An ocean explorer claims to have solved aviation’s greatest mystery by finding the wreckage of Amelia Earhart’s missing plane.
An ocean explorer claims to have solved aviation’s greatest mystery by finding the wreckage of Amelia Earhart’s missing plane.
An ocean explorer has claimed to have solved aviation’s greatest mystery after allegedly finding the wreckage of Amelia Earhart’s missing plane more than 87 years after she disappeared from the face of the Earth.
American aviator Amelia Earhart and her plane vanished over the Pacific Ocean in 1937 during her attempt to become the first woman to fly around the world.
Her disappearance became a source of speculation after accident investigators were unable to locate her body or any wreckage, despite numerous searches over a number of decades.
But now, a team from robotic company Deep Sea Vision (DSV) claims a sonar image they’ve taken on the ocean floor may have unearthed evidence that could blow open the case and reveal what really happened to Earhart.
Former US air force intelligence officer Tony Romeo, who funded the deep-sea search for the missing plane, explained the sonar image identified an object that resembles a small aircraft more than 4877m underwater.
A sonar image of a blurry, plane-like shape 5000m down in the Pacific Ocean which Romeo's team believe is Earhart’s twin-engine Lockheed 10-E Electra.
“We always felt that [Earhart] would have made every attempt to land the aircraft gently on the water, and the aircraft signature that we see in the sonar image suggests that may be the case,” Romeo said, adding that no one else had scoured the area the image took place before.
“This is maybe the most exciting thing I’ll ever do in my life. I feel like a 10-year-old going on a treasure hunt. We always felt that a group of pilots were the ones that are going to solve this, and not the mariners.”
Amelia Earhart was the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean. Photo / Getty Images
Amelia Earhart wreckage mystery: What we know
On July 2, 1937, Earhart was flying a 10-passenger Lockheed 10-E Electra - which was also carrying navigator Fred Noonan - in an attempt to do a lap around the world.
That dream was tragically cut short when she mysteriously vanished during a 4000km flight from Lae in Papua New Guinea to Howland Island, which is about halfway between Hawaii and Australia.
Despite efforts to find the wreckage, nothing was found and the pair were declared dead two years later.
Earhart disappeared while on a journey from Papua New Guinea to Howland Island.
Since the plane’s disappearance, there’s been much speculation and debate about what caused her plane to go down.
The most plausible theory is the small plane ran out of petrol, crashed into the Pacific and sunk to the ocean floor.
For decades, search teams scoured the Pacific Ocean with no success.
Romeo has since posted a photo of the finding to Instagram and believes it shows the plane’s twin engines.
“You’d be hard-pressed to convince me that’s anything but an aircraft, for one, and two, that it’s not Amelia’s aircraft,” he told NBC News.
“There’s no other known crashes in the area, and certainly not of that era in that kind of design with the tail that you see clearly in the image.”
Romeo’s team plans to return to the site either later this year or early in 2025 to investigate further.
“The next step is confirmation, and there’s a lot we need to know about it. And it looks like there’s some damage. I mean, it’s been sitting there for 87 years at this point,” he added.
