Sonar discovery reveals grim fate of Amelia Earhart

It’s one of the great mysteries of the 20th century, but it looks like the fate of pioneering aviator Amelia Earhart might finally have been solved.

It comes as an ocean explorer released a sonar image of what could be Earhart’s missing plane at the bottom of the Pacific.

Earhart was famed for being the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic, achieving the feat in 1932.

However, in 1937 she and her navigator Fred Noonan went missing while crossing high above the Pacific ocean. They were never found, and now the new evidence could provide answers.

Earhart and Noonan had been due to stop to refuel at Howland Island, but they never arrived. One theory suggested that the plane ran out of fuel and crashed into the ocean before arriving at the island.

New sonar mapping from Deep Sea Vision, founded by Tony Romeo, has shown what could be the Lockheed 10-E Electra Earhart was flying around 100 miles off the coast of the island.

Delivering the news in a release on Monday (January 29), the company said that the image shows "contours that mirror the unique dual tails and scale of [Earhart's] storied aircraft.”

The image was taken by a submersible, which scanned a staggering 5,200 miles of the ocean floor. It took around 60 days from when the image of what the company believes to be the plane was taken, until they realised its potential significance.

"We always felt that she [Earhart] would have made every attempt to land the aircraft gently on the water, and the aircraft signature that we see in the sonar image suggests that may be the case," company founder Romeo said.

He also spoke during an interview with NBC's Today show, saying: “Well 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.

“There’s no other known crashes in the area, and certainly not of that era in that kind of design with the tail that you see clearly in the image.”

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