Pilot says he's found the location of Amelia Earhart's aircraft using Google Earth

A British pilot is convinced he has tracked down the wreckage of a missing plane - 88 years after it vanished.

Captain Justin Myers says he is "99 per cent certain" he has found the exact location where legendary female aviator Amelia Earhart's plane crashed. She had set off with navigator Fred Noonan in July 1937 for from Lae, Papua New Guinea, never to be seen again.

No trace has ever been found of the pilot or her plane despite the most expensive sea and air search in American history up to that point being implemented. However now, Captain Myers is sure he has made a breakthrough - and he wants an expedition to the location to confirm his theories. It mirrors a story we previously shared about a tech expert from the UK who had claimed he spotted the doomed MH370 plane on Google Maps.

When Captain Myers recently used zoomed-in images sourced from Google Earth, he spotted a group of shapes he believes to be fragments of the crashed plane. The expert, has almost 25 years of experience as a pilot, who claims these submerged objects match the exact dimensions of Earhart's Lockheed Electra 10E.

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According to Captain Myers, Earhart and Noonan crashed on the east coast of Nikumaroro Island, a remote coral atoll in the Pacific Ocean. He is not the first to suggest Earhart and Noonan may have crashed near to Nikumaroro Island as previous investigations low fuel and bad weather may have pushed the aircraft in this direction.

Earhart was supposed to have landed at Howland Island to refuel, some 400 miles (640km) to the north of the atoll. The difficult conditions led to an attempt at an emergency landing on Nikumaroro, it is thought.

Improvised tools, bits of clothing, and a piece of plexiglas which matches that of an Electra window have been found during previous probes. Captain Myers considered these investigations when he stumbled on what he believes are images of fragments of the crashed plane.

In a blog post, Captain Myers says he became interested in Nikumaroro Island after watching a documentary about Earhart's final flight. He wrote: "Poor sleep, upper wind predictions not being accurate, probably fatigue and some anxiety would likely have played a part in the disappearance.

"As a pilot, I thought to myself, if I was in Amelia's position trying to find a needle in a hay stack low on fuel and to be honest if we were in her position no doubt using some choice language, where would I force land my Lockheed Electra 10E?"

Although Captain Myers, who lives in Lancashire, says he can't be completely sure this is Earhart and Noonan's Electra, he is certain that it is a vintage plane of the same size.

He told Popular Science: "The bottom line is, from my interests from a child in vintage aircraft and air crash investigation, I can say that is what was once a 12-metre, two-engine vintage aircraft. What I can't say is that is definitely Amelia's Electra. If this is not Amelia's Electra 10 E, then it's the answer to another mystery that has never been answered."