An ocean exploration company known as Deep Sea Vision believes they have the answers to a question historians have been searching for years.
In new reports from NPR, Deep Sea Vision announced that they believe they found the aircraft legendary aviator Amelia Earhart was flying when she disappeared on July 2, 1937. Amelia Earhart was the first female aviator to fly solo across the Atlantic.
On July 2, 1937, Earhart was flying her aircraft toward Howland Island where she and her navigator Fred Noonan were expected to stop to refuel. Earhart and Noonan, who were on a mission to fly around the world, never arrived at their stop and were never heard from or seen again.
Now, after exploring the ocean between Australia and Hawaii, Deep Sea Vision captured compelling sonar images of a “plane-shaped object.” The object was spotted just 100 miles off from Howland Island.
From September to December, a team of 16 crew members and an underwater drone scanned more than 5,200 miles of ocean floor. It was during these missions that the potentially historic discovery was made.
AMELIA EARHART'S PLANE FOUND? | An explorer and his team believe they have found the answer to one of the greatest mysteries in U.S. history.
— WFLA NEWS (@WFLA) January 29, 2024
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As NPR reports, Deep Sea Vision founder and former U.S. Air Force Intelligence officer, Tony Romeo, revealed that the images closely resemble the aircraft Earhart was flying; a Lockheed Electra. As a result, he admits he’s “optimistic” about his team’s findings.
“All that combined, you’d be hard-pressed to convince me that this is not an airplane and not Amelia’s plane,” he said. “It was really a surreal moment,” Romeo said when they realized what they may have stumbled upon, considering it’s been a goal of his ever since he started the company in 2022.
As NPR reports, one of the most supported theories in Earhart’s disappearance is that her aircraft ran out of fuel short of their planned stop and the aircraft sank to the bottom of the ocean. Deep Sea Vision’s findings support that theory.
To this day, Earhart’s and Noonan’s bodies were never found.
It’s unclear how it will be determined with absolute certainty that these sonar images are in fact images of Earhart’s plane. This is a developing report.