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The photograph looks for all the world like an innocuous, pre-war holiday snap, with sailing boats and steamships bobbing behind a gaggle of people on a dockside. But if this image shows what investigators believe it does, it could reveal the fate of the record-breaking aviator Amelia Earhart – who disappeared 80 years ago this week.

Earhart, and navigator Fred Noonan, vanished in July 1937 after taking off from New Guinea in a twin-engined Lockheed Electra aircraft bound for Howland Island, 4100 kilometres away in the mid-Pacific. There they were to refuel to continue their round-the-world attempt. But they never arrived.

With the area shrouded in fog, Earhart had needed a bearing from a US coastguard cutter to find Howland. But the radio link from the ship to the plane failed – and the distressed pilot could only be heard saying they were lost.

Extensive searches in the weeks and years that followed found nothing, sparking one of aviation’s most enduring mysteries. Today, enthusiasts are still searching for her.

One effort, by The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery (), has triangulated from Earhart’s final radio signals that the lost aviators may have landed on Nikumaroro, a coral atoll to the south-east of Howland. members have mounted multiple, sponsored searches on Nikumaroro, and were there again this week with four – funded by the National Geographic TV channel.

DNA hunt

They were seeking human remains, chiefly bones or teeth, for DNA analysis. Modern methods are , even without bones, so you can see the temptation. But the island has been much disturbed over the years, .

Just as the TIGHAR archaeologists began to head for home, apparently , the US-based History channel released a preview of a on Sunday night (9pm EST) that, if true, changes everything.

In it, investigator Les Kinney – a former US Treasury agent – says he has pored over declassified photographs in the US National Archives in Washington DC and has found one showing what looks very much like Earhart and Noonan on a dockside on Jaluit Atoll in the-then Japanese-controlled Marshall Islands, to the north-west of Howland Island.

Experts have weighed up the body and facial profiles shown. A man standing to the left of a group has the right stature, sharp features and characteristic receding hairline to be Noonan, NBC News, which has previewed the programme in detail. Furthermore, a woman sitting on the wharf facing away from the camera has the right body dimensions, hairstyle, Caucasian appearance and fashion sense – she’s wearing trousers, rare for a woman of the day – to be Earhart.

Astonishingly, if all that was not enough, the Japanese ship Koshu, in the background of the picture, appears to be towing a barge carrying the pair’s Electra aircraft. Analytical techniques have allowed an estimate of the plane’s size, which fits.

Local tales

For decades, Jaluit Atoll locals told of a plane crash-landing there in July 1937, with the pilots, including a woman, being arrested. History channel investigator Shawn Henry, a former FBI assistant director, believes the Japanese, in the midst of pre-second world war paranoia, thought the aviators to be spies and imprisoned them until their deaths a couple of years later. The Japanese government, however, says it has no record of holding them.

If we are to believe that a single photograph can contain so much evidence – both aviators and the plane – some big questions now need answering. Why was the photograph and associated documentation kept secret all these years? Was it to protect the identity of an allied spy who took the photo? Are there more photos? How can we know exactly when the image was taken? Comprehensive forensic testing of the image could help provide answers, both on dating it and shedding more light on who is in it.

To some it might appear unseemly that the fate of folk heroes is being thrashed out by rival media companies. But their interest and funding, combined with the power of modern forensics, may be the only thing that does finally settle this mystery.