Amelia Earhart disappeared on July 2, 1937 somewhere over the Pacific Ocean as she neared the end of her historic flight around the world. For decades, explorers and adventurers have followed the trail of the American aviation pioneer to try to discover where her Lockheed Electra 10E Special was. Almost 90 years later it seems that the definitive clue has finally been found.
Tony Romeo, pilot and former intelligence officer of the United States Air Force, has spent about $11 million (€10.1 million) since 2021 to find Earhart's whereabouts and assures that he has succeeded. The plane would have crashed about 200 kilometers from small Howland Island, halfway between Hawaii and Australia.
After selling his real estate holdings, Romeo founded the company Deep Sea Vision and began an extraordinary journey into the unknown. Last fall he left Tarawa Atoll (capital of the Republic of Kiribati), in the South Pacific, aboard a research vessel.
Working in 36-hour shifts, the 16-person crew used an autonomous underwater vehicle equipped with sonar to explore the sea floor, scanning approximately 5,200 square miles in total.
Three months after finishing the expedition, the team was reviewing the images obtained and noticed something unusual. At the bottom of the Pacific, about 5,000 meters below the sea surface, there was a mysterious object that appeared to be about the same shape and size as a plane, right in the region where experts believe Amelia Earhart's plane crashed.
The blurry image is far from definitive proof, but some experts point out that the intriguing photograph deserves in-depth analysis. The problem is that it was too late for Romeo's expedition to return to the place. Also, the submersible's camera was broken, so they need some time to repair it.
As the former US military officer has stated to various media, the objective is to return to the area as soon as possible - probably at the end of 2024 - to carry out a closer analysis and be able to certify that the unknown object is really the Lockheed with which Earhart and navigator Fred Noonan left Oakland (California) on May 20, 1937.
The ideal, the specialists point out, is that in future missions they will be able to capture detailed images in which the plane's registration number appears or at least allow us to see more clearly the dimensions and shape of the submerged object to see if it matches the model of the plane. disappeared 87 years ago.
Amelia Earhart was a real celebrity in the United States at the time she was lost. In June 1928 she had become the first woman to make a transoceanic flight across the Atlantic (as a passenger with pilots Wilmer Stultz and Lou Gordon), a feat that propelled her to international stardom.
Almost four years later, in May 1932, she made history again by becoming the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean. Later, she was also the first to fly solo across North America. And in 1935 she went down in history as the first person to fly solo from Honolulu (Hawaii) to Oakland.
In the summer of 1936, the renowned pilot began planning her most ambitious trip yet: a circumnavigation of the world. Earhart Noonan flew almost 35,500 kilometers making stops in South America, Africa and India along her route east.
By the end of June, they had arrived in Lae (Papua New Guinea). After a few days of rest, they set out for Howland Island, a small uninhabited islet in the Pacific where a service station had been built for their journey. The United States Coast Guard had a ship, the Itasca, stationed nearby to assist with the disembarkation.
Operators aboard the Itasca listened to Earhart's radio messages as she got closer and closer to the island. But eventually they lost contact. He was never seen or heard from again by the aviator and her navigator. The US Navy spent 16 days searching for the duo without success. Almost two years later, on January 5, 1939, they were officially declared dead.
Theories abound about his mysterious disappearance; Some viewers have speculated that she was a spy or that she was captured by a foreign army. But Cochrane believes the simplest explanation is the most plausible: that Earhart and Noonan ran out of fuel near Howland Island.
