Huge breakthrough in search for Amelia Earhart's missing plane as crashed plane apparently appears on ocean floor in new SONAR image: Experts 'intrigued' by impressive clue 87 years after her mysterious disappearance

A South Carolina man believes he has discovered the plane Amelia Earhart was flying when she disappeared over the Pacific Ocean in 1937.

Former US Air Force intelligence officer Tony Romeo turned his fascination with the legendary pilot into an adventure when he embarked on an ambitious search for Earhart's lost plane.

Romeo, who sold his commercial real estate investments to fund his search, managed to capture a sonar image of an airplane-shaped object on the ocean floor in December.

Earhart and her Earhart's Lockheed 10-E Electra disappeared at the height of her fame, a mystery that has spawned decades of searches and conspiracy theories.

Earhart's record-breaking career as a pioneering pilot at the dawn of the aviation era made her an international celebrity.

Romeo, who sold his commercial real estate investments to fund his quest, managed to capture a sonar image of an airplane-shaped object on the ocean floor in December.

She became the first woman to fly solo nonstop across the continental US and the Atlantic Ocean, and the first person to fly solo from Hawaii to the mainland across the Pacific Ocean.

“This might be the most exciting thing I'll ever do in my life,” Romeo told the Wall Street Journal.

“I feel like a ten-year-old going on a treasure hunt.”

“It was just unthinkable that she would be missing,” Romeo said.

Adding: 'Imagine if Taylor Swift just disappears today.'

Romeo spent $11 million to finance the trip and buy the high-tech equipment needed for the search, including an underwater 'Hugin' drone manufactured by Norwegian company Kongsberg.

The expedition started in early September from Tarawa, Kiribati, a port near Howland Island, with a crew of 16 aboard a research vessel.

During trips that lasted 36 hours each, the unmanned submersible scanned 5,200 square kilometers of ocean floor.

Earhart's disappearance is a mystery that has spawned decades of searches and conspiracy theories

Earhart was the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean in 1932

On June 1, 1937, Earhart and navigator Fred Noonan left Miami, Florida, for an around-the-world flight. They disappeared after a stopover in Lae, New Guinea, on June 29, 1937, with only 7,000 miles of the journey remaining

Experts are not yet ready to call the find definitive and have asked for clearer images showing details such as a serial number matching Earhart's plane

Finally, about a month into the search, it had captured a faint sonar image of an object the size and shape of an airplane about 16,000 feet underwater within 100 miles of Howland Island.

However, the image went unnoticed until the team discovered it while scanning the data, about 90 days into the trip.

Romeo is now planning a recurring exhibition to get better views of the mysterious object.

Some experts are intrigued by Romeo's discovery, including Dorothy Cochrane, curator in the aviation department at the Smithsonian Institution's National Air and Space Museum.

Cochrane told the Journal that the location of the sonar image corresponds approximately to where experts have concluded Earhart may have crashed.

However, experts are not yet ready to call the find definitive and have called for clearer images with details such as a serial number matching Earhart's plane.

“Until you physically look at this, there's no way to say for sure what that is,” Andrew Pietruszka, an underwater archaeologist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, told the Journal.

Romeo is not the first to organize trips in an attempt to locate the missing plane; half a dozen adventurers and enthusiasts have spent millions on the unsolved mystery.

Expeditions were launched in 1999, 2002, 2006, 2009 and 2017.

Adjusted for inflation, the missions collectively cost at least $13 million, the Wall Street Journal estimates.

“It's the only thing in my career I've ever looked for and not found,” said Tom Dettweiler, a sonar expert who participated in two of the searches and was part of the team that found the Titanic off the coast of Newfoundland. Canada, in 1985.