14 DAY TRIAL // The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery (TIGHAR) now say that sonar imaging has allowed them to pin down an unidentified object at the bottom of the waters off the coast of an uninhabited island (i.e. Nikumaroro island) in the southwestern Pacific.
Data collected thus far indicate that this object, whose length is one of about 22 feet (6.7 meters), is not a rock.
Interestingly enough, the specialists who got the chance to have a close look at the sonar image of this object maintain that it could be the remains of Amelia Earhart's plane.
They base their claim on data suggesting that the object is something man-made, Gizmodo reports.
By the looks of it, the object, which now rests at about 600 feet (almost 183 meters) below the sea's surface, has both the right shape and the right size to be the wreckage of Amelia Earhart's plane.
“It’s exciting. It’s frustrating. It’s maddening. There is a sonar image in the data collected during last summer’s Niku VII expedition that could be the wreckage of Amelia Earhart’s Lockheed Electra,” TIGHAR writes on its official website.
“It looks unlike anything else in the sonar data, it’s the right size, it’s the right shape, and it’s in the right place,” it further adds.
Researchers speculate that, given the drag markings identified close to these alleged plane remains, Amelia Earhart did not crash into the ocean, but made a safe landing on nearby dry reef.
They also say that she most likely sent distress signals, yet rescuers failed to locate and save her in time.
Thus, her plane was eventually pushed into the ocean by the waves battering against it and ended up sinking.
Amelia Earhart went missing back in 1937 when she attempted to fly solo around the world.
Her plane is known to have disappeared close to Howland Island in the central Pacific Ocean.
Before disappearing under these circumstances, Amelia Earhart made history as the first woman pilot to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean.