(UN)SOLVED MYSTERY

There is a never-ending curiosity in people when confronted with an unanswered mystery.

People want to know what happened. It gives closure. And ending.

Without an ending, it leads to speculation, conspiracy theories, accusations and unprovable myths.

There have been a recent rash of stories on one of the great aircraft mysteries of the 20th century: the disappearance of famed female aviator Amelia Earhart. 

Many theories have been told about her ill-fated last trip across the Pacific Ocean. Some researchers claim that human bones have located a site on a remote Pacific atoll where  Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan, may have died on their ill-fated attempt to circumnavigate the globe in 1937.

Search dogs were taken to Nikumaroro, part of the Republic of Kiribati, as part of the latest expedition to the atoll by The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery (TIGHAR) and the National Geographic Society.

TIGHAR believes Ms Earhart managed to land on Nikumaroro - which was at the time an uninhabited British territory known as Gardner Island - but soon succumbed to hunger, thirst or illness. Evidence from this area includes parts of an aircraft hull, plexiglass from a cockpit, a zip made in Pennsylvania in the mid-1930s, a broken pocket knife of the same brand that was listed in an inventory of Ms Earhart's aircraft and the remains of a 1930s woman's compact.

This theory is allegedly supported by British colonial records in Fiji reporting the discovery of the partial skeleton of a castaway who perished shortly before the island was settled in 1938.

The TIGHAR expedition has coincided with the airing of a documentary on The History Channel in the US that claims a photo discovered in US archives proves that Earhart and Noonan were captured by the Japanese and transported to Jaluit in the Marshall Islands. The theory adds that they were both later executed. Les Kinney, a long-time proponent of the theory that  Earhart and Noonan were on a spying mission for the US government shortly before the outbreak of World War II, told the Associated Press the image shows Ms Earhart sitting on a sea wall with her back to the camera, Mr Noonan standing with a group of islanders and a Japanese survey ship identified as the Koshu towing a barge carrying the Electra.

Other researchers and government officials say they have been aware of the photo for several years but have discounted it for a number of reasons. The picture is too blurry to make any positive identification as to any subject.  TIGHAR also points out that the ship is too small to be the Koshu and that what Mr Kinney claims is the aircraft on a barge "is just an indistinct blob."

It has also been pointed out that the photograph is marked as being taken in 1940, three years after Earhart's disappearance. Recently, The Guardian reported that military history blogger Kota Yamano published the photo in its proper context, finding it after about 30 minutes of looking through Japan’s national library, on a page from a Japanese-language travel book on the South Seas. The book was published in 1935, two years before Amelia Earhart’s ill-fated plane took off, so she could not have been depicted in the History Channel story.

The Pacific islands have been an aircraft and vessel grave yard for centuries. During the war, island hopping for intelligence in military shipping lanes was a dangerous but vital activity. Because of the large scope of the Pacific Ocean, many planes had to ditch because of weather or fuel issues. Many remote islands could contain aircraft debris or human remains.

These stories are compelling because there was a famous person who went missing over the Pacific. No one truly knows what happened except for the fact that Earhart's plane did not arrive at its destination. Whether she crashed her plane or safely landed it, no one has any clear proof. Whether she survived an island plane crash is also speculation.

This is not unlike the fan speculation in LOST as to the origin story of Crazy Mother, the island guardian who "stole" Jacob and his brother from their mother when she was shipwrecked on the island. Crazy Mother killed her in order to raise her sons as future island guardians.

One fan theory was that Crazy Mother was Earhart, the long lost aviator. In the context of her plane traveling over the remote Pacific, Earhart may have had the same experience as Flight 815. She crashed on the island. She would have survived the crash like the 815ers. Her co-pilot may have succumbed to the smoke monster as it took Rousseau's crew. (It seemed that the smoke monster was more violent toward men than women.) Since time and space principles did not apply to the island, it is theorized that Earhart went back in time before the ancient Romans arrived on the island.

This would also pre-suppose that there was an island guardian before Earhart arrived in her 1937. That guardian must have also been trapped in the purgatory of guarding a timeless island from intruders. That guardian must have transferred his or her power to Earhart, making her an immortal being. But being immortal, as noted with both Jacob and MIB, has a terrible downside: the inability to live a normal life - - - being captured on an island with a limited to no purpose. You cannot even kill yourself to end the loneliness and frustration of being different.

The idea of having Earhart as an early guardian makes sense if you believe that her mental power channeled into creating later plane crashes on the island. It would have been something that she was familiar and could make survivors of a crash. She would have had to pass along this information to Jacob, as it appears he was the one who wanted and needed to have people come to the island so he could become mortal and die.

MYSTERY SOLVED

LOST, because of its labyrinth of mysteries, had led a few viewers to speculate that the island was a beacon of lost souls, from aviators to sailors. Some speculated that Crazy Mother or Eloise Hawking could have been Amelia Earhart.


Searchers have spent 26 years and made 10 expeditions to investigate the mystery surrounding Earhart’s disappearance. But the solution may have been found by a small piece of metal.  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.
The team then looked at every other kind of plane that could’ve flown over the Pacific at that time. But, again, nothing fit.

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 was an improvised repair, and so was completely unique to Earhart’s plane.

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. They believe it is a match.

 Like LOST itself, there are many theories 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 search team thinks Earhart and Noonan survived for a while on the island as castaways.

ALTERNATIVE: OTHERS

If one thing could have been improved or changed in the series, it could have been the representation and meaning of the Others.

The show's "native" people were not actually island natives. It seems that everyone on the island was brought to it by Jacob or his de facto followers. In Ben's reign, the Others were merely rebel Dharma-folk cloaked in the Others tribal costume.

A better alternative would have been to have the Others really be island natives who would naturally fight any intruder to their space.

The make-up of a lost civilization on an unchartered island would have led to more interesting conflict between the plane crash survivors and the Others.

A true small Pacific island would have limited natural resources. If suddenly 48 survivors begin to live on the island competing for food, water and shelter, the two groups would clash over resources. It is only human nature. Even a self-sufficient non-technological tribe has the will to survive against modern, technologically advanced people.

The alternative Others story would eliminate the need for scientific side arcs like the chemical weapons purge, the island's mysterious EM life force, the Hatch, the Numbers and the political diversions of the tussle between Ben and Widmore over the control of the island, and the Jacob-MIB story arc. It would be pared back to a bare knuckle survival story.

The alternative Other's leader, a king and cult figure to his people, could be as ruthless and cruel as Ben and Widmore combined. That could be represented by him wearing a child's skull as a necklace (even though it would be hard to get that past ABC's prime time censors).  You could add horror elements such as cannibalism, devil worship, tropical fever-madness and revenge warfare as concurrent themes of the natives as they push back against the invasion of Westerners.

Jack's group would be cast as a serious underdog in such a fight. Jack and the beach camp don't know the island and its resources. They are backed up against the beach without normal defenses (except one gun and six bullets). Can one man's military training and one man's delusional outback hero fantasy be enough to keep a violent native tribe at bay?

It would have been a pretty good story.

You could even capture a few of the early dropped elements of the Other's story. If there was an infection, could Jack save the natives and thereby saving his own group from genocide? If there was an issue of tribal women dying in child birth, could Jack save the babies and thereby saving the island population from fading away? Or if the island women were barren by the infection, would the Others kidnap the women and children in order to keep their genetic lines in tact (again, human nature is to reproduce another generation in order to survive)? These real tribal problems could give rise to the plots that the survivors are the solution to the island's issues - - -  from medical knowledge to breeding stock.

There would always be some faction in the beach camp that would want to attack and counterattack the Others in order to forge a place on the island. Another faction would want to seek a peaceful alternative. It is this flashpoint of opinion that could lead to drama, in-fighting and betrayal within the survivors' camp. There also could be a certain madness that would seep into those characters since they have been entitled, pampered, technology dependent individuals who have had their worlds turned inside out. Faced with a real threat by the natives, there would have been an urgency to get off the island and get rescued.

As for the filler arcs, a strong native population could have a back story of actually taking down earlier island visitors such as the U.S. Army (and worship the Jughead bomb as a iconic god) to a bizarre twist that one of the mother elders of the tribe who speaks English is none other than Amelia Earhart.

As a group, the Others were underwhelming in the original series. It was organized more like a street thug crew than as a cohesive group. It could have been used as a more dangerous adversary than as Ben's criminal followers.

EARHART

A 1937 Miami Herald photograph may have solved one of the world's greatest aviation mysteries.

The picture, snapped right before Earhart made her ill-fated second attempt to fly around the world, shows a patch of aluminum bolted onto Earhart’s plane that appears to match a piece of aluminum discovered by investigators on a remote Pacific Island in 1991, the Herald reports.

The metal plate, which experts assumed was used to cover a broken window, does not appear in any other known photos of Earhart’s plane, according to the report.

The photo adds another twist to the controversy surrounding Earhart’s death. The aviation pioneer disappeared somewhere over the Pacific Ocean in 1937 during her second attempt to circumnavigate the globe by air.

Dozens of theories about the nature of Earhart’s death have sprung up over the years. It remains one of the most debated unsolved mysteries in America even today.

In Miami in 1937, the press gathered to see Earhart and her navigator Fred Noonan embark on their flight around the world. Earhart’s plane had been undergoing repairs in Miami for a week before its departure. Ric Gillespie, a prominent Earhart investigator, believes that these repairs included the patching over of a broken rear window with an aluminum plate. The window had been specially installed so Noonan could navigate via the sun and stars but may have sustained damage during Earhart’s rough landing in Miami.

Gillespie, a prominent Earhart investigator, is convinced he and his team discovered the same aluminum plate on the tiny Gardner Island in the Pacific in 1991. Upon the plate’s initial discovery, forensic analysis revealed it was made from a type of aluminum that was commonly used in the manufacturing of American airplanes during the 1930s.

Despite this evidence, the case remained open when further investigation showed the rivet patterns on the scrap did not match those on the metal used to make Earhart’s plane.

However, the Herald photo suggests the plate was not part of the plane’s original structure, but an add-on installed shortly before Earhart’s departure from Miami. If this piece of metal is in fact the same one Ric Gillespie and his team discovered, it would debunk the popular theory that Earhart simply crashed and sank into the Pacific Ocean, suggesting instead that she died after crash-landing on Gardner Island and finding herself stranded.

“The replacement of that window had to be done in Miami, at a Pan Am facility that was helping Earhart,” Gillespie told the Herald. “They may have used different materials than Lockheed ... If we can match that rivet pattern in the photo, I don’t see how anybody can argue against this anymore.”

During LOST's TV run, there were a few fans who speculated that Earhart would turn up on the island in a major plot twist. Some thought that Ben's school friend, Annie, could have been Earhart's granddaughter. One could speculate that Eloise could be Earhart since she knew how to navigate and find the mysterious island.

Despite all the investigations, no one ever found identifiable crash wreckage of Earhart's plane, or any remains of the crew. This leads to the remote possibility that the crew survived a landing on the water or on land. But as the world is currently aware, the oceans are vast places where planes can disappear without a trace.

An Earhart story line could have been used to try to tie the knotted story lines about the island's past into some sort of relevant perspective.