Many know the story of Amelia Earhart, the pioneer aviator who was the first female to fly solo over the Atlantic Ocean and who mysteriously went missing while trying to be the first woman to fly around the world in 1937. Now, it’s believed that her missing plane may have been found.
For nearly 90 years, the world has searched for the missing aviation icon and theorized where she and her plane ended up. An ocean exploration company is claiming it has discovered an object of similar shape and size to Earhart’s aircraft located deep in the waters of the Pacific Ocean.
The company, Deep Sea Vision, posted this on Instagram: "On July 2, 1937, Amelia Earhart and navigator Fred Noonan took off from Papua New Guinea, nearing the end of their record-setting journey around the world never to be seen again. Until today. Deep Sea Vision found what appears to be Earhart’s Lockheed 10-E Electra."
A sonar image captured during an expedition late last year shows an airplane-shaped object sitting on the ocean floor, not far from where experts believe Earhart likely crashed, reports the Wall Street Journal.
The blurred object is far from definitive proof, but Dorothy Cochrane, an aeronautics curator at the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum, told Smithsonian magazine it’s “an intriguing image” that warrants a second look. In the meantime, the sonar image is not detailed enough for experts to draw any definitive conclusions.
In August 2022, the United States Capitol unveiled a statue of Amelia Earhart, becoming only the tenth woman honored in the National Statuary Hall Collection. Established in 1864, Statuary Hall is an imposing room in the Capitol displaying two statues from each state. In Earhart's case, that's Kansas.