A pioneer in female aviation, Amelia Earhart revolutionized her field by becoming the first woman to cross the Atlantic by plane. The feat motivated her to try to break an even more surprising record, that of traveling around the world, however, it was never achieved.
Amelia and navigator Fred Noonan set out on the voyage in July 1937, but disappeared somewhere in the Pacific Ocean. At the time, despite intense searches, neither the bodies nor the wreckage of the aircraft were ever found.
The disappearance occurred on the final leg of the trip, while they were flying over the Pacific Ocean, between Australia and the state of Hawaii, in the United States, and should have passed through Howland, an island that was halfway along the way.
Almost 90 years after its disappearance, a group of explorers appears to have found the whereabouts of the aircraft.
In September 2023, a crew of 16 from the Deep Sea Vision expedition set out to search for the wreckage of Amelia’s plane in Tarawa, Kiribati, a port near Howland Island, according to the expedition’s social media profile.
With a sonar image, the crew was able to visualize a shape similar to the plane, which would be 160km from the island. In total, researchers searched 52,000 miles (about 8,368 km) of ocean floor.
To NBC, Tony Romeo, former Air Force intelligence officer and CEO of Deep Sea Vision, said he strongly believes in the possibility that they found the plane.
“There are no other known accidents in the area, and certainly not from that time, with the type of tail design that you clearly see in the image,” he said.
The expectation is that they will return to the site with suitable cameras and vehicles to take new photos of the wreckage.
“The next step is confirmation and there’s a lot we need to know about that. And it looks like there’s some damage. I mean, it’s been there for 87 years,” he said.
History on screen
In 2009, the feature A night at the museum 2 premiered in theaters and brought Amelia’s story to the screen for a new generation. Played by Amy Adams, Amelia comes to life at the Aviation Museum in Washington, USA, and helps the film’s protagonist, Larry (Ben Stiller), to save the museum’s statues, which come to life at night because of the golden plaque. of Ahkmenrah.
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