Hypothesis #1: Amelia Earhart Perished on a Lonely Pacific Island. Hypothesis #2: Amelia Earhart Lies at the Bottom of the Ocean. Hypothesis #3:Who Cares? We're Having a Helluva Good Time Not Finding Her!

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Outside Magazine January 2002

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Hypothesis #1: Amelia Earhart Perished on a Lonely Pacific Island. Hypothesis #2: Amelia Earhart Lies at the Bottom of the Ocean. Hypothesis #3:Who Cares? We're Having a Helluva Good Time Not Finding Her!
A peek inside the dog-eat-dog world of archaeological sleuths, historic aircraft buffs, and serial entrepreneurs trying to solve the mystery of what happened to one of the greatest aviators of the 20th century

By Stephen Titus

Mike Kammerer piloted his black Mercedes SL600 convertible at 70 miles per hour down New Mexico Highway 599—dodging cars, barely slowing into a left turn past a cadre of state police distracted by an accident nearby—and powered the $130,000 driving machine through the Santa Fe Airport parking lot and straight onto the tarmac, stopping just under the wing of his 1935 Lockheed Electra 10-E. As I pulled in behind him, Kammerer, a youthful 61-year-old with a bushy head of white hair and the perpetually sunburned features of a ranch hand, stepped spryly out of his ride and bolted over to introduce himself. He was wearing a pressed and polished cowboy getup with a shield-size belt buckle, a denim shirt, and a black hat that looked big enough to lift his skinny five-foot-eleven-inch frame clear off the ground if a stiff wind kicked up.

"So, whaddaya think?" he asked as we shook hands. I wasn't sure if he meant the car, his outfit, or the plane.

"Go ahead, stick your head inside," he said, clearing up the matter by wrestling open the door to the legendary aircraft, one of only two existing models of the plane Amelia Earhart used in her tragically foreshortened attempt in 1937 to become the first woman to circle the globe. Last July, Kammerer paid the previous owner, Linda Finch, $1 million for the plane only an hour after he first laid eyes on it, gleefully beating out the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum for this rare prize. Finch had spent four years meticulously restoring it before completing her own successful circumnavigation of the world in 1997, roughly following Earhart's planned route.

A few weeks after buying the Electra 10-E, Kammerer spent another $300,000 on a 1943 PBY Catalina—a lumbering floatplane similar to models the U.S. Navy used to search the Pacific for Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan, after they failed to arrive at Howland Island, the refueling stop they were aiming for just a few miles north of the equator. (By that point they had completed roughly two-thirds of their journey, flying east and connecting the dots from California through South America, Africa, India, and Indonesia before disappearing.)

"I now have two historic planes in my possession that are part of the Amelia Earhart legacy—as investments," Kammerer boasted. "For what, I don't know."

That's the problem. The $1.3 million Kammerer invested was piled on top of $300,000 he shelled out in October 2000 for the media rights to a September 2001 expedition to a tiny, foot-shaped atoll in the middle of the Pacific, led by The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery, or TIGHAR. Why? Because TIGHAR—a Wilmington, Delaware-based nonprofit made up of professional aviation historians, archaeologists, forensic anthropologists, and hobbyists who have volunteered their time to uncover a slew of World War II and other vintage aircraft—thinks the island may be the last resting place of the most famous lost pilot in history. Along with the media rights, Kammerer also secured the promotional rights to any shred of archaeological flotsam uncovered by TIGHAR. To date, that collection includes about 200 artifacts found on previous search missions, including the moldering fragments of an old shoe. Once, that shoe may have been attached to Amelia Earhart's foot. Or maybe not. It's hard to say.

If all of this sounds expensive at worst and speculative at best, it is. But Kammerer is dripping money made on speculation. Independent Television Network, the New York-based company he founded in 1983, has earned him millions over the years by buying blocks of time on television, repackaging it, and then reselling it to advertisers. In 1991 he turned daily operations over to a partner and skipped town for life on the range out West. This doesn't mean he's forgotten how to sell something. Speculation is exactly what he wants. Using hyperbole and good old Barnumesque razzmatazz, Kammerer is building his own El Dorado in the form of a missing airplane and its famous pilot. Which is to say, in his mind, finding Amelia Earhart's plane is secondary to manufacturing an adventure on the back of a 65-year-old mystery. No matter who finds it, Kammerer intends to be there when it happens—media rights in hand, ready to sell. That is, if he can get anyone to stay tuned.

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