Amelia Earhart's last flight 75th Anniversary.

[salt_air]

I'll get into this deeper when I put away a project I'm about to finalize right now, but it would be mighty helpful and bound to lean support in one direction or the other.


Just out of curiosity ... are the reported positions just before and after the (157 ... 150.7) debate available?

To be sure both of those debated coordinates don't sit between the reported position before and the reported position afterwards?

Wouldn't it have to be one and not the other for that reason alone?

[striker63]

I'll answer your questions as best I can, Fred. I appreciate all the work you have done on this. It is fun, isn't it, to try to learn more about what really happened.

The final route I flew was the great circle route from Lae to Howland. Major Bowen P. Weisheit sets it out in his book: "The Last Flight of Frederick J. Noonan". He (Bowen) was a Marine Corps Flight Navigation Instructor with vast experience during WW2 as a Combat Pilot in both the Atlantic and Pacific. He is dead now, but I think his wife still has a few copies of his books for sale. I met him at a WW2 re-enactment at the Mid Atlantic Air Museum in Pennsylvania. He was an amazing guy.

Elgen's route deviated to the south early in the flight to get to 150.7 , and then later his route deviated to the north to overfly the USS Myrtlebank. I like your possible reasons not to believe 150.7 at the time she reported it.

Kelly Johnson was asked about climbing to 8,000 ft early in the flight, and as I recall, it didn't make a significant difference in the maximum range.

I believe Elgen's detailed analysis of the fuel on board, including some High Octane fuel for the take off from Howland back to Hawaii. He had discovered some "lost" records at Lae that detailed AE's instructions about adding standard fuel without diluting the high octane gas. I would suggest we use his numbers, but I didn't include any extra thrust from high octane fuel in my simulation of the Electra. Turns out we don't think she ever used it.

I'm not into multiplayer myself, but I would certainly help as much as I could with the "Earhart Project". I think you would enjoy reading Elgen's book, and Bowen's book as well.

[salt_air]

Our buddy Fred has been under the weather .... should be back soon.


No worries

[bm1]

Hope Fred is feeling better soon.

[salt_air]

Hope Fred is feeling better soon.

Yeah .... good of ya .... I feel the same way.

He'll be along in a few days I reckon.

[NikeHerk67]

Thank you all!

I’m back in the pink and feeling great.

Thanks Dave

Sorry about the delay in responding to your post.

It’s nice of you to offer your help. Don’t be surprised if I take you up on that. I ordered Elgen Long’s book the other day. It should be here soon.

I also strongly agree that the Electra is somewhere at the bottom of the ocean very near Howland Island or Baker Island.

In your tutorial flight from the Naval Air Station, Ford Island, Oahu, Hawaii to Johnston Atol USA. NPS to PJON you are showing a daytime arrival procedure and mentioning Elgen Long,s theory. I guess this is also known as the " single landfall LOP procedure" in other places. (single meaning single star)

I take it that, when you made your successful flight to Howland, you used the same offset you refer to as "the circle of uncertainty" by turning a few degrees left or right sometime before reaching Howland.

My guess is that FN would have used this procedure as well and turned a few degrees left or right, after acquiring his last accurate three star shots, shortly before dawn.

..........just my guess, any thoughts anyone?

Cheers

Fred

[teson1]

Hi Fred,
good to hear you're back in shape. Being a non-native speaker I wondered what "under the weather" would mean Now I know.

The LOP procedure does sound logical.

However, just one thought - what about if AE thought they were really short on fuel and directly headed to Howland in the hope that they'd somehow get some radio directions eventually ? Just a possibility... sometimes circumstances make one not do what may seem most logical from the outside in afterthought.

Anyway, one of the points that I am intrigued with is that as far as I understand they should have had a few hours more fuel than running out at 8:43 (Tighar is basing their hypothesis on that, and the Longs jump through some hoopps to explain why the endurance should have been reduced - one of the points where they are a little shaky).
Personally I agree with some oppinions that it's possible they didn't crash into the sea shortly after their last transmission on 3105 Kc at 8:43 lcl (20:13 GCT), as AE stated she would switch to daytime frequency 6210 KC (I believe to have read that 6210 kc could not be received by the Ithasca/not 100% sure about that from memory), or anyway conditions may have still been bad for that frequency. Too little knowledge here though to judge whether if there was such good reception of of 3105 Kc 6210 kc should not be received at all in case the Ithasca could receive, or later as the sun moved up.

Fred, what's your opinion on that ?

Dave,
thanks for jumping in ! I'm a big fan of the great navigation systems you have created for us! Thanks !

Back to the topic again,
I'd be interested how much fuel you had left when arriving on the LOP/Howland?

Not sure that has some value as proof, but I'd be interested to know how your flight went.

Thanks.

Gunter

[teson1]

Dave, I have another question to you.

One of the surprising bits of information is that AE was flying at 1000 ft along the LOP. Much too low when searching for an island in the middle of the ocean. Sky was clear around Howland according to the accounts as far as I understand.

Coming back to the remote hypothesis that something may have been wrong with the the bubble sextant - maybe they were flying low to permit FN to use a backup marine sextant on the horizon ?
(btw, I've read that some of the alignment errors on a bubble sextant are not as easily checked/fixed as with a marine sextant)
He mentions having a "preventer" marine sextant with him on his Clipper flights to PHB Weems.
That's of course on a spacious Clipper, not a crammed Electra where every pound counts...

Questions:

Is 1000 ft too high to be able to correct the dip appropriately at all... (there's also the question about what correction to take at 1000 ft for refraction with the sun so low on the horizon.)

Not really believing in the broken sextant hypothesis, just interested.

[striker63]

Hi Fred,
I'm glad you are feeling better. Delay was no problem. Salt Air kept me
busy on another fun project he is working.

Elgen's book will give you lots of answers. I treat it as the bible
even though he made some mistakes in it.

re the LOP, Elgen's book on page 25 shows the route I used. On the
Direct Route, at the 1825 GCT Sun LOP intersection, I turned Northward
as shown, and at 1902 GCT I turned southward on the LOP and found
Howland. In my opinion, if AE had turned southward, she would have
seen Baker I. or Howland I. The Itasca was making smoke, and their
weather report was "clear". I followed the procedure Elgen laid out. I
also assumed I had a good 3 star fix just before local dawn. It is
quite possible that Noonan couldn't get a 3 star fix near sunrise
because of bad weather (to the northwest of Howland)

Bowen Weisheit makes a strong argument in his book that AE felt that
with three different RDF systems in play (one in her cockpit, one on
the Itasca, and one on Howland) she would shorten her flight by not
doing an offset LOP approach, but simply homing on the radio. He feels
Noonan would have objected, but got overruled, and that got him killed.

AE really needed the few gallons of hi octane gas she had to take off
from Howland for Hawaii. There was no hi test gas on Howland.

Hi Gunter, thank you for your very kind words. On my last three flights
from LAE to Howland I landed with between 20 and 45 gallons remaining.
I had another 15 to 30 gallons on board when I hit the LOP. I didn't
simulate the "flying both north and south", or the "circling" that AE
reported. The only reason I can think of that would explain why she was
at 1000 ft would be poor visibility. And if the visibility was locally
poor, Noonan wouldn't have been able to get sun shots to see if he was
drifting off the LOP. They would have been between a rock and a hard
place. I recall reading somewhere that the visibility was good to the
south toward Baker I. from Howland, but not as good to the north.

Finally, with confirmed AE radio reports that she was "on you but
cannot see you", and "running low on gas", I don't see how they could
decide on what course to take to get Gardner Island since they wern't
where they should have been. Not knowing what course to take to me
makes it more unlikely that they left the area around Howland.

Regarding the sextant, I read somewhere that the star tables included
some correction to be used for stars near the horizon, but they were
not very accurate. I also read that Howland was more than 6 miles from
where the charts of the time showed it to be. I don't know about the
errors due to the sextant.

Dave Bitzer

[bm1]

Glad to hear Fred is doing well again. Continuing to practice with Dave's sextant. I think Iam getting the hang of it fairly well. At least with shorter flights, 100 to 200mi or so, I can find my destination pretty easy.
Soon I will try something longer, and see what happens. But Oshkosh is next week, and Ill be busy with that.