Amelia Earhart news....

[Odie]

http://news.discovery.com/history/amelia-earhart-island-artifacts.html

Seems like this has been reported in the past....or maybe it's my memory.

[PRB]

This guy, Gillespie, has been at this for some time, I think. It would be amazing if he indeed found solid evidence on that island.

[johnh_049]

I saw a documentary on this a couple of years ago. they couldn't deciide if they found her final resting place or not. Hopefully, this will shed some light on it.

[Ken Stallings]

One thing though must be looked at.

If she was able to ditch beside a small island, then the plane should still be there. If they could survive the ditching, then by definition the airplane should be in large enough pieces to survive.

Even in shallow sea water, an aluminum aircraft will not disentigrate in the 70 years since it ditched.

Though I do agree that this is the most likely outcome. She was critically short on fuel and lost, saw a small island and made the rational choice to ditch beside it and swim to land.

Ken

[HouseHobbit]

We will never know for sure, I am very sorry to say..
God Bless Her..
:engel016:

[Lionheart]

It would be nice to find out where she landed or what happened.

Sorry that she has been missing all this time.

She was the pilot on a Ford Tri-Motor that my dad was on once. That really inspired him to be a pilot as he grew up.



Bill

[jmig]

It would be nice to find out where she landed or what happened.

Sorry that she has been missing all this time.

She was the pilot on a Ford Tri-Motor that my dad was on once. That really inspired him to be a pilot as he grew up.



Bill

THAT is so awesome!

Kind of like getting flight training from one of the Wright brothers.

[oakfloor]

300 miles off course from howland island? Id think that noonan would have been better than that.

[Ken Stallings]

300 miles off course from howland island? Id think that noonan would have been better than that.

You go fly across the Pacific Ocean, with no landmarks for hundreds of miles, and no weather information, and see how close you come!

Back then, people didn't even know the jet stream existed much less could forecast it.

Being 300 miles off often meant nothing more than a 50 miles per hour wind in an unpredicted direction.

Ken

[oakfloor]

You go fly across the Pacific Ocean, with no landmarks for hundreds of miles, and no weather information, and see how close you come!

Back then, people didn't even know the jet stream existed much less could forecast it.

Being 300 miles off often meant nothing more than a 50 miles per hour wind in an unpredicted direction.

Ken
Well they got that far somehow, And wind drift can be compensated for, and jet streams at 5,000 '?

[tigisfat]

300 miles off course from howland island? Id think that noonan would have been better than that.

Not if he was busy playing round 8 of 9 rounds of grab@$$!!:icon_lol:

[jmig]

If I remember my celestial navigation right, a sun line will only give you one line. You can be anywhere on that line. I those days it was 90% dead reckoning and 10% luck. If the winds were off and he was a degree or two off on heading....

I recall once during the SEA era hearing about a tanker navigator who missed Guam by 400 miles. Luckily for them, the Guam people was able to get a directional fix off the HF and steered them back to Guam.

[Lionheart]

Not if he was busy playing round 8 of 9 rounds of grab@$$!!:icon_lol:

This is the first time I have ever heard someone say something bad or rough about Amelia. Maybe Ive just lived a sheltered life.



On navigation; I know Arizona pretty well as I used to drive it all over daily so all the mountains and valleys are locked into my mind. With Arizona photo real scenery, I have twice been able to get lost in my own state with all its landmarks all over the place. I thought I knew better then the instruments and found myself nearly 100 miles adrift. Imagine being over water... No landmarks. Constant drone of the engines.

Also, I thought they couldnt get to one another in the aircraft when in flight as the center fuel tank was so huge. They had to yell over the top of the tank or talk through the intercom. (Thats what I remember).

From what I know of Amelia from documentaries, she was an outstanding individual.



Bill

[jmig]

This is the first time I have ever heard someone say something bad or rough about Amelia. Maybe Ive just lived a sheltered life.



On navigation; I know Arizona pretty well as I used to drive it all over daily so all the mountains and valleys are locked into my mind. With Arizona photo real scenery, I have twice been able to get lost in my own state with all its landmarks all over the place. I thought I knew better then the instruments and found myself nearly 100 miles adrift. Imagine being over water... No landmarks. Constant drone of the engines.

Also, I thought they couldnt get to one another in the aircraft when in flight as the center fuel tank was so huge. They had to yell over the top of the tank or talk through the intercom. (Thats what I remember).

From what I know of Amelia from documentaries, she was an outstanding individual.



Bill

According the the "movie" she did have an affair earlier. However, when she realized how it hurt her husband, she ended the affair and became closer to him. I doubt she was having an affair with the navigator.

I thought the statement was rather crass and juvenile. However, I am sure it was meant as a joke.

[PRB]

Well, it may be of interest to some to learn that AE and Noonan were physically separated during the flight by the extra fuel tanks. He, the navigator, was stuck in the rear of the plane, with no glass dome to take star sightings, and no compass to keep track of what course AE was steering, and no intercom between the two. The only means of communication was by a string and pulley system to pass notes to and fro. So 8 or 9 holes of grab*** or anything else was not possible. This I read about in Don McVicar's book “More than a Pilot”. McVicar was a navigator, Ferry Command pilot in WW-II, president of World Wide Airways after the war, and even an air racing pilot. He has a chapter on AE in that book that is very interesting reading. McVicar is a bit critical of AE's experience as a pilot, and especially as a navigator. The principles of long range over-water navigation were well known by 1937. She put her life on the line trying to accomplish things that had never been done before, which is more than many of us will ever do. She paid the ultimate price, and for that she should never be forgotten. But, “The Rest of the Story” is often filled with interesting tidbits that reveal human failings that we all share...

[Ken Stallings]

If I remember my celestial navigation right, a sun line will only give you one line. You can be anywhere on that line. I those days it was 90% dead reckoning and 10% luck. If the winds were off and he was a degree or two off on heading....

I recall once during the SEA era hearing about a tanker navigator who missed Guam by 400 miles. Luckily for them, the Guam people was able to get a directional fix off the HF and steered them back to Guam.

I may be the only member of SOH (but more likely just one of a few) who actually did navigate an airplane across the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans using only celestial and pressure line of position techniques.

You are correct. A sun line of position (LOP) merely gives you a line (in actual fact a small segment of a circle) and you can be anywhere along that line. When flying from west to east, as she was doing, the sun line plots along the distance line, meaning more or less perpendicular to your west to east course line.

Pressure line of position can provide a course line, meaning a LOP that runs parallel to your west to east courseline.

I would believe that her navigator would have use the temperature method to plot his pressure lines. It is not all that accurate, but better than nothing.

The jet stream sometimes does come down in altitude and can radically and unpredictably alter the winds from their normal strength and direction, even at altitudes down to 5,000 feet MSL, or lower. It is suspected this happened on that fateful flight. Don't forget also that for celestial to work, you have to be able to see the celestial body you are shooting. Clouds can become a problem.

Back in that era, every cross oceanic flight was a risk, especialy the distance she flew on that leg, which was the longest scheduled leg of her around-the-world effort. So, being off by 300nm is plausible. Noonan's job was to get Earhardt close enough to receive the NDB signal that was supposed to guide her in. But it seems for whatever reason, the radio did not function. She was close enough to establish radio contact for some time, and in theory that meant she should have been close enough to receive and home in on the NDB signal.

But, clearly that did not happen.

Why has remained one of the oldest questions in aviation history.

Ken

[Willy]

Not if he was busy playing round 8 of 9 rounds of grab@$$!!:icon_lol:

Please, we try to have a bit more class than that around here.

[Ken Stallings]

Well they got that far somehow, And wind drift can be compensated for, and jet streams at 5,000 '?

I frankly cannot understand what you meant by your first comment.

For the second one: Yes wind drift can be compensated for, but you must understand that's true only if you know what the winds are. All they had back then was a mechanical device known as a drift meter. It basically allowed you to determine the angular deflection of the aircraft track to the heading. It worked fairly well when tracing over easily determined ground reference points, ideally a straight road or long furrowed farm field. Over the ocean it was practically worthless.

For the third comment: Yes, jet stream can significantly affect winds down to surface. I live in Portales, NM. Among other facts of life here is that we frequently get winds of 50 to 60 knots when the jet stream pitches down south and with no mountains in proximity to break it up, the jet stream is felt all the way down to surface. At 5,000 feet AGL you can absolutely see classic jet stream influenced winds that ravage at 50-90 knots. Again, it was believed based upon radio traces and estimates that she encountered a signficant shift of wind.

The risks these pioneers took were incomprehensible to our modern understandings. As a former navigator, if you handed me a sheet of paper with detailed and fully accurate winds listed along my planned route of flight, I could plot a running DR (dead reckoning) position and likely be within a few miles of actual position over a course of 1,000 miles. But, if I did not know what the winds were, then it was entirely likely that without other forms of position resolution, such as celestial or pressure lines of position, I could find myself 300 miles off course over than same 1,000 mile course.

Ken

[Willy]

I do know that using DR and drift meters in FS, it's still relatively easy to get way off course if you're not minding the store. We've proved that one often enough.

[Bone]

Yes, the grab@$$ coment was sophomoric, but funny just the same. It was obviously a joke. As far as getting lost over the Pacific, it would be easy enough to do with that technology. It's a huge Ocean and Islands tend to look alike. I've flown alot of service to numerous islands in the Caribean, and that relatively small body of water seems huge when you're flying over it.

[tigisfat]

Gentlemen, please excuse my humor.:salute:

I don't know enough about her to judge myself, but I've heard many attacks on her character over the years. The two that readily come to mind are the claims of her affair with Noonan, that even extended to a suggestion that the two eloped together (one of many explanations for her dissappearance I've heard), and I've also heard she displayed poor airmanship and general flying skills. What the truth is, I don't know, but I figured you all had heard the same at one point or another, so I didn't think a joke about the accused relationship was too far off the beaten path.

[jhefner]

Ken;

Just wondering: are the waves below you any help in determining the direction and speed of the wind; or could it be different at higher altitudes?

-James

[PRB]

Those drift meters could be used at sea, if there were distinct waves to watch. More difficult than using a nice straight road perhaps, but doable. They did it in WW-II.

[HighGround22]

. . . It worked fairly well when tracing over easily determined ground reference points, ideally a straight road or long furrowed farm field. Over the ocean it was practically worthless. . . . Well, I recall using it over the ocean, back in the Fifties/Sixties.

We'd be sent out from the carrier to cover an area of open ocean for six hours, on average. Every hour or so, we'd "do a wind" with the drift meter. We'd fly steady and take a drift reading; alter 60 degrees port and do another; alter 120 degrees to starboard (60 from the original hdg) and do the last one before resuming course.

We'd plot the drift lines on an E6B (hand-held analog) computer, which gave us a "cocked hat" -- a (hopefully small) triangle that gave us an indication of the wind speed and direction. We'd apply that to the next hour of patrolling, and so-forth. Worked a treat, ack-shully, and far from worthless.

While I'm babbling, the other method we'd use was the "smoke wind". We'd note the heading and fire the "Retro" (a pneumatic "gun" that fired a smoke marker rearward at the same speed we were flying forward, thus effectively dropping it straight down), and fly a steady-rate circle. When we were back to the original heading, we'd note the elapsed time and fire another smoke from the Retro. Smoke #1 to smoke #2 gave wind direction; crunching the time gave windspeed. Shazam!

Years later, I was flying over the saltchuck in much bigger, land-based aerodynes with GPS. Much more relaxing!

[HighGround22]

.
And just by the bye, I've always wondered how much of a part Noonan's boozing had to play in their demise. It's been a while since I last did any detailed reading, but it seems to me that Amelia indicated, in a "coded" telegram, that her navigator was back on the bottle, just before the last leg or two. I seem to recall that she was urged to pack it in, but demurred.

I know, I know,nil nisi bonum, and all that, but nevertheless, it's always remained a bit of a nagging doubt in my mind.

[tigisfat]

.
And just by the bye, I've always wondered how much of a part Noonan's boozing had to play in their demise. It's been a while since I last did any detailed reading, but it seems to me that Amelia indicated, in a "coded" telegram, that her navigator was back on the bottle, just before the last leg or two. I seem to recall that she was urged to pack it in, but demurred.

I know, I know,nil nisi bonum, and all that, but nevertheless, it's always remained a bit of a nagging doubt in my mind.



I've heard so many accounts of derogatory information about her whole operation that I dont know which ones to pay creedence to. I was surprised that Lionheart hadn't heard anything bad about her before. It seems all I hear is people putting her down.

I've heard that her departure had to be delayed because she wrecked her first around-the-world aircraft leaving Oakland. The story says that they had to ship her a new one fast, away from the prying eyes of the media.

[Ken Stallings]

Tigisfat,

I held my tongue during your first ill considered remark. Now, despite staff politely advising you this wasn't the sort of thing appreciated, you now go much further off the reservation with all these negative remarks about two long since dead people!

By all FACTUAL accounts I have read, she was very happily married for many years. Just because Fred Noonan was a man doesn't mean people should engage in pointless and ill-considered speculation about adultery! The unavoidable fact is she's no longer alive to refute these baseless and scandalous charges.

I should think we should have enough respect for the dead to avoid this.

Ken

[Ken Stallings]

Ken;

Just wondering: are the waves below you any help in determining the direction and speed of the wind; or could it be different at higher altitudes?

-James

It depends. Waves are determined by two forces -- currents and winds. The whitecaps are largely produced by winds, but the swells are largely determined by currents.

Pressure and celestial were the primary means that navigators confirmed the accuracy of the DR's.

I find the discussions about drift meters fascinating, however! I did read that passage with considerable interest.

Cheers,

Ken

[Ken Stallings]

Well, I recall using it over the ocean, back in the Fifties/Sixties.

We'd be sent out from the carrier to cover an area of open ocean for six hours, on average. Every hour or so, we'd "do a wind" with the drift meter. We'd fly steady and take a drift reading; alter 60 degrees port and do another; alter 120 degrees to starboard (60 from the original hdg) and do the last one before resuming course.

We'd plot the drift lines on an E6B (hand-held analog) computer, which gave us a "cocked hat" -- a (hopefully small) triangle that gave us an indication of the wind speed and direction. We'd apply that to the next hour of patrolling, and so-forth. Worked a treat, ack-shully, and far from worthless.

While I'm babbling, the other method we'd use was the "smoke wind". We'd note the heading and fire the "Retro" (a pneumatic "gun" that fired a smoke marker rearward at the same speed we were flying forward, thus effectively dropping it straight down), and fly a steady-rate circle. When we were back to the original heading, we'd note the elapsed time and fire another smoke from the Retro. Smoke #1 to smoke #2 gave wind direction; crunching the time gave windspeed. Shazam!

Years later, I was flying over the saltchuck in much bigger, land-based aerodynes with GPS. Much more relaxing!

I guess the question I have is how did you determine the drift line. On land it required measuring the angular deflection over a known straight line. Obviously you could use whitecaps and swells, but as I pointed out those are as much a byproduct of currents as winds. It could be very misleading information.

The smoke markers were used back in my brief time in HC-130's. However, we just dropped one smoke marker and gauged the direction of the wind. Obviously, to fire two you had to hold a constant rate turn using the turn-bank indicator and this would cause the wind to drift you a specific heading and distance off your location on the first smoke drop. I have to say this is a very ingenious method! I did not know you folks did that. First I have heard it written anywhere! Appreciate that insight very, very much! :engel016:

Cheers,

Ken

[Ken Stallings]

.
And just by the bye, I've always wondered how much of a part Noonan's boozing had to play in their demise. It's been a while since I last did any detailed reading, but it seems to me that Amelia indicated, in a "coded" telegram, that her navigator was back on the bottle, just before the last leg or two. I seem to recall that she was urged to pack it in, but demurred.

I know, I know,nil nisi bonum, and all that, but nevertheless, it's always remained a bit of a nagging doubt in my mind.



Rather than quote Latin, we should simply quote good sources to refute the claim.

Here is a good one:

http://tighar.org/Projects/Earhart/forum/FAQs/noonan.htm

Fred Noonan was promoted to Master Navigator at Pan Am, which certified him as one of the best navigators in the world during his era. He left Pan Am voluntarily after working for them for seven years. During the 1930's most men consumed alcohol, but no objective sources assert that Noonan was an alcoholic. Moreover, all eye witnesses confirm that Noonan was in good physical condition when he boarded the ill-fated flight with Earhardt.

In fact, the only unusual occurence on the second attempt to takeoff from Lae is that videotape seems to indicate that the lower loop antenna was blown off the aircraft. If true, this means the ADF would not work to locate her final bearing to Howland Island. That being the case, it points out why despite being in radio range, she was unable to guide in on a bearing for the landing.

BTW: I shortchanged the distance. The leg was 2,200 miles! That's a very long distance folks! Do some math and determine how a simple 30 knot difference in winds can affect such a distance.

Ken

[casey jones]

I still read stories and interviews by people who were on Sapan in 1937 that she was taken aboard a Japaneses ship. A Japanese officer testified that he was a doctor then and was brought to the ship to attend to the injuries of a white woman and white man, he said he saw a twin engine plane on the back of the ship with part of its wing broken.


Cheers

Casey:salute:

[Lionheart]

I have heard alot on this also. I heard that they found a remnant of a box, in fairly good condition, like a radio or battery box with a serial number on it that corresponded with that of the airframe of the Electra. Thats some pretty strong evidence.

[Ken Stallings]

I think the leading theories are that they ditched and then three various things happened.

1. They were captured by the Japanese, who believing they were spies and realizing if anything was released publicly, the United States would expect safe return, they were quietly killed and their bodies discarded so they would never be found. The US government, assuming Earhart was on some sort of round-the-world flight that happened to provide an option for very limited surveillance of Japanese areas, would be equally desirous of avoid the incriminating possibility that they helped get her killed, decided not to press the issue with Japan.

2. They successfully ditched and were marooned on a small island, never found, starved to death, and still have their bones lying wherever they fell.

3. The ditching was unsuccessful and the plane's wreckage lies at the deep with their bodies trapped inside and likely never to be seen, much less recovered.

Of these three likely outcomes, only one carries any realistic chance of discovery. As gristly as this option is, it is the only way we will ever recover their bodies.

I think any of these three outcomes are as likely as the other. Speculation claims anecdotal evidence of Japanese capture, but I'm thinking it is plausible that anyone actually in the know was sworn to secrecy, and carried that secret to their graves to avoid further public recrimination after the war ended, not to mention an almost certain chance of a war crimes trial if they spoke about it.

If you survived the war and had the option to stay quiet and get on with rebuilding your life in a war torn nation, or speaking and putting yourself at the mercy of the victorious allies with news your military murdered one of the greatest aviators in human history, covered it up for many years, and did so before your two nations were at war -- well, what would you do!

Hence why it's entirely likely that could have happened.

Ken

[PRB]

Well, they were heard by the Itasca, and with a strong signal, meaning they were close, before they dissapeared, so the most likely scenario is that they are at the bottom of the sea near Howland Island someplace.

But then there is this:

http://www.electranewbritain.com/ (http://www.electranewbritain.com/)

[tigisfat]

I still read stories and interviews by people who were on Sapan in 1937 that she was taken aboard a Japaneses ship. A Japanese officer testified that he was a doctor then and was brought to the ship to attend to the injuries of a white woman and white man, he said he saw a twin engine plane on the back of the ship with part of its wing broken.


Cheers

Casey:salute:

I wonder if the defection theory I mentioned I heard is related to those accounts.