HAS THE MYSTERY OF AMELIA EARHART BEEN SOLVED?

I regularly have a bento lunch at the Diamond Head Lookout.

This is my view.

So right next to me is this plaque, which commemorates the first solo flight from Hawaii to North American in 1935 by Amelia Earhart. She Piloted a Lockheed Vega right over this spot on her way to Oakland. From my posting of 9June2016:

About her around the world adventure two years later in 1937 with Fred Noonan, she arrived in Lae, New Guinea: and I myself once had too much of an adventure here. They next headed for Howland Island, and disappeared.

There are at least eight conspiracy theories, ranging from being kidnapped by aliens to capture by Japanese troops leading to her becoming one of the Tokyo Roses to....

Well, yesterday it was announced that Deep Sea Vision of South Carolina, using an unmanned, underwater drone, scanned more than 5200 square miles of the Pacific Ocean last year, and company founder Tony Romeo believes after leaving Papua New Guinea Amelia Earhart and her navigator Fred Noonan headed for Howland Island to refuel, but never arrived, and they recorded sufficient imagery of what could be Earhart's Lockheed 10-E Electra.

The exact location wasn't revealed, but could be as shown below. Howland Island is misspelled, and one crash site was a 2019 speculation.

In 1999, Dana Timmer led a $1 million deep-sea search, and recorded some promising sonar images, but was unable to raise funds to confirm. Nauticos conducted expeditions in 2002, 2005 and 2017, but only found shipping trash. Romeo (left) spent $11 million and hopes to return to confirm their discovery.

So has the mystery been solved? Not quite yet. Plus, hints are there that the plane is at a depth of 16,000 feet, so raising the plane will take maybe hundreds of millions of dollars.

The most noteworthy film about her was the 2009 Amelia, with Hilary Swank the lead, Richard Gere. Ewan McGregor and Christopher Eccleston as Fred Noonan. Alas, Rotten Tomatoes gave it 19/31 scores, so nothing you will particular enjoy. Should you want more, there is a Library of Congress Collection about her.

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