Did Renowned Aviator Amelia Earhart Survive Her Mysterious Pacific Plane Crash?
Emilia's Last Mission
Amelia Earhart in her lifetime became one of the most celebrated aviators in the world, and in her death, transformed into a mystery that explorers are still chasing. In her last attempt at circumventing the world in 1937, Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan, disappeared, never to be found. KQ2 reported. To this date, no one has been able to find her aircraft's wreckage. After eight decades of Earhart's disappearance, Deep Sea Vision, an ocean exploration company, has been able to pinpoint a location, where they believe the plane's wreckage could be present. But, several experts do not seem to agree with the assertions.
Amelia Earhart's Love for Flying
Amelia Earhart fell in love with flying when she attended an air show in Long Beach with her father in 1920, PBS reported. The following year, she passed her flying license tests given by the National Aeronautic Association. In 1922, Earhart managed to set an unofficial altitude record for female pilots after flying the Canary to 14,000 feet. Her popularity catapulted amongst the public when she became the first woman passenger on a trans-Atlantic flight. One of her biggest dreams was to circumnavigate the globe and she managed to raise funds for this pursuit in 1936. She and her team took a year to get everything prepared and took flight on March 17, 1937. Their first attempt failed and due to some difficulties, they had to call off the mission from Honolulu, three days later. She took her second attempt on July 1, this time only with Noonan, and managed to fly over countries like South America, Africa, India, and Lae, New Guinea. During their search of Howland Island, a tiny island in the Pacific, the duo lost radio contact with the Coast Guard cutter Itasca. The aircraft vanished from the authority's sight over the Pacific Ocean and is yet to be found.
Deep Sea Vision's Discovery
Deep Sea Vision co-owners Tony Romeo and Lloyd Romeo began searching for Earhart's aircraft wreckage after the pandemic, KQ2 reported. Their pursuit came into being due to Tony Romeo's son posing a simple question about what people can find in oceans. Tony Romeo replied, "How about Amelia Earhart's plane?" And the dream was born. Three years later, the brothers believe they have found the location of Amelia Earhart's Lockheed Electra 10E. The discovery was reportedly made with the help of sonar imaging, a process in which the ocean floor is mapped using sound waves, BBC reported. The organization claims that the aircraft wreckage is present at around 4,877m (16,000ft) from the surface of the Pacific Ocean. Deep Sea Vision shared an Instagram post regarding the discovery on January 27.
Is It Earhart's Aircraft?
Dorothy Cochrane, the Aeronautics Department curator at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum in Washington D.C. is not fully on board with this finding and wants more evidence, BBC reported. "Photographing the object would greatly assist in identifying it further," Cochrane said. "I am encouraged that DSV is searching near Howland Island and believe they would like to make another expedition to conduct more research." Richard Gillespie, founder of The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery, completely disregards the finding. As per him, the wreckage in the image looks nothing like Earhart's aircraft. "It is definitely not the Lockheed Electra and it's not just me that thinks so," he said. "Any sonar expert will tell you that one grainy image doesn't tell you anything." The common viewpoint amongst researchers is that more in-depth research is needed before the wreckage could be positively identified as Earhart's aircraft.
Did She Survive the Crash?
Over the years multiple explorers have come up with theories and speculations regarding what could have happened with Earhart after her crash, BBC reported. A 2017 documentary explores a premise in which Earhart survived. In this premise, Earhart and Noonan after surviving the crash, landed in the Marshall Islands and were taken prisoner by Japanese authorities. The documentary claims that if these were the sequence of events, then the U.S. government would have information regarding Earhart's ultimate fate in their classified files.