(PatriotWise.com) — A former Air Force intelligence officer who last year embarked on a sea expedition to find Amelia Earhart’s lost aircraft believes he finally tracked it down, NBC News reported.
Tony Romeo, the CEO of Deep Sea Vision, last year sold off commercial real estate holdings to bankroll his search of the Pacific Ocean for the infamous pilot’s plane, using sonar technology to comb the ocean floor in the location where Earhart’s plane is believed to have vanished in 1937.
Romeo and his team reviewed sonar data collected by an underwater drone in December and discovered a plane-like shape believed to be Earhart’s Lockheed 10-E Electra twin-engine plane about 100 miles from Howland Island, midway between Hawaii and Australia.
During her quest to become the first female pilot to circumnavigate the world, Earhart and navigator Fred Noonan were scheduled to land on Howland Island in July 1937 to refuel the plane. However, Earhart and Noonan never made it to Howland.
US officials eventually concluded that Earhart’s plane crashed in the Pacific. She and Noonan were declared dead in 1939. Their remains were never found.
While the sonar image is blurry, Romeo is certain it shows Earhart’s plane, given the unique shape of the Lockheed 10-E Electra.
According to Romeo, there were no other reported crashes in the area where the aircraft was found, let alone an aircraft with that unique tail design.
Romeo told NBC News that the next phase would be to confirm the discovery. He and his team plan to return to the site in late 2024/early 2025 with a remotely operated vehicle mounted with a camera to capture clearer images of the aircraft, which Romeo said appears to have sustained damage.
The return trip would be expensive, requiring expensive high-tech equipment. The first search used an underwater drone from the Norwegian company Kongsberg and an unmanned submersible that scanned 5,200 miles of the ocean floor, according to the Wall Street Journal.
The sonar images believed to show Earhart’s plane were taken 5,000 meters beneath the surface of the ocean.
On Tuesday, Fox News interviewed Earhart’s great-nephew about Romeo’s surprising discovery. Watch that interview HERE.
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