Gary seems correct. The life raft was thought to be aboard by Putnam. It was thought to be aboard by the navy, we have newsreels showing Amelia with the Life raft.
On the other hand we have speculation it was left behind when packing "non essential" supplies.
The weight of the evidence is she had a life raft. I will accept Her Husband's word.
Why it wasn't seen on Niku a week after the landing is a hurdle for the landing on Niku theory. It is incredulous to me the plane vanishing by a storm within a week. First you need a storm, then you need Fred and Amelia just watching it slip away without wrecking into the reef trough or beach at full power. It is also hard to believe they did not pull off necessary supplies like a life raft.
Then to take it one further leap, we have to say the rescuers missed a yellow life raft, or saw it and just said to themselves, "a life raft, nah means nothing, lets get out of here, onto to the next island", while by major coincidence Amelia was off hiking concealed in the brush at the same time.
Wow, the castaways were having some bad luck that week.
Mark is also correct, there is a long list of items that should have been aboard the electra that have not been found. Items the occupants had plenty of time to remove.Suitcase, water bottles, fuel cans(lots of them),clothing identified by photographs such as leather jacket fragments, Freds clothing, hair, Her teeth, Freds teeth, instruments for navigation, Papers and charts, emergency supplies like first aid kits, the life raft, flare gun, flares, toolbox, and probably a lot more I haven't thought of. Still a bare bones flight, but still a lot that should have been on that island at some point.
So none of that was found. But an outdated jar of ointment was found and assigned evidence value as a personal item of freckle cream. Now we have a report from Amelia listing in the smallest detail what she carried as far as personal items, down to her toothbrush, and guess what? No freckle cream mentioned.
Still some insist a WWI cream jar was a personal artifact of AE?
John Desling summed it up nicely, two decades later, no plane, no wings, no engines, no identifiable supplies, or personal items like clothing, or teeth and bones.
Just a cream jar which would have held some very old cream by 1937 if it was Earharts. And even that scant evidence is not supported by Amelias own testimony she carried no personal items like cosmetics. Only a toothbrush for hygiene.
It seems to me, that if Amelia was there, man or nature has swept clean any items that could be reasonably associated to Earhart. Or she was never there. I remember a 2001 Dr.King interview where he was asked at what point searching should end. He laughed and said basically when the money runs out, then got serious and said yes at some point the land has yielded all it will basically and it is past the point of diminishing returns.
I would suggest Tighar is at that point if all that has been found is what has been presented. Unless a storm uncovers new beachfront evidence, like a wing, then perhaps all resources spent should be underwater.