Michelle Foley
Jan 31, 2024 - 01:20

Deep sea explorer may have found Amelia Earhart's plane

Deep sea exploration company releases sonar image that may be the remains of Amelia Earhart's plane, solving aviation mystery.

Deep Sea Vision (DSV), a company based in South Carolina, has released a sonar image that they believe could be the remains of Amelia Earhart's plane. Earhart, a famous American aviatrix, disappeared over the Pacific Ocean in 1937 while on a pioneering round-the-world flight with navigator Fred Noonan.

The image was captured after an extensive search in a remote area of the Pacific to the west of Earhart's planned destination, Howland Island. DSV reported that the blurry image, captured by an unmanned underwater submersible at a depth of 5,000 meters using side scan sonar, reveals contours that mirror the unique dual tails and scale of Earhart's aircraft.

DSV's chief executive, Tony Romeo, stated that the image suggests that Earhart may have made an attempt to land the aircraft gently on the water. The company spent 90 days searching 13,500 square kilometers of the Pacific Ocean floor, which is more than all previous searches combined. The exact location of the find is being kept confidential, and further search efforts are planned.

The company's discovery was made applying what is known as the "Date Line theory," which was first advanced in 2010 by Liz Smith, a former NASA employee. This theory posits that Noonan forgot to turn the calendar back a day as they flew over the International Date Line, resulting in a miscalculation of his celestial star navigation and a westward navigational error of 100 kilometers.

Amelia Earhart, who won fame in 1932 as the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic, took off on May 20, 1937 from Oakland, California, hoping to become the first woman to fly around the world. She and Noonan vanished on July 2, 1937 after taking off from Lae, Papua New Guinea, on a challenging 4,000-kilometer flight to refuel on Howland Island, a speck of a US territory between Australia and Hawaii. This discovery could potentially solve one of the most tantalizing mysteries in aviation history and provide closure for historians and enthusiasts alike.