- Tony Romeo believes he has found Amelia Earhart's long-lost plane.
- Romeo told BI that he captured an image of an aircraft-shaped object at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean.
- Experts say the location appears to be about right, but a clearer image is needed.
A pilot and former U.S. Air Force intelligence officer says images taken using sonar on a high-tech unmanned submersible reveal one of America's most puzzling mysteries: the disappearance of iconic pilot Amelia Earhart at the height of her fame. I believe I may have finally figured out the cause.
Tony Romeo is one of a long line of researchers and enthusiasts who have worked to find Earhart's distinctive Lockheed 10-E Electra airplane. The plane, along with famous pilot and navigator Fred Noonan, disappeared over the Pacific Ocean during a circumnavigation attempt. July 1937.
The mystery surrounding Earhart's disappearance has puzzled researchers for years and inspired conspiracy theories ranging from her capture by the Japanese military to that she was a government spy.
But Mr. Romeo, a former real estate investor who sold commercial real estate to raise the $11 million needed to fund the search, returned home in December from a nearly 100-day voyage to find the plane lost at sea. He had sonar images that appeared to show him. depth.
High-tech search at sea
His expedition, using a $9 million high-tech unmanned submersible called Hugin, manufactured by Norway's Kongsberg, and 16 researchers, began last September in Tarawa, Kiribati, and covered 5,200 square miles under the sea. Covered. The Wall Street Journal reported.
It was a dream that Romeo had for years before making it a reality.
“This has always been an interesting story for me, and everything in my life kind of collided at the right time,” Romeo, whose father and brother are also pilots, told Business Insider. Told. “I actually started it about 18 months ago because I was getting out of real estate and looking for a new project, but this was something I had been thinking about and researching for a long time.”
About a month into the voyage, the researchers captured sonar images of an airplane-like object about 160 miles from Howland Island. However, the images were not discovered in the submarine's data until the 90th day of its voyage, making a change in direction impractical. Let's go back and take a closer look.
Experts have expressed interest in the discovery, with Dorothy Cochran, a curator at the Smithsonian Institution's National Air and Space Museum, telling the Journal that the image was reportedly taken from the same location where Earhart's flight is believed to have taken place. He said it is almost geographically accurate compared to where he is. That it has gone down.
But others say they want more clarity and details such as the plane's serial number.
“Until we physically see this, we can't say for sure what it is,” Andrew Pietruska, an underwater archaeologist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, told the Journal.
Romeo said the search could be “the most exciting thing of my life” and that autonomous or robotic submersibles equipped with cameras and sonar would be used to explore the area to get better images. He added that he plans to return to . They got even closer to the object, which lies more than 16,500 feet below the surface.
Romeo tells BI that if it's not Earhart's plane, then the object he found is either another plane that went missing in the Pacific, or perhaps less interestingly, another man-made object that fell out of a shipping container. He said it could be an object. But for now, the unique shapes of the fuselage, tail and wings make him confident he's made a breakthrough.
“The next step is confirmation. We need to actually photograph it using different types of sensors to see how the artifacts are placed on the ocean floor,” Romeo told BI. “Once that stage is complete, there will be a lot of people involved. It's going to be an expensive undertaking, so the Smithsonian will be involved, families will be involved, investors will be involved, but then we'll say, 'How do we lift the plane?' ?How do we rescue them?''
He added, “I don't think we're there yet. But I think Americans want to see this in the Smithsonian. It's there. It's not at the bottom of the ocean.” .
A decades-old mystery
Over the years, hopeful explorers have poured millions of dollars into expeditions to find Earhart's lost plane, but her last known location has complicated the search. There is.
“It's very deep water and the area she could have been in is vast,” sonar expert Tom Dettweiler told the Journal.
One team that searched for Earhart's plane in 2009 said on X (formerly Twitter) that they now know the aviator's whereabouts after searching 2,500 square miles near Howland Island, close to where Romeo conducted her search. He said, “I'm confident'' in that. it's not. ”
Earhart, the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean and the United States, was declared legally dead on January 5, 1939, two years after her disappearance. But her legacy lives on and continues to fascinate people around the world.
“It was one of the great mysteries of the 20th century, and even into the 21st century,” Cochran told the Journal. “We all hope that the mystery will be solved.”
date line theory
After decades of scouring clues and potential clues to her whereabouts, including the 'Dateline Theory', Romeo moves towards answering key questions surrounding the famous pilot's disappearance. I believe we have taken a big step forward.
This theory, which Romeo relied on in part to guide her search, suggests that when Earhart crossed the International Date Line during her 20-hour flight, her navigation system became inaccurate and she was misdirected by about 60 miles, resulting in a tragic death. This suggests that there may have been a similar outcome.
Romeo said that once it is confirmed that Earhart's plane has been found during another voyage scheduled for later this year, the company he founded as part of the search will continue to work to solve other mysteries left at sea. He said he would go.
“There are so many wonderful things in the Pacific. The World War II aircraft and flight MH370 are still there, and maybe someday we will be able to go there,” Romeo told BI. “We haven't announced it yet, but we have state-of-the-art equipment and we're looking forward to collaborating with others on other projects. There is a demand for such things.”
