On July 2, 1937, Amelia Earhart and her navigator disappeared while flying over the Pacific Ocean during their trip around the world. Her plane has never been found despite countless efforts to solve the mystery of its vanishing. Now, ocean exploration company Deep Sea Vision has shared the sonar image above that they say "appears to be Earhart's Lockheed 10-E Electra" airplane.
They captured the image with an underwater robot 16,000 feet below the ocean's surface near Howland Island about 1,700 nautical miles southwest of Honolulu. The island was a fueling stop destination during Earhart's journey but they never made it.
From CBS News:
Tony Romeo, a pilot and former U.S. Air Force intelligence officer, told the Wall Street Journal that he funded the $11 million search by selling off his commercial real estate properties[…]
Romeo's team didn't find the image until about three months into the trip, and at that stage it was impractical to turn back, he told the Journal, so they intend to return for a closer look.
Sonar experts told the Journal that only a closer look for details matching Earhart's Lockheed aircraft would provide definitive proof.
"Until you physically take a look at this, there's no way to say for sure what that is," underwater archaeologist Andrew Pietruszka told the newspaper.
