Searchers believe they have found Amelia Earhart’s missing plane

(CNN) — The tragic and mysterious disappearance of revolutionary aviator Amelia Earhart while flying over the Pacific Ocean fascinated the world for nearly 87 years, sparking countless investigations and expeditions in search of answers to what happened to the beloved pilot.

The latest group to join the search, a team of underwater archaeologists and marine robotics experts from Deep Sea Vision, a deep-sea exploration company based in Charleston, South Carolina, claims to have found a clue that may help Earhart’s story. Can close.

Using sonar images, a tool to map the ocean floor that uses sound waves to measure the distance between the ocean floor and the surface, the group discovered an anomaly more than 4,877 meters underwater in the Pacific Ocean. Detected, which resembles a small plane. The team believes the anomaly may be the Lockheed 10-E Electra, the 10-passenger plane that Earhart was piloting when she disappeared while attempting an around-the-world flight.

A deep sea exploration company captured a sonar image of an anomaly on the ocean floor that resembles an airplane. The team believes it could be Amelia Earhart’s Lockheed 10-E Electra, which disappeared nearly 87 years ago. Credit: Deep Sea Vision/PR Newswire

Deep Sea Vision announced the discovery via an Instagram post on Saturday, January 27.

Company CEO and former U.S. Air Force intelligence agent Tony Romo said, “Some people call it one of the greatest secrets of all time, I think it’s actually the greatest secret of all time.” joined in. “We have a chance to end one of the greatest American stories of all time.”

Solve an underwater mystery

According to Romeo, the photos were taken about 161 kilometers away from Howland Island, which is the nearest location where Amelia Earhart and her navigator Fred Noonan were expected to land after their final takeoff from Lae, Papua New Guinea. The pair were declared lost at sea by the US government after an intensive 16-day search.

Deep Sea Vision explored more than 13,468 square kilometers of the ocean floor using an advanced autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) called Hugin 6000, which maps the ocean floor using sonar technology. Romo told CNN that the company’s shipments began in early September 2023 and ended in December.

Romeo hopes to return to the site later this year to confirm that the anomaly is an aircraft, which will likely involve the use of an ROV (remotely operated vehicle) with a camera that can observe the object more closely. Will allow investigation. Romo said the team will also study the possibility of bringing their discovery to the surface.

“While it is possible that it is an aircraft and perhaps even Amelia’s aircraft, it is too early to say for sure. It could also be noise in the sonar data, something geological or another aircraft,” said underwater archaeologist Andrew Pietruska. . Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego and chief archaeologist of Project Recover, an organization dedicated to finding soldiers and aircraft missing during World War II.

“That said, if I were looking for Amelia’s plane and this was the target in the data set, I would want to inquire further about it,” Pietruszka said in an email.

More Theories About Earhart’s Disappearance

A 2017 History Channel documentary proposed the theory that Earhart and Noonan crash-landed in the Marshall Islands, about 1,000 miles from Howland Island, where they were captured and taken to the island of Saipan, where they were held hostage. and ultimately died. The theory was based on a photograph in the United States National Archives that showed several blurry figures; Investigators claimed that the aviator and his plane appear in the image.

The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery (TIGHAR) theorized in 2016 that Earhart and Noonan survived the crash landing on a rock in the Pacific Ocean, but were unable to radio for help and may have died as they were shipwrecked. Went. The TIGHAR team claimed that the skeleton of a dead man found in 1940 on the island of Nikumaroro, Kiribati, matched “Earhart’s height and ethnicity”.

The most widespread theory supported by the US government and the Smithsonian is that Earhart and Noonan crashed in the Pacific Ocean near Howland Island when the plane ran out of fuel.

The new sonar image of the missing plane is of particular interest because of its proximity to Howland Island, according to Dorothy Cochrane, curator of general aviation in the Department of Aeronautics at the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum. In Earhart’s last communication, Cochrane said, as she approached Howland Island, her radio transmissions became progressively stronger, indicating she was getting closer to the island before she disappeared.

However, the plane-sized object discovered by Deep Sea Vision lacks some features of Earhart’s Lockheed Electra, such as twin engines, according to David Jordan, co-founder and president of deep-sea exploration company Nauticos, which Has led the search. Operation for lost aircraft.

“It is impossible to identify anything from a sonar image alone, as sound can be misleading and the artwork can be unexpectedly damaged by changes in its shape. For this reason, you can never say that something is (or is not) from only one sonar image,” Jordan said in an email.

Confirming that the anomaly was found in Earhart’s plane would require a return to the site to further examine the plane and, more definitively, locate the “NR 16020” certification that represents the missing Lockheed wing. Was printed at the bottom, Jordan said. If the plane had been discovered at this depth in the ocean, where temperatures were very cold and oxygen low, the plane might have been very well preserved, Jordan said.

“(Earhart) was the rock star of that time, the Taylor Swift of that time… Everyone was rooting for her, they wanted her to tour the world and she just disappeared without a trace,” Cochran said. ” “This is the mystery of the 20th century, and now the 21st century.”