A possible breakthrough in the 87-year-old mystery surrounding Amelia Earhart’s disappearance continues to emerge as the adventurers who captured it investigate two-decade-old theories about what happened during her ill-fated flight. almost disappeared, like the aviator himself.
Deep Sea Vision CEO Tony Romeo and his brother Lloyd released sonar images from their $11 million Pacific expedition last week. It showed a hazy, planar mass they believed could be Earhart’s Lockheed 10-E Electra.
The brothers say they plan another expedition this year or next to get better photos of the wreckage. told the Daily Mail Due to hard drive issues during the 90-day voyage, potentially important images may have never seen the light of day.
The 16-member expedition, funded by the sale of Tony Romeo’s commercial real estate, set out in September from Tarawa, Kiribati, a port near Howland Island.
They used underwater drones to scan 5,200 square miles of the ocean floor, but they had to capture and scan sonar data between flights.
At one point, the hard drive appeared to be completely corrupted and was scheduled to be erased and formatted until the company’s operations director discovered that the data was recoverable.
That’s when the group made a surprising discovery.
“We noticed something there. It was a very sandy, flat area. We knew right away that this was something that could very well be an airplane.” Romeo told the Daily Mail.
The brothers said of their team: Potentially groundbreaking discovery triggered The “dateline” theory was proposed by former NASA employee and amateur pilot Liz Smith in 2010 to explain the disappearance of Earhart and her navigator Fred Noonan during what was supposed to be a record-setting voyage around the world. proposed. 1937.
This theory posits that as Earhart and Noonan soared past the International Date Line, one day the navigator forgot to set the calendar back and the pair ended up about 90 miles off course. There is.
Romeo, a pilot and former U.S. Air Force intelligence officer, said Noonan was an experienced pilot unlikely to make such a mistake, but fatigue may have played a role in the serious mistake.
“As we saw it as pilots, it’s certainly tiring when you’re flying,” he told the Daily Mail.
This theory led them to coordinates approximately three miles below sea level and within 100 miles of Howland Island. There, their drone captured a sonar image of a plane-like figure they believed to be the wreckage of Earhart’s fateful voyage.
Romeo confirmed to the outlet that the sonar image was not of her plane, but could be the remains of another crashed plane or a strange rock formation. It is hoped that follow-up research will confirm their findings and help solve a decades-old mystery.
“We need to put a camera there. If you see the number NR16020 on the wing, you’ll clearly know what it is,” he told the Mail.
On July 2, 1937, Earhart and Noonan departed from Lae, Papua New Guinea, with plans to refuel at Howland Island before continuing their journey to Honolulu and their final destination, Oakland, California.
The two faced strong headwinds at Lae and headed toward Howland, but eventually Earhart’s radio communications went silent.
The US Navy and Coast Guard 16 days search A search for the missing duo was unsuccessful, and Earhart was officially declared dead on January 5, 1939.
