A state-of-the-art underwater drone may have solved one of the most enduring mysteries of the last 100 years: What happened to record-breaking aviator Amelia Earhart when her plane disappeared during a world tour in 1937?
Numerous expeditions yielded no results, only confirming that no trace of his twin-tailed monoplane remained on the ocean floor.
But now private pilot Tony Romeo believes his new South Carolina-based marine research company could provide promising new evidence in the search for Earhart after capturing a grainy sonar image of what he believes is the outline of the iconic American Lockheed 10-E Electra.
Archaeologists and explorers are hopeful. However, it is not yet known whether the messy-haired pilot’s plane was at a depth of approximately 4,800 meters.
And there is a lot of debate about the correct handling of the discovered object.
Archivists are hopeful that Romeo’s Deep Sea Vision is close to solving the puzzle—if for no other reason than to draw attention to Earhart’s achievements.
Regardless, the search continues for the first woman to fly across the Atlantic Ocean.
Reconnaissance using Hugin 6000 drone
How did Deep Sea Vision detect the object that could be Earhart’s plane?
Romeo wanted more than his commercial real estate career. His father flew for Pan American Airlines, his brother is an Air Force pilot and he also has a private pilot’s license. Coming from an “aviation family,” he had long been intrigued by Earhart’s mystery.
Romeo said he sold real estate interests and bought a $9 million underwater drone from a Norwegian company to fund research last year. The latest technology is called Hugin 6000; this is a reference to its ability to penetrate the deepest layer of the ocean at 6,000 m.
A team of 16 people began a nearly 100-day search in September 2023, scanning 13,468 square kilometers of seafloor.
They narrowed their search to the area around Howland Island, an atoll in the central Pacific between Papua New Guinea and Hawaii.
But it wasn’t until the team reviewed the sonar data in December that they spotted the blurry yellow outline of what appeared to be a plane.
“Finally, we obtained an image of a target that we very strongly believe was Amelia’s plane,” Romeo told The Associated Press.
The next step is to take a camera underwater to better examine the unidentified object. If the images confirm the explorers’ fondest hopes, Romeo said, the goal will be to revive the long-lost Electra.
Earhart’s attempt to circumnavigate the world
Ultimately, Romeo said, his team embarked on a costly quest to “solve aviation’s greatest unsolved mystery.”
Romeo said an open hatch cover could indicate Earhart and her flight companion escaped after the initial impact, and the cockpit dial could provide insight into what exactly went wrong.
There are numerous theories about what happened to them, from alien abductions to Japanese executions.
Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan, disappeared while flying from New Guinea to Howland Island as part of an attempt to become the first female pilot to circumnavigate the world.
He radioed that he was low on fuel.
The US Navy searched but found no trace. The official position of the US government was that Earhart and Noonan crashed with their plane.
Theories have since veered in absurd directions, including alien abduction or Earhart living under an assumed name in New Jersey. Others claim that he and Noonan were executed by the Japanese or died as castaways on an island.
“Amelia is America’s favorite missing person,” Romeo said.
Maritime archaeologist James Delgado said Romeo’s potential discovery would change the narrative but “we need to see more.”
“Let’s drop some cameras over there and take a look,” said Delgado, senior vice president of archeology firm SEARCH Inc.
Romeo’s expedition uses world-class, cutting-edge technology that was once secret and “revolutionized our understanding of the deep ocean,” Delgado said.
But he said Romeo’s team needed to provide “forensic-level documentation” to prove it was Earhart’s Lockheed. This could mean patterns in the aluminum of the fuselage, tail configuration and details in the cockpit.
David Jourdan said exploration company Nauticos searched in vain on three separate expeditions between 2002 and 2017 that explored an area of seafloor the size of Connecticut.
Aside from the engines, one would expect to see straight wings rather than curved wings as the new sonar suggests. However, he acknowledged that this could be explained by damage to the aircraft or reflections distorting the image.
“It could be a plane. It definitely looks like a plane. It could be a geological feature that looks like a plane,” he said.
Dorothy Cochrane, curator of aviation at the National Air and Space Museum, said Romeo’s crew searched in the right place near Howland Island.
It was here that Earhart desperately searched for a runway when she disappeared on the last leg of her flight.
If the object is indeed a historic aircraft, the question for Cochrane will be whether it is safe to remove it. He added that how much of the machinery is still intact will depend in part on how smoothly Earhart lands.
“That’s when you actually look at this image and say, ‘What do we have here?'” Cochrane said. “This is where you should say,” he said.
What if Earhart’s Lockheed Electra is found?
Ole Varmer, a retired attorney for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and a senior researcher at the Ocean Foundation, said that if the fuzzy sonar images turned out to be of the plane, international standards for underwater archeology would strongly recommend that the plane remain where it was.
Varmer said non-invasive investigations could still be done to uncover why the plane likely crashed.
“You preserve as much of the story as possible,” Varmer said. “It’s not just the debris. It’s its location and context on the seabed. It’s part of the story of how and why it got there. When you recover it, you destroy part of the site; the information.”
Varmer said it would likely cost hundreds of millions of dollars to remove the plane and place it in the museum. And while Romeo could probably seek recovery in the courts, the owner of the plane has the right to refuse.
According to a blog post by Purdue University in Indiana, Earhart purchased Lockheed at least in part with money raised by the Purdue Research Foundation. And he planned to return the plane to the school.
Romeo said the team believes the plane belongs to the Smithsonian. Acknowledging that potential legal issues were “uncharted territory,” he said the research firm would “deal with them as they arise.”