New deep sea sonar scans are reigniting interest in one of the 20th century’s most enduring mysteries—the disappearance of Amelia Earhart. For those in charge of maintaining the world’s largest Earhart archival collection, last week’s news appears not only credible, but extremely promising.
“The potential discovery of the location of Amelia Earhart’s plane is incredibly exciting,” Sammie Morris, Purdue University’s Head of Archives and Special Collections, tells PopSci. Earhart joined Purdue’s faculty in 1935 as an aeronautics adviser and counselor in the study of careers for women. “The location of the found object is in the vicinity of where the plane may logically have gone down when the fliers were en route to Howland Island, and the imagery the searchers captured is compelling and appears consistent with the shape of a plane.”
[Related: Many have tried, but no one has solved the mystery of Amelia Earhart’s demise.]
Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan, disappeared on July 2, 1937, during her widely covered attempt to become the first female pilot to circumnavigate the world. Countless experts, researchers, and fame-seekers attempted to locate the legendary pilot’s final resting place over the next 87 years—spawning all manner of plausible and not-so-plausible theories in the process.
In 2018, for example, an investigation team claimed to possess proof Earhart that crash landed on Gardner Island, approximately 350 nautical miles from Howland Island, where the aviator was expected to land for refueling. Subsequent examinations proved inconclusive, leading groups like the marine robotics company, Deep Sea Vision, to continue the decades’ long quest.
Last Friday, the organization released striking sonar imagery “captured westward of Earhart’s projected landing point” in the Pacific Ocean. According to DSV’s announcement, the scan appears to show “unique dual tails” emblematic to the famed…
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