Ex-US Air Force officer who thought he found Amelia Earhart’s long-lost plane reveals what he actually discovered

A former US Air Force officer who thought he had found Amelia Earhart's plane has revealed what he actually discovered.

In December last year, pilot Tony Romeo returned from an exhibition to the Pacific Ocean with an impressive find - an image of an aircraft-shaped object he believed to be Earhart's aircraft.

The mystery of Earhart's disappearance dates back to July 2, 1937, when she became the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean.

Aviator Earhart was traveling with navigator Fred Noonan whey they disappeared off the radar.

Together, the pair traveled to New Guinea before heading to Howland Island in the Pacific Ocean, but during their journey Earhart radioed the coastguard to say the plane was running out of fuel.

In a tragic twist, Earhart seemingly disappeared off the face of the Earth.

Ever since, the public have wondered what happened to the pair and their missing plane.

At the time, the US Navy and the Coast Guard searched for 16 days for Earhart and Noonan, but Earhart was officially declared dead on January 5, 1939.

There's been plenty of attempts to find the wreckage since, but so far they've all been unsuccessful.

Earhart was travelling the world with Noonan (Bettmann/Getty Images)

Romeo decided to launch his own investigation, decades after the plane went missing.

After selling his commercial properties, he funded an $11 million search, using sonar to scan the area where many believe Earhart's plane went down.

But despite their exciting discovery, Romeo and the Deep Sea Vision team have now confirmed that what they saw wasn't what they had hoped for.

“While this outcome isn’t what we hoped for, we are continuing our search for another 30 days to cover over 1,500 square nautical miles,” said Romeo.

“The global response to our initial discovery has been truly inspiring, a testament to Amelia and the pull of her incredible story.”

It turns out, what the sonar had revealed was actually an aircraft-shaped rock formation.

Earhart, Noonan and the plane have never been found (Bettmann/Getty Images)

Despite the disappointment, the team were prepared for the possibility that what they saw on the sonar could turn out to be something else.

Dorothy Cochrane, aeronautics curator at the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum, told The Post and Courier that further research would need to be carried out.

“We don’t really know. It’s a sonar image,” she said.

“But when you have an image that crops up like that, you need to do some further research to see what you have.”