Amelia Earhart was born in 1897 in Kansas, United States. She has been interested in aviation since childhood. This made her want to learn about aviation and buy a small plane. Therefore, she collects money by doing various jobs and buys a small plane. She also learns to fly airplanes.
She owns many records related to flying airplanes in the last century. In 1922, she set a world record by flying her plane to a height of 14000 feet, the highest altitude a woman flew at that time. Also, she set many records for flying airplanes at the highest speed. She made history as the woman who flew an airplane across the Atlantic Ocean for the first time in the world. The time taken for the entire journey has been recorded as 14 hours and 56 minutes.
Amelia Earhart won many awards for her special talents. The gold medal awarded by the National Geographic Society was presented to her by the hand of the American President Herbert Hoover at that time. She is also awarded the Flying Cross by the American Congress. Due to this, she becomes an extremely popular character. Also, the books she wrote based on her flight experiences sold very well.
In her thirties, she wants to fly around the world. That journey is planned to start from Oakland, USA, driving the plane around the world and returning to Oakland. Most of this trip involves flying the plane over the sea. Therefore, she took Fred Noonan, a navigator, for this trip. A navigator’s job is to advise the pilot about the direction the aircraft should travel.
They started their world tour on June 1, 1937, from Oakland, America by Lockheed 10-E Electra plane. On June 29, 1937, they arrived at Lea, Papua New Guinea. By that time they have traveled a distance of 22000 miles. The total distance of this trip is 29000 miles, which means they had only 7000 miles left to complete the trip around the world.
Image credits: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_Model_10_Electra
Their next destination was a small island in the Pacific Ocean 2,500 miles away from Lea, Papua New Guinea. The name of this island is Howland. On July 2, 1937, they filled the fuel tank of the plane with fuel and set off again. It takes about 20 hours to arrive at Howland Island. This island is a tiny island, about 2 km long and 1 km wide. There was an abandoned airstrip on this island. Also, several American ships were anchored near the island to support and communicate with Amelia Earhart.
They planned to refuel the plane at Howland Island. A few messages from Amelia were received on board after the voyage. In one message, she said that there was a cloudy sky that day. She also sent messages about the distance to Howland Island. They got data about the location of the island through radio navigation. But Fred Noonan had expressed doubts about the accuracy of this data before starting the journey.
As Fred Noonan speculated, they were unable to find the island due to an error in the data. Realizing this, the staff on the ship started transmitting the signal. But Amelia’s plane could not pick up those signals. This is due to a difference in the frequency on which the ship transmitted signals and the frequency range of the signal receiver on the plane Amelia was flying.
A few minutes later, Amelia sends a message saying the plane is running low on fuel. Another hour later, the last message from her is received. It was said that they were lost without being able to find the island.
Finally, ships near the island started blaring sounds. Also started emitting streams of light and clouds of smoke. But there was a cloudy sky that day. Therefore, the aircraft could not see the light streams emitted by the ship. All communications between the aircraft and the ship were terminated.
After this incident, the US Air Force started the most expensive search operation at that time. Many ships and planes were involved. But they could not find Amelia Earhart’s plane. So they had to decide that Amelia Earhart was missing.
In January 2024, a man named Tony Romeo conducted an underwater exploration in the area where Amelia Earhart’s plane disappeared. For that, they use underwater drones and sonar technology. In this research, they found an object in the shape of an airplane at the bottom of the sea using sonar technology. Experts who saw this object thought that this could be Amelia Earhart’s plane.
This place is very deep in the sea. The depth of that place is about 16000 feet from the sea level. Let me give you an example to get an idea about this. You have heard about the Titanic that sank in the Atlantic Ocean. The Titanic is 14000 feet deep at the bottom of the sea. But this place is even 2000 feet deep. Therefore, it is very difficult to travel to this place even by a submarine.
Experts on seabed exploration express an interesting opinion about this information received from sonar technology. They say that if this 16,000-foot object is Amelia Earhart’s plane, it might be well preserved. They say there are 2 main reasons for it. The first reason is that at 16,000 feet the oxygen level at the bottom of the sea is very low, so the impact of the corrosion is very low. The second is that there is no pressure difference between the inside and outside of the plane due to the seawater filling into the plane, so it does not shrink.
In the future, the team including Tony Romeo is planning to explore the seabed once again with more advanced drones and equipment. If the search is successful, we will be able to know what happened to Amelia Earhart, which has been a mystery for almost 100 years. In the future, whether we are able to know what happened to her or not, Amelia Earhart is a very brave woman.