#Still Unsolved

[xtruss]

Has Amelia Earhart’s Plane Really Been Found? 6 Key Things To Know

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.

— By Rachel Hartigan | January 29, 2024

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. Photograph Courtesy PF-(Aircraft), Alamy Stock Photo

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.

The remotely operated vehicle Hercules is retrieved from the waters off Nikumaroro Island onto the deck of the E/V Nautilus in 2019 after a day of searching for Amelia Earhart’s missing airplane. Explorers have long sought to solve the mystery of the famed aviator's fate. Photograph By Gabriel Scarlett, National Geographic Image Collection

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.

1. Sonar Images Have Limitations.

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.

Amelia Earhart is shown in the cockpit of her autogiro on April 8, 1931, after setting a new altitude record for women in planes of this type. Bettmann/Contributor/Getty Images

2. Deep Sea Vision Didn’t Confirm The Object’s Identity.

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.

“We were out of time. We were out of resources,” says Romeo. “And we didn’t have a camera on our [AUV]. It broke really early in the expedition.” Returning to go over the target again with just sonar didn’t seem worth the hundreds of thousands of dollars he estimated it would cost. Deep Sea Vision plans to go back to the sonar image site this year, this time with an operational camera on the AUV to confirm the finding.

National Geographic Explorer at Large Bob Ballard, pictured here in the control room of the E/V Nautilus, led a major expedition in 2019 to find the remains of Amelia Earhart's airplane. Photograph By Gabriel Scarlett, National Geographic Image Collection

3. Some Experts Say The Plane, If It Is A Plane, Doesn’t Resemble The Electra.

“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.”

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.”

Amelia Earhart is photographed with her Lockheed Model 10-E Electra, the aircraft she used in her attempted flight around the world. Earhart and the plane went missing on July 2, 1937. Underwood & Underwood/Alamy Stock Photo

4. The Object’s Location Is Roughly On Earhart’s Flight Path—But Beyond The Range Suggested By Her Radio Signals.

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.

A deep-sea exploration company has captured a sonar image of an anomaly on the ocean floor that resembles an aircraft. The team believes the object could be Amelia Earhart's Lockheed 10-E Electra that went missing nearly 87 years ago. Deep Sea Vision/PR Newswire

Tony Romeo holds a model of Amelia Earhart's plane, which resembles sonar images he and his crew captured with high-tech equipment. Tony Romeo/CEO Deep Sea Vision

5. Others Have Claimed To Solve This Mystery.

Over the nearly 90 years since Earhart and Noonan vanished, many people have claimed to have proof of what happened to them.

Members of the Ballard-led expedition dive in the primary search area just off Nikumaroro Island, an isolated ring of coral and sand surrounding a turquoise lagoon where some suspect Earhart may have been landed. Photograph By Gabriel Scarlett, National Geographic Image Collection

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.

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.

6. The Mystery Is Still Unsolved. That Doesn’t Mean Its Unsolvable.

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 … you know, there is some urgency.”

Top: The Romeo Brothers are planning another Pacific Ocean expedition to get better sonar images to confirm whether they have discovered the ruins of Earhart's doomed voyage. Bettmann Archive

Bottom: Deep Sea Vision believes they may have come across Amelia Earhart's wrecked plane in the Pacific Ocean. Photo: Bettman via Getty Images/Deep Sea Vision

Tony Romeo holds a model of Amelia Earhart's plane, which resembles sonar images he and his crew captured with high-tech equipment. (Tony Romeo/CEO Deep Sea Vision)

[noa-nightingale]

Man it is so good to see this - to see Ryan getting proper credit for his own show that he created. That man's brain is amazing and I hope he knows how much we appreciate him.

[almondcroissantsandink]

they’re gonna file your ghosts!!!

[bottomseareef]

I find it weird that people are treating the Watcher situation like a scandal when it was just bad business decision

Don’t get me wrong an INSANELY bad business decision but why would you compare it to the Try Guys situation? Like some people were acting like Shane Madej and Ryan Bergara themselves evicted them and took their dog

[autism-swagger]

Since the identity of the Sweet Sixteen Killer is known in Timeline 2, I don't think it would be as big of a part of the town's identity as it in Timeline 1. So I propose that the big unsolved mystery the town builds itself around in Timeline 2 isn't the killings.

It's Jamie.

The supposed exchange student who was only in town for five days, who knew things she shouldn't (couldn't) have, who disappeared without a trace and, when looked into, never even existed to begin with.

[claired3lune]

I absolutely love Unsolved (Watcher's Version)

[bixels]

You guys remember when Dan Olson's "The Line Goes Up" video dropped and was so damning and incriminating that, overnight, hundreds of the most beloved content creators and Youtubers quietly dropped any and all mention/support of crypto in their videos?

[aphyray]

Something's coming... 👀

The Hunter's Elegy. Deadname ghosts and name necromancy in a dystopian future. A private detective novel full of cover-ups, cults, and penance. #acab

Starring discredited cold case documentary maker Reese Keyes and his justifiably egotistical new boss, private investigator Hunt Cheroneau, who's having him record their every arrogant word while the two of them solve a case that cuts far far deeper than either of them are prepared for.

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The extremely visceral cover art there is by the very talented @morggo. Go check out their work! It's sick as hell!

[theghoulboysblog]

the silliest guys talking about their book that they wrote and narrated together <3 cuties!

[parkercore-69]

i was a victim of the gravity falls to transgenderism/buzzfeed unsolved (+watcher) pipeline and i made a visual representation for it.

[saltedcaramela]

I watched the documentary on the JonBenet Ramsey case on Netflix and 2 things were clarified for me: 1. Journalistic integrity in the media has been on a downward spiral for decades. And 2. Too big a portion of law enforcement cannot be trusted to do their job and do it well.

[vhalesa]

Akko didn't steal any cabbages, all she had to do was ask~

[thatonegeekygirl]

Shark Arm Murders - Q+A

[mintytealfox]

Oh my GOSH YIKES

NOT LIZZIE BORDEN AAAAAAHH 😨😨😨

I was waiting to hear anyone else say something about this but I haven't seen anything yet and then here is the Epilogue and It looks an awful lot like he is writing the NAME again AH 😩😩😩

[mechadria]

ok i don't know if anyone noticed this but buzzfeed unsolved has been posting compilations of unsolved true crime and supernatural episodes and passing them off as NEW content with ryan and shane being back on the channel???

like this is insane to me???? it does not matter whether you like ryan and shane/watcher tv, this is disgusting behaviour - BU is literally utilising their likeness to drive views and revenue to a channel they are no longer associated with.

(and maybe using AI to do it? too blurry to tell but that sure looks like AI slop to me)

absolutely abysmal behaviour from buzzfeed, which means i expected nothing less from that soul sucking company. i doubt that ryan and shane would fight this if they even could bc that'd be a lot of money and effort for little result but good god. there really are no lows too low for buzzfeed.

[puppy-barkz]

gotta be honest, in my very limited interactions with bfu/watcher fans, they have gotta be one of the kindest fanbases out there. i've made like two posts and they've gotten so many notes (for me, at least) and everyone is so sweet about it in general. ily guys