Did they find Amelia Earhart’s plane? The incredible life and disappearance of an aviation pioneer

The director of a marine robotics company assures having found the remains of the Lockheed Electra 10E at the bottom of the Pacific Oceanthe plane that disappeared on July 12, 1937 when It was piloted by the famous aviator Amelia Earhart and his co-pilot, Frederik Noonan.

For years, several expeditions have launched into the waters of the South Pacific to find the remains of this plane, without results.

Now, and although several experts they are skeptical Regarding the discovery, Tony Romeo, CEO of the company Deep Sea Vision, says that a (blurred) sonar image captured during an expedition last year appears to show a plane resting about 5 kilometers deepsomewhere within a 160 km radius of the howland islandwhere the Electra must have landed that fateful day in 1937.

That tiny American island in the South Pacific was going to be a stopover on the long trip that Earhart and Noonan had begun almost 40 days earlier in Miami, with which They were looking to go around the globe on a new routewhich had never been flown at the time: this challenging itinerary went as close as possible to the equator, instead of the flights that were made until then in the Northern Hemisphere, in shorter and safer sections (with more places to land in emergency case).

Of They had flown more than 35,000 kilometerswhich was more than two-thirds of its way around the world, when the Electra 10E communicated for the last time with the coast guard of the small Howland Island.

“KHAQQ calling the Itasca. We must be above you, but we don’t see you. Fuel is running out“, was the last message they issued, at 7:30 p.m. GMT. At 8:14 p.m., the Itasca coast guard received new communication with the position of the plane; a little over an hour later, Faced with radio silence, the search began.

That July 2, close to turning 40, Amelia Earhart became a legend: she wasone of the first aviators in the world and a pioneer in achieving several feats; among them, being the first woman to cross the Atlantic alone (in 1932) and the first person to do so twice

And he was on a new one, which had begun on June 1, 1937 in Miami, from where, together with Noonan, he flew to Puerto Rico, then to eastern Venezuela and Brazil, and then crossed the Atlantic to Africa and continued through Pakistan, India, Burma, Thailand, Singapore, Indonesia and Australia. That tragic day they planned to land in tiny Howland (in a remote point between the Marshall Islands and Kiribati), and then continue heading to Hawaii and California. It could not be.

Amelia was then owner of several records, such as being the first woman to cross the Atlantic alone, crossing it in record time and achieving the longest distance flown by a woman without stopping, among others. AND he was a celebritypromoted by the United States government itself.

For this reason, the then American president, Franklin D. Roosevelt, he was personally concerned about the disappearancen, and he spared no resources to search for it: he sent to the south of the Pacific 9 ships and more than 60 planes who toured the area looking for remains of the plane and its occupants, without luck.

The search It was abandoned after 16 fruitless daysand the case concluded with the hypothesis that the aircraft had fallen into the ocean after running out of fuel.

The legend of Amelia Earhart began when she was born, on July 24, 1898 in Atchison (Kansas)although different family events led her, along with her mother and sister Muriel, to live in Chicago, where she was surprised by the beginning of the First World War.

Without hesitation, he enrolled as volunteer in nursing tasks in Toronto, Canada, where he treated injured pilots. Years later she would say that “the aviation bug” had bitten him; in those help tasks, he visited a Royal Air Corps camp.

In the 1920s he was living in California when he went to see an air show in Long Beach. Again he did not hesitate: that was his thing. She managed to get a ride over Los Angeles in a biplane, and about that flight she would later recall: “As soon as we took off, I knew that I would have to fly from then on”.

So he took classes, bought a Kinner airplane that he called “the Canary” because of its yellow color, and In 1922 he achieved his first recordwhen flying at 4,267 meters (14,000 feet) altitude.

The following year she became the 16th woman to obtain a pilot’s license from the International Aeronautical Federation and began to promote the activity, especially among women. The Boston Globe – she lived in Boston at the time – mentioned her as “one of the best pilots in the United States.”

In 1928 he crossed paths with another adventurous woman, Amy Guest, an American aristocrat who wanted to be the first woman to cross the Atlantic Ocean. Amelia was bitten by another bug, but pressure from her family prevented it.

The opportunity came when, that same year, he was offered to accompany pilot Wilmer Stultz and mechanic Louis Gordon, with whom he left in a Fokker FVIIB-3m named Friendship from Halifax, Nova Scotia, to land in South Wales: new challenge accomplished and new record. Later she would say that all the work had been done by the pilots, but it was she who became, for the press, the star of the journey.

Upon returning to the United States they were received with honors and President Calvin Coolidge invited them to the White House. By then she began to be known as “Lady Lindy” because, it was said, he had an air of Charles Lindbergh, the aviator who in 1927 had become the first to cross Atlantic.

While continuing to promote aviation among women, in 1930 helped create an airline that linked New York, Philadelphia and Washington, of which it was vice president of public relations. By then, with his Lockheed Vega aircraft, had achieved speed records among the “flying women.”

Hectic years followed for Amelia: in 1931 she married the publicist George Putnam, and on May 20, 1932, on the same Lockheed Vega with which she had crossed the Atlantic, she left for cross the ocean again, but this time, alone. She took off from Harbor Grace, on the Newfoundland and Labrador peninsula, heading for Britain. And she achieved it.

Thus it became the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic and the first person to do it twice. In addition, she achieved the longest distance flown by a woman without stopping and achieved the record of crossing the Atlantic in the shortest time: 13h 50′. Fame, tours, interviews and decorations became a regular part of her life.

But His adventurous spirit remained intact.: Two years later he faced another risky feat, in which ten pilots had attempted it before and had lost not only the challenge, but their lives: fly over the Pacific, from Hawaii to California. What 10 other adventurers had not achieved, she did.: took off from Honolulu on January 11, 1935 and landed in Oakland before a crowd, even receiving congratulations from President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

And the challenges continued: that same year she flew alone for the first time between Los Angeles and Mexico Cityand from there Newark, New Jersey.

And he began to plan what he defined as “the flight he had left to make”. That fateful trip around the world with which she would mark two milestones: being the first woman to do so and flying the greatest distance possible circumnavigating the globe. It could not be.

After the search for the plane was abandoned, the fact that no remains of the aircraft or its crew were found helped the various theories emerged about the outcome of that tragedy.

There was, for example, the theory that Amelia had survived and returned to New Jersey, where He had lived with another identity. Also the one who maintained that in reality she had always been an American spy, and after the accident she had been captured and taken prisoner by the Japanese.

Another said that Amelia and Fred had actually tried to land on the nearby island of Nikumaroro – a small atoll – where they had achieved survive a time as castaways. A theory that was reinforced with the publication, not long ago, of a scientific study that claimed that skeletal remains found in 1940 in Nikumaroro had been re-examined, and that there was a high probability that they belonged to Amelia.

It was even said that a woman’s shoe, a bottle of a liquor she used to drink, and a sextant box to contain a Brandis Navy Surveying Sextant, similar to the one used by Fred Noonan, had also been found on the atoll. But this was never confirmed.

In 1938, on Howland Island a lighthouse was built in honor of herand in 2009 The movie “Amelia” was releasedbased on the life of Amelia Earhart, starring Hilary Swank, Richard Gere, Christopher Eccleston and Ewan McGregor.

Now, the supposed discovery of the wreckage of the plane gives life again to the fascinating story of a woman for whom the sky was never a limit.