8. Dr. Robert Ballard long avoided the search for Amelia Earhart
Dr. Robert Ballard achieved world-wide fame when he discovered the remains of RMS Titanic in the summer of 1985. He later enhanced his credentials by locating the wreck of the German battleship Bismarck, and published findings confirming that its crew had scuttled the ship, as had long been claimed by survivors. He located the wreck of USS Yorktown, sunk in the Battle of Midway, the remains of John F. Kennedy’s PT-109 in the Solomon Islands, and several of the ships sunk during the naval battles around Guadalcanal. Less well-known were his discoveries of ancient ships dating to the late period of the Roman Empire and the Byzantine Empire.
Yet Ballard long expressed little interest in the search for Amelia Earhart’s lost Electra, for several reasons. The sheer size of the search area alone made the cost of such an expedition prohibitive. There simply was no place to start. The size of the object to be found also presented a daunting challenge, and because of World War II, numerous wrecked aircraft litter the sea bottom of the Pacific Ocean. There were many opportunities to be diverted by other submerged objects. But the revised analysis of the Bevington photograph changed that perspective. If one accepted that the image in the photograph was in fact part of an airplane, a starting point for a search for other remnants was clear.
