would make it conclusive."

Gillespie said the photo was taken by a British survey team in October 1937 and had been seen by Earhart researchers many times. But investigators took a new look at it in 2010 and, when their suspicions were triggered, had the photo checked by U.S. State Department experts. In a blind review, they determined the component in the picture is the landing gear of a Lockheed Electra.

"This is where the airplane went into the drink," Gillespie said.

On July 2, 75 years to the day after Earhart was last heard from, Gillespie will depart Honolulu on a University of Hawaii research vessel to try to find that plane in the deep waters off a flat reef on Nikumaroro.

Bildet viser Amelia Earhart sammen med Bernt Balchen. Foto: Wikipedia