Sonar image reveals possible Amelia Earhart`s plane wreck

Researchers believe that a grainy sonar image captured off an uninhabited tropical island in the southwestern Pacific might represent the remains of the aircraft Amelia Earhart was piloting when she vanished on July 2, 1937.

Washington: Researchers believe that a grainy sonar image captured off an uninhabited tropical island in the southwestern Pacific republic of Kiribati might represent the remains of the Electra, the two-engine aircraft legendary aviator Amelia Earhart was piloting when she vanished on July 2, 1937 in a record attempt to fly around the world at the equator.

The images, released by The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery (TIGHAR) that has long been investigating Earhart`s last, fateful flight, show an "anomaly" resting at the depth of about 600 feet in the waters off Nikumaroro Island, some 350 miles southeast of Earhart`s target destination, Howland Island, Fox News reported. The sonar image, according to TIGHAR researchers, shows a strong return from a narrow object roughly 22 feet long oriented southwest/northeast on the slope near the base of an underwater cliff. Shadows indicate that the object is higher on the southwest (downhill side). A lesser return extends northeastward for about 131 feet. Ric Gillespie, executive director of TIGHAR, told Discovery News that the image attracted their attention because there is no other sonar return like it in the entire body of data collected. A number of artefacts recovered by TIGHAR during 10 expeditions have suggested that Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan, made a forced landing on the island`s smooth, flat coral reef. Gillespie and his team believe the two became castaways and eventually died there. In its underwater search, TIGHAR missed the place where the anomaly appears by only a few hundred feet. Wolfgang Burnside, president of Submersible Systems Inc and the inventor and pilot of ROV, said he found the target "very promising, definitely not a rock, and it`s in the correct location on the reef." ANI