“Ms. Erartart, let me ask a question,” one of the reporters said, raising his hand. She replied: “Why would you risk it like that? Because I want to.” This happened during the press conference held in New York on February 12, 1937. In this context: Amelia Earthhart (a real star of the timewhich came out of existence The first woman to cross the Atlantic Ocean solo in 1932, among other feats) announced an around-the-world itinerary that would take him in his Lockheed Electra. It will leave Auckland for Honolulu, Howland Island, New Guinea, Australia, India, Africa, Brazil and finally back to the United States. But midway, the plane crashed and almost caught fire.
But she tried again on May 20, accompanied by Captain Fred Noonan. If she completes the 46,670-kilometre itinerary, she will become the first woman to circumnavigate the planet.. But this did not happen. After traveling about 35,000 kilometres, the plane stopped emitting signals and was never found. So far.
A team of underwater archaeologists and marine robotics experts from ocean exploration company Deep Sea Vision has announced a potential breakthrough in solving the mystery. Using sonar, a technique for mapping the floor of the Pacific Ocean using sound waves, The team discovered an anomaly more than 4,877 meters deepWhich looks like a small plane. It is believed that it could correspond to the small Lockheed Electra plane that Amelia piloted. The mission is led by Deep Sea Vision CEO Tony Romeo, a former Air Force intelligence officer who has already spent $11 million, obsessed with the case.
Romeo believes an image created using sound waves, taken near Howland Island, supports this The “dateline theory” surrounding Earhart's disappearance. This assumes that Noonan may have miscalculated his situation after forgetting a major detail: the International Date Change Line during his trip.. That's why Amelia had made an effort to land in the water.
“The image of the plane that we see on sonar indicates that this may be the case,” Romeo said. “We are thrilled to make this discovery at the end of our expedition and plan to bring closure to a great American story.” Although the exact location of the remains has been kept secret, it has emerged that the images were taken about 161 kilometers from Howland Island, the next place Earhart and Noonan were expected to land after their final take-off from New Guinea.
The couple was declared missing at sea after two weeks of intense search. Operations began just one hour after the last radio message was broadcast she has. President Franklin Roosevelt personally ordered the North American Navy and Air Forces to join an operation that included about four hundred soldiers in that region of the Pacific Ocean. They found nothing.
Before leaving, Amelia wrote a letter to her husband saying: “I want you to know that I am fully aware of the risks I face. I do this because I want to. Women have to try things, just like men. If we fail, our mistake can become a challenge for others.“.
Born in 1897 in Kansas, Amelia Mary Earhart became fascinated with airplanes when she was in her twenties. On December 28, 1920, aviator Frank Hawks took her on a flight that would change her life forever. “When I was two or three hundred feet off the ground, I knew I had to fly“, he says in his autobiography. He began taking flying lessons with pilot Nita Snook. At the age of 25, he bought a Kinner Airster biplane. She flew it in 1922, when she set the women's altitude record of four thousand metres. With the family's economy fragile, he soon sold the plane.
Earhart's life changed dramatically in 1928, when publisher George Putnam, seeking to expand public enthusiasm for Charles Lindbergh's transcontinental flight a year earlier, selected Earhart to become the first woman to cross the Atlantic Ocean by airplane. She achieved this, despite being a passenger. but She became a media star and a symbol of what women can achieve.. She married Putnam in 1931, although she kept her maiden name.
Earhart's popularity gave her opportunities to move from fashion (she was a very beautiful woman, and made short hair and uniforms with high boots a trend) to work as an aviation editor for an aviation magazine. worldwide. In 1932, she became the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean as a pilot. His awards included the American Distinguished Flying Cross and the French Cross of the Legion of Honor. At the same time, she helped other women learn to fly.
A widespread opinion about its final flight is that the plane crashed when it ran out of fuel. This view is shared by Dorothy Cochrane, curator of aviation at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum in Washington. But Cochrane does not deny the importance of Deep Sea Vison's discovery. “Imaging the object would be a huge help to get to know it better,” Cochrane told the BBC.
Richard Jantz, director emeritus of the Knoxville Center for Forensic Anthropology at the University of Tennessee, believes he knows what happened to Earhart. In 2018, he re-examined a series of bones found in 1940 that were believed to belong to Earhart. This means she died on Nikumaroro Island, where they were discovered, about 400 miles south of Howland. Gantz told the BBC that his views “have not changed with the new discovery.”
Richard Gillespie, founder of the International Historic Aircraft Restoration Group, also supports the Nikumaroro theory. Gillespie led 12 expeditions to search for Earhart's plane, and wrote several books on the subject. He calls himself the “leading authority” on what happened to the pilot, telling the BBC: “We have ample evidence that she died in Nikumaroro.” He also claims that the latest discovery cannot simply be Earhart's plane. “It's definitely not a Lockheed Electra. Any sonar expert will tell you that a grainy image doesn't tell you anything.” He said it looked more like a US Navy fighter plane.
