Search results
People also ask
Where was Amelia Earhart's plane found?
What happened to Amelia Earhart during her final flight?
What are the characteristics of Amelia Earhart's plane?
What happened to Amelia Earhart's body?
Jan 29, 2024 · The Two-Way. New Research Claims Bones Found 80 Years Ago On Pacific Atoll Likely Amelia Earhart's. The team spotted the plane-shaped object between Australia and Hawaii, about 100...
- Juliana Kim
Jan 30, 2024 · Space and Science. Explorers say they think they’ve found Amelia Earhart’s long-lost plane. By Taylor Nicioli, CNN. 5 minute read. Updated 3:58 PM EST, Tue January 30, 2024. Link...
- Deseret News via Yahoo
Deseret News archives: Amelia Earhart made history despite murky end to her life
On May 21, 1932, Amelia Earhart became the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean as she landed in Northern Ireland, about 15 hours after leaving Newfoundland. Like Charles Lindbergh ...
7 days ago
- Gannett via Yahoo
Did you know Amelia Earhart once called Des Moines home? Where she lived:
Email your question to the Des Moines Register's Bill Steiden at wsteiden@registermedia.com. Amelia Earhart took to the skies in 1921, but did you know she saw her first plane at 10 years old ...
6 days ago
Feb 7, 2024 · USA TODAY. The disappearance of pioneering aviator Amelia Earhart – so famous she could've been the Taylor Swift of her era – has captivated aviation fans and history buffs for 86 years. Now,...
- Overview
- 1. Sonar images have limitations.
- 2. Deep Sea Vision didn’t confirm the object’s identity.
- 3. Some experts say the plane, if it is a plane, doesn’t resemble the Electra.
- 4. The object’s location is roughly on Earhart’s flight path—but beyond the range suggested by her radio signals.
- 5. Others have claimed to solve this mystery.
- 6. The mystery is still unsolved. That doesn’t mean its unsolvable.
A new grainy sonar image claims to solve the mystery of the famed aviator’s disappearance, but experts say it’s too soon to tell. Here's what we do know.
Amelia Earhart and navigator Fred Noonan disappeared over the Pacific Ocean in an attempt to circumnavigate the globe in this Lockheed Electra 10e airplane on July 2, 1937. Experts say it's too early to know for sure whether claims that the wreckage has been found are true.
With the release of a grainy gold image, news headlines around the world are trumpeting the possible discovery of Amelia Earhart’s Lockheed Electra 10e, the plane she was flying in 1937 when she and her navigator, Fred Noonan, disappeared during the most difficult leg of their round-the-world flight.
Deep Sea Vision, a new venture founded by pilot and commercial real estate investor Tony Romeo, captured the sonar image during a hundred-day expedition in the central Pacific, the region where Earhart was lost. “It was definitely a surreal moment for all of us,” says Romeo, who sold his real estate holdings to purchase a cutting-edge autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) equipped with highly advanced sonar technologies.
(Why does Amelia Earhart still fascinate us?)
Still, it’s too soon to say whether this discovery of an object 16,000 feet deep means one of the great historical mysteries has been solved. Here’s what we do know.
Sonar images are not photographs. The sound waves sent by sonar are at a low frequency, which translates to low resolution.
“The sound wave, because it’s so big, can’t see fine detail,” says David Jourdan, an engineer whose company Nauticos has led three expeditions in search of Earhart. “It can be distorted by reflections, like taking a picture of a mirror.” Promising images, on a second look, sometimes turn out to be something else entirely, like a geological formation.
Romeo and his team found the image in their data storage files as they were transitioning to another expedition. They thought that data from one of the AUV’s earlier sorties had been corrupted. When they discovered it wasn’t—and that they had a potential blockbuster find—it was too late to return to the site.
(Why colossal crabs may hold clue to Amelia Earhart's fate.)
“The proportions aren’t quite right,” says Jourdan, pointing to the way the wings are swept back rather than straight across, as the Electra’s were.
Others are even more skeptical. “For the wings of an Electra to fold rearward as shown in the sonar image, the entire center section would have to fail at the wing/fuselage junctions,” according to an email blast from The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery (TIGHAR), an organization that has put forward the theory that Earhart died a castaway on an island to the east of the sonar image site. “That’s just not possible.”
(These are the top 3 theories for Amelia's Earhart's disappearance.)
Romeo dismisses this criticism. Both the wings and the tail look swept back due to distortion caused by the AUV moving through the water, he says, pointing to the twin fins on the back of the plane instead. “That’s very distinctive of her aircraft,” he says. “There’s only a couple of planes that’ve ever been made like that.”
Earhart and Noonan disappeared on July 2, 1937, flying from Lae, New Guinea, to Howland Island, a one-and-a-half-mile long island some 2,500 miles away. After flying 20 hours, Earhart thought they were close and radioed the Itasca, the Coast Guard ship awaiting them at Howland, “We must be on you but cannot see you.” Her voice was so loud, the Coast Guard radiomen thought she was very near too. She wasn’t, but the strength of the radio signals suggest that she was just beyond visual range.
Deep Sea Vision’s search area was roughly a hundred miles west; Romeo won’t reveal exactly where to avoid someone else making the crucial find. But he does acknowledge that they were guided by a theory that Noonan had failed to account for how the International Date Line would affect his calculations. That theory, however, doesn’t account for the strength of Earhart’s radio signals.
Over the nearly 90 years since Earhart and Noonan vanished, many people have claimed to have proof of what happened to them.
People who believe the Japanese captured and killed the aviators have pointed to everything from a generator retrieved in a Saipan harbor in 1960 to a photograph on a Jaluit dock revealed in 2017. TIGHAR, meanwhile, has claimed various smoking guns over the years but now argues that a preponderance of historical and archaeological evidence puts Earhart on Nikumaroro Island, 400 hundred miles south of Howland, where they believe she starved to death.
(Inside the search for Amelia's Earhart's missing plane.)
Then there’s the simplest explanation: that the aviators simply crashed into the ocean. Elgen Long, an airline pilot who with his wife Marie did the most extensive research into where that might have happened, wrote a book called Amelia Earhart: The Mystery Solved. Over three expeditions, Jourdan has looked where Long suggested (and elsewhere) and come up empty.
Jourdan’s team believes they’ve narrowed down where the Electra went down based on recent radio signal testing. Meanwhile, when Deep Sea Vision returns to the site this year, they will bring a documentary crew to capture the moment. “This is definitely something that we need to go back and look at,” says Romeo. “We’ve got to get out there before … ...
- Rachel Hartigan
Jan 29, 2024 · Amelia Earhart's long-lost plane possibly detected by sonar 16,000 feet underwater, exploration team claims. Updated on: January 30, 2024 / 10:30 AM EST / CBS News. Amelia Earhart's...
- Managing Editor
- 2 min
- CBS News
- Stephen Smith
Jan 29, 2024 · Jan. 29, 2024, 7:10 AM PST. By Marlene Lenthang and Emilie Ikeda. A pilot and explorer who embarked on an $11 million expedition at sea believes he has solved one of the world’s greatest mysteries:...
Jan 29, 2024 · January 29, 2024 4:33 PM EST. A n ocean exploration company claims to have found Amelia Earhart’s missing plane— a potential lead in the decades-long mystery over the legendary pilot’s...
