An 87-year-old search for Amelia Earhart’s missing plane appeared to finally have come to an end earlier this year.
After an extensive expedition, explorers from South Carolina firm Deep Sea Vision said they had found an “airplane-shaped object” in the same region of the Pacific Ocean where the legendary aviator disappeared in 1937.
However, a second expedition now reveals that the object is not an airplane at all, but just a bunch of rocks.
Tony Romeo, founder of Deep Sea Vision, said in a statement: “This outcome is not what we had hoped for.
“The global response to our first discovery was truly inspiring, a testament to Amelia and the appeal of her incredible story.”
Amelia Earhart was the first female pilot to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean and one of the first pilots to promote commercial air travel.
The Kansas native was flying a Lockheed Model 10 Electra with navigator Fred Noonan when the plane disappeared near Howland Island on July 2, 1937.
At the time, she was trying to become the first woman to circumnavigate the world, but what exactly happened may forever remain a mystery.
Amelia Earhart was an American aviation pioneer who was a widely known international celebrity during her lifetime, but the circumstances of her death remain a mystery. She is pictured here in 1931 in the cockpit of her gyroplane
Earlier this year, Deep Sea Vision released sonar images (photo). They said it could be the remains of the plane Earhart was flying when she disappeared over the Pacific Ocean in 1937. Now it turns out that it is a pile of stones.
Deep Sea Vision began its first search in September 2023 in a part of the Pacific Ocean west of Earhart’s planned destination, remote Howland Island.
The crew spent 90 days searching 5,200 square kilometers of the Pacific Ocean floor – “more than all previous searches combined.”
To their delight, blurry images of what appeared to be an aircraft were captured by an underwater drone at a depth of about 16,000 feet.
When Deep Sea Vision released the footage in January, Mr Romeo was confident they had solved the 87-year-old mystery.
He said, “It would be hard to convince me that this is anything but a plane, first, and two, that it is not Amelia’s plane.”
However, he did admit that the drone’s camera failed, so they wanted to return to the location to prove it was Earhart’s plane.
Possibly leading the way, Romeo reiterated his ultimate goal: getting the plane out of the water.
He said this summer: “We’ll have to see…is it still intact? The wings are folded down. We have to look at how it is in the sediment, in the mud, in the sand?
Sonar images were captured by an unmanned underwater submarine at a depth of 16,000 feet after an extensive search of an area of the Pacific Ocean west of Earhart’s planned destination, remote Howland Island.
Tony Romeo (left) is seen with DSV operations chief Corey Friend leaving Tarawa, Kiribati on September 8, 2023
“And then we have to see if there’s a debris field: are there shoes outside the plane, are there pieces of the plane around that we have to worry about recovering?”
“The plane sits there and slowly falls apart, just like the Titanic.”
The team’s second expedition this year wasted no time and used the same Hugin 6000 underwater drone as the first expedition in December 2023.
Unfortunately, “an unfortunate rock formation” in the shape of an airplane was identified, meaning that the search for the truth continues once again.
But Deep Sea Vision decided to continue its search “for an additional 30 days to cover more than 1,500 square nautical miles,” the company said in a statement.
Exactly what happened to Amelia Earhart has long been a source of fascination for Mr. Romeo, a former U.S. Air Force intelligence officer who sold his commercial real estate investments to finance his quest.
He reportedly spent $11 million searching for the plane’s wreckage.
Earhart – who rose to fame in 1932 as the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean – was on one of the final legs of the circumnavigation of the world in 1937 when her plane tragically crashed.
Earhart (born 1897) stands in front of the Lockheed Electra in which she disappeared in 1937
Earhart was flying a Lockheed Model 10 Electra when the plane disappeared on July 2, 1937. In the last radio message Itasca heard during the flight, Earhart said, “We are on line 157 337…. We sail on the line north and south.’ The numbers 157 and 337 refer to compass directions – 157° and 337° – and describe a line passing through the intended destination, Howland Island.
This final fatal flight took off from Lae Airfield in Papua New Guinea and headed east to Howland Island, a journey of 4,556 miles.
Both Earhart and Noonan, 44, communicated with a nearby Coast Guard ship, USCGC Itasca, before their plane lost contact.
In the last radio message Itasca heard during the flight, Earhart said, “We are on line 157 337…. We sail on the line north and south.’
The numbers 157 and 337 referred to compass directions – 157° and 337° – and described a line passing through their intended destination, Howland Island.
A popular and relatively simple theory is that the plane crashed into the sea when it ran out of fuel and then sank.
Both Earhart and Noonan either died immediately on impact or were unable to get out and drowned, the theory goes.
The tragic loss has led to even more fantastic theories, including the claim that they were eaten by the crabs and imprisoned by the Japanese.
It is generally agreed that the wreck lies beneath the waves near its planned destination of Howland Island or another island about 560 kilometers southeast called Nikumaroro.
Experts recently discovered code on an aluminum panel found on Nikumaroro in 1991 and believed to have been part of Earhart’s missing plane.
However, analysis revealed that the panel did not belong to Earhart’s Lockheed Electra, but was part of an aircraft that crashed at least six years later during World War II.