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The photo that could answer the 80-year-old Amelia Earhart mystery

Investigators claim a recently discovered photograph may hold the answer to the 80-year-old mystery surrounding the disappearance of pioneering aviator Amelia Earhart.

Earhart was on her way to becoming the first female pilot to circumnavigate the globe when she and navigator Fred Noonan took off from New Guinea in a Lockheed Electra twin-engine airplane on July 2, 1937.

The pair were never seen again and their fate has been the subject of numerous theories throughout the intervening years.

Experts working on the upcoming History Channel documentary Amelia Earhart: The Lost Evidence now say Earhart survived her epic flight, only to be captured by Japanese military.

A photograph discovered in a National Archives file by former US treasury agent Les Kinney purportedly shows Earhart and Noonan alive on a dock after their plane was originally believed to have run out of fuel and crashed in the Pacific.

A Japanese ship can be seen in the background carrying what appears to be Earhart’s plane.

https://twitter.com/HISTORY/status/882600212103139328

Former FBI executive assistant director Shawn Henry has backed up the theory that the aviators survived a crash-landing in the Marshall Islands and were held prisoner by the Japanese on the island of Saipan until their deaths.

“This absolutely changes history,” Henry told People, adding that the Japanese government possibly thought Earhart and Noonan were American spies.

amelia earhart and fred noonan

Earhart and Noonan before their crossing of the Pacific in 1937. Photo: Getty

The photo, which Kinney believes must have been taken before 1943, shows a ship towing a barge with an airplane on the back with several people on a nearby dock. 

“I can say with more than 99.7 percent confidence that the photo is authentic and untouched,” digital forensic analyst Doug Carner was quoted as saying by People.

amelia earhart

Earhart was thought to have crashed in the Pacific. Photo: Getty

Facial recognition expert Kent Gibson, who compared known images of Noonan and Earhart with the individuals photographed on the dock, said he believed was “likely” they were the two lost aviators.

“There’s nothing that points me in another direction,” according to Gibson, who said the woman in the photograph had the “same prominent, athletic shoulders as Amelia” and the same “short, bobbed hair.”

They both recognised the ship in the photo as Koshu Maru, a Japanese military vessel said to have captured the duo after their crash.

This Japanese military theory has been in discussion since the 1960s, and is backed by witnesses who apparently saw their aircraft land and saw the two in Japanese custody.

Watch a preview of the documentary:

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