The truth behind an image many believed to show the final resting place of Amelia Earhart’s lost plane has finally been revealed.
Earhart, an American aviation pioneer, disappeared over the Pacific Ocean on July 2, 1937, along with her flight navigator, Fred Noonan, while attempting to become the first female pilot to circumnavigate the world.
Mystery has surrounded her disappearance, with no trace of her, Noonan, or her Lockheed 10-E Electra plane, ever being found.
While most historians believed she must have crashed and sank into the Pacific Ocean, other conspiracy theories have emerged, including that she may have made an emergency landing on a nearby island or that she was captured by Japanese forces.
One of the wilder theories was that Earhart survived, changed her name, and became banker Irene Craigmile Bolam, however, Bolam sued the publishers of a book that originated this theory and reportedly reached an out-of-court settlement.
One of the more convincing potential sightings of Earhart’s Electra came after South Carolina-based deep-sea explorer Tony Romeo and his Deep Sea Vision team stumbled upon what he believed could be the wreckage of the plane.
They captured a sonar image of an aircraft-shaped object in the Pacific Ocean during a three-month expedition to find Earhart’s Lockheed 10-E Electra, but have now confirmed the disappointing truth.
After further investigation, they have confirmed that the potential breakthrough was in fact nothing more than a rock formation, which had a similar shape to an aircraft.
Romeo said in a statement, as cited by the New York Post: “While this outcome isn’t what we hoped for, we are continuing our search for another 30 days to cover over 1,500 square nautical miles.
“The global response to our initial discovery has been truly inspiring, a testament to Amelia and the pull of her incredible story.”
Romeo, who is a pilot and former US Air Force intelligence officer, had sold all of his commercial properties to pay for the $11 million search and remains committed to finding a breakthrough in the case.
Earhart had started her journey from Lae, Papua New Guinea, with plans to refuel on Howland Island before continuing their journey to Honolulu and their final destination of Oakland, California.
However, Earhart’s radio transmissions ended up going silent after she faced a strong headwind in Lae, and despite a 16-day search by the US Navy and Coast Guard, no trace was found of her whereabouts.
Earhart – who was 39 at the time of her disappearance – was officially declared dead on January 5, 1939, around a year and a half after she vanished.
Over the resulting nine decades, many expensive searches have attempted to locate any trace of where she and her plane may have ended up. All have so far been unsuccessful.
Romeo and his 16-person team had begun their investigation in September 2023, starting from Tarawa, Kirbati, a port near Howland Island, and used an unmanned submersible to scan 5,200 square miles of the ocean floor.
A blurry image appearing to show an airplane-shaped object was found around a month into the search, over 16,000 feet below the surface and around 100 miles off Howland Island.
While the images caused a frenzy, sonar experts had warned it was too hazy to verify whether or not it was the long-lost plane.
A second expedition launched by Romeo has now, sadly, confirmed that what was believed to potentially be the plane is actually just a rock formation in a similar shape.
The company is continuing its search to discover the truth of where Earhart and her plane ended up.
