(NewsNation) – A pilot who went on an $11 million expedition to find out What happened to Amelia Earhart? believes He may have found her plane at the bottom of the Pacific.

Tony Romeo, businessman and former Air Force intelligence officer, sold commercial real estate to finance the trip to find out what happened to the famous aviator who disappeared in 1937.

Romeo Sonar images taken of what looks like a plane-shaped object resting on the bottom of the Pacific Ocean near Howland Island, which is about halfway between Hawaii and Australia.

The location matches where historians believe Earhart and sailor Fred Noonan crashed. According to Romeo, the tail’s unique shape is also consistent with the twin-engine Lockheed 10-E Electra that Earhart flew.

Amelia Earhart: aviation pioneer

Earhart was a pioneer in aviation. She was the first female passenger to cross the Atlantic and later the first woman to complete a solo flight across the Atlantic. She was also the first female pilot of any gender to fly solo between Honolulu, Hawaii, and Oakland, California.

In 1937, Earhart set out to become the first woman to circumnavigate the world. The Electra was designed specifically for her and the voyage she and Noonan embarked on on June 1, 1937 in Miami.

The pair stopped in numerous locations including South America, Africa and Southeast Asia, with the last known stop being in Lae, New Guinea on June 29, 1937. The rest of the journey was to take place mainly over the open sea.

The couple were on their way to Howland Island but never arrived. The flight’s last known location was near the Nukumanu Islands. Earhart and Noonan maintained communication with a Coast Guard cutter sent to the island during their approach, but radio contact was lost after a transmission indicated she believed she and Noonan had found the island, which may have been false was.

A Navy and Coast Guard search failed to find Earhart and Noonan or the plane. She was officially declared dead in 1939, but her disappearance has been a mystery that has fascinated the public for decades and spawned many theories about what happened.

What happened to Earhart’s plane?

The most plausible theory is that the flight ran out of fuel and crashed into the Pacific Ocean, sinking to the seabed where it could not be found by rescue workers.

However, other theories were also floated, including that the couple crashed on the uninhabited island of Nikumaroro, then known as Gardner Island. In 1940, bones identified as male by anthropologists at the time were found on the island. The skeleton has disappeared, but examination of the data has led some to believe that this is the case might actually have belonged to Earhart.

Another theory is that the pair crashed somewhere in Japanese-controlled territory and were captured. Although tensions were high between Japan and the United States, World War II had not yet begun and it is not clear why Japan would have taken the couple and held them instead of receiving credit for their rescue.

Others have suggested that she was actually a spy, or that she landed safely and later assumed a new identity.

An answer to a nearly 90-year-old mystery?

Romeo’s image, if accurate, would support the first theory. But more evidence would be needed, a challenge since the object in the images is 16,500 feet below the surface – even deeper than that Wreck of the Titanic.

Romeo took the pictures with a $9 million high-tech unmanned drone submersible and a 16-person research team. The expedition began in Kiribati in September 2022 and covered 5,200 square miles of the ocean floor.

Experts say that while the images are worth further investigation, they require more information to conclusively say that the plane is Earhart’s.

Romeo hopes to return to the area with a camera and remote-controlled vehicle to take better pictures of the plane and perhaps solve the decades-old mystery once and for all.