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SMART NEWS


RESEARCHERS THOUGHT THEY FOUND AMELIA EARHART’S MISSING PLANE. IT TURNED OUT TO
BE A PLANE-SHAPED PILE OF ROCKS

Months after capturing a promising sonar image, they learned that the blurry
object was nothing more than a rock formation that resembled the aviator’s
Lockheed 10-E Electra aircraft

Ellen Wexler

Assistant Editor, Humanities

December 6, 2024

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

A sonar image taken on November 1 shows a rock formation. Deep Sea Vision via
Instagram


Earlier this year, researchers announced that they had captured an intriguing
sonar image: a grainy object shaped roughly like a plane resting 16,400 feet
below the surface of the Pacific Ocean. The site was located about 100 miles
from Howland Island, which was Amelia Earhart’s intended destination when her
plane vanished in the summer of 1937.

Her disappearance is one of the most enduring mysteries in aviation history, and
the researchers hoped they had solved it. But they knew they would need more
information before drawing definitive conclusions.



On November 6, the exploration company Deep Sea Vision announced in an Instagram
post that it had bad news: The mysterious object was a rock formation that just
so happened to be shaped like Earhart’s Lockheed 10-E Electra aircraft.

“Talk about the cruelest formation ever created by nature,” Deep Sea Vision CEO
Tony Romeo, a former U.S. Air Force intelligence officer, tells CNN’s Taylor
Nicioli. “It’s almost like somebody did set those rocks out in this nice little
pattern of her plane, just to mess with somebody out there looking for her.”

Romeo and two of his brothers are also pilots, and they were hopeful about their
chances, as he told the Wall Street Journal’s Nidhi Subbaraman in January. After
all, they had always suspected that the mystery would be solved by pilots,
rather than mariners. Several years ago, Romeo sold his real estate interests to
fund the $11 million search.

Based on the facts of Earhart’s final voyage, the company was searching in the
right place, as Dorothy Cochrane, an aeronautics curator at the Smithsonian’s
National Air and Space Museum, tells Smithsonian magazine. Today, most experts
think that Earhart ran out of fuel near Howland Island.



That was the conclusion that Elgen Long, an American aviator and researcher, and
his wife, Marie, came to after decades of exhaustive research, which they
published in their 1999 book Amelia Earhart: The Mystery Solved. In recent
years, exploration companies like Deep Sea Vision and Nauticos—which has staged
three unsuccessful searches—have been building on their work.

“With each expedition, they compress the search area,” says Cochrane. “I remain
hopeful that the Electra will be found.”

Amelia Earhart posing for a portrait circa 1936, a year before she disappeared.
Library of Congress / Getty Images

At the time of her disappearance, Earhart was a household name around the world.
She had risen to fame after becoming the first woman to fly across the Atlantic
as a passenger in 1928. Four years later, she became the first woman (and second
person) to make the same voyage as a solo pilot.

In June 1937, Earhart hoped to break a new barrier: becoming the first woman to
fly around the world. After setting out from Florida, Earhart and her navigator,
Fred Noonan, traveled for more than 20,000 miles, making stops in South America,
Africa, India and New Guinea. The next leg of the journey was crossing the
Pacific.

The duo planned to stop on Howland Island, a 13,200-foot-long strip of land in
the middle of the ocean, where they would refuel. After taking off on July 2,
the plane and its two passengers were never seen again.



The official search lasted for more than two weeks but proved fruitless. In the
eight decades since, interested onlookers have felt compelled to keep looking.
As Romeo told the Wall Street Journal, working on the mystery was “maybe the
most exciting thing I’ll ever do in my life.”

Late last year, Romeo set out with his 16-person crew from Deep Sea Vision. The
team used millions of dollars of advanced equipment—sonar technology attached to
an autonomous underwater vehicle—to scan 5,200 square miles of the ocean floor.

A few months later, the researchers were reviewing sonar images when they
noticed the plane-shaped object. Their discovery made headlines around the
world. While many experts were intrigued by the news, they also urged caution.

“It really requires further research,” Cochrane told Smithsonian magazine’s
Sarah Kuta at the time. “Finding something that’s really worth investigating
further is step one. Verifying it’s the actual craft is step two.”



The fuzzy sonar images had been taken from about 1,640 feet away. A few weeks
ago, the team returned to the site and positioned their underwater vehicle
directly above the area. After a 24-hour-long wait, the results were in: A
high-resolution image showed nothing more than an “unfortunate rock formation,”
as Romeo tells the Wall Street Journal.

“I’m super disappointed out here, but you know, I guess that’s life,” he adds.

Romeo isn’t giving up; in the recent Instagram post, Deep Sea Vision promised
that it’s continuing to search. So is Nauticos, which recently completed an
analysis of potential search areas using radio data, per CNN. David Jourdan, the
company’s co-founder and president, thinks the remaining areas could potentially
be investigated in one more mission.

Meanwhile, without new evidence, some onlookers have formed their own versions
of the story. For many years, conspiracy theories about Earhart’s
disappearance—that she was a spy, that she adopted a new identity—proliferated.
Cochrane hopes that the plane will be found, finally putting some of these
notions to rest.



“Besides solving one of the greatest mysteries of the 20th century,” she says,
“the discovery would end speculation and return focus to Amelia Earhart’s
enduring contributions to aviation and her impact in women’s and American
history.”



Get the latest stories in your inbox every weekday.



Ellen Wexler | | READ MORE

Ellen Wexler is Smithsonian magazine’s assistant digital editor, humanities.


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