A hopeful explorer thinks he has found the solution to the famous mystery of Amelia Earhart‘s plane, which vanished over the Pacific Ocean in 1937. Tony Romeo, the head of Deep Sea Vision, said this week that he and his 16-member team may have located the remains of Earhart’s Lockheed 10-E Electra aircraft at the bottom of the Pacific. Romeo, who used to be a U.S. Air Force intelligence officer, showed sonar images of an object that looks like a plane, which was detected by Deep Sea Vision’s US$11-million project to solve the Earhart mystery. He told The Wall Street Journal that the company’s underwater “Hugin” drone captured the sonar image of the plane-like object, which lies about 16,000 feet (around 4,877 metres) under the ocean’s surface. (To compare, the Titanic wreck is at a depth of about 12,500 feet, or nearly 3,658 metres.) The sonar image was taken less than 100 miles (about 161 kilometres) from Howland Island, the place where Earheart was supposed to refuel but never arrived.
An explorer claims he may have found the remains of Amelia Earhart’s plane on the ocean floor, using a high-tech underwater drone1. The plane-shaped object was detected near Howland Island, where Earhart last refuelled before vanishing in 1937. The explorer, a former Air Force officer, said he spent US$11 million on the search and shared sonar images of the possible wreck2. However, some experts and enthusiasts doubt his claim, citing inconsistencies and distortions in the images. Earhart was a pioneering aviator who attempted to fly around the world, but her fate remains a mystery.