November 14, 2024, 6:31 am | Read time: 10 minutes
87 years ago, the legendary American pilot Amelia Earhart disappeared over the Pacific Ocean and was declared dead. Some say that she died when she fell into the ocean, others say that she was captured by Japanese soldiers. There has been renewed hope of clarification since the beginning of this year: a former US Air Force intelligence officer took a sonar image in the Pacific that was supposed to show Amelia Earhart’s plane and solve the mystery surrounding her disappearance. However, he has now confirmed that his once-promising discovery was merely a rock.
Amelia Earhart was the first woman to cross the Atlantic in an airplane, and an idol of American women throughout her life. In 1937, at the age of just 39, she wanted to be the first woman to fly around the world at the equator in an airplane. But during this venture, she mysteriously disappeared. A few months ago, a pilot believed he had made a breakthrough in solving the mystery. A sonar image of the pioneer’s alleged plane was supposed to shed light on the disappearance of Amelia Earhart. However, it has now emerged that the image does not show an airplane.
Overview
Setback after supposed breakthrough in search for missing plane
Together with her navigator, Fred Noonan, Amelia Earhart disappeared without a trace somewhere over the central Pacific on July 2, 1937. Amateur researcher Tony Romeo is one of a long line of people who have tried to solve the mystery of her disappearance. For a brief period, it appeared as if he might have succeeded in his quest to find Earhart’s distinctive aircraft, the Lockheed 10-E Electra. In December 2023, he returned from a 100-day sea voyage, for which he invested a whole 11 million dollars, with a sonar image that he believed showed the missing plane in the depths of the ocean. In an interview with Business Insider, the former US Air Force intelligence officer shared his long-standing fascination with Amelia Earhart’s story.
Romeo’s expedition began in September 2023 in Tarawa, an atoll in the Pacific Ocean. The 16-strong research crew used a 9 million dollar unmanned high-tech diving drone to investigate an area of the seabed covering more than 13,000 square kilometers. About a month into the voyage, the drone recorded a sonar image of an airplane-shaped object. That was about 160 kilometers off the small, uninhabited Howland Island. However, the team did not discover the image until the 90th day of the voyage. That made it impractical to return for a closer look.
New sonar images show that the alleged plane was a rock formation
Experts claimed the location where the image was taken to be the exact spot where Earhart’s flight is believed to have crashed. Others, however, said you couldn’t be sure until you had clearer footage with the plane’s serial number. Romeo told Business Insider at the time that he planned to return to the area. There, he wanted to try to get better images using autonomous or robotic submersibles. These would be equipped with cameras and sonar. They would get closer to the object, which rests more than five kilometers below the surface.
On November 1, 2024, Tony Romeo and his Deep Sea Vision team confirmed, as reported by the New York Post, that the supposed breakthrough was, in fact, just a rock formation resembling an airplane. This was revealed by new sonar images. In a statement, Romeo, who sold all his commercial real estate to fund the search, said, “Although this result does not meet our expectations, we are continuing our search for another 30 days to cover more than 1,500 square nautical miles”. Despite the setback, he is upbeat. He said, “The global response to our initial discovery has been truly inspiring. A testament to Amelia and the appeal of her incredible story.”
Earhart’s final hours
Earhart’s route was to take her from Miami via Puerto Rico, Venezuela, and Brazil across the Atlantic to Senegal. It was to continue via Sudan, Ethiopia, India, Myanmar, and Papua New Guinea, always along the equator. The last stage on the way to her final destination of Hawaii was to be the most dangerous, as the route led entirely across the Pacific Ocean. On the way over the huge masses of water, Earhart only wanted to stop once more, on Howland Island, back then part of the US territories, near present-day Kiribati. But the pilot was never to reach her destination.
Her last radio messages were desperate. She and Noonan could not find the coordinates of the island, ran out of fuel, and lost radio contact. When no ship in the vicinity was able to re-establish contact, a huge fleet of ships was immediately sent in search of Earhart. At the time, it was the most expensive and complex rescue operation in the history of the US Navy, with dozens of warships and aircraft deployed. But in vain. A few weeks later, Earhart was pronounced dead by her husband. The most likely cause of death was that the plane crashed into the Pacific Ocean and that the two pilots died on impact or by drowning. Some adventurous theories assume that Earhart and Noonan were captured by Japanese soldiers (the Pacific War was already raging in 1937). However, there is no evidence for it. The third theory assumes that Earhart and Noonan were able to make an emergency landing on the island of Nikumaroro.
The biggest proponent of this theory is Ric Gillespie from the International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery (TIGHAR). For decades, the historian and former US soldier has been reconstructing the day Earhart disappeared and the week that followed. He collects evidence and leads expeditions to uncover the last days of the pilot’s life. Gillespie’s theory: Amelia Earhart did not crash into the ocean, but was able to make an emergency landing on Nikumaroro, which is not far from Howland Island.
The atoll lies just above sea level and is only six kilometers long and two kilometers wide. A jungle of palm trees grows on the white, sandy beach. The jungle surrounds an inner lagoon with shallow, bright blue water. The small island is completely surrounded by a coral reef that protects it from the ocean waves. According to Gillespie’s theory, Earhart landed on this reef, managed to get ashore, and survived there for a few days. At night, when the tide came in, she swam to the plane and tried to send emergency radio messages for several days.
Radio messages are said to bear witness to Earhart’s desperate situation
These messages are not Gillespie’s speculation but were demonstrably received on several US military stations and, according to dozens of reports, were also heard on US radio. Several women reported hearing Earhart’s cries for help in the middle of a radio broadcast in their living rooms at home. At the time, the authorities received more than 120 such reports from private households and the official search teams. More than half of them are considered credible and are consistent in terms of content. There are careful written transcriptions of all the radio messages heard. At the time, several of the military stations assumed that the messages originated from Nikumaroro – which was still called Gardner Island at the time. Gillespie collected all the sayings over the years and analyzed them at great length. He has made the report on his findings freely available online.
The radio messages vividly depict Earhart’s dire situation. In one transmission, she describes the water levels around the plane steadily increasing, expressing doubt about how much longer they could withstand the situation. In another, she explains that her navigator, Noonan, is seriously injured and urgently needs medical help. And in another radio message, Earhart allegedly even relayed her coordinates. However, the listener who overheard this is said to have lost the note.
Gillespie arranges the messages in his report. He comes to the conclusion that the alternation between the intervals in which Earhart remained silent and those in which she radioed indicates that Earhart only ever switched on the aircraft’s engines during low tide in order to be able to radio. In addition, the transmissions made in the first few days described the plane as “surrounded by water”. The next transmissions are already cries for help. In these, Earhart reports that the plane is half on land and half underwater. The last recorded radio messages testify that the plane was almost completely submerged in the ocean.
French liqueur and a torn ladies’ shoe
In addition to the radio messages, there are other indications that support Gillespie’s theory. A week after the radio contact was broken off, Navy pilots from the USS Colorado searched Nikumaroro. They found several signs that someone must have recently set up camp on the coast. Beyond that, however, they found no parts of the plane.
A year after Earhart’s disappearance, a small group of British colonized the previously uninhabited island of Nikumaroro. In 1940, these settlers found parts of a woman’s shoe. As well as an empty sextant box (navigation devices that are also used in airplanes), and a bottle of a French brand of liqueur that Earhart said she liked to drink. The shoe could also later be assigned to a brand that Earhart also wore. In the same year, a human skull and a skeleton were also found on the island.
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Bones disappeared on the way to Fiji
But in the case of Amelia Earhart, the scientists and truth-seekers were constantly dogged by bad luck. When the bones were to be transported to Fiji for closer examination, they went missing. However, several photos of the skeleton and skull are available. Some scientists assume that the bones are more like those of a man. Others point out that Earhart was very tall for a woman in her time, at more than 1.70 meters, with strong upper arms and barely pronounced hips.
In 2018, more than 80 years after Earhart’s disappearance, the US anthropologist Richard Jantz published a study. There, he used modern methods to evaluate the photos and the analyses carried out at the time. He came to the conclusion that the bones could very well be Earhart’s. However, the study was also criticized because old photos cannot be considered a sufficient source.
Furthermore, the big question remains: If Earhart really landed on Nikumaroro and survived, where is her plane? Although Gillespie and the TIGHAR found a piece of metal and a piece of Plexiglas on the island during one of their expeditions that could match Earhart’s plane, it was never possible to prove beyond doubt that it actually belonged there. Several diving operations around the island have so far failed due to technical problems.
Howland Island, near which Tony Romeo’s recent sonar image was taken, is located several hundred kilometers north of Nikumaroro. If it is indeed Earhart’s missing plane, the theory of an emergency landing on Nikumaroro is probably invalid.
Thus, the final chapter in the saga of aviation pioneer Amelia Earhart continues to elude us, shrouded in mystery.