For dozens of explorers, Amelia Earhart was the one who seemingly escaped forever.
But a commercial real estate investor in Charleston, South Carolina, believes he may have finally found a key piece of an 87-year-old puzzle.
The famous and pioneering female aviator disappeared along with her navigator during a record-setting round-the-world trip in 1937.
Despite numerous attempts and millions of dollars spent over 90 years, neither Earhart’s body nor the remains of the plane have ever been conclusively located.
However, pilot and former US Air Force intelligence officer Tony Romeo sold all of his commercial real estate to raise money for the search. told the Wall Street Journal He thinks he found part of Earhart’s plane on the ocean floor.
Romeo says sonar images of an aircraft-shaped object in the Pacific Ocean could possibly be Earhart’s Lockheed 10-E Electra, and experts who have seen the images say it’s worth investigating. .
“This is probably the most exciting thing in my life,” Romeo told the Journal.
“I feel like a 10-year-old going on a treasure hunt.”
Earhart’s daredevil maneuvers made her world famous.
She was the first woman to fly solo and nonstop across the continental United States and the Atlantic Ocean, and the first woman to fly solo across the Pacific Ocean from Hawaii to the mainland.
“I couldn’t imagine her going missing,” Romeo said. “Imagine Taylor Swift disappearing today.”
Romeo and two of his brothers, all pilots, felt they had better luck finding Earhart than previous adventurers, many of whom were sailors.
“We always felt that it was a group of pilots, not sailors, who were going to solve this problem,” Romeo told the Journal.
By studying Earhart’s direction, location, and fuel levels based on radio messages received by the U.S. Coast Guard ship Itasca, stationed near Howland Island to assist with Earhart’s landing and refueling. , attempted to guess Earhart’s flight path.
They then created a search area based on where they thought Earhart most likely crashed.
Romeo spent $11 million on travel and high-tech equipment.
The key to the search was the underwater drone Hugin.
His 16-person expedition set out aboard a research vessel in early September from the port of Tarawa, Kiribati, near Howland Island.
The team’s unmanned submersible scanned 5,200 square miles of ocean floor, and about a month later captured a blurry image of an airplane-like object 5,000 meters below the surface, less than 160 miles from Howland Island.
But it wasn’t until three months into the trip that Earhart’s hunters discovered the tantalizing drone images, and at that point, there was no turning back, Romeo said.
He told the Journal that he is planning another trip to take better photos in hopes of helping experts solve the decades-old mystery.
Dorothy Cochran, curator of aviation at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Air and Space Museum, said the area where the image was taken matches where Earhart scholars believe she may have been before her disappearance. He said he was there.
“Until we actually see this, we can’t say for sure what it is,” said Andrew Pietruska, an underwater archaeologist who is leading the deep-sea search for the missing military plane and its soldiers. He told the newspaper.
On July 2, 1937, Earhart and navigator Fred Noonan took off from Lae, Papua New Guinea, planning to refuel at the uninhabited island of Howland Island. An airstrip and refueling station were being built so they could continue to Honolulu and their final destination, Oakland, California.
They encountered strong headwinds at Lae, but the operator monitored Earhart’s radio messages as she flew toward Howland until she went silent.
rear 16 days The U.S. Navy and Coast Guard ended the search for the missing pioneer, who was pronounced dead on January 5, 1939.
