Ear: Earhart

Aviatrix Amelia Earhart may or may not have passed through Astoria on a road trip to Canada with her mother in the 1920s, but she, her navigator, Fred Noonan, and their Lockheed Electra 10E plane definitely did disappear in 1937 during a round-the-world flight.

In January, there was a huge kerfuffle when Tony Romeo, CEO of Deep Sea Vision, announced he thought (after spending $11 million) he had found Earhart’s Electra about 100 miles from Howland Island, one of the places people speculated she landed or crashed, and produced some grainy images of an airplane-ish looking object lying on the ocean floor (pictured, inset).

Not so fast, The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery (TIGHAR) said at the time, in an email with the subject line, “Not an Electra.”

“Aside from the reams of evidence that Earhart and (Fred) Noonan landed and died at Nikumaroro (about 350 miles southeast of Howland),” the email states, “the aircraft (if it is an aircraft at all) cannot be an Electra” due to the wing design, “among other things.”

In a recent “I told you so” email, with a headline of “Another One Bites the Dust,” TIGHAR announced that Romeo’s images of an “aircraft” were literally of a pile of rocks. Vindicated, once again.

The Post and Courier of Charleston, South Carolina, quoted Romeo as saying, “this outcome isn’t what we hoped for,” in an $11 million understatement. (Images: Deep Sea Vision / SZ Photo/Bridgeman/ACI)