Earhart's plane disappeared over the Pacific Ocean in 1937 during her attempt to become the first woman to fly around the world. Photo: Bettmann
An ocean explorer claims to have solved aviation's greatest mystery after discovering the wreckage of Amelia Earhart's missing plane.
The American aviator's plane disappeared over the Pacific Ocean in 1937 during her bid to become the first woman to fly. fly around the world.
Her unexplained fate has since become the source of widespread speculation as accident investigators have been unable to find her body or any debris.
But Tony Romeo, a former Air Force intelligence officer who sold his real estate business to fund an $11 million deep-sea search for the missing plane, believes he captured a sonar image that reveals its location.
Sonar image of a blurry, airplane-like shape 5,000 meters above the Pacific Ocean, which Mr. Romeo's team believes is a twin-engine Earhart Lockheed 10 — E Electra Credits: Deep Sea Vision
“This is probably the most exciting thing I've ever done in my life. I feel like a 10-year-old kid going on a treasure hunt,” Mr. Romeo of South Carolina told the Wall Street Journal.
Mr. Romeo and his two brothers, all pilots, were motivated by the prospect of using their flying know-how to solve the “perfect puzzle.”
“We always felt it was a group of pilots who could solve this problem, not sailors,” he said.
Mr. Romeo's company, Deep Sea Vision, used an unmanned underwater vehicle to scan 5,200 square miles of ocean floor using sonar technology in the suspected area of Earhart's crash.
After examining data from the survey cruise, the team found an image of a blurry, flat shape on 5,000 meters deep on the bottom of the Pacific Ocean.
The sonar image was taken approximately 100 miles from Howland Island. halfway between Australia and Hawaii.
Mr. Romeo, who later posted the photo on Instagram, believes it shows Earhart's twin-engine Lockheed 10-E Electra.
“ You’d be hard-pressed to convince me that it’s not a plane, firstly, and secondly, that it’s not Amelia’s plane,” he told NBC News.
“There are no other known crashes in the world. area, and certainly not from that era, with the design and tail that you clearly see in the image.»
Mr Romeo's team plans to return to the site either later this year or early 2025 to investigate further.
“The next step is confirmation and there is a lot we need to know about it. And it looks like there is some damage. I mean, it's been there for 87 years at this point,” he added.
“I myself think it's the greatest mystery of all time. It is certainly the most enduring aviation mystery of all time.»
Earhart and her navigator Fred Noonan were scheduled to land on Howland Island in July 1937 to refuel during her quest to become the first female pilot to circumnavigate the world. globe.
But the couple did not arrive and were pronounced dead two years later, with US investigators concluding that the plane had crashed somewhere in the Pacific Ocean. No remains were found.
Mr. Romeo's mission follows a number of previous attempts to solve the mystery.
In 1999, America's Cup competitor Dana Timmer conducted a deep-sea search near Howland Island. Although a promising shadow was spotted on sonar, Mr. Timmer was unable to raise the money to go back and check on his find.
Ten years later, a team assembled by Ted Waite, founder of the computer company Gateway, conducted a new search in the Pacific ocean, but to no avail. “We are confident that we know where Earhart is not,” the team subsequently announced.
Nauticos, an ocean exploration firm, launched three unsuccessful searches in 2002, 2006 and 2017. in my entire career I have never looked and found it,” said Tom Dettweiler, a hydroacoustics expert who participated in two searches and was part of the team that found the Titanic wreck off the coast of Newfoundland in 1985.< /p>
There are also proponents of the wilder theory that the Japanese captured and killed the aviators, with «evidence» ranging from a generator found in Saipan harbor in 1960 to a discredited photo, allegedly from 1937, of a couple docked in the Marshall Islands at the time. were under the control of Japanese forces for a time.
Another claim, supported by forensic analysis of bones found in 2018 on the remote Pacific island of Nikumaroro, suggests Earhart may have died there.
Bones were discovered in 1940 and were initially thought to be male. But a re-examination six years ago found that their size was that of a woman and similar to Earhart's body shape.
The International Historic Aircraft Restoration Group previously suggested that Earhart starved to death after being shipwrecked on Nikumaroro, which is located to the east of the sonar image.
A US-based group has expressed doubts about Mr. Romeo's supposed discovery.
“For Electra's wings to fold back as shown in the sonar image. , the entire central section would have failed at the joints of the wing and fuselage,” the report says. «It's simply impossible.»
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