A breakthrough in the search for Amelia Earhart may have finally born fruit as a “plane shaped object” has been spotted on a sonar image following an £8.67million ($11million) search
The Kansas-born aviator, who was the first female pilot to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean, has long-eluded experts, adventurers and conspiracy theorists after she went missing while attempting to circumnavigate the globe in 1937.
Flying with navigator Fred Noonan in a Purdue-funded Lockheed Model 10-E Electra, Earhart disappeared on July 2, 1937 having last been seen in Lae, New Guinea.
She was due to stop at Howland Island in one of the final legs of her flight but was never seen or heard from again.
Amelia Earhart's plane may have been found
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Earhart and Noonan were pronounced dead around one and a half years after they disappeared sparking a mystery that has eluded experts and the public for more than 80 years.
Although the wreckage of her aircraft has never been discovered, new images during a major search may now shed light and bring an end to the mystery.
Tony Romeo, a pilot and a former US Air Force intelligence officer told The Wall Street Journal that he thinks he and his brothers found part of Earhart’s plane resting on the ocean floor.
Having paid for the search by selling all his commercial properties, Romero says an image of an aircraft-shaped object in the Pacific Ocean could be Earhart’s.
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Amelia Earhart's plane was last seen on July 2, 1937
Insatgram (@deep.sea.vision)
“This is maybe the most exciting thing I’ll ever do in my life,” Romeo told the Journal.
“I feel like a 10-year-old going on a treasure hunt.”
Romeo added: “For her to go missing was just unthinkable. Imagine Taylor Swift just disappearing today.”
Together with his brothers, Romeo felt they would have better luck locating the plane than in previous searches which had mainly been made by sailors.
The mystery surrounding Amelia Earhart has persisted for more than 80 years
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“We always felt that a group of pilots were the ones that are going to solve this, and not the mariners,” he said.
Having studied maps, her direction, fuel levels and last radio messages, the Romeo brothers drew up a search area based on the most likely areas Earhart could have crashed.
Using an unmanned submersible, they took blurry pictures of the object some 5,000 metres below the water’s surface.
However, Andrew Pietruszka, an underwater archaeologist, claimed: “Until you physically take a look at this, there’s no way to say for sure what that is.”