Sonar images may be Earhart’s plane

PHILADELPHIA – “It’s exciting. It’s frustrating. It’s maddening,” declares a Delaware group about tantalizing sonar images of what could be Amelia Earhart’s plane.

“It’s the right size, it’s the right shape, and it’s in the right place,” declares the home page of the International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery, or TIGHAR, which led a $2 million July expedition that raised hopes worldwide that the mystery finally would be solved of what happened to the famous flier who vanished over the Pacific in 1937 during an attempt to circle the globe.

The immediate result has been “the usual rodeo,” with Ric Gillespie, TIGHAR’s executive director, agreeing to requests from the likes of “The CBS Morning News” and CNN for interviews, he said by phone Friday morning.

“Amelia is just magic,” he said. “Everybody jumps on it.”

Although he cautions that the sonar imagery is far from proof they’ve found Earhart’s Lockheed Electra, his hopes are high of revisiting the island of Nikumaroro next year, if funding can be raised.

Before summer’s end last year, a careful review of high-definition video turned up an area with several objects that might be aircraft parts. A tire? A strut? A fender?

The intriguing images, though, raised more questions. Where was the bulk of the wreckage? The engine? The girderlike main beam? Pieces of wings, or the tail section?

The new discovery suggests answers.

In March, a man taking part in a TIGHAR online forum reported noticing an odd feature on a sonar map from the expedition.

It’s simply a long, thin, slanted streak that has a sonar shadow, showing that part of it has some bulk.

Of course, the sonar could have picked up some eccentric formation of rock or coral, or the wreck of some unknown ship, Gillespie points out.

No one will know until another expedition gets a better look.