Mysterious death
Ex-pilot claims to have found the wreckage of aviation pioneer Amelia Earhart
Amelia Earhart obsessed with flying. She took her first flying lesson in 1921
© Getty Images
Amelia Earhart’s disappearance is one of aviation’s biggest mysteries, and now it appears to be solved. Ex-pilot Tony Romeo searched the Pacific with a sonar drone. He found an object that looks like Earhart’s Lockheed Electra.
Tony Romeo believes he managed to capture the wreckage of their Lockheed 10-E Electra on the ocean floor. Romeo is not the first detective who wanted to solve the mystery. Ric Gillespie, director of the International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery (TIGHAR), was certain that the pilot and her navigator Fred Noonan were stranded on Nikumaroro Island and perished there due to lack of water. There is some evidence to support this theory. Bones were found on Nikumaroro Island in 1943 that Richard L. Jantz, a professor at the University of Tennessee, attributed to Earhart. He only had photos of the bones at his disposal; the actual remains disappeared. But even the most extensive searches were later unable to discover any equipment or remains of the two on the island. This made the hypothesis that they were stranded there and survived for weeks more and more unlikely.
Aviation pioneer
Photo series Amelia Earhart wanted to fly around the whole world and disappeared over the Pacific
Search for the wreck
Romeo, a pilot and former intelligence officer, started with a simple idea: technical problems or a navigation error forced Earhart to crash over the ocean and the plane sank. Another argument against Nikumaroro is that no wreck could be located in the area around the island. So Romeo set out to systematically search the ground along the suspected route using the sonar of a submersible. The problem here: The Electra has a characteristic shape, but is much smaller than a shipwreck. Romeo invested $11 million, which he had earned from real estate deals, to solve the mystery of the charismatic pilot. In 100 days at sea, he and his team searched 13,500 square kilometers. The diving drone alone cost nine million dollars. It comes from Norway and bears the mystical name of one of the god Odin’s ravens: “Hugin” – the thought.
“I’ve always been fascinated by this story, and all the things in my life came together at the right moment,” Romeo told Business Insider. “I was retiring from the real estate industry and was looking for a new project.”
Conceivable, but not certain
The image was taken approximately 100 miles from Howland Island. Dorothy Cochrane, curator at the National Air and Space Museum, was able to confirm that the location was on the pilot’s route. However, the sonar image is not real proof. Romeo knows that too. Unlike other Earhart detectives, he is cautious about his claims. Because of the special shape, he thinks it is likely that it is an airplane, but it could also be another airplane that was lost in the Pacific. Now Romeo wants to return with a diving robot. Which will then get closer to the wreck and provide better images.
The sonar image shows a similar shape to Amelia Earhart’s plane.
© Deep Sea Vision / PR
The most famous of all female pilots
In the period between the world wars there were a number of female aviation pioneers. No one became as famous as the American Amelia, thanks to her iconographic appearance and the fact that she was a real media star for sponsorship purposes. And above all, her mysterious death. Amelia Earhart secured her place in aviation history a few years earlier. On May 20, 1932, she crossed the Atlantic in a Lockheed Vega 5B. Five years after Charles Lindbergh, she became the first woman to dare to fly solo across the Atlantic. She had it four years earlier Made the flight as a passenger. Like a “sack of potatoes,” she scoffed. She even once remarked that the fame of a downed female pilot was far greater than that of an injured man. Little did she know how aptly she was foreshadowing her afterlife. Amelia Earhart was not a loner; she used her fame to advocate for women’s rights. “One of my most common fears is that girls, especially those whose desires are not routine, will not get a fair chance… This has been passed down through generations, a legacy of age-old customs. The corollary of this is that women are raised to be shy. “
Joni Mitchell sang about her
A ghost of aviation
She was swallowed by the sky
Or by the sea like me she had a dream to fly
Like Icarus ascending
On beautiful foolish arms