Eighty-six years after Amelia Earhart's disappearance, and after countless searches in the Pacific Ocean, the founder of a deep-sea exploration company believes he has found his plane.
The evidence: a few blurry images taken about 5,000 meters below the surface of the Pacific, showing what appears to be an object on the ocean floor. The airplane-shaped object is located where experts believe the famous pilot fell while she was trying to become the first woman to fly around the world.
Tony Romeo, a pilot and former U.S. Air Force intelligence officer, is convinced that the image captured in December by his company, Deep Sea Vision, shows the wreckage of Earhart's Lockheed 10-E Electra. Her aviator and navigator, Fred Noonan, disappeared in July 1937 after leaving Lae, New Guinea, en route to Howland Island in the Pacific Ocean.
His disappearance gave rise to conspiracy theories that have endured for almost a century. Sonar images from Deep Sea Vision may be the final clue for those trying to unravel the mystery.
“It would be hard to convince me that it's anything but a plane, for one and two, that it's not Amelia's plane,” Romeo said on the “Today” show.
In a statement, the South Carolina-based company says the images were captured along Earhart's projected flight path, in an area believed to be “untouched by known wrecks.”
Romeo, a commercial real estate investor who sold his properties to finance his search for Earhart's plane, told the Wall Street Journal that he has spent $11 million on travel, equipment and an underwater drone. He plans to return to the area to get better images of the object and, he hopes, test his theory.
Romeo was not immediately available for comment.
On Sunday, Deep Sea Vision posted the underwater images on its Instagram account. The object appears to have extended wings and a tail.
What happened to Earhart has baffled historians and enthusiastic amateurs, some of whom have spent millions of dollars searching for clues.
Some theorize that Earhart and Noonan did not crash into the ocean, but rather were stranded on a desert island where they were forced to land after running out of fuel.
More outlandish theories posit that Earhart was taken prisoner by Japanese forces or that she was a spy recruited by the United States government for a secret surveillance mission. Others believe Earhart somehow took advantage of her disappearance to secretly return to the United States and live a quiet life away from the spotlight.
Most of the leads generated by the searches have yielded false hopes and dead ends.
A photograph featured in a History Channel documentary, “Amelia Earhart: The Lost Evidence,” suggested that she and Noonan crash-landed and were captured by the Japanese military. Then a history blogger found the same photograph published in a 1935 book, two years before Earhart disappeared, shattering the theory.
In 2018, researcher Richard Jantz wrote in Forensic Anthropology that bones found on the Pacific island Nikumaroro likely belonged to Earhart. Jantz wrote that he compared the bones to Earhart's known measurements and concluded that they probably belonged to her. A forensic anthropologist at the University of South Florida used DNA testing in 2019 in an attempt to confirm the theory, but later told the Tampa Bay Times, “It wasn't her.”
Romeo, who told the Wall Street Journal that he has been searching for the plane since September, has scanned about 5,200 square miles of ocean floor. The image resembling Earhart's plane was discovered by his team while reviewing hours of footage; The location where it was taken is believed to be about 100 miles from Howland Island, where Earhart and Noonan planned to refuel.
Deep Sea Vision searched the ocean floor using what researchers have called the “date line theory,” which holds that Noonan miscalculated his celestial navigation when the pair crossed the international date line, drifting off course. of its route about 60 miles, according to a statement. Of the company.
If the object in the image is indeed Earhart's plane, it would appear to be relatively intact despite having been underwater for more than 80 years.
“We always feel that [Earhart] “Every effort would have been made to land the plane gently on the water, and the plane signature we see in the sonar image suggests that may be the case,” Romeo said in the statement.
Earhart's around-the-world flight was supposed to end in Oakland. After he disappeared, the US Navy and Coast Guard searched the area for 16 days without success.
