In 1937, Amelia Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan, disappeared mysteriously on their attempt to circumnavigate the world. The disappearance has stumped experts for 86 years until a sonar image came to light on Jan. 27, 2024. This image is believed to be of Earhart’s long-lost plane. It has many debating if this age old mystery is solved.
The CEO of Deep Sea Vision, Tony Romeo, gave a quick debrief on how he and his team found the plane. They used the six radio calls Earhart made on her journey to estimate her possible geographic location when she reported her plane was running low on fuel. This gave them an area to map out and search.
The team spent approximately three months scanning over 13,000 sq.km. of ocean before coming across the plane. It was found on the ocean floor about 100 miles from Howland Island, which was where Earhart was scheduled to stop and refuel, until she went missing.
The plane Earhart flew was a Lockheed Electra 10-E. “The twin vertical stabilizers in the back are very clear on the sonar image, and those are very distinctive of Amelia Earhart’s aircraft,” Romeo said.
Although the image strongly resembles Earhart’s plane, experts cannot say for certain without more detailed evidence. Romeo and his team plan to go back and collect more visual data in hopes to finally confirm that is, in fact, the plane of Amelia Earhart and give her story closure.
