(NewsNation) — A pilot who has been on an $11 million expedition to find out what happened to Amelia Earhart believes he may have found her plane at the bottom of the Pacific.
Tony Romeo, businessman and former Air Force intelligence officer, sold commercial properties to fund the trip in an effort to find out what happened to the famed aviator who vanished in 1937.
Romeo took sonar images of what seems to be an airplane-shaped object resting on the floor of the Pacific Ocean near Howland Island, which is located roughly halfway between Hawaii and Australia.
The location is consistent with where historians believe Earhart and navigator Fred Noonan crashed. Romeo says the unique shape of the tail is also consistent with the twin-engine Lockheed 10-E Electra Earhart was flying.
Amelia Earhart: Aviation pioneer
Earhart was a pioneer in aviation. She became the first female passenger to fly across the Atlantic and then later became the first woman to fly a solo transatlantic flight. She also became the first aviator of any gender to make a solo flight between Honolulu, Hawaii, and Oakland, California.
In 1937, Earhart set out to become the first woman to circumnavigate the globe. The Electra was designed specifically for her, and the voyage and she and Noonan set off from Miami on June 1, 1937.
The pair stopped in numerous places including South America, Africa and Southeast Asia, with the last known stop in Lae, New Guinea, on June 29, 1937. The rest of the journey would be mainly across the open ocean.
The pair were headed to Howland Island but never arrived. The flight’s last known location was near the Nukumanu Islands. Earhart and Noonan maintained communications with a Coast Guard cutter sent to the island during her approach, but radio contact was lost after a transmission indicating she believed she and Noonan had found the island, which may have been incorrect.
A search by the Navy and Coast Guard failed to locate Earhart and Noonan or the plane. She was officially declared dead in 1939, but her disappearance has been a mystery that’s fascinated the public for decades and spawned many theories about what happened.
What happened to Earhart’s plane?
The most plausible theory is that the flight ran out of fuel and crashed into the Pacific, sinking to the ocean floor where it wouldn’t be found by rescuers.
However, other theories have been floated, including that the pair crash-landed on uninhabited Nikumaroro Island, then known as Gardner Island. Bones were found on the island in 1940 and were identified by anthropologists at the time as being male. The skeleton is gone, but examination of the data has led some to suggest they could actually have belonged to Earhart.
Another theory holds that the pair crashed somewhere in Japanese-controlled territory and were taken captive. While tensions between Japan and the U.S. were high, World War II had not yet started and it isn’t clear why Japan would have taken the pair and held them rather than getting credit for rescuing them.
Others have suggested she was actually a spy or landed safely and later assumed a new identity.
An answer to a nearly 90-year-old mystery?
Romeo’s image, if accurate, would support the first theory. But more evidence would be needed, a challenge with the object in the images located 16,500 feet below the surface — even deeper than the wreck of the Titanic.
Romeo captured the images using a $9 million high-tech unmanned drone submersible, working with a research crew of 16. The expedition began in September 2022 in Kiribati, covering 5,200 square miles of the ocean floor.
Experts say that while the images are worth further investigation, they need more information to conclusively say the plane is Earhart’s.
Romeo hopes to return to the area with a camera and remote-operated vehicle to get better images of the plane and maybe settle the decades-old mystery once and for all.