Romeo rejects this criticism. Both the wings and tail appear swept back due to the distortion caused by the AUV moving through the water, he says, highlighting the twin fins at the rear of the plane. “That’s very characteristic of his plane,” he says; “There are only a couple of airplanes that have been made like this.”
Earhart and Noonan disappeared on July 2, 1937, flying from Lae, New Guinea, to Howland Island, an island just two kilometers long about 4,000 kilometers away. After 20 hours of flying, Earhart thought they were close and radioed to the Itasca, the Coast Guard ship waiting for them in Howland: “We must be on you but we can’t see you.” Her voice was so loud that Coast Guard radio operators thought she was very close to it, too. She wasn’t, but the strength of the radio signals suggests she was just a little beyond visual range.
Deep Sea Vision’s search area was about 160 km to the west; Romeo doesn’t reveal exactly where to prevent someone else from making the crucial discovery. But he does acknowledge that they were guided by the theory that Noonan had not taken into account how the international date line would affect his calculations. That theory, however, does not explain the strength of Earhart’s radio signals.
In the nearly 90 years since Earhart and Noonan disappeared, many people have claimed to have evidence that would explain what happened to them.