Warbird Information Exchange

One night a long time ago I heard Johnny Carson say, "The commercial pilot shortage is so bad that just the other day American Airlines called up the Earhart residence to ask if there was any word on Amelia."

I agree with Bill's point on the difficulty in finding such a small island after such a long flight. With one wave looking like the next, it has to be very difficult to trust your time and distant calculations. With that, when you have that much time sitting in the seat it is easy to start second guessing your decisions and your navigator. Being tired and then "lost", can challenge the best of pilots. I think she ran out of gas, never found any land, and went into the ocean. Depending on how hard she hit, they might not of survived. But if they did, they would have to get out of a sinking airplane, find and inflate a raft and then wait in the wide expanse of open water until found. With a flight that was going so wrong, she would of have had to have every thing, start going right.

The Japanese involvment, however possible is not probable. Amelias story is known world wide now. If there was a cover up, when they first picked her up, I don't think it would still be a secret to this day. To many people, ship crews, prison guards, goverment officials and on and on, would have been involved with the cover up. But with those people now in there 80's and 90's, I don't they would elect to just say nothing.

I'd very much agree. I don't have stats, but most record-setting pilots of the periods had accidents. Nancy Bird Walton was unusual in having no accidents - and I'll bet most posters in this thread haven't heard of her. It would be interested to run a table of air-miles to accidents, records to accidents etc. with her contemporaries.

99 gets 1 they went into the water. But the fascination, Nathan, is with the unresolved. The Japanese theory just smells bad as soon as you subject it to any testing at all - I like John Boyle's thoughts too.


I am no expert, but as you asked! Certainly the Japanese felt 'squeezed'. How justified that was may be moot. War was inevitable given their belief in racial superiority and military driven state. Their treatment of their fellow 'beneficiaries' in the Co-prosperity sphere gets them an imperialist hypocrisy award. However British, Australian, Dutch, French and American actions in the Pacific pre-war were not disinterested, and in varying degrees will not be well regarded in history's judgement either.

Earhart was no saint, nor without flaws. I'd rebut the PR mannequin charge given how much she lived to principles that ran against the PR need. Any criticism of her flying or navigation skills which does not note the gender bias and critiques of the time is fundamentally flawed. In the end, she had drive and guts, and put a lot back into aviation for what she got out of it. But like most record-setters of the era, she was almost certain to go on until she didn't come back.

Regards,

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James K

"Switch on the underwater landing lights"
Emilio Largo, Thunderball.

www.VintageAeroWriter.com

Ask any pilot that has actually flown around the Pacific [or any Ocean for that matter] and they will concur that flying into the rising sun looking for an island that small and with every cloud reflection looking like an island with basic navigation was an unfortunate decision...They were lost and probably didn't survive the ditching as Amelia along with being extremely frightened must have been 'knackered' as well...

Whatever her flying abilities were, I admire her guts in doing what she did and wonder if some of her critics have actually held a flying licence themselves. I myself was 'suckered' in flying GA aircraft long distances around the Pacific when that 'island' turned out to be a cloud shadow...

Jeff's book, unlike others, has some research done in Japan, I don't want to give it all away, you should read the book.

Japan was, and may be a closed secretive govt and society, and while the answers might be there, it may be hard to find. And "saving face" is a nice way of saying that lying is the norm.

I wish someone offered a large reward for info from Japanese records now.

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Bill Greenwood
Spitfire N308WK

Here's something to consider, however...in spite of how small Howland Island is, a good navigator can bring you amazingly close. Back when I was waltzing around the Western Pacific in the Skypig, our navigators were still required to take celestial fixes during each flight, even with the Doppler and GPS units they were using. One Nav I flew with really loved the challenge of celestial navigation, and he could bring us amazingly close to the track that his GPS was putting us on. I, however, was lucky to get my position in the right OCEAN when I was learning celestial nav....that's why I just flew the plane.

Fred Noonan was apparently a very good navigator (Pan Am? Can't remember), and if he was able to get the sun-line plotted and even get one more celestial fix for cross-reference, it should have put them right in the ballpark...especially with a Navy coal-fed battlewagon making black smoke as a visual reference.

Not arguing that the island was hard to see, or that with any kind of cloud cover putting shadows on the sea surface making it hard to distinguish one from the other (trust me...try finding the feather of a periscope, or more important, a life-raft or person floating in the water at 200 feet of altitude--it's discouraginly difficult, even in calm water)...just more of a comment that celestial navigation has been around for a LONG time, and it always amazes me how accurate triangulation can be. But one mistake farther up the line translates to bigger mistakes the farther along you go.

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Offer me solutions, offer me alternatives, and I decline......

The first guys to demonstrate the use of celestial navigation for long distance flights, adapting a sextant for use in flight, was the Almirant (at time of death) Gago Coutinho who, with Sacadura Cabral (one of the best portuguese pilots ever) crossed the South Atlantic in 1922. The system invented by Gago Coutinho was the same used aboard the Graff Zeppelin in their world cruise.

just your small "almost nothing to do with it" piece of information.

refs

the voyage: http://honeymooney.com/brazil/coutinho_ ... ummary.htm
the sextant: http://www.mat.uc.pt/~helios/Mestre/Nov ... 61if_2.htm

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rreis

If you want pictures, see rreis@flickr

Perhaps this has been mentioned previously on this thread but they also only had one pair of eyes to search for the island. Noonan was not in the cockpit but rather positioned further back in the plane. They could only exchange messages by passing notes back and forth. Howland was also inaccurately placed on their map by a few miles - not many but enough that even if right on target according to the map the actual location would have been closer to the horizon, which if positioned sunward would have made seeing it very difficult.

The Howland leg of the trip reeks of inadequate preparation and planning. Earhart simply did not dedicate the thoroughness characteristic of Lindbergh. If, as believed by Long, she ran out of gasoline at altitude, she may well not have had the experience to control the aircraft to a smooth ditch landing. This means that they would have had no chance to get out of the aircraft and also that the plane is quite likely not intact on the sea floor, making discovery much more difficult.

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Kevin McCartney

What is the title of the book that Jeff wrote about Amelia?

Thanks,

Bill

Interesting comparison. Had Lindbergh been trying to find the island and had Amelia been trying to find Europe (France), he would probably be dead, and she'd probably have found it. Don't forget she also flew the Atlantic, successfully, one of the 'many' like Lindbergh, after the true pioneers.

I don't know enough of the details to comment on the specifics of the latter stage of the Earhart global flight, but there are a couple of observations to make.

-Most flights prior to that were at risk of mechanical failure, which often masked other competency or skill issues including navigation tools and technique shortfalls. Many pioneers - including Lindbergh on his Atlantic flight - spend a good deal of time 'lost' sometimes due to weather, sometimes other issues.

-Noonan and Earhart had already traversed most of the globe, successfully. They had found their way so far without failing. Any analysis or implications of incompetence have to weigh that in the measure, and look at why, as well as the factor of the island being a 'hard target'. They were a so-far successful team.

-Many / Most successful record flights aimed at a continent or large island, allowing for error. Some of those also failed, because they didn't know if they were left or right of track - see Bertram and Klausmann's Northern Territory problem, and their lucky survival. http://www.raafawa.org.au/wa/museum/junkers/default.htm

-Most pioneering or record flights would be analysed today as foolhardy or with shortfalls of planning or competencies. Because the spotlight has been turned on the Earhart effort due to it's failure, it has the effect of giving it as an exception, rather than a norm. You would be able to flaw many / most other (successful) flights of the period on the same criteria.

-Air navigation was not an established science at the time, and was based on maritime navigation techniques (with obvious elapsed time / speed issues) and early other methods such as D/F. There was a lot more debate as to 'good' techniques and practices, including many that today would be regarded as fundamentally flawed. Watch out for navigation hindsight, which is just a version of "Why didn't they use GPS / Cell-phones". More absurd, certainly, but the same misunderstanding of the options and understanding of the time.

-Earhart didn't aim to get lost and die. Anyone involved in an exploration or pioneering (or major aircraft recovery!) task knows that there has to be a compromise between best tools and techniques for the job and deciding when and where to 'go for it', often dictated by external factors. She chose what she thought the best compromise from the options she believed available, and was better funded and supported than many others of the time. Certainly she could've done better. It's sad that what she thought was adequate was not.

The 'Japanese' or 'spy' accounts make great bedtime stories, but there is no - repeat no credibility to them saying she survived / was captured.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amelia_Ear ... ted_claims

Regards,

_________________
James K

"Switch on the underwater landing lights"
Emilio Largo, Thunderball.

www.VintageAeroWriter.com

My quote from this topic discussed over in the Vintage section


It always seems incredible to me that most of the Earhart hunters seem to ignore one thing. Amelia Earhart herself.
If you read the transcripts of her radio calls she tell you herself where she is - running a course back and forth , low on fuel , can't see any land in sight. To the Naval people monitoring her radio calls , they all agree that it was quite apparent that in the last calls her voice was quite shrill and panicked. SHE knew they were going to ditch. That was a given by all involved.
I doubt very much she landed on an island, an atoll or my personal favorite became a prisoner of the Japanese. Just the wishful thinking of adventurer/ treasure hunters I'm afraid.
Don't get me wrong , I think it would be fantastic if her and Noonan's remains were found or the a/c itself but it's a great big ocean out there and the odds are stacked that they are three miles deep in water.

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...it was a plane adrift beneath the moon moving serenely thru beams like an angel of the night .....fair as a song ........aloof from mortal dreams

Yes, Noonan was in the back and one can only imagine his thoughts at the end...
It was a very small island to find...just Google Earth it.
As for 'inadequate preparation and planning' - this was the '30s and overlooks the fact that this was the first time it had been attempted.
Ironic that in a few years time the Pacific was heaving with long distance flights [although not all of those even with 'adequate preparation and planning' made their destination]

Funny old thing...TIGHAR has popped up again.

Btromblay,

The book I wrote or by Vincent Loomis with Jeffrey Ethel is AMELIA EARHART, THE FINAL STORY.

Did you know Jeff or know of him?

He was a pretty famous warbird pilot and author, and a very nice guy and my friend, sadly lost in an accident.

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Bill Greenwood
Spitfire N308WK

Btromblay,

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Bill Greenwood
Spitfire N308WK

Hi,

I knew of Jeff, with the planes he has flown and the videos that he has made. I have seen several of his books, but I didn't know that he wrote one about Amelia. I never had the pleasure of meeting him, before his passing. We were probaly both at Oshkosh, at the same time, but our paths never crossed.

Thanks for the info,

Bill