After a long wait, Deep Sea Vision, a marine robotics company from South Carolina, claims to have found her plane, the Lockheed 10-E Electra. With sonar technology, they have located it deep in the Pacific Ocean, about 16,400 feet below sea level. The average person can only dive about 130 feet below sea level!
To be more specific, Deep Sea Vision’s CEO, Tony Romeo, announced that the plane was about 100 miles from Howland Island, where Earhart and her Navigator; Fred Noonan, were heading before vanishing in July 1937.
The evidence they have is a sonar image of the plane believed to be the Lockheed 10-E Electra. Without further exploration of it, the company jumped to a grand conclusion that the sonar image was the big breakthrough they were hoping for.
While everyone would like to believe that it is her plane, they should have further examined the area it was in and should have gathered more information before spreading the news.
Earhart’s plane did not have swept-back wings like shown in the sonar image, and the image does not show the fine detail one would need to say that it is her plane.
It must be pointed out that Deep Sea Vision NEVER confirmed that the image was of the plane, and clarified that sonar images like this could be of something else, like a natural rock formation.
As a matter of fact, there is more evidence of it not being her plane. For instance, there is the fact that the proportions of the plane are not quite right—the wings are swept back, unlike the 10-E Electra, which had straight wings. There are more discrepancies like this proving the marine robotics company wrong.
Even with this, the mystery still needs to be fully solved. Hopefully, we will be enlightened on this topic.