Newly released documents share Amelia Earhart's tragic final moments on fatal flight

On 2 July, 1937, a plane carrying famous aviatrix Amelia Earhart and her navigator Fred Noonan disappeared while flying over the Pacific Ocean.

They had been in the final stages of a flight which would have made Earhart the first woman to fly around the world, but while flying from Lae, Papua New Guinea, to Howland Island in the Pacific, contact was lost with their plane.

Neither the aircraft nor the bodies of Earhart and Noonan were ever found, though there have been plenty of attempts to search for them and plenty of theories put together about what actually happened to them.

What is known is that the last contact with Earhart's plane was made with the USS Itasca, where radio transmissions painted a worrying picture.

From the final clear radio transmissions received by the nearby ship it seemed as though they were struggling with visibility and low on fuel.

Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan pictured on 11 June, 1937, less than a month later they would disappear (Topical Press Agency/Getty Images)

"We must be on you, but we cannot see you," Earhart told the ship.

"Fuel is running low. Been unable to reach you by radio. We are flying at 1,000 feet."

However, according to documents newly released by the US government, that wasn't her final transmission, as that came at 8:43 am local time on the day she went missing.

Instead, the last confirmed transmission had Earhart telling the ship 'We are on the line 157 337' and informing it she was 'circling but cannot hear you'.

Then the Itasca heard 'wl rept msg we wl rept, wait', Earhart telling them she was going to be repeating her message, and that's pretty much it; the ship made several attempts to say they'd heard her message, but they are all listed as unanswered.

Documents show her final recorded message told a nearby ship she couldn't hear or see them, and then the rest is silence (Bettmann/Getty)

An echo of this same moment was picked up by US listening posts in Hawaii, but these are the final moments where Amelia Earhart was confirmed alive and communicating with someone.

Since then, there have been various theories and search efforts, many of them focused on Nikumaroro Island, and various items and human remains have been connected to the disappearance but there's never been the conclusive smoking gun to properly close the case.

Whatever happened to her and Noonan after that final message is known only to the two people who were on the plane, both of whom are long dead by now.

A team from Purdue University were planning on travelling to Nikumaroro Island to investigate a site captured by satellite photos which experts think might have been the final location of Earhart's plane.

However, delays mean the cyclone season has started and they'll have to wait until next year to go.