Amelia Earhart: Has sonar found her missing airplane?
Though
she vanished during her around-the-world flight in 1937, Amelia Earhart's
plane was never found, leaving behind one of the
bigger mysteries in aviation.
However,
that mystery may be solved. An "anomaly" has been discovered on a sonar image
and the International Group for Historic Aviation Recovery believed it could be
Earhart's downed plane.
The
image was captured off Nikumaroro island in the southwestern Pacific. It shows
an object about 22 feet long, resting 600 feet underwater. The location is
roughly 350 miles southeast of Earhart's destination, which was Howland
Island.
The group has made a number of discoveries over 10 expeditions, recovering
several artifacts. It is their belief that Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan, made a
forced landing on the island's coral reef and became castaways, eventually dying
there.
"What initially got our attention is that there is no other sonar return
like it in the entire body of data collected," Ric
Gillespie, executive director of the group,
tells Discovery News. "It
is truly an anomaly, and when you're looking for man-made objects against a
natural background, anomalies are good."
The
group hopes to make another expedition to the island to investigate the anomaly,
but it will depend on whether the non-profit is able to raise funding.
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