by A state-of-the-art underwater drone may have solved one of the most enduring mysteries of the past 100 years: what happened to pioneering aviator Amelia Earhart when her plane disappeared on her round-the-world flight in 1937?
Many trips resulted, confirming that there was no trace of his twin-tailed monoplane in the slates of the sea floor.
But now private pilot Tony Romeo believes his new South Carolina-based ocean exploration company can offer exciting new evidence in the hunt for Earhart after capturing a sonar image he believes is the outline of the iconic American Lockheed 10-E Electra .
Archaeologists and explorers are optimistic. But it remains to be seen if the tousled-haired pilot’s plane is at a depth of about 4,800-meters.
And there are many debates about the proper handling of whatever is found.
Archivists are hopeful that Romeo’s Deep Sea Vision is close to the answer – if for no other reason than to bring attention to Earhart’s achievements.
Regardless, the search is on for the first woman to fly across the Atlantic Ocean.
Discovery using the Hugin 6000 drone
How did Deep Sea Vision detect the object that may have been Earhart’s plane?
Romeo wanted more adventure than his career in commercial real estate. His father flew for Pan American Airlines, his brother is an Air Force pilot and holds a private pilot’s license himself. Coming from an “aviation family”, he had long been interested in the Earhart mystery.
Romeo said he sold his real estate interests to fund last year’s search and to buy a $9 million underwater drone from a Norwegian company. The state-of-the-art technology is called the Hugin 6000 – a reference to its ability to break into the deepest layer of the ocean at 6,000 m.
A crew of 16 people began a search of around 100 days in September 2023, scanning over 13,468 square kilometers of the seabed.
They narrowed their search to the area around Howland Island, an atoll in the middle of the Pacific Ocean between Papua New Guinea and Hawaii.
But it wasn’t until the team reviewed sonar data in December that they saw the faint yellow outline of what appears to be an airplane.
“In the end, we came out with an image of a target that we strongly believe is Amelia’s aircraft,” Romeo told The Associated Press.
The next step is to take a camera underwater to better examine the unidentified object. If the visuals confirm the explorers’ greatest hopes, Romeo said the goal would be to raise the long-lost Electra.
Earhart’s attempt to circle the globe
Ultimately, Romeo said his team undertook the expensive adventure to “solve the greatest unsolved mystery”.
An open hatch could indicate that Earhart and her flight companion escaped after the initial impact, Romeo said, and a cockpit dial could provide insight into exactly what went wrong.
From alien abduction to Japanese execution, there are many theories about what happened to them.
Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan, disappeared while flying from New Guinea to Howland Island as part of her attempt to become the first female pilot to circumnavigate the globe.
She had said she was running low on fuel.
The US Navy searched but found no trace. The official position of the US government is that Earhart and Noonan went down with their plane.
Since then, theories have veered into the absurd, including alien abduction, or Earhart living in New Jersey under an alias. Others speculate that she and Noonan were executed by the Japanese or died as ponies on an island.
“Amelia is America’s favorite missing person,” Romeo said.
Maritime archaeologist James Delgado said the possible discovery of Romeo would change the story, but “we need to see more”.
“Let’s put some cameras down there and see,” said Delgado, senior vice president of archeology firm SEARCH Inc.
Delgado said Romeo’s voyage used state-of-the-art technology that was once classified and is “revolutionizing our understanding of the deep ocean.”
But he said the Romeo team must provide a “forensic level of documentation” to prove it is Lockheed Earhart. That could mean the patterns in the aluminum of the fuselage, the configuration of its tail, and details from the propeller.
David Jourdan said his exploration company Nauticos searched in vain on three separate expeditions between 2002 and 2017, surveying an area of the ocean floor roughly the size of Connecticut.
He would expect to see straight wings and no swept wings, as the new sonar suggests, as well as the engines. But that could be explained by damage to the aircraft or by reflections that distort the image, he admitted.
“It could be an airplane. It certainly looks like an airplane. It could be a geological feature that looks like an airplane,” he said.
Dorothy Cochrane, curator of aeronautics at the National Air and Space Museum, said Romeo’s crew searched in the right place near Howland Island.
That’s where Earhart desperately looked for a runway when she took off from the last point of her flight.
If the object is indeed the historic aircraft, the question for Cochrane is whether it is safe to lift it. How much of the machinery remains intact would be determined in part by how smoothly Earhart landed, she said.
“That’s where you have to look at this image and say, ‘What do we have here?'” Cochrane said.
What happens if Earhart’s Lockheed Electra is found?
If the sonar images of the plane turn out to be blurry, international standards for underwater archeology would strongly suggest that the aircraft remains where it is, said Ole Varmer, a retired attorney with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and a member senior at The Ocean Foundation.
Non-invasive research can still be done to show why the plane crashed, Varmer said.
“You preserve as much of the story as you can,” Varmer said. “It’s not just the wreck. It’s where it is and its context on the seabed. That’s part of the story of how and why it got there. When you salvage it, you’re destroying part of the location, which can provide information”.
It would probably cost hundreds of millions of dollars to raise the plane and put it in a museum, Varmer said. And although Romeo could make a salvage claim in the courts, the owner of the plane has the right to refuse it.
Earhart bought the Lockheed with money raised, at least in part, by the Purdue Research Foundation, according to a blog post from Purdue University in Indiana. And she decided to return the aircraft to the school.
Romeo said the team believes the plane belongs to the Smithsonian. Acknowledging the “uncharted territory” of potential legal issues, he said his exploration company will deal with those as they arise”.
