New Guinea - Amelia Earhart & Fred Noonan, en route to Howland Island, 2 July 1937

[AC4RD]

... even if she didn't have decent Morse code skills. (And Fred Noonan, long-time long-distance navigator, would certainly have been able to use Morse.)

I read quite recently that Noonan agreed about leaving the Morse (CW) key behind, because he felt that his Morse skill was not good enough to be useful on the flight. I'm very surprised at that--I thought being a first-rate navigator (which Noonan certainly was) meant he would be skilled in CW operation. Fred Manning, the first-choice navigator was. But I was wrong; Noonan did have to pass a basic Morse test (Amelia as well) to be licensed, but apparently he didn't use Morse enough to feel competent at it. This is truly surprising to me--but at least I've corrected myself now.

And one more minor note. Richard said "She (Amelia) insisted on only using voice transmissions and did not use Morse Code. Even without her Morse Key, she could have used her microphone transmit switch to send Morse Code." I'm fairly certain that's not true; I've never seen an AM or SSB transmitter on which that is the case. In every transmitter I'm familiar with, pushing the Push-to-Talk (PTT) button does turn the transmitter on, but in AM or sideband mode, there's no signal unless there is input from the microphone. This is why you hear of AE giving a "long count" in voice for Itasca to use as a RDF signal, and you also hear of people giving a long whistle into the mike. The mike output goes to a modulator, and without input (voice, whistling, whatever), the transmitter is in transmit mode but there's essentially no signal being transmitted.

This is probably boring to most people, sorry. To get MORE boring, sorry, that "no signal" point would not be the case in FM mode--in FM, the transmitter is on at the default power output when the mike's PTT is depressed. For Morse (CW, 'continuous wave') the presence/absence of that output is the signal, and the output is turned on and off (modulated) with the hand key to add data to the output. "A" is "on_short brief_pause ON_LONG," for instance.

With FM, the power output is a full carrier, like CW, but nonstop, and the actual transmitting frequency is varied slightly (modulated) to carry the voice signal. Pressing PTT to turn the transmitter on at full power, and off, to make the characters in Morse, would have worked, if the transmitter was FM mode. But FM wasn't being commercially used anywhere at the time of AE's flight. AE's voice signals were AM, "amplitude modulation," and without a voice input, there's no amplitude to modulate. (I hope that makes sense to anybody who actually bothered to read this all.)

The only real point of this message is to say I was wrong: being an aircraft navigator in 1937 did NOT automatically mean being skilled at using Morse code. "My bad."

Best! --ken (side note: "AC4RD" is my FCC license, just as AE's plane held license KHAQQ)

 

[Richard]

Good info on radio signals. I would point out that there is a lot of continuous noise in an aircraft with the engine(s) running. So, although an amplitude modulated (am) signal might be affected differently by a keyed microphone, than by a telegraphy key, there would still be a possible signal to detect by keying morse code on the microphone.

Reading accounts from various radio stations and individuals who were listening for Amelia's signals, one hears of weak voice signals that could not be understood. Had those voice (or other sounds like whistling) been interrupted by mic keying, perhaps a simple SOS message could have been sent and received over a great distance.

It seems, however that not only were Amelia and Fred inadequetly skilled in Morse Code and lacking in properly operating radio equipment, they had also failed to anticipate the potential need for what became an emergency situation.

Emergency messages are very brief and specific, and could/should have been part of their emergency checklist. The format can be written out in advance in Morse Code as well as voice:

Mayday, Mayday. This is (call sign). Position (lat/long or over/near ____), at time ____. True heading ____, True airspeed ____, Nature of emergency, Pilot intentions.

The problem was that no such message seems to have been sent by Amelia. Her transmissions were a jumble of voice messages that were sent at various times with no discipline or standard content.

Amelia knew that she could not hear Itasca. Her transmissions "in the blind" should have been so stated, and she should have been making standard position reports as she approached Howland. She never made any such reports.

As it was, Itasca was hearing her well. Had she made proper position reports, and been more specific about her intentions, Itasca might have commenced a search for the plane in a more localized area.

A big mystery today is her last transmission about flying "north and south" on line 157/337 looking for Itasca. This sounds to me like she was finally able to get a DF cut on Itasca with her loop antenna. Unfortunately, Amelia did not state specifically where that line came from.

 

[AC4RD]

...
A big mystery today is her last transmission about flying "north and south" on line 157/337 looking for Itasca. This sounds to me like she was finally able to get a DF cut on Itasca with her loop antenna. Unfortunately, Amelia did not state specifically where that line came from.

"Absolutely, 100% agree," on AE's absolute incompetence at using her radio effectively. (Also agree about background noise providing some modulation, though AE apparently didn't think of that either.)

Elgen Long's book, Amelia Earhart, the Mystery Solved, (which I think is far and away the best book about the flight) says explicitly that Balfour at Lae NG tried to explain how stations ordinarily communicate via two-way exchanges, at a set time (a "schedule" or "sked" in radio parlance.) And he was frustrated that AE didn't seem to understand the concept even with his explanations. The book also says that the radiomen on Itasca didn't know that the idea of a regular sked was foreign to AE; they didn't understand that she wasn't listening for them after her own transmissions.

The part about "flying on a line 157/337" is actually explained in Elgen Long's book. Long was himself an old-time over-water navigator in the Pacific and he explains a lot about that sort of navigation. (He also explains in depth how the fact that AE, the Itasca, and Lae were all on different time zones, screwed up the radio communications. Well worth a read, IMO.)

So as I understand it (which is very little), knowing the exact time and the exact angle of the sun above the horizon, one can tell the longitude with reasonable precision. Long explains that when Noonan's calculations said they were at the longitude for Howland (which was actually a few miles incorrect on the charts), he had AE fly up and/or down the "sun line" for that longitude. The reason the sun line isn't straight N-S but 157/337 is apparently the declination of the earth to the sun, as I understand it. (Which, as I mentioned, is very little.)

I've actually got a privately published book, Amelia Earhart’s Radio – Why She Disappeared – By Paul Rafford, Jr., a former Pan Am radio operator. IIRC he suggested that AE turned for Gardner Island but by painful coincidence, her radio quit working at that very moment, which is why she didn't tell the outside world she was doing so. I find that hard to believe, personally. But while I googled Rafford to get the Pan Am credentials, which I didn't remember, I found this website:

Paul Rafford Jr. – Amelia Earhart: The Truth at Last

Posts about Paul Rafford Jr. written by earharttruth

earharttruth.wordpress.com

I've only glanced at it so I don't know or vouch for the information there, but it appears to be worth a read. In my glance I saw a claim that radio logs were faked after AE's splash, which is possible, I suppose, though it's starting to get into tinfoil-helmet territory IMO. That's just incidentally.

Sorry, that got a bit long and it's poorly organized. My bad but I'm in a bit of a rush. --ken

 

[Richard]

There are some interesting celestial techniques that can be done with a sextant.
For instance sighting the elevation of Polaris (the North Star) above the horizon will give your Latitude.

But there are other factors which are necessary for successful air navigation.

Having a precise watch or chronometer set to the exact second to Coordinated Universal Time (aka Greenwich Mean Time), a good Dead Reconing position, and a current celestial almanac to calculate your celestial shot are all vital to accurate celestial navigation.

A sextant reading itself doesn't give you a line of longitude. It gives you a reading of the sun's elevation to compare with the calculated height. This, in turn is plotted on the chart as a line of position (LOP).

Early morning (sunrise) sextant sun shots tend to be the most innaccurate ones due to refraction and other factors.

If the sun or a star is in front or behind the aircraft, the LOP will plot perpindicular to your course and can provide a good idea of your speed. If the sun or star is off your wing, the LOP gives you an idea if you are left or right of your intended course. Your relationship to any island or other position comes from where your calculated position on the chart (map) is plotted.

All of this takes time and is not an instantaneous line of position to fly up or down. And making a statement about flying up and down a course line makes absolutely no sense to the ship without either a stated fix position for the aircraft OR an explanation of how it relates to the ship or to Howland Island.

The context of Amelia's hapless transmissions to Itasca seems to be about trying to find the Coast Guard Cutter and trying to get a DF cut from them. The most likely explanation for her sudden announcement about "157/337 line" I feel is that Amelia finally got (or thought she got) a bearing to Itasca via her loop antenna. Such an announcement would make sense in that this line would logically pass through Itasca, and therefore she was somewhere along that bearing/reciprocal bearing IN RELATION TO Itasca.

But the operable word here is "logically" - something sadly lacking in Amelia's transmissions.

The loop antenna on the Electra could give Amelia a bearing to Itasca's transmissions, but the antenna could not differentiate between the actual bearing or its reciprocal (which is 180 degrees out) thus the double number of 157/337.

Regarding the log books of the Itasca radio shack: those may very well have been neatly rewritten from rough notebooks or writing pads. Probably not because of any devious cover up, but in an effort to be accurate and consistant.

 

[AC4RD]

The most likely explanation for her sudden announcement about "157/337 line" I feel is that Amelia finally got (or thought she got) a bearing to Itasca via her loop antenna. Such an announcement would make sense in that this line would logically pass through Itasca, and therefore she was somewhere along that bearing/reciprocal bearing IN RELATION TO Itasca.

But the operable word here is "logically" - something sadly lacking in Amelia's transmissions.

The loop antenna on the Electra could give Amelia a bearing to Itasca's transmissions, but the antenna could not differentiate between the actual bearing or its reciprocal (which is 180 degrees out) thus the double number of 157/337.

(respectfully snipped for focus) VERY interesting about the navigation. I think I can feel certain that AE didn't get a bearing with the RDF loop, though. Long's book goes into some depth on the subject: The Bendix receiver and the RDF loop and coupler were installed by a guy from the Bendix factory.

The Bendix rep showed Fred Manning (navigator until the Hawaii ground loop) and AE how to work both of them. The Bendix receiver was a new model that didn't yet have an operating manual. (All this, BTW, is from Long's book; it appears that Joe Gurr, AE's radio specialist, is the primary source of information on this subject.) The RDF loop and coupler were a model Bendix made for the US Navy. The receiver was capable of receiving from 200kHz to 10MHz; the loop was able to take bearings from 200kHz to 1430kHz (1.43MHz). Both the receiver and the loop had the operating frequencies in five physical bands, requiring switching manually to change frequencies on different bands.

So the receiver was calibrated in 5 bands and the loop was, also. But since the loop only worked on the lowest 14.3% of the receiver's range, they were NOT the same 5 bands. AE used the loop to take a bearing, in the training, on AM broadcast station KFI on 640kHz, with no trouble. Neither she nor Joe Gurr (at the time) understood the large gap in the two units' receiving capabilities. Long says that AE _believed_ (very incorrectly) that she could take a bearing on any frequency the RA-1 receiver could hear, up to 10MHz--he calls this an innocent but tragic mistake. Near Howland, AE requested that Itasca send "A" in Morse, on 7.5MHz, and she tried to take a bearing on the ship, unaware that her coupler/loop were totally unable to function at that frequency. She was unable to get a minimum. And of course, the ship and Howland RDF units had their own problems, and AE was apparently unable to hear their voice calls.

Once again, it was a matter (and not the only one) of insufficient preparation and training. :-( AE was certainly daring. But it seems to me that AE shows the truth of an adage my late father-in-law (an old B-47 pilot) liked, which you've certainly heard before: "There are old pilots, and there are bold pilots. But there are no old bold pilots."

 

[Richard]

Amelia was definitely trying to get a radio cut bearing either to or from the Itasca. If she didn't actually get one, it is possible that she THOUGHT she had gotten one on her loop antenna. Unfortunately, her communications and intentions were not very clear.

This July 2nd will mark 85 years since Amelia and Fred went missing in the Pacific.

 

[AC4RD]

Latitude. Not longitude. :-( I SAID I didn't know anything about it, didn't I? ;-)

I'll attach a screenshot from the kindle edition of Elgen Long's book; it explains the "running on the position line 157-3whatever"--which, you'll note, I failed rather badly at explaining. I'm using the screenshots under the assumption of "Fair Use," and I still encourage everybody interested in AE to buy a copy. I have a paper copy but also bought it again when I got an e-reader. Excellent source of information, particularly concerning the actual times of events, which are confused in some other accounts. --kk (edited to add, Noonan used this technique a number of times in the flights documented in the book, and a general accountof the method is probably given elsewhere in the book, if this doesn't explain it.)

 

[Richard]

Latitude. Not longitude. :-( I SAID I didn't know anything about it, didn't I? ;-)

I'll attach a screenshot from the kindle edition of Elgen Long's book; it explains the "running on the position line 157-3whatever"--which, you'll note, I failed rather badly at explaining. I'm using the screenshots under the assumption of "Fair Use," and I still encourage everybody interested in AE to buy a copy. I have a paper copy but also bought it again when I got an e-reader. Excellent source of information, particularly concerning the actual times of events, which are confused in some other accounts. --kk (edited to add, Noonan used this technique a number of times in the flights documented in the book, and a general accountof the method is probably given elsewhere in the book, if this doesn't explain it.)

The explanation makes sense, and the discussion about DR-ing the LOP sunline ahead of course is a technique that is common practice in celestial navigation. In fact, it is done all the time when computing and plotting a 3 star fix, since you can only sight one star at a time. The first lop is advanced, the second is plotted as shot and the third lop is regressed.

It is a good theory and explanation, however if this was in fact what they were trying to do, it certainly was not made clear in Amelia's radio transmissions. Perhaps Amelia had no idea how it worked and was only repeating (in an abrieviated way) what Fred told her.

 

[Quiet Time]

So, would it be safe to say that these two, AE and FN, were just really lost?

 

[AC4RD]

So, would it be safe to say that these two, AE and FN, were just really lost?

This is entirely my own opinion, OK? The flight from New Guinea to Howland Island was inherently risky. AE's Electra was far beyond it's nominal weight capacity, because it was full of gas. Howland is tiny and low, and AE was flying east into the sun at dawn, reducing her visibility. And Howland was not actually where the chart showed it, the chart was a few miles off.

As Richard explains, above, the navigation was tricky to begin with. There was no GPS then and radio communication was primitive. The navigator (Noonan) was highly skilled and experienced, no doubt about that. But he was using a borrowed octant, not his own sextant, and he had to depend on diffficult celestial sights (stars, sun) and on "dead reckoning," which requires a certain amount of guesswork. For a long time AE was above the cloud cover and Noonan couldn't use smoke flares to get the windspeed.

Let me start by quickly dismissing the Gardner Island theory: there is NO evidence, not a bit, to support it, and the island was searched by air just a few days after the disappearance. And AE could not have sent useful radio signals after a landing there, not possible. The "I heard Amelia on the shortwave set last night!" is just like the "Elvis isn't dead, he's tending bar in Orem, Utah" ideas.

Saipan? Nope, nope. Again, no evidence even slightly useful--and getting stories from their childhood during a time of hostile occupation, out of elderly people who speak a different language, does not count as evidence. Get photos, get a handwritten note from Garapan Jail from Amelia, get the octant Noonan borrowed from Fred Manning, get SOME evidence. But there isn't any and there isn't going to be any, IMO, because that's even more bogus than Gardner Island.

AE got CLOSE TO Howland Island, we know from the radio logs and personal testimony from immediately afterward. She was running search patterns and she had adequate fuel at the time.

Just MHO but if AE or Noonan had bothered to learn their own RDF's usage, and/or if AE had been even vaguely competent at using her radio, they'd have made it to Howland fairly easily. We know they got very close--a big or tall island might have been visible, though Howland was hard to see except very close. Elgen Long (himself an old-time Pacific air navigation/pilot) said Noonan did as well as possible with the tools he had. They just needed RDF for the last half-hour of the trip. Radio direction finding could have given AE a bearing straight to Itasca, if she had known how to use it. Or she could have used her radio--if she had known how to use it correctly--to get a bearing from Itasca, if she had been able to hear them, which she very rarely was.

(Richard, your point about "noise in the microphonen was borne out by a book by Jan Bartelski, I just skimmed it the other night. It's on Amazon's "kindle unlimited" if you have that. I don't remember the specifics offhand, but it referred to AE "making a noise in the microphone" trying to get a bearing from Itasca. This book [it had "tragedy" in the title] also had an interesting argument that AE ran into a strong tropical depression and went off course without knowing it, because the winds were strong from another direction while she was in it, and they were above the clouds so they had no idea of windspeed or their actual over-the-ground speed.)

To me, Quiet Time, the whole thing boils down to poor preparation and planning by Earhart. Noonan's navigation did get them CLOSE to Howland, with plenty of fuel left to find the island. They simply needed radio direction finding OR adequate ship to plane communications for the last stage. If Earhart (or Noonan) spent a couple of hours learning aircraft-style communications and how to use her RDF loop/coupler (it only went up to 1430kHz and AE tried to use it at 7500kHz), and another hour or two working out working communication protocols with Itasca, she'd have made it. It was a risky trip but well within AE's abilities--IF she had prepared properly. IMO.

 

[Richard]

Air Navigation is primarily a science and "art" involving vectors. You have factors such as indicated (read on the instruments) air speed corrected to true airspeed, compass heading corrected (for deviation and magnetic variation) to true heading. Then you have the wind speed/direction vector, which applied to the other factors gives you Track and speed over the ground.

Initial winds used might come from a meteorological forcast, but once in the air, the Navigator is constantly calculating and updating the wind between celestial fixes.

A fix is obtained on a regular schedule (at least hourly or earlier). If the plane is off course, a course correction is made, and a course line is drawn on the chart.

Communication between the aircraft and the facility or ship providing Flight Following is vital, and a regularly scheduled time and radio frequency for sending position reports should be arranged in advance - as well as filing a detailed flight plan.

Unfortunately there doesn't seem to be any such planning or practice in regard to the Lae - Howland flight. This leaves much to speculation about what the situation was with Amelia's last flight.

Did a major shift in the wind blow them off course? Possibly, but this is something the Navigator would have seen. None of Amelia's transmissions mention any such weather/wind events. In fact, they sound like they felt they were on schedule and in the close vicinity of Itasca and Howland.

Finding a ship or island on a visual search is not as easy as one might think. This is especially true with low clouds, rough water, and when flying at low altitude, and a few miles distance.

They were certainly looking hard for Howland Island, but at some point, after not finding it, any possible island or atoll would be considered as a landing or ditching zone.

 

[Richard]

Missing for 85 years...

Fred Noonan and Amelia Earhart, missing since 2 July 1937

LINK (note that although dated in 2021, the info in the article is about 5 years old):

Evidence shows Amelia Earhart may have survived crash

On Jan 5, 1939, two years after her disappearance the world-class aviator Emelia Earhart was declared dead but thousands believe she and her navigator, Fred Noonan, survived the historic crash. Does this new evidence prove it?

www.irishcentral.com

 

[Richard]

July 24th was Amelia's 125th birthday.

 

[Richard]

Bumping this thread up...

 

[PrairieWind]

We haven't heard anything for a while, even from TIGHAR. This is always one of my favorite mysteries to discuss/follow. Part of me hopes it is never solved.

 

[AC4RD]

We haven't heard anything for a while, even from TIGHAR. This is always one of my favorite mysteries to discuss/follow. Part of me hopes it is never solved.

I find it interesting in a very sad way; just a LITTLE more preparation and training IMO would have taken AE and Fred Noonan to Howland and to home. Personally, I think it will never be solved; I feel sure that AE's Electra is in what Shakespeare called "the vasty deep" and only a very expensive search could have a chance of finding it--MHO, of course.

The last I heard, ol' Rick at TIGHAR was still busy getting rich people to pay for "expeditions" to Gardner (yes, that's not the name these days but Gardner is easier than Nikumaroro) so they can "look for evidence." So far they've found a scrap of metal, a cosmetics jar, and part of a shoe. On an island that has had visitors since 100 years before AE splashed in--which (MHO) happened far from Gardner, but very close to Howland.

If you're interested in AE's last flight, this is the only book about the last flight that I know of that's well-reasoned, well-written, and remarkably convincing: Amelia Earhart: The Mystery Solved: Long, Elgen M.: 9781439164662: Amazon.com: Books Copies are available cheaply from a number of used book places online, it's on Amazon Kindle, and my library has had both paper and electronic copies. WELL worth a read, IMO!

 

[Richard]

Amelia Earhart in a rare 1937 Photo.
She went missing in her Lockheed Electra aircraft, along with her Navigator Fred Noonan on 2 July 1937

There are many differing theories and opinions regarding what became of that flight ranging from the aircraft crashing and sinking to an emergency water or island landing.

Here is a link to a website which discusses some of those many theories:

Earhart Research Page of Honor

I don’t know why this page was so long in coming, or even why the idea finally dawned on me when it did, but the old cliché, “Better late than never,” just about covers it. Ironi…

earharttruth.wordpress.com

 

[cenazoic]

The author of above link believes she went down in the Marshalls and was captured by the Japanese. A taste:

The perpetuation of the false “Earhart mystery” has always been about protecting the long-questionable reputation of the Father of the Modern Democrat Party — forget Woodrow Wilson, who was a lightweight in comparison — and Amelia Earhart is exhibit No. 1 in a legal proceeding that unfortunately will never get under way down here. No American president has been more overrated than FDR — except the treasonous Obama, who will someday join FDR and LBJ in the lowest circle of hell reserved for U.S. presidents and others who betrayed their nation.

So, yeah, maybe not a very ‘fair and balanced’ resource.

 

[Richard]

The author of above link believes she went down in the Marshalls and was captured by the Japanese. A taste:



So, yeah, maybe not a very ‘fair and balanced’ resource.

Politics aside, one has to keep an open mind on the case at hand and consider all the known facts and circumstances.

The link was to a portion of the website which discusses various researchers and their conclusions or theories regarding Amelia Earhart's disappearance.

While one might conclude that she ditched her aircraft in open water and perished when it sank into the Pacific, others might conclude differently for various reasons.

The linked website owner does happen to think that Amelia and Fred survived a crash landing or ditching on or near Milli atoll, and that they were captured by the Japanese military and taken to Saipan, where they subsequently died. He wrote a book on the subject.

The question of what the US Government knew/knows about Amelia's disappearance - and possible Japanese military involvement is one which bears scrutiny and consideration.

 

[cenazoic]

Sure, but one must also consider one’s sources.

The above quote, regardless of the politics of the people mentioned, reveals a mind with a quite overt conspiratorial bias, making all of his ideas and conclusions suspect. Some people have written books indicating that LBJ and Jackie O were behind the JFK assassination. Every remotely ‘not technically impossible, but extremely unlikely’ hypothesis does not warrant serious scrutiny.

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.