It really isn’t my goal to turn DSN into a conspiracy blog, but then I wasn’t expecting someone to claim to have found Amelia Earhart’s airplane.
In case you live under a rock…Amelia Earhart, the pioneering aviator, disappeared on July 2, 1937, during her attempt to circumnavigate the globe. She and her navigator, Fred Noonan, were flying from Lae, Papua New Guinea, to Howland Island when they vanished over the Pacific Ocean. Despite extensive search efforts, no trace of Earhart, Noonan, or their aircraft, a Lockheed Electra, was ever found. The disappearance sparked numerous theories, ranging from crash-and-sink scenarios to theories of Earhart being captured by the Japanese. Despite decades of speculation and search missions, the fate of Amelia Earhart remains one of aviation’s greatest mysteries.
On Saturday, Deep Sea Vision, an oceanic exploration firm headquartered in South Carolina, sonar imagery potentially depicting Earhart’s aircraft resting on the floor of the Pacific Ocean. Utilizing advanced unmanned underwater drones and a 16-member expeditionary team, the company surveyed over 5,200 square miles of seabed between September and December. Deep Sea Vision’s founder, Tony Romeo. is former U.S. Air Force intelligence officer and aviator and divested his real estate business in 2022 to embark on oceanic exploration, driven by a desire to contribute to the search for answers surrounding Earhart’s disappearance.
The identified plane-shaped entity lies approximately 100 miles off Howland Island, where Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan, were scheduled to refuel before their untimely disappearance.
But not everyone is convinced, including Dr. Andrew Thaler of Southern Fried Science
I am also skeptical and I think the Lizard above sum’s it up quite nicely. Granted it is in plausible location. Sure it looks like plane. However sonar is notoriously difficult to deduce meaningful shape from at this level of resolution. This could just as easily be another misshapen bit of wreckage that in sonar looks like an airplane. Second, the big old World War II deposited a lot of airplanes and other vessels on the seafloor in South Pacific.
Also the swept wings of this “plane” do not really match that of Earhart’s Lockheed Model 10 Electra. Of course both could be broken and bent into exactly same angle…
Clearly, better sonar imagery and ROV/HOV dives are needed before this could even be considered plausibly Earhart’s plane.
