Llegendary flight pioneer, first woman to cross the Atlantic solo, the American Amelia Earhart disappeared into thin air at the age of 40, in 1937 during an undertaking that should have consecrated her forever in the eyes of the world: the aerial circumnavigation of the globe following the equatorial route, the longest. Today the wreck of the famous twin-engine plane may have been identified from the Deep Sea vision of Tony Romeo, a former Air Force officer, who for a year has been scanning the bottom of the Pacific with sonar and drones, fascinated and obsessed by a mystery and a sinking that recalls that of the Titanic (and which is already cost 11 million dollars).
The story of Amelia Earhart
Together with her twin-engine Lockheed Electra and navigator Fred Noonan, the aviator took off from Miami on June 1, 1937, making stops in South America, Africa, India and New Guinea. She just missed crossing the Pacific Ocean, but the two never made it home. Nothing more was heard of the plane and the pilots, despite the tenacious search operations, defined at the time as the most expensive, organized by the US Navy and the Coast Guard.
The data recently collected by the underwater drone of Tony Romeo, a former Air Force officer, they brought to light an image that It would look a lot like Earhart’s craft: the wreck could be a 5,000 meters deep160 kilometers from Howland Island, halfway between Australia and Hawaii, right where the pilots were supposed to land.
(Original Caption) Amelia Earhart (1898-1937), American aviatrix, first woman to cross Atlantic. Photograph showing her with airplane.
Amelia and Noonan were declared dead two years later, in 1939, despite having found no traces of the wreckage: “You have to convince me that it is not a plane and that it is not Amelia’s” Romeo declared to NBC, convinced that it was indeed the aircraft due to the particular shape of the tail. “It’s probably the most exciting thing I’ll ever do in my life,” he later told the Wall Street Journal. “I feel like a ten-year-old playing treasure hunt.”
Biographies and films of a pioneer
Earhart’s life has been told in two autobiographies, 20 Hrs, 40 Mins And The fun of it. Last Flight it was instead published posthumously by her husband.
In 2009, director Mira Nair dedicated the film to her Amelia starring Hilary Swank. Reread with modern eyes, it is a true story of empowerment, considering the era in which Amelia managed to assert herself in a decidedly male environment. At 24, she was the 16th woman to earn a pilot’s license in the United States: she learned to fly from Anita Snook, another aeronautics pioneer.
However, the film was a flop at the box office, despite the presence of Richard Gere as her husband-pygmalion George Putnam, the man who more than anyone contributed to publicizing the aviator’s exploits. He organized the record voyage around the world which Earhart never completed.
A different ending?
The aviator’s life and story were so fascinating that they sparked different series on her disappearance: according to the explorer Ric Gillespie, the twin-engine plane would have made an emergency landing on Gardner Island and the pilot would have tried to send an SOS for a week, before the plane was sucked into the water.
For others, Amelia would have purposely disappeared, perhaps tired of the hype and the limelight. The sinking was probably due to a mix of factors: radio failure, bad weather and fuel loss.
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