If that’s Amelia Earhart’s plane, would Purdue really get it? A look at the documents

Purdue donors paid to get the Lockheed Electra for Earhart’s round-the-globe attempt. Documents show intent to have the plane back on campus. But the university admits: ‘It gets pretty complicated’

(Photo: Deep Sea Vision)

The legend has it that once Amelia Earhart completed her record-setting attempt to fly around the world in 1937 that the Lockheed Electra 10-E that Purdue Research Foundation donors helped finance would return to the West Lafayette campus.

Purdue’s own recollection of that surfaced again in late-January, when a deep sea exploration team spotted a shape three miles deep in the Pacific Ocean they contend could solve the mystery of Earhart’s lost journey.

“Earhart’s post-flight plan was to return the plane to Purdue, where it would be used to further pure and applied scientific research in aeronautics,” a university-produced history of the aviator’s time in West Lafayette stated shortly after the January announcement of the discovery.

Amelia Earhart (Photo: Purdue Archives)

But if that really is Earhart’s plane, and if it’s ever successfully salvaged, what are Purdue’s realistic claims to the aircraft?

“It gets pretty complicated,” Brian Edelmen, Purdue Research Foundation president, said. “Whenever there’s a rumored find, we dig into it. … In doing that, there’s this sense of being Indiana Jones, going through minutes and letters of these folks.”