Even a piece of metal can get a second chance. In 1991, a group of researchers investigating the disappearance of Amelia Earhart found a sheet of aluminum on the island of Nikumaroro in the Western Pacific. Earhart’s plane, a Model 10 Electra, mysteriously vanished near the island on July 2, 1937. This piece of metal, a sheet 19 inches by 23 inches and made of the same material as Earhart’s plane, looked like it could be the first piece of the aircraft ever found.

The problem was its odd shape and size, which didn't seem to fit any part of the Electra. “We finally reached the point that we decided that it couldn’t be from Earhart’s plane,” said Richard Gillespie of The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery, which has spent 26 years and made 10 expeditions to investigate the mystery surrounding Earhart’s disappearance.

The team then looked at every other kind of plane that could’ve flown over the Pacific at that time. But, again, nothing fit.

“Earlier this year, around June, I threw up my hands,” Gillespie said. “I didn’t know what the heck this thing is.”

Amelia Earhart with her Electra. Wikipedia

Then the team noticed that in pictures taken of the Electra as it took off from Miami on June 1, 1937, the plane had a shiny patch near its tail, covering what had been a specially made window. This patch, Gillespie explained, was an improvised repair, and so was completely unique to Earhart’s plane. Could the sheet be this patch? “My first reaction was: This is a Hail Mary pass,” he said.

The team further analyzed the old photo and turned to a restored Electra to see how such a piece of metal would have been attached. After closer examination, they realized that the sheet perfectly matched in size, shape, and patterns of rivet holes. Even tears along the edges of the sheet aligned with where rivets would’ve been. “It’s like a fingerprint,” Gillespie said. The team reported their findings here.

“This is the first time we’ve ever found something we can link directly to Earhart’s aircraft,” he said. “And we’re going to treat it as a piece of her aircraft.”

This artifact makes it even more important to go back to the island and look for the rest of the plane, he added. In 2012, the team contracted Ocean Imaging Consultants, Inc. to take sonar data of the ocean floor. The images revealed a strange shape below the base of a cliff on Nikumororo—near where the metal sheet was found. No one knows for sure what the shape is, Gillespie said, but this latest finding certainly increases speculation that it’s in fact Earhart’s plane.

The strange data wasn’t noticed until after the team had already left the island. But, the investigators plan to return to the island in 2015 and search for the wreckage with divers and a remotely operated vehicle.

Conspiracy theories abound about the fate of Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan. Some say Earhart was captured by the Japanese or that she found her way back to the US and lived out her life as a New Jersey housewife, Gillespie said. His team’s hypothesis is that Earhart and Noonan were trying to find Howland Island, but after failing to do so, they landed on a reef extending out from Nikumororo, also known as Gardner Island. For days, the pair sent out distress calls from the aircraft’s radio, but the rising tides soon pushed the plane over the edge of the reef and into the ocean. The team thinks Earhart and Noonan survived for a while on the island as castaways.

The team’s research is not without critics, Gillespie admitted. Some even say he’s a con artist, he said. “If I am, then I’ve got myself fooled.”