It's one of the enduring mysteries of the past century - what happened to female flyer Amelia Earhart, whose plane disappeared over the Pacific Ocean in 1937? The search for the wreckage has never really stopped and it's been one of the most revisited tales in the history of air travel. 

Popular Mechanics has a story about a 15-year-old shortwave DXer, who may have accidentally tuned into the last broadcast for help from the aviation pioneer in July 1937. Was it her and her navigator sending a final plea for rescue? And why has this angle of the story been lost to history?

Betty Klenck was a 15-year-old girl listening from St. Peterburg, Florida on that fateful day. She wrote down what she heard in a logbook she kept, before anyone knew that the flyer was in trouble. 

"...the young girl supposedly heard, “This is Amelia Earhart. This is Amelia Earhart.” Klenck reportedly did her best to transcribe the transmissions into her notebook, though the words came too fast to copy down verbatim, and the signal faded in and out.

Over the course of three hours, Klenck came to believe that the woman making distress calls was accompanied by a man who had suffered a head injury and “was delirious.” As the man and woman audibly wrestled for control of the transmitter, it became apparent that their plane had crashed onto land, but rising water levels made them uncertain of their long-term survival."

As the investigaton continued, most forgot about this obscure teen's handwritten notes. But what if what she heard was actually real? It's a fascinating prospect that a teenager playing around with her radio may have come to receive one of the most important - and now forgotten - transmissions in history. And as a DXer, could there have ever been a more significant catch?

Here's a page from that notebook:

A transcript of what else she wrote down.

From Popular Mechanics: 

A 15-Year-Old Transcribed a Ghostly Broadcast in 1937. Was She Listening to Amelia Earhart’s Last Words?