Ocean explorers wish they had captured a photo of Amelia Earhart’s plane.
Amelia Earhart stands next to her Lockheed Electra 10E plane before her final flight from Oakland, California, to Honolulu in 1937. Its disappearance remains one of aviation’s greatest mysteries.
A deep-sea exploration company that has offered a possible clue to Amelia Earhart’s disappearance now says an underwater photo it released earlier this year did not show the wreckage of Earhart’s plane, as it had hoped, but a naturally occurring rock formation in the shape of an airplane.
Deep Vision, based in South Carolina, announced in January that it had captured sonar images of what may have been Earhart’s Lockheed Electra plane sunk on the Pacific Ocean floor, about 100 miles from Howland Island, where Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan, were scheduled to refuel in July 1937 before their around-the-world voyage.
The two never arrived, and their bodies and the wreckage of their plane were never found. In 1939, Earhart was declared dead.
The 39-year-old woman’s disappearance remains one of aviation’s biggest mysteries. If successful, she would have become the first female pilot to fly around the world.
Deep Vision is the latest in a long line of explorers who have been working to find answers.
In late 2023, the company used a high-tech underwater drone and a crew of 16 to survey more than 5,200 miles of seafloor. Earlier this year, the company announced that one of its sonar images captured what it believes may have been Earhart’s plane.
A sonar image of Earhart’s massive Elktra plane next to it in 2023.
Deep Sea Vision announced earlier this year that it believed it had captured sonar images of Earhart’s plane, based on its size, shape and location.
The possible discovery of underwater debris suggests Earhart’s plane ran out of fuel and sank, one of several persistent theories about her disappearance.
Others, based on a since-debunked photo, believe Earhart and Noonan survived an emergency landing but were captured by Japanese forces, which were expanding their control of the region in preparation for World War II. Another theory is that the two crashed on or near the remote island of Nikumaroro (now part of Kiribati) and died shortly after.
The case is far from closed. Deep Sea Vision announced in an Instagram post earlier this month that its research is not yet complete.
“After 11 months of waiting, it’s finally over, and unfortunately, our target was not the Electra 10E that carried Amelia (it was just a natural rock formation). The plot thickens as no evidence of her disappearance has been found,” the company wrote.
Deep Vision CEO Tony Romeo, a former U.S. Air Force pilot and intelligence officer, told NPR in January that there are three main reasons to believe they have found the wreckage.
The size and tail of the figure in the photo are very similar to Earhart’s plane, he said, and the location where it was taken is “very flat and smooth, so any natural formation protruding from the bottom is highly unusual.”
New research suggests bones found in Pacific atoll 80 years ago are likely those of Amelia Earhart
But he also acknowledged there are reasons to be cautious. The company also said in a January press release that despite its optimism, “there is still a lot of debate internally about whether the sonar images should be released publicly.”
“We brought a bottle of Jameson 1937 whiskey on the plane. We decided not to open it because there is no official news at this time,” Romeo said in an interview with NPR’s Morning News program.
Romeo said the next step would be to send a remotely operated submersible to the seafloor about 15,000 feet away to take pictures and assess the condition of the suspected aircraft.
“The one we want to see is NR16020. The numbers are painted on the front of the wing of the aircraft and the lower part of the wing,” Romeo said. “Based on our observations of other World War II aircraft on the seafloor at similar depths, we expect that the paint and the aircraft will be in good condition.”
Romeo told CNN last week that his team revisited the site in early November and used an autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) to capture high-resolution images that revealed the rock formations.
“We are talking about the most brutal formations that Mother Nature has ever created,” he said. “It looks like someone placed those rocks in beautiful patterns on the plane just to annoy those who look for them.”
“The plot has developed and we plan to investigate further,” Romeo told NPR via email.
“While we are disappointed with the recent discovery, we are hopeful that Amelia’s plane will be found, wherever she may be hiding,” he wrote. “The search map we created adds a lot of mystery to where Amelia may have disappeared.” The search “is continuing”, and nearly 7,700 square miles have been cleared so far.
