Have We Found Amelia Earhart's Missing Plane? [VIDEO]
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In November 2023, a boat and its crew troll the waters of the South Pacific. They pilot an underwater drone capable of mapping the ocean floor thousands of feet below. In a sense, they're treasure hunting. They've spent nearly three months and two million dollars on this expedition. There's been no shortage of setbacks and surprises. And they haven't found what they're looking for, not yet. But just when it's about time to call it quits and head home,

Good news arrives. Sonar data they thought they'd lost weeks ago has been recovered. And as they scan the images, they come across the grainy outline of what could possibly be their long-lost treasure. The plane that Amelia Earhart flew into oblivion.

Welcome to Conspiracy Theories, a Spotify podcast. I'm Carter Roy. You can find us here every Wednesday. Be sure to check us out on Instagram at The Conspiracy Pod. This is a special video version of Conspiracy Theories, which you can watch only on Spotify.

Since we last covered the disappearance of Amelia Earhart on this show in 2019, there have been several updates. Now well over 85 years old, this mystery just won't quit. Unless, of course, we finally get an answer. Today, we'll take a look at what the deep-sea exploration company Deep Sea Vision found...

and what their discovery could mean for the countless theories surrounding one of the most popular mysteries of all time. Stay with us.

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Hi there, Carter Roy here. If you're interested in true crime, especially unsolved murders, serial killers, and cold cases, you'll love my brand new show, Murder True Crime Stories. Each episode covers a notorious murder or murders with a special focus on those who were impacted the most. We'll always leave with the knowledge of why these stories need to be heard. You can listen to Murder True Crime Stories wherever you get your podcasts.

More than 85 years after Amelia Earhart and her navigator Fred Noonan disappeared over the South Pacific, Deep Sea Vision thinks it might have found a huge piece of the puzzle. A sonar image that appears to show a plane more than three miles below the ocean's surface. It's similar in size and shape to Amelia's missing Lockheed Electra.

But if you're watching this as a video right now, you can see the image is blurry and nothing has been confirmed yet. A curator of the National Air and Space Museum's aviation collection thinks deep sea vision may be on the right track. They believe it's worth the considerable amount of time and money that would be required to take a closer look.

But there are also skeptics. Some say the image doesn't look like it has the right engine type. Others claim Amelia's plane would never have ended up in that location, so close to Howland Island, her intended destination. So let's return to the day Amelia Earhart went missing and discuss some of the places she, Fred Noonan, and the plane may have ended up. It's July 1937.

Amelia and her navigator, Fred, have flown over 22,000 miles, with 7,000 miles to go before they're back in California. If they complete the trip, Amelia will be the first pilot to circumnavigate the globe at its widest point, a nearly 30,000-mile journey over the equator. Currently in Papua New Guinea, Amelia's ready for the whole thing to be over with, but

But the most taxing part of the trip is still to come. Her next stop is a Pacific atoll called Howland Island. It's tiny and thin, less than one square mile in area. Locating it will be hard. Landing safely will be Amelia's biggest challenge yet. Adding to the danger, the flight from Papua New Guinea to Howland Island will take around 18 hours.

And that's in favorable conditions. In headwinds, the Lockheed Electra could be airborne for an entire day. And if that happens, its gas tanks will be nearing empty.

The good news is, the Electra is outfitted with some pretty state-of-the-art technology, like a top-of-the-line radio. Plus, a Coast Guard ship, the Itasca, will be anchored near the island in case anything happens. Their radio operators should be in regular contact with Amelia. On the morning of July 2nd, Amelia and Fred leave Papua New Guinea at 10 a.m. local time.

Based on weather conditions, they should be nearing Howland Island around daybreak the following morning. The crew of the Itasca should see them coming and hear them before that. Around midnight, the Itasca fires up its spotlights and shines them into the sky. Clouds have rolled over the area and the beams will act as beacons for Amelia, guiding her in the dark.

Coast Guard radio operators send periodic transmissions, waiting for the Electra to come into range. But hours pass before any signs of life. Around 2.45 a.m., Amelia's voice breaks through for the first time. It's faint, but it comes in on her designated frequency, and the operator can make out her unique call sign.

K-H-A-Q-Q. Kila Hotel Alpha Quebec, Quebec. Amelia relays something about the overcast weather, but her voice quickly fades to static, which is then followed by hours of silence.

The silence is concerning. By this point, Amelia and Coast Guard radio operators are supposed to be in regular communication, checking in at least once every hour. But when Amelia's voice breaks through again, it becomes clear. Amelia isn't receiving any of the Coast Guard's transmissions. They can hear her, but she can't hear them.

Later, researchers will be fairly certain why. In videos and photographs taken during Amelia's departure for Howland Island, the plane's receiving antenna is missing. It must have broken off at some point, and no one noticed. There's not much the Coast Guard can do except listen, wait, and hope for the best. When the sun rises, they trade their spotlights for black plumes of smoke, hoping Amelia will spot them.

Around 6:15 a.m. local time, radio operators receive another message. Amelia says she's about 200 miles out and the transmission comes through loud and clear. So it seems like things are going well, except she does something strange. She begins making a high-pitched noise that sounds like whistling and asks the Coast Guard to take a navigational bearing on her signal.

In theory, she's trying to give them a strong, consistent signal to track, but that's not how her equipment works. The Electra's radio direction finder is meant to help Amelia find the Itasca, not the other way around. She may be starting to panic. About 90 minutes later, at 7.42 a.m., Amelia's voice returns. We must be on you, but cannot see you.

She and Fred seem to believe that they're in the right place, flying directly over Howland Island and the Itasca. But for some reason, they can't see either. She adds,

The signal is so strong, it practically blows out the operator's headphones. In fact, they go outside, expecting to hear the Electra's engine roaring overhead. But there's nothing. The Coast Guard only logs one final transmission after that. It comes through around 8.45 a.m., well past the Electra's expected arrival. Her voice racked with fear,

Amelia gives operators two compass bearings for the Electra's current line of position, 157 and 337. If they're correct, that line should bring Amelia and Fred directly over Howland Island, but that doesn't happen. The Electra never appears, and Amelia and Fred are never seen again. You could call it the moment they disappear, except...

Amelia's radio continues to transmit signals for days. Where were Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan when they ran out of gas? Answer that and you just might find their missing plane. There are plenty of theories. One of the most popular is connected to the radio transmissions that continued after July 2nd, 1937.

Not long after the Coast Guard logged its communication from Amelia, the Navy launched a search to try and recover the famed aviator. It carried on for days and ultimately became the most expensive rescue effort in American history up until that point. But by today's standards especially, the execution was far from perfect.

Leadership changed hands several times, the fastest ships weren't called in, and nobody landed on any nearby islands to check for castaways. Which is important because while the Navy was out searching, people from around the world thought they heard Amelia Earhart calling for help.

See, the Coast Guard weren't the only ones listening to Amelia's frequency that day. Radio enthusiasts, reporters, and aviation fans from all over tuned in to track her historic flight. And for several days, dozens of people reported hearing SOS and distress calls made by Amelia herself.

Some were hoaxes that could easily be debunked. But according to a 2012 study by the International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery, or TIGER, as many as 57 of these radio transmissions could have actually come from Amelia. And in order for Amelia's radio to work, its batteries couldn't have gotten wet.

The Electra needed to be at least partially above water. This has led some to believe Amelia ended up over 400 miles south of her destination on a different island called Nikumaroro.

Nikumaroro is about four and a half miles long and part of a volcanic crater. It has a central lagoon and a wide coral reef surrounding it. It sits along the same line of position as Howland, the one Amelia said she was flying on that day, 157-337. The theory goes, as they were running out of fuel, Amelia and Fred landed the Electra along the island's exposed reef.

It was low tide at the time, so she could still access her radio, at least until the tide engulfed the plane days later. After losing their only mode of communication, life for Amelia and Fred would have been about survival. Evidence to support the theory dates back to July 9th, 1937, a week after they first went missing.

A Navy pilot involved in the search for Amelia spotted signs of what he called, quote, recent habitation on Nikumaroro. He circled the island for a bit, but when he didn't see anyone flag him down, he moved along, assuming it was just an old campsite. Or if there were people living in the island's dense jungle, they didn't need his help.

He didn't realize until much later that nobody lived on Nikumaroro at the time. Britain only colonized the island three years later, and when they did, they found an old campsite and human skeletal remains. In total, 13 bones were recovered and sent to a lab in Fiji.

A doctor determined they belonged to a male of European origin, so someone not indigenous to the area. Modern forensic technology could probably tell us a whole lot more, but no one knows where the bones are now. They went missing after those tests. All we have are the doctor's notes detailing the size of each bone.

In 2018, forensic pathologist Richard Jantz revisited those notes. Using new technology, he compared old photographs of Amelia Earhart with the bone measurements from 1940. He ultimately concluded that the doctor in Fiji was probably wrong. The bones didn't belong to a man.

He claims that they're more similar to Amelia Earhart's skeletal structure than they are to 99% of the world's population. In his report, published in the Journal of Forensic Anthropology, Jantz concluded, "...until definitive evidence is presented that the remains are not those of Amelia Earhart, the most convincing argument is that they are hers."

Adding even more fuel to the theory, it wasn't just bones at the old campsite on Nika Mororo. They also found remnants of some shoes belonging to both a man and a woman, and a box meant to hold a sextant, a navigational tool that Fred Noonan would have owned.

One proponent of this theory is Rick Gillespie, the executive director of TIGER, the International Aircraft Recovery Group. We mentioned a study they conducted earlier. And Rick's in good company. Bob Ballard also believes the waters of Niku Mororo hold the answer. Bob is the legendary explorer credited with locating the Titanic and the German battleship, the Bismarck.

He made one unsuccessful attempt to find Amelia's missing Lockheed Electra in 2019, but he plans to mount another search in the future. There is a catch to this theory, though, and it's a pretty big one. Niku Mororo is 400 miles away from Howland Island. Some researchers think she couldn't possibly have made it that far. She would have run out of gas first.

A company called Nauticos has carried out three expeditions to find the missing Electra, one in 2002, another in 2006, and the most recent in 2017. Their efforts have been focused on the waters closer to Howland Island, Amelia's intended destination. To date, they've covered over 1,800 square nautical miles.

They've also teamed up with other research groups to build a replica of the communication system Amelia had on board that day. They've run tests and plan to use the results to narrow their next search area. Then there's Tony Romeo, the founder of Deep Sea Vision. Tony and his company are newcomers in the field.

Like so many other people, Tony picked up a hobby during the 2020 pandemic, magnetic fishing, or fishing using a magnet instead of bait. The goal is to find metal in the water, old tools, dropped coins, lost jewelry, that kind of thing. But magnetic fishers have found surprises before, like a handcuffed body and some old hand grenades that luckily didn't go off.

Not many people make the leap from river fishing for trinkets to purchasing a $9 million autonomous underwater vehicle, but Tony Romeo did. In 2020, Tony purchases the Hugin 6000 and launches Deep Sea Vision with the intention of searching for lost ships and planes. He puts together a dream team of engineers, robotics experts, and researchers, which includes his brother, Lloyd.

Tony and Lloyd are more than just hobbyists. Plenty of people grew up with the story of Amelia Earhart. But as he told The Post and Courier in 2024, the Romeos have a unique perspective. Their father had a long career as a pilot, and both Tony and Lloyd followed in his footsteps. Tony is a veteran of the U.S. Air Force.

They know the details of Amelia's disappearance well and subscribe to the theory that she and Fred disappeared close to Howland Island. That's largely due to the fact that their radio transmissions steadily got louder and clearer throughout the flight. But it's more than just that. They also give weight to what's called the Dateline Theory.

First put forth by researcher Liz Smith in 2010, it suggests that at some point during their flight, Amelia and Fred crossed the international date line, didn't account for the change, and miscalculated their coordinates. Fred Noonan was a gifted navigator who would have known to anticipate the change, but that doesn't mean human error didn't come into play.

The dateline is just an idea, not something you can physically see. And Fred was probably tired from working through the night and possibly preoccupied with the Electra's malfunctioning radio. If their timing was wrong, their calculations could have been off by as many as 60 nautical miles.

For their first expedition, Tony Romeo and his Deep Sea Vision team picked an area west of Howland Island. They're confident in their equipment. The Huginn 6000's sonar capabilities are currently considered the most advanced in the world.

It can detect objects that are up to 6,000 meters or about 3.7 miles below sea level. In August 2023, after 18 months of preparation, they set out to map the area's ocean floor. They experienced setbacks very early on. For some reason, they can't view all the images the Hugin is capturing. The sonar data is corrupted.

All they can do is continue on, hoping their luck will change. And it does. By some miracle, they recover the images weeks later. And it is a good thing they do. If they hadn't, we might never have seen this. Hmm, whatever that is. For those who aren't watching the video, it's a very grainy image, the kind you might see from a NASA deep space picture.

By the time deep-sea vision recovers this image, they're miles away from where it was taken and have experienced another setback. The Hugens' camera is broken. Even if they return to the spot, they wouldn't be able to capture a clearer image without it. The object is 16,500 feet below the surface. For perspective, that's more than six of the world's tallest buildings stacked on top of each other.

4,000 feet deeper than the Titanic wreck. Access is a real challenge. When news of the blurry sonar image breaks in early 2024, the reaction is exactly what you might expect. It's met with both excitement and skepticism, especially from Deep Sea Vision's competitors.

Deep Sea Vision hasn't yet disclosed the exact location of the object they've found, but they've hinted that it's within 100 miles of Howland Island. At the end of the day, Tony Romeo and his team want to be the first ones to find the Electra. They don't want to tip their hand to their competitors, so to speak. We mentioned Nauticos earlier, the company also searching the waters near Howland Island.

They have their doubts about Deep Sea Vision's strategy. They believe Tony and his team were searching too far west. They also question the image itself. They've pointed out that sonar images can be tricky.

Sound waves travel a lot farther in water than light can, but they can't pick up as much detail. There's a lot left open to interpretation. In the past, images have seemed promising, only to turn out to be a pile of big rocks. But even still, in their opinion, the image doesn't look quite right.

According to Nauticos, the wings aren't the right shape. And there are certain features missing, like the nacelles, the big containers that house the Electra's engines. Tony actually agrees about the nacelles. He doesn't know why those are missing from the image, but he's less concerned about the wings. He says sonar imaging could have easily warped their appearance.

Of course, there are those like Rick Gillespie and Bob Ballard who believe the Electra is hundreds of miles away near an entirely different island, but none of it has shaken Tony Romeo's confidence. I'll read you this quote from his appearance on NBC's The Today Show in January 2024. You'd be hard-pressed to convince me that's anything but an aircraft for one, and two, that it's not Amelia's aircraft.

If he's right, we can maybe put some decades-old conspiracy theories to rest. Conspiracy theories last covered this topic in 2019. In that episode, we discussed the theory that Amelia's flight around the world and subsequent disappearance was actually a smokescreen, and that Amelia was actually sent on a top-secret spy mission.

It's well known that Amelia had a personal relationship with then-President Franklin Roosevelt and his wife, Eleanor. They publicly supported her career and even paid for the runway on Howland Island, which is why some have suggested that FDR might have asked for a favor in return, specifically spying on Japanese installations in the South Pacific.

In 1937, Japan was already in early diplomatic talks with Germany, making moves that would lead to allying them as the Axis powers during World War II. The idea is that Amelia diverted north and flew to the Marshall Islands, which were under Japanese control at the time.

And while there, she might have been intentionally captured so the U.S. Navy could go snooping around without looking suspicious. They could just say they were looking for Amelia. Amelia's husband, George Putnam, seriously investigated this spy theory.

And it branches out into two different outcomes. In the first, Amelia was eventually saved and returned to the United States where she assumed a new identity, living under the name Irene Bolam. Irene was a real person. She lived in New Jersey, worked as a banker, and looked a tiny bit like an older version of Amelia Earhart. You can see for yourself. ♪

That's Irene Bolum holding a copy of a book that claims she was Amelia Earhart undercover. Irene successfully sued the publishers for $1.5 million. At the very least, in the eyes of the court, she proved she wasn't Amelia Earhart. The second possible outcome is Amelia and Fred never made it out of Japan alive.

Multiple eyewitnesses have come forward over the years, claiming they remember seeing the Americans die in Japanese territories. But it's also possible they just saw the 1943 film Flight for Freedom. Its main character's name is Tony, but she was very clearly modeled after Amelia. She's a world-famous female pilot, and by the end of the movie, she ends up spying on the Japanese for the U.S. government.

She's not outright killed, but she does disappear in the end. And it's basically implied that Japan and their allies are to blame. Some have called elements of the film propaganda. If deep-sea vision really has found the Elektra, maybe the theory will finally be put to rest. And maybe there are even more clues waiting to be found inside the Elektra that could flesh out the story even more.

Like notes Fred Noonan might have taken during the flight. 70 years after a British cargo ship was sunk by German torpedoes, more than 700 letters were found preserved inside the wreckage nearly three miles under the ocean. Handwritten sheet music was found in the Titanic. As one conservator told The Guardian, "The lack of oxygen in the ocean slows the decaying process." So who knows what we'll find?

As confident as he is that he's on to something, Tony Romeo is also open to the possibility that he's wrong, that what his team found is just a pile of rocks and Amelia's plane is still missing. We won't know for sure until they return to the site with a working deep water camera, something they plan on doing in 2024. If it's not the Lockheed Electra, they plan to continue their search.

Tony was interviewed by The Post and Courier in early 2024. He told reporter Tony Bartlemy that he loves the riddle of Amelia Earhart and everyone who's contributed to it. It's a tragedy and a mystery of epic proportions with a superstar at its center. It's hard to over-exaggerate Amelia's level of celebrity during her lifetime, but

She received invitations from the White House, parades were thrown in her honor, crowds of thousands gathered just to catch a glimpse of her, and she was good at being in the spotlight. She posed for all these photos and gave reporters all the sound bites they needed, rattling off smart quips with a polite smile.

Girls around the world plastered her face on scrapbooks. They told their teachers and parents they wanted to be her when they grew up. And Amelia cared about being a role model. She delivered radio speeches on the importance of women's role in science. She traveled across the country lecturing on gender equity and social equality. She was more than a hero. She was a living legend.

That's the reason we're still talking about her today. That's why groups like Deep Sea Vision and Nauticos and Tiger are still pouring blood, sweat, tears, and millions of dollars into these expeditions. Answers about Amelia's fate are out there, if we can find them. Thank you for listening to Conspiracy Theories, a Spotify podcast. We're here with a new episode every Wednesday.

Be sure to check us out on Instagram at The Conspiracy Pod. If you're listening on the Spotify app, swipe up and give us your thoughts. Or email us at conspiracystories at spotify.com. Amongst the many sources we used, we found Tony Bartlemy's reporting for The Post and Courier, as well as Rick Gillespie's book, Finding Amelia, the true story of the Earhart disappearance, extremely helpful to our research. Until next time, remember...

The truth isn't always the best story. And the official story isn't always the truth. This episode was written and researched by Connor Sampson and Mickey Taylor. Fact-checked by Haley Milliken and Laurie Siegel. And sound designed by Alex Button. Our head of programming is Julian Boisreau. Our head of production is Nick Johnson. And Spencer Howard is our post-production supervisor. I'm your host, Carter Roy.

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