New sonar images set to finally solve Amelia Earhart plane mystery

The explorers behind the search for Amelia Earhart’s plane wreckage may have a breakthrough.

A 90-day expedition was launched near Howland Island – close to where the famed pilot vanished.

And now the expedition has turned up what could be a massive lead in the search for the pilot and her plane.

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Amelia Earhart – a pioneering pilot – was the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean.

Sadly, Earhart’s career ended in tragedy when she vanished during an ambitious global flight in 1937.

In recent months, explorers found something on the ocean floor, which they claim could be the actual plane wreckage, 87 years on from her disappearance.

Ocean expedition team, Deep Sea Vision, headed to the Pacific Ocean between September and December last year to conduct sonar imaging, using sound waves, when they made the potentially historical discovery.

The sonar images beamed back to the team on the surface from the depth seem to show a twin-engine plane on the ocean floor.

The plane-shaped anomaly the team found lies some 16,000 feet below sea level.

Its proximity to the spot where Earhart disappeared, over the Pacific ocean, suggests they may have solved the mystery almost a century later.

Earhart’s great nephew and spokesperson for the family, Bram Kleppner, told Fox News Digital they may finally be on to something, because the image looks like it might be a plane, and the location is right, too.

Speaking to different news outlets, Kleppner further stated that the wing number is the key thing here.

Earhart’s plane wing number, NR16020, will be difficult to identify since the plane has been sitting at the bottom of the ocean for nearly a century.

But if they managed to identify it from the pictures, the mystery would be solved.