Amelia Earhart event in Atchison brings conflicting theories and hope for finding the lost plane

From left, Gary LaPook, Dorothy Cochrane, Liz Smith, Tony Romeo, Lloyd Romeo and Rod Blocksome stand in front of Muriel, a plane identical to the one in which Amelia Earthart and Fred Noonan took their fateful last flight. (Cami Koons for Kansas Reflector)

ATCHISON — A grainy sonar image shows what some hope is Amelia Earhart’s lost plane. But it doesn’t show the decades of research, scientific debate and collaboration that has been dedicated to this search through the Pacific Ocean.

Rod Blocksome, a radio communications expert who has been on several expeditions to search for the plane, said folks usually view past explorations as failures –– after all, they didn’t find the plane.

“But we know a lot about where the plane isn’t,” Blocksome said with a laugh.

Blocksome has contributed thousands of hours of research into Earhart’s radio communications and their impact on her navigation, and he is one of many dedicated researchers contributing to the search.

Most explorers are willing to collaborate and share their theories and some of their findings, but they also will share when they think someone has it wrong.

Experts who gathered in Atchison last weekend say it’s all for the collective goal of finding the plane and bringing the Kansas native home to the United States.

The Amelia Earhart Hangar Museum organized several events on Friday and Saturday with notable Earhart explorers, as part of Atchison’s annual Amelia Earhart Festival.

In attendance were Tony and Lloyd Romeo, who earlier this year released a sonar image of what they believe is Earhart’s lost Lockheed Electra 10-E.

Romeo’s discovery follows the “date line theory,” authored by Liz Smith, who was also in attendance. The two collaborated virtually throughout Romeo’s expedition but met face to face for the first time in Atchison for “ Adventure Amelia: A Conversation With Explorers In The Search For Amelia .”

The other panelists were Gary LaPook, an expert on celestial navigation, and Blocksome. Tony and Lloyd Romeo consulted these seasoned navigators while on the Deep Sea Vision search last year.

“We know all of these people through various conversations, but to sit in one room … I’m looking forward to it,” Tony Romeo said in a press event Friday morning.

Tony Romeo visited Atchison and the Amelia Earhart Hangar Museum two years before and saw Muriel, the only surviving plane of the same model that Earhart took off in almost 90 years ago.

He said seeing the plane in person made the search for Earhart’s plane feel less like a “needle in a haystack” mission.

Beyond the mission to find Earhart’s plane, the Romeo brothers are building Deep Sea Vision, with its marine robotics technology, as a company that can go after some of the other mysteries in the ocean. The crew is also exploring more sustainable methods for extracting the mineral nodules on the ocean floor that power important technology elements.

But the search for Earhart’s plane is the dream that started the company.

“We don’t want one bit of the plane to be lost or damaged,” Tony Romeo said. “We certainly don’t want it to be found by a foreign entity. … It’s an American treasure, and we want to bring it home.”

There are many theories about Earhart’s fate — some tend toward conspiracy, but the theorists gathered at the museum believe Earhart ran out of fuel and sank in the Pacific Ocean.

Dorothy Cochrane, a curator for the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum, said she agreed to moderate the panel because it included folks looking at Earhart’s disappearance “based on the evidence, the factual evidence of her flight.”

The date line theory proposes that as Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan, crossed the international date line on their flight from Lae, Papua New Guinea, to Howland Island, they got mixed up on the date. This would have affected key navigational calculations and put them off course by about 60 nautical miles.

LaPook cleared his throat from the stage at Fox Theatre Atchison, where more than 200 people came to attend the panel.

“When you navigate you don’t change your clocks,” LaPook said to argue Smith’s theory.

He explained some of the intricacies of celestial navigation, his knowledge of Noonan’s charts from earlier legs of the trip, and he pulled out the nautical almanac of 1937 to show the charts to Smith, who was seated to his right.

Smith defended her theory, with support from Tony Romeo, who attributes his discovery, in part, to the date line theory.

A question from the audience asked what this means for the Romeo sonar image and its probability of being Earhart’s plane.

“I’ve seen this happen twice on our expeditions,” Blocksome said.

A reading comes up that appears to be an artificially constructed object, but is disappointing when the team goes back for further imaging.

They have all encountered various forms of what Smith called a “plane shaped rock” on the bottom of the Pacific.

Despite their competition and differences of opinion, the panelists all want to see Earhart found and are hopeful for the Romeo brothers’ next venture into the Pacific.

“I think it’s the most interesting target that has shown up,” Blocksome said, and he noted he has future explorations planned. “But we all want to find out first what Tony has got.”

Tony Romeo said Deep Sea Vision plans to return to the site of the sonar image before the end of the year and gather detailed images of what he believes is Earhart’s plane. He hopes to then execute a salvage operation.

“She needs to come home,” Romeo said. “If it turns out that we didn’t find her, we’ll be the biggest cheerleaders for the guys that do.”

Heather Stemp attended the panel on Friday. She traveled to Atchison from Ontario, Canada, to present her newest book, “ Beyond Amelia ,” as part of the festival.

Stemp’s young adult novels follow Earhart’s lasting influence on Ginny Ross, who is based on Stemp’s real-life Aunt Ginny.

“When (Earhart) disappeared, she didn’t really disappear, because she inspired so many,” Stemp said. The goal of her novels is to help inspire young readers to find something they are passionate about and stick with it, just like Earhart did.

She was excited by the panel on Friday morning and the possibility of solving the mystery. Like the others, Stemp said she believes it would only reinvigorate Earhart’s influence.

“If it’s found and ends up in a museum, then it becomes accessible to everyone and we can pique the curiosity of kids who want to follow a dream,” Stemp said.

The panelists, who agreed Earhart’s plane should live in the Smithsonian once it is found, believe solving the mystery would allow Earhart’s impressive accomplishments and body of work to step into the limelight.

“So much of it is about her disappearance,” Smith said. “It’s so cool Atchison celebrates her birthday and accomplishments.”