via USA Today: Amelia Earhart, in her Lockheed Electra plane, sits surrounded by knee-deep water, marooned on the reef of Gardner Island with her seriously injured navigator, Fred Noonan. She waits for the tides to lessen before sending out yet another distress signal. It's July 2, 1937, just hours after Earhart's plane disappeared over the Pacific Ocean on the most challenging leg of her flight around the globe — the 2,227 nautical mile trip from Lae, New Guinea to Howland Island. "Plane down on an uncharted island. Small, uninhabited," she calls out, a signal, apparently only heard by Texas housewife Mabel Larremore who had stumbled upon the message from Earhart while scanning her home radio. Then, 12 hours of silence. For Richard Gillespie, executive director of The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery, this is a glimpse into how he believes Earhart's last days with communication to civilization transpired — pieced together by analyzing a catalog of radio distress