The latest adventurer to hunt for it says a fuzzy sonar image shows the twin-engine aircraft Earhart was flying when she vanished in 1937

When she disappeared on her most ambitious trip—what she hoped would be a record-setting journey around the world—it sparked a decadeslong mystery: What happened to Amelia Earhart?

LINK https://www.wsj.com/science/am...od=trending_now_news

Now, a commercial real-estate investor from Charleston, S.C., thinks he might have found a vital clue.

Tony Romeo, a pilot himself and a former U.S. Air Force intelligence officer, is the latest in a string of adventurers to plumb the Pacific Ocean in search of the plane Earhart was flying in 1937 when, at the peak of her fame, she vanished.

In December, Romeo—who sold his commercial properties to fund his search—returned from an expedition with a sonar image of an aircraft-shaped object resting on the ocean floor. He believes it’s Earhart’s Lockheed 10-E Electra, and experts are intrigued.



The location where Romeo said he captured the image is about right, said Dorothy Cochrane, a curator in the aeronautics department of the Smithsonian Institution’s National Air and Space Museum, and sonar experts who have viewed the image agree that it’s unusual enough to take a closer look.

Romeo said he plans to return to get better images. “This is maybe the most exciting thing I’ll ever do in my life,” he said. “I feel like a 10-year-old going on a treasure hunt.”

At the dawn of the modern aviation age, Earhart’s record-breaking run as a pioneering pilot made her an international celebrity. She was the first woman to fly solo, nonstop across the continental U.S. and the Atlantic, and the first person to fly solo from Hawaii to the mainland over the Pacific.

“For her to go missing was just unthinkable,” Romeo said. “Imagine Taylor Swift just disappearing today.”



Amelia Earhart was an international celebrity in her time. Her successful trans-Atlantic flight garnered a parade through New York City. In Ireland, a gaggle of men awaited her autograph.
KEYSTONE-FRANCE/GAMMA-KEYSTONE/GETTY IMAGES; BETTMAN ARCHIVE/GETTY IMAGES
Since Earhart vanished, voyagers on at least a half-dozen trips have sunk millions into hunts for her lost plane.

People can’t quit Amelia. They also can’t seem to find her.

In 1999, Dana Timmer, an America’s Cup sailor, helmed a deep-water search near Howland Island, a dot of land between Australia and Hawaii where Earhart was last expected to land. Timmer saw a promising shadow on sonar, but never raised the cash to go back and verify his find.

In 2009, a team put together by Ted Waitt, founder of the Gateway computer company, hauled in a handful of junk including a metal drum and a 6-inch-wide cable. “We’re confident we know where #Earhart isn’t,” the group tweeted after the expeditions.

Nauticos, an ocean exploration firm, launched three searches, in 2002, 2006 and 2017, but found nothing but a piece of pipe and other shipping trash, said David Jourdan, the company’s president and founder.

Fateful Flight
For years adventurers have searched the Pacific Ocean along the final stretch of Amelia Earhart's flight route in hopes of finding her missing plane.

Completed path

Planned path

Speculated path

Oakland

Earhart departs in May 1937

Karachi

Miami

Honolulu

San Juan

Bangkok

Dakar

Singapore

Khartoum

Howland Island

Object found within 100 miles of the island

Fortaleza

Earhart disappeared after departing Papua New Guinea in July

Note: Flight path is simplified.
Sources: Smithsonian Institution (Oakland departure); Sammie L. Morris, Purdue University (Miami to Oakland route)
Emma Brown/THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
“It’s the only thing in my career that I’ve ever looked for and not found,” said Tom Dettweiler, a sonar expert who participated in two of the Nauticos searches and was part of the team that found the Titanic off the coast of Newfoundland, Canada, in 1985.

Excluding the Waitt group, which declined to disclose costs to the Journal, the missions collectively cost at least $13 million when adjusted for inflation.

Romeo and two of his brothers, all pilots, thought they’d bring their airmen’s read to “the perfect riddle” of where Earhart disappeared. “We always felt that a group of pilots were the ones that are going to solve this, and not the mariners,” Romeo said.

They tried to imagine Earhart’s strategy by drawing on clues about her direction, location and fuel levels based on radio messages received by Itasca, the U.S. Coast Guard vessel stationed near Howland Island to help Earhart land and refuel. Then Romeo and his team plotted a search area based on where they thought Earhart was most likely to have gone down.

Romeo said he sold his real estate interests in 2021 and spent $11 million to fund the trip and buy the high-tech gear needed for the search—including an underwater “Hugin” drone manufactured by the Norwegian company Kongsberg.

Romeo’s expedition began in early September from Tarawa, Kiribati. The team used a submersible drone equipped with sonar to scan the ocean floor. VIDEO: DEEP SEA VISION
“That’s the vehicle I would choose to use,” said Larry Mayer, an oceanographer and director of the Center for Coastal and Ocean Mapping at the University of New Hampshire.

Romeo’s expedition began in early September from Tarawa, Kiribati, a port near Howland Island, with a 16-person crew aboard a research vessel.

In outings that lasted 36 hours each, the unmanned submersible scanned 5,200 square miles of ocean floor. About 30 days in, it had captured a fuzzy sonar image of an object the size and shape of an airplane resting some 5,000 meters underwater within 100 miles of Howland Island. But the team didn’t discover the image in the drone’s data until about 90 days into the trip. By then, it wasn’t practical to turn back, Romeo said.

Experts who have seen the image said they want to see clearer views of the object with details such as a serial number that matches Earhart’s vessel.


A sonar image—reflecting varying levels of brightness—of the airplane-shaped object resting 5,000 meters underwater about 100 miles from Howland Island. PHOTO: DEEP SEA VISION
“Until you physically take a look at this, there’s no way to say for sure what that is,” said Andrew Pietruszka, an underwater archaeologist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at University of California, San Diego, who leads deep ocean searches for lost U.S. military aircraft and the soldiers who went down with them.

The search for Earhart’s plane is particularly challenging because of the remoteness of her last known location. “It’s very deep water, and the area that she could’ve possibly been in is huge,” Dettweiler said.

This was also Earhart’s challenge.

On July 2, 1937, she and navigator Fred Noonan took off from Lae, Papua New Guinea, nearing the end of their historic trip. They planned to refuel at Howland, an uninhabited island where a runway and refueling station had been built ahead of their arrival, before flying on to Honolulu and finishing in Oakland, Calif.

The world was watching.


Tony Romeo spent $11 million to search for Earhart’s lost plane. PHOTO: DEEP SEA VISION
Earhart and Noonan took off from Lae into a strong headwind. Operators listened to Earhart’s radio messages as she flew across the Pacific toward Howland, a half-degree north of the equator. The Coast Guard’s Itasca, stationed near the island, estimated their progress by the strength of the radio transmissions.

The last messages came in so strong that a radio operator looked skyward, expecting to see her fly overhead, according to Laurie Gwen Shapiro, a journalist who is working on a biography of Earhart.

She was nowhere to be seen.

After 16 days, the U.S. Navy and Coast Guard ended their search, and on Jan. 5, 1939, Earhart was declared dead.

Most experts who have studied Earhart’s last broadcasts expect to find her craft within range of Howland Island, but in the absence of its discovery, a host of theories have emerged. In one improbable scenario, Earhart was captured by a foreign military. In another, she made a secret return to the U.S. and lived a quiet life out of the spotlight under a new name. In a third, she was a spy.

“That’s just nonsense,” said Cochrane, the National Air and Space Museum curator. “None of that is practical.”

For now, the world is still waiting for an answer.

“It was one of the great mysteries of the 20th century and still now into the 21st century,” Cochrane said. “We’re all hopeful that the mystery will be solved.”


Earhart and Fred Noonan board the Lockheed 10-E Electra in San Juan, Puerto Rico, during their around-the-world flight attempt. PHOTO: BETTMANN ARCHIVE/GETTY IMAGES

I read with great interest every few years the latest theory about her disappearance. Hope this one's the one.

That Lockheed appears to have wings perpendicular to the fuselage. The image shows swept wings (if it's a plane at all). Of course, anything can happen when you hit the ocean and sink 15,000ft, but I'd guess no, it's not her plane.

It'd be cool if it was I suppose, as that find is kind of the Holy Grail for those hunting it.

Well this does sound more promising than that research out of Bermuda several years ago.

She was abducted by aliens. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_37%27s

The swept wings are a mystery, if it is a plane at all. You can see the twin tail, so that would support it being an Electra, but those swept wings.

Was there any plane that had a twin tail and swept wings (F14 Tomcat excepted).

I’m always fascinated by guys with a ton of money and even FU money ( Paul Allen) subsidising legit research search expeditions. He found the Indianapolis a few years ago.

There is quite a rabbit hole concerning Earhart. And some of what I read would indicate that a lot of her reputation was hype and promotion by her husband and others that covered for the fact that she was only a mediocre pilot. There was a skeleton found on Howland Island after she disappeared that lent credence to her crash landing on the beach but it too disappeared. Others believe she was captured by the Japanese and executed. TIGAR is convinced the Electra landed on the beach and was subsequently washed into deeper water accounting for its disappearance.
I have followed all this since I was a teenager and I believe the most likely scenario is she missed Howland and crashed into the ocean. This most recent search seems more based in fact. The swept wings on the sonar image may be some kind of distortion.
The Dutch used the military version of the Electra for maritime patrol during WWII and lost a lot of them. There may be more than one Electra on the ocean floor.

quote:

Romeo said. “Imagine Taylor Swift just disappearing today.”

I mean...

I also have read about Amelia. There was a lot of hype about her, and her navigation skills were mediocre. Finding a tiny island in the Pacific with limited fuel and poor nav skills is a good way to get killed.

quote:

“Imagine Taylor Swift just disappearing today.”

Forget all the alternative explanations and conspiracy theories. She, her navigator who accompanied her and the airplane are at the bottom of the ocean somewhere. That part of the Pacific is very deep. It would be cool to find the wreck, and even if found but not hers, somebody's family (more likely descendants) would get some closure.

quote:

Originally posted by c1steve:
... her navigation skills were mediocre...

Well, she was a woman, so...

.

IIRC, she had an experienced navigator along with her, by the name of Fred Noonan. Long flights over water were still in the toddler stage. It's kind of hard to stop and ask directions.

But what was in her suitcase?

https://tighar.org/Publication...3Vol_19/suitcase.pdf

The "Post Loss Radio Study" cited by TIGAR refers to a woman who supposedly heard Earhart over shortwave radio making radio transmissions after landing the Electra. Another Earhart rabbit hole.

Wake me up when someone finds something a little more substantial.
This has been going on for the best part of the last century.
That vast area of the Pacific is filled with lost planes from the war so an unidentified plane on the oceans bottom isn't exactly a rear finding.

She was a hero for a generation of women who were coming of age at the time of her disappearance. Maybe they will solve it. They solved the Michael Rockefeller death, but still have not figured out what happened to Errol Flynn's son.

I met several Japanese living on Saipan for generations who claim to have grandparents who saw a white Man and Woman in-prisoned on the Island during the pre war period.It seem widely known by
locals they were executed and buried on the island.

Her navigator, Noonan, was reputed to be unreliable and not proficient with some of the navigation gear on the airplane. I am fuzzy on the details now, but he was a weak link. As I recall, she expected to rely on him for navigation. Flying the airplane would be a busy job for the pilot, so a navigator was necessary.

Her accomplishments were due to far more than just luck. Those were early days of aviation with rudimentary equipment and not much tribal knowledge to lean on to stay out of trouble. She certainly had guts and was the real deal. I feel blessed to have her autograph dated Nov 7, 1932 when she was guest of honor at the Explorers Club.

There is a hypothesis that he had her flying on a reciprocal course from the correct course as they searched for Howland. I have seen very many inexperienced pilots get confused by the course vs bearing, and TO vs FROM. Back in those days the instruments were raw data and could require a little bit of mental visualization and simple math. A simple error results in flying the opposite direction than desired.