OAN’s Abril Elfi
3:48 PM – Monday, January 29, 2024
According to claims made by one deep-sea exploration team, Amelia Earhart’s long-lost airplane may have been located.
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A sonar image that Deep Sea Vision, an exploration group based in Charleston, South Carolina, claimed to have taken this week in the Pacific Ocean “appears to be Earhart’s Lockheed 10-E Electra” aircraft.
The group went on to say that they have scanned more than 5,200 square miles of the ocean floor since September. Sonar images that seemed to depict a plane-shaped object resting at the bottom of the sea were shared on social media by the company.
A video of the 16-person team’s search was also made public. During the search, they reportedly used an advanced underwater drone to better scan the ocean floor.
Tony Romeo, a pilot and former U.S. Air Force intelligence officer, told the press that he was responsible for funding the $11 million search and was able to do so after selling off his commercial real estate properties.
“This is maybe the most exciting thing I’ll ever do in my life,” he told the Journal. “I feel like a 10-year-old going on a treasure hunt.”
In an attempt to become the first female pilot to circle the globe, Amelia Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan, vanished on July 2nd, 1937, while over the Pacific Ocean. Their disappearance went without a trace and sparked the most costly search and rescue operation in American history by the U.S. Coast Guard and Navy. After being missing for two years, Earhart and Noonan were declared to be deceased.
Romeo told the Journal that the aircraft-shaped object was photographed by his team’s underwater “Hugin” submersible at a depth of approximately 16,000 feet in the Pacific Ocean, less than 100 miles from Howland Island, where Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan were expected to refuel before going missing.
Romeo also said that his team did not discover the sonar image until approximately three months into the journey, and by then, it was “too late to turn back around.” As a result, they plan to go back for a closer examination.
A closer inspection for details matching Earhart’s Lockheed aircraft would yield conclusive evidence, sonar experts told the outlet.
Additionally, Romeo stated that his aviation expertise brought a new perspective to the search.
“We always felt that a group of pilots were the ones that are going to solve this, and not the mariners,” Romeo told the outlet.
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