It was announced wrapped in a halo of hope. Deep Sea Vision, an American deep-sea exploration company, detected an anomaly almost 5,000 meters deep in the Pacific Ocean last January. Images from underwater sonar, a technology that maps the seabed using sound waves, appeared to show a small buried plane that could correspond to the one Amelia Earhart was piloting when she mysteriously disappeared in 1937.
Although the exact location of the discovery was kept secret, it was revealed that it was about 161 kilometers away from Howland Island, the tiny piece of land in the middle of the Pacific where Earhart planned to make her first stop in her attempt to go around the world and break the circumnavigation record.
The famous aviator, the first woman to fly over the Atlantic non-stop and one of the pioneers of commercial aviation in the United States, had taken off from a small airport in Papua New Guinea in a 10-passenger Lockheed 10-E Electra, accompanied by her co-pilot Fred Noonan. Before reaching Howland Island, where they planned to refuel, Earhart requested help from the ship Itasca to provide her by radio with the exact location of the island to begin landing maneuvers. Their contact, however, was lost forever.
After two weeks of fruitless searching without finding the slightest vestige, the US government considered them lost, although the lack of evidence of the accident fueled a multitude of theories and speculations. Since then, there have been many attempts to unravel one of the most famous enigmas in aviation.
The images taken by Deep Sea Vision seemed to be a solid clue as to the fate of the legendary aviator. His team of underwater archaeologists and marine robotics experts had searched more than 13,400 square kilometers for 100 days and came to the conclusion that the aviator landed in the water and that her ship eventually sank due to currents. That anomaly at 4,900 meters deep offered “the opportunity to close one of the best American stories,” as executive director Tony Romeo stated when announcing the discovery.
However, the ocean exploration company itself has admitted eleven months later in a statement on Instagram that “unfortunately” it was not Amelia’s plane, but “just a natural rock formation.”
The company says it is “continuing to search – now clearing almost 7,700 square miles.” In his opinion, “the plot thickens without there being any evidence of his disappearance yet” and he wonders: “Did he run out of gas near Howland Island?”
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