Amelia Earhart was a pioneer in aviation. However, she would not live to her 40th birthday. During an attempt at becoming the first woman to complete a circumnavigational flight of the globe in 1937, Earhart and her navigator Fred Noonan, disappeared over the central Pacific Ocean near Howland Island. Her disappearance remains one of the great unsolved mysteries of the 20th century. For 87 years people have been trying to find her plane, a twin-engine Lockheed 10E Electra. Newt’s guest is Tony Romeo, CEO of Deep Sea Vision. He discusses the search for Earhart’s plane and his recent discovery.
On this episode of Nuts World. Amelia Earhart was a pioneer in aviation. In nineteen twenty eight, publisher George Putnam picked Earhart to become the first woman to cross the Atlantic by plane as a passenger. When her flight landed in Wales, she became a media sensation and a symbol of what women could achieve. In nineteen thirty two, she became the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic as a pilot. Her awards included the American Distinguished Flying Cross and the Cross of the French Legion of Honor. However, Earhart would not live to her fortieth birthday. During an attempt of becoming the first woman to complete a circumnavigational flight of the globe in nineteen thirty seven, Earhart and her navigator Fred Noonan disappeared over the Central Pacific Ocean near Holland Island. The two were last seen in Lay in New Guinea on July second, nineteen thirty seven, on the last landstop before Holland Island and one of their final legs of their flight. Her disappearance remains one of the great unsolved mysteries of the twentieth century. For eighty seven years, people have been trying to find her plane, a twin engine Lockheed ten E Electra. Here to talk about the search for Earhart's plane and his recent discovery. I am really pleased to welcome my guest, Tony Romeo, CEO of Deep Sea Vision, a marine robotics company specializing in deep ocean exploration and survey. Tony, welcome and thank you for joining me on News World.
Thank you, speaker. I appreciate that.
So before we talk about your discovery, I just want to start by talking about Amelia Earhart. You have a great quote in the Wall Street Journal quote. For her to go missing was just unthinkable. Imagine Taylor Swift just disappearing today. I mean, Earhart really had a level of international fame that was astounding for that time period. Why was she so famous? Man? Can you talk about aviation and the role of this pioneering woman during the time that she was there.
Sure, that's a great question. I appreciate all the questions have been asked over the last couple of days. I think that's one of the best because the story is about her. She is America's favorite missing person, right not Jimmy Hoffa, but he's famous too. But Emilia Art is our favorite missing person. And you know, as long as she's missing, there's gonna be someone out there looking for She came from a humble upbringing. She was a nurse in World War One in Toronto, and she just fell in love with flying. And she seemed like you're just average, normal American and she was tapped on the shoulder to do something great and she ran with it, and to do it she did then, flying across the Atlantic, flying across the Pacific solo, and setting these speed records, distance records, flying records were just unheard of, and especially for women. And it's just so impressed with what she did. There's a lot of people wouldn't do what she did then, They wouldn't do it now, certainly not with the technology that she used. Just a fascinating person. And by the way, you know, aviation pioneer, early advocate for women's rights, but also tremendous author. She wrote a book called for the Fun of It, one of the best books you've never heard of.
It's called for the Fun of It.
Yep, terrific. She was so gracious, She was incredibly gracious. She never said anything bad about anyone. I mean, you knew when she didn't like somebody, but she never said anything bad. She is so clever, so witty. She actually wrote four books. I feel like of all the things known about Meli are, that's one of the most unknown things. Tremendous author and just very intelligent women.
As late as nineteen thirty there were still only two hundred female pilots. That it really had been a field that females had not been very accepted in. So she was really outstanding as a pioneer at a time when it was very rare.
And here's another fact for you, Knut that is very interesting, I think is she was the first woman to cross the Atlantic right, solo. But she was the first woman to fly across the Atlantic. Said, but she was actually the second person. I mean, of course, you know it was Charles Lindbergh was the first one, but she was the second one to do it, and there were no other men that did it. It was her. She was the second person to do it. So and solo, by the way, I mean, just incredible, incredible thing to do.
I think now that we do it routinely in large passenger ships, we don't realize back then, But I mean everything about whether the engine could work, whether you run out of fuel, whether your navigation was good enough. I mean, these were real pioneers and they were taking real risks. Now it's interesting, though, because I think because she was so daring and because she was breaking these records, she really became sort of a symbol and attracted a lot more women into becoming pilots.
Totally agree, absolutely for sure, and not just in the aviation. Encouraged women to break the barriers of all sorts of professions, and she called her the cockpit, her kitchen. Basically, she was encouraging women to get out there and pursue careers, and I think it was a wonderful message and it resonated.
Part of that process. She became a friend of Eleanor Roosevelt, the first lady who herself had really strongly advocated women's rights and women pursuing careers and women making a contribution. And she became the first woman vice president of the National Aeronautic Association, which actually kept the official records and races, and she convinced them to have separate female records because women did not have the money or planes to fairly compete against men. For world titles. The other thing that you were talking about. She wrote, but in addition to writing, she also gave lectures all over the country. She was a person who was a star in her own right, and people came there. And I didn't know this, but she designed a whole line of women's clothing, dresses, blouses, pants, suits, hats, using her own sewing machine, her own dress form, her own seems just. She modeled them for promotional things, and so people could actually sort of read her books, listen to her speech, and then wear her clothing. This wasn't a cultural phenomenon.
That's right.
And a luggage line, and they also had her at one point, I think, promoting cigarettes, which she absolutely hated because she didn't smoke.
You mentioned that she designed this line of lightweight, canvas covered plywood luggage. I didn't realize this Earhart luggage was sold into the nineteen nineties.
I didn't know that either. That's wow.
Incredible talk about lasting as an impact. And of course she became a household name. People knew who she was. I was amazed. Now she broke the women's attitude record when she got to fourteen thousand feet. That's in nineteen twenty two, and then, as you point out, six years later, she crosses the Atlantic in twenty hours and forty minutes. I mean again and again, she's just doing stuff. Is remarkable. Did she have a close relationship with the aircraft manufacturers.
She did. With the Lockheed Martin folks. She did.
They kind of specially designed the aircraft for her. It was Purdue University. You mentioned that she was a teacher and a professor. She actually was a teacher at Purdue University who in large part ended up buying and giving to her as a gift the aircraft, the Lockheed Martin Electra. So yeah, she had a very close relationship with them and Gary Johnson, so yeah.
A very close relationship.
And she knew most of all the pilots and aircraft manufacturers at the time, and she was obviously so well known. She knew the president. She was invited to numerous events with FDR. I mean, she was really a worldwide celebrity.
She goes coast to coast, setting a women's record. I didn't realize this. She flies from Honolulu to Oakland, which is a twenty four hundred mile trump. I mean, it's comparable to crossing the Atlantic.
Sure, yep.
And apparently that was also the first flight where a civilian aircraft carried a two way radio. So here you have somebody who was a pioneer in technology, a pioneer in achievements, pioneer in women's roles, in a variety of ways. She flew from Los Angeles to Mexico City. That took thirteen hours back then with the equipment, that's a long time to stay awake.
And you're a funny part with that story.
She was flying in Mexico City and somehow she got lost or she wasn't sure where she was at, and she just landed in this ranch land and got off and there was a guy and a horse there, and she stopped and asked him how to get to Mexico City, and he told her, yeah, it's that way, just a little bit further, and she got back in the plane, took off the guy's farm, and finished the flight.
You can't quite imagine how really on the edge she was living. And when she began her worldwide flight around the world in thirty seven, she becomes the first person man or woman to fly from the Red Sea to India. That is a long flight and it's the same thing you're talking about earlier with Mexico. I mean, here you are in an area. Nowadays we have all of these electronic devices and they're sort of electronic highways in the sky. These folks are doing at the hard way totally different. So from your perspective, when did you get interested in a milliar are heart?
Oh?
Since I was a kid, I've always been fascinated with the story. My dad flew for Pan American for over forty years, and my brother is a pilot in the Air Force. My other brother has his past license, my sister has a past license. I have my past life. So it's been a story that's just always from early age growing up, that we always talked about.
You know.
It's just recently that you know, he really got deep into researching and I said, why has this not been solved yet? All the information is there, and you know, as a dug deeper, it wasn't necessarily that people don't know where she went down. We all know generally the area. The problem was logistically how difficult and challenging it is to get to Howland Island. It's a very deep ocean out there in the Pacific. It's days away from anything else. So to mount an expedition go out there and do a search is extremely expensive and it's challenging. There's only been five serious attempts at finding an airplane deep ocean searches. David Jordan one of the greats in the history of Amilliard, He's done three of them, and Ted Waite of Gayweight Computers, Found to Get with Computers has done another one. And so it's not an easy thing to do, and so it's just for us. It was can we do this? Can we actually put this together? If I can get into it. My tactic on the tackling this problem was not to do it as a lease, go out and lease equipment, but actually set up a business deep sea vision where we buy the equipment and then we turn into a larger kind of operation where we can use this equipment for other contracts and jobs out in the Pacific. And there's a backlog of work out there between pipe surveys, wind farm jobs, other rec surveys. So if we could buy this equipment, we could bring the cost way down and then work in our Amelia airhard searches and other projects. Isn't the only one we're interested in? World War two stuff. So for me, this was a perfect opportunity of switching careers out of real estate get into something a little bit more adventurous and exciting.
How far is it from Holland Island to other larger places.
It's about three days away. I mean the closest island is care Body. If you look at it looks like but it's pronounced careboss. There's another island that's Tuvalu American samoas a couple of days away, So it's really in the middle of nowhere. I mean she was flying there. It was right on the equator. She was flying there as a stopping point on her next leg to Whii. She needed to refuel, so the US Coast Guard had put some fuel there for her and built a runway actually for so she could land and refuel and then take off and fly to Hawaii and finish off the trip.
When I was reading about you to work, I was really surprised. I mean, if you get the Coast Guard to go all that way to build a runway and to bring aviation fuel, she was really getting significant support to try to help her succeed. That's a pretty big deal.
Oh yeah, I know, And I think the President was involved, FDR was involved on a few of the requests. They built a runway on Helland Island for especially for her to land there, and they had people stationed there for waiting for her rival. And there was another ship halfway between Papa New Guinea and Holland also trying to help her track her way to Helland Island.
So there was a lot of support. It was a big deal. It was a worldwide event.
I mean, it was an opportunity, I think, to showcase American innovativeness, American bravery. Somebody, an American could fly around the world, American women could fly on the world, So I mean, I think it was a great opportunity for the country to show case a true American hero.
They also have been that having been personal friends with Elin Roosevelt didn't exactly hurt and getting the President to say to the Coast Guard, g wouldn't you like to go down to Holland Island?
She absolutely leveraged don yep which is.
Just kind of remarkable. Now. She leaves Miami on June first, nineteen thirty seven, in what is a planned program, which given things like what they were doing in Holland, they must have really thought this through and planned it out as around the world project.
Imagine that.
Imagine doing something like that today, buying the tickets and figuring out your visas. And I mean, you're talking about a time when flying in some of these airports, you didn't even know what to expect. There were some countries that had required vaccinations, there were countries that were having malaria outbreaks. There were maps that didn't even have accurate roads and navigational guides for her. All this was done through telegrams, right. They weren't texting each other and emailing and figuring this out. This is all telegrams. And a lot of people fault her for this communication plan and not being better on the radios, and I'm like, you can't do that, It's not fair. This is nineteen thirty seven. People weren't talking to each other on the radios back then, Between aircrafts, it was all in its infancy. She was breaking ground in so many different ways.
It's incredible.
It strikes me that when she did go missing, people had this wide range of explanations of what happened. I remember one time there was a period where they thought maybe the Japanese had forced her down because she had gotten near the islands that they were in charge of in the South Pacific. People were looking for all sorts of explanations, and I think for a long time people thought, you know, she might be found alive, even though during World War Two we were all.
Over the region right right right.
Well, the search itself, they had nine vessels with four thousand crew and sixty six aircraft out there looking for it cost over four million dollars, which back then was real money.
Yeah, it was the largest search and rescue operation of its time, and there's been a lot of debate on that number you just read out there. I mean, these are servicemen that were already in the military, already in the navy. So I mean, you know, you add up their salaries and say, okay, it's four million dollars search, But I mean, like they could have been sitting at Pearl Harbor. You know a lot of these guys were pulled from Pearl Harbor to go out and.
Do the search.
So they're still in the Navy, they're still getting paid. So to say that the money was spent for meli are is not I don't think that's I mean, the efforts could have been done better on training. I guess you could say, but there probably were fuel costs that were used. But I mean an enormous amount of resources were put into finding her. But I will say this interesting thing that came out of the search was that our maps got better. And one of the things we've learned since she had the wrong map, Helen Island was plotted incorrectly on her map by off by six miles. Some folks say that could have contributed to her. But by going out there, the Navy learned a lot about the Pacific, about a lot of the islands, and you know, I think some of that was used in preparation for World War Two.
What people need to realize is if you're off by six miles and you don't know which way you're lost, it's not like, oh, let's just have a mid course correction. Well, I noticed that that a battleship which was going to go on a cruise for ROTC Midshipman. So they sent a battleship all the way down. They sent the aircraft carrier of Lexington, which was one of the two biggest carriers we had at the time. Then that particular carrier had sixty three aircraft. I mean, they really went all out trying to see if they could find her. It gives you a sense of how famous she really was. Yep. So all of this has happened. She becomes very famous, and there's a great mystery here. Her husband, George Putnam, financed his own search until October thirty seven. She was finally declared officially dead after being lost at sea. It's tragic, but then the searches start and people have never given up. As you're an example. Tell us about you in a sense. I mean, you're out here, you have created this company. You're off doing something which has to be just totally absorbing.
Yeah, it's been a fascinating adventure. It's start to finish. It's been eighteen months or so. I mean, I thought this would be an easy thing to plan, and the more I got into it, the more I realized how complex this is. Organizing vessels and people and equipment, you know, mobilizing to get out to a very remote area of the world has been extremely challenging.
Part of what makes it possible from your standpoint is that you have deep sea vision. Can you describe the company and what it does and what its unique strengths are.
So we have the latest AUV ever built in An AUV is an autonomous underwater vehicle and it's this red submarine looking thing. There's nobody inside of it. It's completely autonomous, unmanned, and it's called the Huguen six thousands.
Built by Kongsberg.
And what it does is it goes down six thousand meters almost all the way down to the full ocean depth to the seafloor about fifty meters off the seafloor. And what it does is basically mosalon and just goes back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, and it just scanning everything it's looking at using sound, and then it's recording all of that and then it comes back to the surface. It's untethered, it's not connected to the ship. We're not seeing a real time video of anything. And so for thirty six hours, we don't know what it's looking at. We have no idea what it's seen. Comes back up, we put in the computer and then we analyze all this data. And I mean it is an enormous amount of data. Imagine looking at I don't know what Long Island is, but like the area of Long Island hundred fifty square miles and picking through it to find one object that's twelve by eighteen meters, And so our strength is we've got this deep water sonar. And then also I knew I would need the best talent to basically launch this, and I hired a guy named Craig Wallace who built the Huguen six thousand in Norway, and we ran into each other at a bar in Norway while I was out there training on the system, and he was just so excited and fell in love with the idea. Finding Miliart worked for Kongsberg for almost twenty years, and I said, why don't you come with us and help us make this a success, And about a week later it was done. He was on board, so it was having him along out there, and we specially modified the system so it could scan even wider, and we had a great team of guys. I mean, we came at this from a business perspective. Everything was about fine tuning the cost, getting a fuel efficient boat because the fuel you're burning out there is not negligible, and having a small crew so things go wrong, you're not having to deal with a lot of problems. The formula was to maximize our time out there, scan the most area if possible, and do this as smartly as possible so we could be successful.
One of the things that you use is synthetic aperture sonar. What is synthetic aperture so far.
So it's this idea of stretching the array out a normal side scan. You're just sending a ping and you're listening back a ping and you're listening back and he creates an image of synthetic aperture sonar is you're sending a ping numerous pings out and as the submarine is traveling through the water, there's an antenna basically as an array and is listening for the return sound comes, so it hits the wall, it hits the plane, and then it comes back right and you're creating an image. Well, what this does is it's ping A goes out. You're sending ping, B ping, PC ping, and you're listening as the array. As the submarine is going through the water, the antenna is almost like making it longer and longer, so it's not actually that long, but based on where its starting point was and where it's listening, you've created a longer antenna and You can therefore listen to more pings and you can create a mesh of the sound and make a better image basically, and you can look out further.
Is the ability to use that at the depth you were at a new capability.
SaaS is a new thing within the last I don't know, I say a decade. I'm not really sure it is new. It's changed the game for sonar for sure.
What depth were you operating at?
About five thousand meters? About fifteen thousand feet? Yeah, everything the ocean is measured in meters.
Well, actually, i'll probably about sixteen thousand feet.
Yeah, that's right.
Yeah, it's not as deep as the Mariana Trench, but it's deep.
It's deep.
And for reference, you have about forty five hundred feet deeper than the Titanic.
That's wild. So you're looking for something deeper and you're looking for a smaller.
Thing, that's right.
Yeah, well put yeah, So and what you do is you just scan a grid back and forth.
That's it.
So how long were you scanning? How many weeks did it take?
We were out there about three months.
We came about this mathematically and a little bit statistically, right, we've divided the area. We wanted to search into sectors, and we assigned probabilities to each of those sectors, and then we also, as sign a difficulty, leveled each of those sectors based on the terrain that we knew was on the seafloor. And then once we could mesh those two together, we could say, well, we want to tackle the most equal probability stuff the fastest, even if it's equal probability. But it's harder to do because you have ravines and valleys. We'll save that for the end, but let's cover as much territory as we can if it's the same probability. And that was our approach, and I think it was a good one.
When you're doing that, did you find other stuff?
We didn't find a lot. To be honest with you, We've got a question a few times. No shipwrecks, no other planes.
That's interesting.
Yeah, there's no shipping lanes out there.
I guess it was an area that many people went to.
Now a lot of people know this, but it was attacked. Holand Island was attacked. I believe this a couple of days after Pearl Harbor. Just one of those weird quirks in history. We had colonized, and use that word very loosely, but we had colonized the line islands, Polin Island, Baker Island, and Jarvis Island with I think five or six folks. I think that was our signal to Japan saying, hey, these are our islands out here, and Japan came by with some of their zeros, some of their fighter planes and straight the island killed a couple of Americans on the island, believe it.
Or not, which is their way of saying, no, it's.
Not, it's not. That's right exactly.
In terms of your own background, which is fascinating. Dad was a pilot, as you point out earlier for pan Am, you and all of your siblings have pilot's licenses, so it must really be in the family.
That's right.
We definitely were encouraged to fly. I was flying in high school. I was fourteen or fifteen. My sister was teaching at the Air Force Academy actually, and her husband was two. So I ended up going to the academy. Basically, right at the end, I decided I didn't want to fly. It was stressing me out. I liked flying, don't get me wrong. I had my license and I've flown a fair amount since I graduated, but it just wasn't Being a professional or commercial pilot was just not my thing.
You went to the Air Force Academy and spent six years a lot of it with an F sixteen squadron, so you got a fair amount of flight time.
In Yeah, I did get a couple of flights F sixteen. That was a lot of fun.
You leave the service, you create a company. I'm assuming it's called Quickly. It's kwkly, did I.
Guess right, that's right?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, and it's using mobile phones to connect home buyers with agents. And then the company, which now is Zillo, actually bought your startup. That's right, classic contraship. And then you go all the way across the country, having grown up in Washington State, and you end up attending the Charleston School of Law and marrying your wife, Melissa Moss. I mean, you're in Mount Pleasant in North Charleston. It was a very nice area. That's a good quality of life. But then after COVID you start thinking about something different, which is called magnet fishing. What is magnet fishing?
So, yeah, so it was the article in read in the Wall Street Journal. It's about I had not heard anything about this. This is an activity that kind of got started during COVID, But it's basically, you have a big magnet, powerful magnet, and you have a rope tattoo, and you just drop it off a bridge or peer or whatever, and you just drag it along the bottom of the ground and then you pull it up and you see what sticks to it.
I mean you get.
Scissors and fishing gear and some people pulling guns and safes, I mean, bicycles, I mean all kinds of crazy stuff. And so our kids were not going to school, which wasn't long down you're in South Caroline, by the way.
They ended up pretty quickly, but I went up going out with my five.
Year old son, and this was like treasure hunting for him, right, I mean didn't matter we were pulling up, you know, a screwdriver.
It was like cool.
And so that got me thinking about what else is out here in the oceans that could be pulled up and that could be found, and that the idea of finding Amelia Earhart with magnets was like the original idea. But then I quickly realized this was isn't practical obviously, but you know, it got me thinking, like, why has this one not been solved? We're eighty seven years on, We've got the technology to find it. My brother made the comment that I think was very memories, said, this isn't going to last much longer. It's about maybe about five or ten more years on this one, and somebody's going to find this.
So you decided why not?
You why not?
And I was doing commercial real estate, So after law school I got into commercial real estate. I like, do these chapters in my life, the Air Force tech stuff and law and then commercial real estate and so now we got the deep sea expiration. I like the different chapters. It's fun and maybe one point get into policy. That's one of the things i'd follow in your footsteps. And I'm not sure what fashion, but I'd like to do that.
At some point, you're sort of moving beyond the magnets of the concept of underwater and you end up dealing with a company in Norway. What takes you to Norway?
Congsberg, the company that makes these equipments, the Huguen six thousand. They're basically the gold standard in sub sea equipment. They're basically the only ones if you want a subse submersible capable of going down six thousand meters. You have to get it from them, and actually we bought it. Funny story, it took eight months just to have them release the equipment because it was such sensitive. Equipment's usually only sold to militaries. And so here's this guy, random guy from South Carolina. We were contacting the US embassy, folks that I knew in the Pentagon, and finally they released it on all this list of conditions. I mean, it just kind of threw them, is like, this is not a common request for somebody just coming randomly buy a deep sea submersible equipment. We had to go to Norway and do some training for about a month out there in the Fjords, which was in December, which was super cold.
It's a pretty expensive piece of equipment, isn't it.
That's right, nine million dollars. Yeah, you were.
All in at this point. I have to ask you, in passing, what's your wife's reaction?
Great question?
Skeptical, maybe less so now that you may have actually found the plane. Yeah, so you take this remarkable modern technology, you go to the Pacific, you spend three months, and you find a reflection which looks like it has the same dimensions and shape of a Lockheed Electra, which is the plane that Erhart was what what was your reaction when you're sitting there looking at the screen and you suddenly see this.
I mean, it's surreal.
It was right the last day of the expedition and everyone's frustrated, and it was a moment of realization for me. I remember sitting down. Some folks said a few words, you know, we're producing documentary. You have to watch the documentary. Hear those words. I don't know what I'm can or can't say on in the podcast, but it was one of those Eureka moments. I remember thinking it, this is the first time anybody seen the plane. If this is it, this is the first time her plane has been seen in eighty six, eighty seven years, and it was incredible to know that there was. It's not a ghost, it's not Bigfoot, it actually exists.
It's interesting that you feel that having three pilots thinking this through was actually an advantage over having people who are primarily mariners dealing with ocean events. What do you think was the advantage of being pilots.
I appreciate you asking that we came about this with a pilot mindset. A lot of folks they dissect her final thirty minutes and say, well, she would have done this nice neat search grid, and she would have done this, and she thought she was out of gas. Every turn she made. She thought that was the last turn that she had. You know, one comment that she makes at the very end of she's low on gas. It's one of the last things that she tells us, she's low on gas. And I can tell you no pilot is going to admit they're low on gas. I can promise you that, because when you tell people that you just admitted you've made the biggest mistake. You take off with enough gas and you're saying I'm low on gas, you're admitting a huge, huge mista. And that's a huge clue for us because it tells us she's not low on gas, she's out of gas. She's basically out of gas. That's why she's selling. And there's been cases of commercial airliners that have gone into the ground because the pilots are too embarrassed to call the air traffic controller. They're polding for weather and they're just too embarrassed to tell their air traffic controller that we're out of gas. And I mean there's more than one time that's happened, and so for her to tell us that, and as a pilot, I mean immediately recognize she's saying she's long gas. She's admitting a huge mistake here. And I think folks, and not the disparage in bates come before us. But if you're in mariner, you don't think about that low and gas. Well I'm out of gas. Well I just flowed for the rest of them. That's a big problem being out of gas as a pilot. The other thing was the winds, you know. I mean you're coming into an airport. The first thing you want to know as a pilot is what's the wind speed? I need to know which direction to land.
She did not know.
She said she was flying a thousand feet. She didn't know what the winds were at that surface. She couldn't communicate with the boat. And that's also something I don't think a lot of folks have keyed in on, which helped us with our analysis.
To that point. Though given the echo you're getting back, it looks like she landed well enough that the plane didn't break up.
That's right.
We always believe that she landed softly on the surface and it didn't crack up, and I think that's a very reasonable conclusion. There's been other exact aircraft blockheyed electors that have landed on the water and did not. It is a structurally very strong She was trying to fly from Hawaii to Howland. That was for her first attempt, and she crashed on takeoff. The plane was actually still in good condition. And then of course she tried and then she switched around decided to fly the other way around the world. And we all agree that if this is a debris field, we're not going to find it. We had not tuned and filtered our sonar for small targets.
I'm very curious Tony, what it is they had done with the elector that made it unique and that enabled you to sort of check off that it was probably her plane.
There was a couple key characteristics, these twin vertical stabilizers in the back that was very distinctive of her aircraft. There have been others that have been built that way, but this was very distinctive of hers. They don't really make planes that way anymore. The center gravity is very far forward on the aircraft in relationship to the nose, and we see that with the sunar image. And thirdly, the dimensions of the plane are very similar of the sunar image are very similar to what her aircraft was.
So what is your next step, Yeah.
To get out there and confirm it and then get all the interested parties involved.
We've invited the Earhart family.
To come out with us, in which they've agreed to, and they're excited about anybody else that we feel has an interest in being a part of the confirmation and the verification and then ultimately, I hope the salvage of the plane. I mean, I'd like to bring it off and bring her home.
If you get it to the surface. Does that set off a whole series of legal questions?
It absolutely does. It's a complex one. There's a lot of interested parties. The plane was not insured and it was a private plane, so privately owned that puts them in a certain category. The area that's found is going to make a difference. You know, how it's sitting in the sand actually also makes a difference. So these are things that we're going to have to kind of work through. We're going to expect to get all the interested parties together and we'll sort it out.
When do you think you'll go back.
Twenty twenty four? You know, hopefully we can make an announcement on your podcast when we do.
If we can work out the details, we would love to talk to you at some point on the boat out there. That would be a great podcast, wouldn't that be fun?
That would be sort of a report to the country.
Say what you walk about Elan must But he has changed the world with Starlink. I tell you what when we were out there in Tuvalu. He's given Starlink to these islands out in the Pacific on the condition they go out and clean up the beaches and all the pollution, all the stuff, this garbage, and they come back every month and if there's garbage and not taking care of the waste properly, that he.
Pulls the starlink away from him.
And that, to me is just brilliant and I love seeing that is a great example of a private sector solution.
Entrepreneurs actually solve.
Problems absolutely one hundred percent. It's this organic ground swell of absolutely yep, you.
Know, and you might real entice a whole generation of young people to decide to become entrepreneurs.
I hope, so you're.
Doing fun things when you get out there. Let's find out a data and we'll do an interim report while you're out there, and then another one after you get back. I think people will be fascinated by what you're doing and how you're doing it. You'll be in our prayers and you'll be on our best wishes. I think what you're doing is exactly what America is all about. You're going into the unknown, you're trying something that's a big risk, and you're using your mind and science and technology to solve something which has not been solved for almost nine decades.
Thank you a lot of the inspirations Amelia herself. She was the ultimate entrepreneur, innovator. We're making a documentary on this. It's called why Not Us? Why can't five unknown guys solve aviation's greatest mystery? You know, whether it's the plane or not. I hope it's inspiration for folks. There's this one thing you've always wanted to do, Go do it. If you're inspired, go do it.
Tony ownA, thank you for joining me on news World. The explanation you're doing is fascinating. You are, frankly a fascinating guy. I really hope that you have found her plane. I look forward to being part of talking with you as you go back. We look forward very much to continuing to brief our listeners about what you're doing. So thank you for being with us.
Thank you, speaker, I appreciate it. Thanks Having on.
This modern world of science and invention is of particular interest to women, for the lives of women have been more affected by its new horizons than those of any other group. Profound and stirring as have been accomplishments in the remoter fields of pure research, it is in the home that the applications of scientific achievement have perhaps been most far reaching, and it is through changing conditions there that women have become the greatest beneficiaries in the modern schemes. Science has released them from much of the age old grudgery connected with the process of living. Candle dipping, weaving, and crude methods of manufacturing necessities are things of the past. For an increasing majority today, light, heat and power may be obtained by pushing buttons, and cunningly manufactured and appealing products of all the world are available at the house vice door. Indeed, beyond that door she need not go. Thanks to the miracles of modern communication and transportation, not only has applied science decreased the toil in the home, but it has provided undreamed of economic opportunities for women. Today, millions of them are earning their living under conditions made possible only through a basically holed industrial system. Probably no scientific development is more startling than the effect of this new and growing economic independence upon women themselves. When the history of our times is written, it must record as supremely significant the physical, psychic, and social changes women have undergone in these exciting decades. The impetus of the sociological evolution of the last halst century should be largely credited to those who have toil and laboratory, and those who are translated into practical use the fruits of such labors. Among all the marvels of modern invention, that with which I am most concerned is, of course, air transportation. Flying is perhaps the most dramatic of recent scientific attainment. In the brief span of thirty odd years, the world has seen an inventor's dream, first materialized by the Wright brothers at Kitty Hawk, become an everyday actuality. Perhaps I am prejudiced, but to me it seems that no other phase of modern progress contrives to maintain such a brimming measure of romance and beauty coupled with utility as does aviation. Within itself, this industry embraces many of those scientific accomplishments which yesterday seem fantastic impossibilities. Aviation, this young modern giant, exemplifies a possible relationship of women and the creations of science. Although women as yet have not taken full advantage of its use and benefits, air travel is as available to them as to men. As so often happens in introducing the new or changing the old, public acceptance depends peculiarly upon women's friendly attitudes in aviation. They are arbiters of whether or not their families shall fly, and as such are a potent influence. And lastly, there is a place within the industry itself for women who work. While still greatly outnumbered, they are finding more and more opportunities for employment in the ranks of this latest transportation medium. May I hope this movement will spread throughout all branches of applied science and industry, and that women may come to share with men the joy of doing those can appreciate the world most who have helped create.
Thank you to my guest Tony Romeo. You can learn more about deep Sea Vision on our show page at newtsworld dot com. Newtsworld is produced by Gingrish three sixty and iHeartMedia. Our executive producer is Guernsey Sloan and our researcher is Rachel Peterson. The artwork for the show was created by Steve Penley. Special thanks to the team at ginglestree sixty. If you've been enjoying Newtsworld, I hope you'll go to Apple Podcast and both rate us with five stars and give us a review so others can learn what it's all about. Right now, listeners of Newtsworld can sign up for my three free weekly columns at gingrishtree sixty dot com slash newsletter. I'm newt Gingrich. This is Newtsworld.