Amelia Earhart Plane Wreckage Found, US Exploration Team Says

An exploration team from South Carolina in the US believe they have discovered the plane wreckage of Amelia Earhart, the first woman to attempt to fly around the world.

Before this, there have been a multitude of theories offered as to what happened to the brave aviator Amelia Earhart, who, along with her navigator Fred Noonan, disappeared during her flight over the Pacific Ocean in 1937, having last been seen in Lae, Papua New Guinea on July 2nd.

However, Deep Sea Vision, an exploration team based in South Carolina, now claim to have found the wreckage of Amelia Earhart’s aircraft.

Posting on Instagram on Saturday, January 27th, the exploration team shared pictures of what they say “appears to be Earhart’s Lockheed 10-E Electra,” meaning that after eighty-seven years, the wreckage of one of history’s most famous pilots may have finally been found.

Previous Theories About the Wreckage of Emilia Earhart

When the pair first went missing, a search was conducted lasting almost two years before the pilot and her navigator were declared dead. Since then, lots of suggestions have been made as to what happened to Amelia Earhart, Noonan, and the wreckage.

Some have said the plane ran out of fuel while in search of the next landing spot at Howland Island and plummeted into the sea. Others have argued the pilot and her navigator likely tried to land on a different island and subsequently died there.

Other more adventurous theories have suggested that Amelia Earhart and Noonan were captured by the Japanese or were never found because they had been devoured by crabs on whichever island they crash-landed on.

Dispelling Myths

The Deep Sea Vision team may have dispelled all these myths with their efforts, which began in September last year and involved sweeping 5,200 square miles of the Pacific Ocean.

Speaking to The Wall Street Journal, pilot and former US Air Force intelligence officer Tony Romeo said a submersible captured the sonar image of what they believe to be the crashed plane.

The image shows a wreckage, which was found 16,000 feet below the ocean’s surface and was less than 100 miles from Howland Island, which Amelia Earhart and Noonan had been aiming to reach so they could refuel.

To conclude that this wreckage did indeed belong to the famous female aviator, more thorough examination will need to be carried out.

Before her attempt to fly around the world, Amelia Earhart had already become the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean in 1932. She set off on the morning of May 20th from Harbour Grace, Newfoundland with a copy of the Telegraph-Journal, given to her by journalist Stuart Trueman, to confirm the date of the flight.