Come on...spades a go go!
There is another discrepancy to the TIGHAR hypothesis (other than the Gallagher Paradox) in that, by the same logic as you (Charlie Chisholm) pointed out, that there would have been a sign for planes since she was intelligent, distressed by having been not seen and, a herself pilot..... by similar logic, thinking about how she must have felt, as she faded off this mortal coil, there is something else missing.
She was world famous and dying. She was leaving behind a husband and millions of fans. What person like her, alone in that situation would not leave a message? So where is the message? Someone asked about carvings in the trees (and that is a good start) but if she had a pen knife, or some rouge, and some plexiglass, i.e. effectively a pen and piece of paper, then she would have left a message. Surely....If I understand her feelings at all then, I would say: no message, no Amelia. So okay, the message has not been found yet.
But it seems it has. There is her very characteristic "E" initial next to a hole. Next to a hole. Say it slowly. Amelia's "E," next, to, a hole.
I am of the opinion that one hole in the ground looks very much like another so the fact that it resembles the coconut tree holes doesn't make it any less dig worthy.
Spaaaade!
The only other thing I can think of without going there is, if it was Earhart's E, then there would have been a depression in the center of the upper part of that so called "G," somewhere in the area marked in red below, since the upper area would be the top too prongs of the E smudged together. If there was a depression in that area of the "G" (!), I don't think that I need a spade.
Was there a depression?
Thank you very much for the better, clear picture of the ARROW (T!!) with the track joining it to the "A".
I went for a bicycle ride and had a thought about this. Maybe on another thread I will write about the "madness" that makes us interested in finding Amelia Earhart but in brief, as Ric has said, we do it because it is a wonderful, wonderfully romantic story. I am not going to be able to go there, so there is nothing in it for me but the story is beautiful and there are two things that, while riding my bike, it occurred to me to add.
1) First of all it is entirely appropriate that Amelia should have used this symbol.
Amelia was famous. She flew planes, and then gave talks about flying planes. She did it over and over again. She was a pilot pop star, and perhaps, in the immortal words of Lady Gaga, a
fame monster. She loved her fans. She loved being loved. But of course, not everyone in the world loved her. She was intelligent enough to know that many people in the world would not know her from Adam. She was intelligent enough to know that a few South Sea Islanders (if that is the right term) might know her so little, love her so less, that they might put her bones in a bag and throw the them overboard into the sea, in case those bones brought bad luck.
When she wrote her "E," she knew that it was too small for any plane to see. It was a message to someone to find. Obviously if anyone came when she was still alive she'd be able to given her message first hand, so her "E" and anything buried beside or beneath it, was message to someone that would come after she is dead, a last will and testament, a legacy, a kind of lover letter.
It was not as if she was burying treasure. She had no gold bars. Far from it. She may at best have had a piece of paper in a bottle. Or a piece of scratched plexiglass. Now, had she left a big "X" or even a recognisable letter, then there would be a good, or better, chance that someone digs up said bottle or plexiglass and thinks "Damn no treasure," "What is this message saying 'Dear George, I love you, I am sorry about Fred...'" Their reaction would be, "splash", as they throw the message into the lagoon. The thing about last wills and testaments, about any messages that people send knowingly into the abyss into the absence, into the impossibility of a response, is that they send them in the hope that the message reaches someone that loves them.
That is beauty of Amelia's "E". I like to think that it was sent to those that love her. Not to some Kiribati fisherman that might happen to walk past, but someone who came searching for her. In my film script, in the story I see in my mind, as she piled up hundreds of white coral pieces in the shape of her "E," she was intelligent enough, famous enough, and
beautiful enough to know that one day, there would be someone who would come searching, and see her sign, and say, "Yes! That is Amelia!" And it was to people like that, people like us, that she sent her message. She knew we would not throw her message away.
If so, isn't that a beautiful story?
I think that one of the reasons she is so beautiful is because she had slight
exotropia (non convergent strabismus).
2) This is just waffle but...The "Gallagher Paradox" preys on my mind.
If there really was a plane wreck in the bay, then why wasn't Gallagher sure that he had found AE? If there were two sets of bones, one a man's another a woman's (as in the Kilts version of events) then why wasn't he 200% percent sure. And what happened to the other, Kilts narrated, set of bones? A possibility occurs to me that, perhaps Gallagher did know of the plane in the bay. Perhaps he did find two sets of bones. Perhaps he did dig around the A site to find evidence -- what is up with digging up trees over there anyway? Weird. And perhaps, bearing in mind that this was only a few years after the disappearance, he wanted the glory. Was there a reward? Did he write less than he knew in his correspondence up the chain of command? Did he dig up whatever hand been left there? Did the Kiribati folk bury what he had found? The possibilities are endless.