Could it be a clue  the clue  to what happened when Earhart and her navigator Fred Noonan vanished somewhere over the trackless Pacific Ocean three months later? Ric Gillespie, a prominent Earhart investigator, believes that these repairs included the patching over of a broken rear window with an aluminum plate. And he hopes that modern computer enhancements of that part of the photo will link it to a piece of possible airplane wreckage discovered a quarter century ago on a tiny Pacific island in the area where Earhart disappeared. 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. Her landing on May 24, 1937 was rough and she stayed in Miami for a week while the plane underwent repairs. One of them, it appears, was the removal of a specially installed window in the rear of the airplane that navigator Noonan used to take sightings on the sun and stars, the method by which pilots found their way over unmapped oceans, jungles and desert in the days before radar and GPS. 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. In 1991, TIGHAR’s second expedition to Nikumaroro discovered a damaged piece of aluminum sheet lying among the vegetation and flotsam from a severe storm that had hit the island since our initial visit two years earlier. But as they poked through the rubble, investigators found a fascinating piece of junk: A scrap of aluminum, 19 inches wide by 23 inches long, with four precisely measured rows of rivet holes. The scrap is made from a substance Alcoa Aluminum called 24ST Alclad, which was used in the manufacture of nearly all American planes manufactured in the 1930s  including Earharts Lockheed Electra. “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 dont see how anybody can argue against this any more. 
 
 In fact, it seems certain that they will argue. It remains one of the most debated unsolved mysteries in America even today.
– Attention, Amelia Earhart buffs. The Miami Herald has an intriguing report about how a long-forgotten photo snapped before takeoff could prove that she crash-landed on a Pacific island. The photo, taken on a runway in Miami in 1937, shows a shiny rectangular patch on the side of the plane that suggests a recent repair—a potential clue not visible in any other photos taken of her plane that day. Earhart investigator and TIGHAR Director Ric Gillespie hopes that computer analysis of the image will reveal a rivet pattern that matches up with a piece of aluminum found on the island of Nikumaroro in 1991. In fact, it was Gillespie's search team that found the 23-inch-long piece, which it dubbed Artifact 2-2-V-1, years ago, and he viewed it as a major breakthrough in solving the mystery of where the plane went down. (TIGHAR released a research bulletin on the artifact in May.) But critics soon pounced, pointing out that its rivet patterns didn't match those on Earhart's Lockheed plane. If, however, the scrap had been added in a last-minute, unrecorded repair, that could explain it. The Herald report also notes that Earhart had a rough landing in Miami, and she apparently had to patch a broken rear window as a result. The window can be seen in photos from an earlier leg of the trip, but in its place in the newly surfaced photo is that shiny aluminum patch. Click to see the image, or to read other stories on developments in the search.