According to Romeo, a former US Air Force intelligence officer, the wreckage lies more than three miles deep on the ocean floor, about halfway between Hawaii and Australia.
Missing over Pacific Ocean
Earhart became the first woman and second person to ever fly solo and nonstop across the Atlantic Ocean in 1932, five years after Charles Lindbergh accomplished the feat.
She was attempting to fly around the world with navigator Fred Noonan when her plane went missing over the Pacific Ocean. Had she succeeded, she would have become the first female pilot to do so.
Romeo’s private exploration company, Deep Sea Vision, traced the plane wreckage using sonar data from a deep-sea drone. Somewhat blurry sonar images from the drone show an airplane-like shape on the flat, sandy ocean floor, he said.
Lockheed Model 10-E Electra
Deep Sea Vision’s 16-person crew searched more than 13,400 square kilometers for 100 days at the end of last year. Romeo said the footage showed a plane the same size as Earhart’s Lockheed Model 10-E Electra.
The image, he said, appeared to show a distinguishing feature of the plane: the twin vertical stabilizers on the tail.
Mission
Romeo plans to launch a mission later this year or next year to find the long-lost plane, which a massive American search failed to do in 1937.
“The first step is to confirm the drone footage,” he said. “The next step, if possible, would be to raise the wreckage to the surface and recover it.”
The importance of such a mission speaks for itself as far as Romeo is concerned. “She’s America’s most famous missing person, right? As long as she’s missing, there will always be someone looking for her,” Romeo said. “If we can help bring closure to this story and bring Amelia home, we would be super excited.”
2024-01-31 02:10:19
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