KERHONKSON — The fate of Amelia Earhart is the last great mystery of aviation history.
Millions of dollars have been spent trying to find what remains of the plane in which she had hoped to circumnavigate the world — the plane that crashed somewhere near Howland Island in the Central Pacific Ocean 75 years ago.
And now, an Accord man has developed a tool that might enable intrepid armchair aviators to find an answer to that mystery themselves.
Jonathan Blair is a former National Geographic photographer who was aboard one of those million-dollar "search for Amelia" missions about 10 years ago.
Blair caught the Amelia bug. He read all the books written about the search — what he now laughingly calls his collection of "we didn't find her" books.
His reading and research led him to conclude there was "something goofy" about all the efforts to locate the wreckage of Earhart's Lockheed Electra L10E "Special," the plane in which she and navigator Fred Noonan crashed in July 1937.
"Everybody was looking in the same place, and no one had found her," Blair said.
What if, Blair wondered, instead of booking passage on one of those search efforts (typical fare: $50,000), he could instead book passage on a virtual duplicate of Earhart's plane?
Why couldn't he duplicate her flight path and make his own investigation?
Read all of Jeremiah Horrigan’s story, Accord man explores air mystery, at the Times Herald-Record.
Photo by Steve Borland.
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