TIGHAR
Amelia Earhart Search Forum => Celestial choir => Topic started by: Bruce W Badgrow on August 04, 2014, 02:44:20 PM
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When Amelia Earhart failed to get a radio bearing on the Coast Guard Cutter Itasca, Fred Noonan would have known that his chances of finding Howland Island were about nil. Noonan would have then gone to plan B. When planning a long flight any navigator would have an alternate landing place in mind. There were two groups of islands that Noonan would have considered, the Gilbert Islands to the west and the Phoenix Islands to the south southeast. Because their fuel was getting low, he would most likely have selected the Phoenix Islands which were closer. I believe that Noonan would have selected Gardner Island to fly to. This island was 353 miles distant and it was the nearest island that was bigger then Howland Island. Noonan would have also noted that, because of the position of the sun, he could navigate to this island with a good degree of a accuracy. I believe they found Gardner Island quite easily. Gardner Island was nearly 3 times as big as Howland Island and in 1937 it was mostly covered with tall trees. This would have made the island much more visible from a distance than Howland Island was.
Bruce W Badgrow
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Be careful about "would have" here, Bruce - we can't know that, but in fact you have just fairly summarized what so many of us believe to be a more than fair case of what "might have" happened.
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Personally, I don't think Noonan ever navigated to Gardner Island. I think he was always looking for Howland and stumbled upon Gardner by accident. If it were otherwise he should have known it was Gardner when he saw it but the content of the post-loss radio messages strongly suggests that Earhart did not know the name of the island she was on.
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Personally, I don't think Noonan ever navigated to Gardner Island. I think he was always looking for Howland and stumbled upon Gardner by accident. If it were otherwise he should have known it was Gardner he saw it but the content of the post-loss radio messages strongly suggests that Earhart did not know the name of the island she was on.
I guess I got a bit ambiguous in my reply above, but I tend to think that is how it would (ouch, there's that word again...) have happened myself.
Maybe that's why I've never had a problem with the "you can't find a particular island (Gardner) if you don't know where you are starting from" argument - and to clarify, never had a problem with the possibility of finding Gardner this way (accidentally). Sorry - realized I had once again spoken rather ambiguously.
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Maybe that's why I've never had a problem with the "you can't find a particular island (Gardner) if you don't know where you are starting from" argument.
Now, now, Mr. Neville, sir, you're making things wayyyyyyy more complicated than they need to be. All you have to remember is The Navigator's Golden Rule: "Wherever you go, there you are."
I know, my bad.
LTM, who gets tries not to get annoyed when he loses himself,
Monty Fowler, TIGHAR No. 2189 ECSP
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See above, clarified - never believed being lost would prevent stumbling onto Gardner was my point.
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Way no radio message saying thier heading to a different island? They knew they were in contact with the Itasca - multiple A's.
Ted Campbell
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Way no radio message saying thier heading to a different island? They knew they were in contact with the Itasca - multiple A's.
Ted Campbell
Last call did say "on the line 337 - 157" - which coincides with the early sun-derived LOP, and logical for cutting north-northwest to look for the island, thence south-south-easterly if not found to north (at least as many see it, including myself).
I think we're largely saying that we believe they weren't deliberately headed to another island, but may have found Gardner quite accidentally if the flight did progress to SSE per above.
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Ric...I may be wrong on this...but wasn't Amelia on Howland Island at one time before the world flight! Reason, I ask is I remember a picture of Amelia, Fred, and Paul Mantz standing next to a tree looking into the ocean!
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Ric...I may be wrong on this...but wasn't Amelia on Howland Island at one time before the world flight! Reason, I ask is I remember a picture of Amelia, Fred, and Paul Mantz standing next to a tree looking into the ocean!
Is it this one taken (http://e-archives.lib.purdue.edu/cdm4/item_viewer.php?CISOROOT=/earhart&CISOPTR=334&CISOBOX=1&REC=2) with Putnam? That one was in Miami per the Purdue notation
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Personally, I don't think Noonan ever navigated to Gardner Island. I think he was always looking for Howland and stumbled upon Gardner by accident. If it were otherwise he should have known it was Gardner when he saw it but the content of the post-loss radio messages strongly suggests that Earhart did not know the name of the island she was on.
Searching for Howland along the cited line does not logically preclude also searching also for Gardiner
(actually any Phoenix island) - you can do both (in point of fact Noonan was doing both) at the same time - "I'll take whichever island I find first" and post-loss signals as a basis for theory presupposes evidence not acknowledged as fact, at least not by general consensus. Personally, I find it hard to believe that Noonan didn't recognize that they had come upon a member of the Phoenix chain, even if he couldn't specifically identify it as Gardiner, although my guess is that he could have managed that. So I would anticipate any transmission for help would include, among other things, either the word Gardiner or Phoenix.
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So I would anticipate any transmission for help would include, among other things, either the word Gardiner or Phoenix.
So would I. But none of the post-loss messages, credible or not, contains anything that sounds like Gardner or Phoenix or any other island name.
Like you, I have a hard time believing that Noonan, if functioning, could not figure out where they were. I do not have a hard time believing that Amelia could not figure out where she was. Therefore, it seems to me that Noonan was not functioning. Betty's transcription and the lack of any evidence of Noonan's presence at the Seven Site seem to support that conclusion. I think Fred was in Bad shape early on and didn't survive for long.
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I've had a nagging thought for sometime, so I thought I'd share it and add to the conjecture.
I read Amelia's 'Last Flight' on the Oceania web site and a comment she made in Part 6 (http://www.janesoceania.com/oceania_amelia_earhart5/index.htm), July 1 struck me. She said "We commandeered a truck from the manager of the hotel and with Fred at the wheel, because the native driver was ill with fever, we set out along a dirt road."
These days we know that door knobs, grocery carts, Steering wheels and a variety of surfaces can be sources of colds, flu and other infections.
As a contributing factor if Fred contracted a serious illness from the steering wheel of the commandeered truck, couple that with injuries suffered in the landing, the extreme temperatures and the stress of survival it's no wonder he was behaving badly after a couple of days. Whether or not he was sick enough to have his navigational skills affected during the flight would only be a guess.
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Interesting thought, Steve. It's a world of variables due to the simplest things, and the flight from Lae to Howland may as well have been a moonshot in terms of needing heads-up humans aboard. Think of the trouble NASA went to to avoid problems like that with astronauts (and it didn't always work, even then - Apollo 13 included a very ill crew-member, not 'causal', but certainly adding risk to the 3 member crew).
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Way no radio message saying thier heading to a different island? They knew they were in contact with the Itasca - multiple A's.
Ted Campbell
Yes, if only there had been a couple more in-flight radio messages which included "continuing on the line 157" with ever-weakening signals than the last known transmission, the Niku hypothesis would not have so many detractors. In fact, Earhart and Noonan might have been rescued with a much more concerted search effort in the Phoenix group. I can only speculate why such signals were not sent, or received as the case may be ... I don't know.
That notwithstanding, my inclination is to believe Noonan knew it was Gardner when they found it.
With a star fix at some time before sunrise, and the LOP established at sunrise, I believe Noonan had a very good idea where they were and the course, time and distance required to reach Howland. Earhart's ability to hold that course while she fiddled with the radio for the balance of the flight to the Howland area would be critical to arrive on station, and I believe her course discipline suffered under these conditions (what the hell ... we will have Itasca to help guide us in...) along with the fatigue factor associated with such a long flight. They missed by a little, they knew they were close, but they simply could not see Howland when they arrived in the area and searched along their LOP, first to the NNW, then to the SSE. And this is a contingency I believe Noonan considered and had planned for prior to arriving in the area.
So I believe Plan B was enacted when "bingo" fuel was reached after searching along the LOP near Howland. This plan was to fly a SSE heading to the Phoenix Islands, knowing Baker was en route along that heading and that if they happened upon Baker, it would be a relatively easy navigational turnaround to get back to Howland with fuel to spare for another brief search. But they did not see Baker (I assume due to the same challenges in surface visibility as at Howland), and continued until they did see a much larger Gardner in the distance, more or less where Noonan expected it to be.
The post-loss radio signals deemed credible are either brief, or incomplete, or both. Betty herself acknowledges she didn't start writing down what she was hearing for some time after she was hearing it, and even then she confirmed she did not record every word she heard. So it is entirely plausible, if not likely, that Earhart did mention Gardner and/or Phoenix, and it simply was not heard or recorded, or both.
As to why more in-flight signals were not heard after Plan B went in to effect, there are dozens of speculative possibilities. Maybe Amelia became exasperated at the onset of Plan B and while abandoning the Howland area, she switched to incorrect frequencies, did not double-check frequency? or began a debate with Noonan about the merits of Plan B as they began their flight away from Howland and was hoping they would soon see Baker, at which point she would broadcast again? Then not seeing Baker, she became even more exasperated and questioned Noonan about their navigational conundrum before trying to broadcast again, then saw an island in the distance, flew towards it ... oops, not an island ... then finally saw Gardner and made a pre-landing broadcast that was not picked up? or she saw fuel was extremely low so she prioritized the identification of a landing site and execution of the landing sequence, and never made a pre-landing broadcast? I don't know.
But I do believe Noonan had a Plan B, that plan involved the Phoenix Islands, and he made Amelia follow it to the letter.
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Its interesting that you mention the term"bingo fuel." Its a term that very common today in commercial aviation. I work as a dispatcher and do divert fuel or "bingo fuel" calculations pretty much on a daily basis. This kind of made me sit back and think how much the new generations of pilots (and their dispatchers!) take for granted.
Nowadays when we plan flights with "plan B" in mind. Not just, "fly aimlessly until we find something that resembles a runway" but we list it out, brief on and and say "If we cant get into East Jesus, we are going to fly direct to Nowheresville. It will take about this much gas. We should also carry our standard reserve, plus enough to make a few passes. My great uncle flew in WW1 and WW2. I only met him a couple of times when I was still pretty young but my Great Grandfather recounted some of the stories that he told about flying in the days before modern fuel planning. Sure, there was fuel planning but NOT to the extent that we have today. Today we have fuel indications that tell us, right down to the drop, how much fuel we have on board. We have up to the minute weather updates, ATC resources on every corner of the earth, and ground support at our beck and call.
So I offer a modern dispatchers take on this. (Please save the questions and tomato throwing until afterwards!)
In my line of work, we are responsible for every flight from the moment it blocks out to the time it blocks in. The pilots send position reports, noting their location and fuel on board and we recalculate their fuel numbers. If the route or altitude needs to change for whatever reason, again we are hacking away at a computer to update it again. If something happens and they cant get into their destination, we are helping our pilots find the best place to land within the scope of their fuel...be it their filed alternate or somewhere more favorable. We are there to do these calculations so the pilot can concentrate on the vital task of flying the airplane. Amelia didnt have a "dispatcher" per se.
It has been loosely reported that Amelias "Plan B" was to head south towards the Phoenix Islands, but I have to wonder if this was a hard and fast plan or if it was something said casually. Sometimes, in our predeparture pow-wow, the Captain and I will have a discussion as to whether or not we should carry extra fuel for an alternate. Sometimes we will come to a "gentemens agreement"....usually to the tune of "Well, we TECHNICALLY arent requiring but its looking a little sketchy... buuut... we would als have to leave X many passengers behind if we carry an alternate. So lets do this: If things start to go tango uniform enroute, we'll drop into X station." Something tells me her plan B, if she had one, probably went something like that.
Ive heard all of the fuel numbers and all I can gather is that she was carrying fuel to get her to her destination plus reserve. It would seem that if she intended to use the Phoenix group as her alternate she would have ensured that she would have enough to GET to the Phoenix group....meaning that when she was filling her airplane, she would have had to have, at the very least, allotted X amount of gas to get there. Whats the point of having a "plan B" if youre just going to run out of fuel halfway there and end up in the drink? If this were the case, one would think we would see more documentation about it. I dont think Amelia ever believed that she wouldnt reach Howland. We have personal recounts that she was particularly arrogant in that sense. I also believed that she suffered from a debilitating condition that I see in many of my crews who are on the last leg of a 4 day pairing faced with unexpected bad weather or some other fast arising circumstance.....a serious case of "GetHome-itis." We have pilots who could fly a bathtub, but something about suddenly getting put into unexpected airborne holding on their "go-home" leg, makes some pilots want to push it even if the situation is hopeless. For example, an airport fogs in at 1 am and now its below mins. Its highly unlikely its going to improve in the 20 minutes of fuel you have to hold with before you HAVE to divert....but pilots with GetHome-itis will hold down to the last minutes and often times end up cutting into their reserve getting to their alternate. Mind you, I was a commuter for 6 years and have suffered from this condition as well. Its like having a monkey on your back. All you want is to walk in your front door, grab a beer (or pop or milk or whatever) from your icebox and be HOME.
Moving on. I dont think she specifically had Gardner in mind when she took off for Howland. Nor did Noonan. In her mind, there was no other option but Howland. I just dont see a preplanned "bingo fuel.".
What I DO see is that she had a very experienced navigator. While he may not have known the name of the island, he certainly had the most up-to-date charts attainable for the time and surely would have started sniffing out somewhere ANYWHERE they could reach. He starts doing the math. While Amelia is still holding out hope in a deteriorating situation, perhaps her navigator was plotting out distances. At some point, perhaps he finally convinced her that the circling thing was doing nothing but wasting gas, time and energy. Showed her the calculations and helped her work out the fuel to determine if it was possible. I dont think it was a " holding down to divert fuel" in this case rather more of an "Airport closed on final....find a peice of pavement (or in this case, coral) and land on it."
Maybe Noonan took on the role of an early form of dispatch. :P
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Great post Krystal.
I am informed by World War 2 military aviation, especially carrier aviation, and so use the term "bingo fuel" accordingly. While I believe you are absolutely correct that fuel measurement and planning was not as exact and extensive then as it is today, I can assure you that for carrier operations, it was the primary consideration in planning flight operations. One can only appreciate the agonizing decision Admiral Spruance faced after locating the Japanese carriers at Midway, recognizing that launching his planes at maximum fuel range (for normal cruising flight) meant ordering the deaths of many of his pilots and gunners, and the losses of many, if not all, of his extremely valuable planes simply due to limited fuel range.
Even land-based aircraft learned this lesson early in the war ... Japanese fighter escorts in the long flight from Rabaul to Guadalcanal learned how critical fuel conservation was to their survival, and their combat tactics evolved accordingly. The American ground-based aircraft at Guadalacanal learned these same lessons towards the end of the campaign, as the Allies established their toehold in the Solomons.
As neither Earhart nor Noonan was a military aviator and were making their flight prior to the valuable aviation lessons learned in World War 2, it is unlikely that either of them used the term "bingo fuel" nor even incorporated it in their psychologies as a rigorously urgent concept to the degree a naval aviator might. I do agree Earhart was arrogant to some degree, and I agree she fully believed she would find Howland. I doubt Earhart participated in Noonan's Plan B beyond sharing fuel calculations and a casual discussion of the "what ifs".
But I certainly believe Noonan had a Plan B.
Noonan had the experience of navigating across the Pacific for PanAm, so he knew and understood the unique challenges of flight in that region. He was also an officer in the Merchant Marine during World War I with the threat of u-boat torpedo attacks ever present (he was supposed to be on one boat, S/S Cairnhill, which was torpedoed and sank with all hands lost, as well as Noonan's passport and personal belongings!). I do not believe Noonan shared Earhart's posited arrogance when it came to contingencies over vast stretches of ocean.
And so while he might not have known Gardner by name, I believe he knew Baker by name, and knew Baker was to the SSE of Howland, and considered it as a possible 'locator' prior to the flight. I believe Noonan *must* have considered the possibility of failing to find Howland. And in so doing, he would have recognized that there were two alternatives if they failed to find Howland after cruising the LOP for a period of time:
1) doubling back to the WSW towards Beru Island;
2) continuing on the LOP to the SSE in hopes of finding either Howland or Baker.
Choosing between those alternatives would be determined by the fuel consideration ... Beru was certainly near (if not beyond) the extreme end of their fuel range given a search period in the Howland vicinity. Alternative #2 offers the advantage of including 2 possible islands to spot well within fuel range ... this is the critical contingency factor in my view.
So then Noonan considers the next "what-if" ... what if we don't see Baker? He continues the SSE course line to ... the Phoenix Islands. He reviews his fuel calculation, and draws an 'X' near Gardner. Between Baker and that 'X', he sees possible markers in the form of coral atolls on his chart, and then MacKean. Not inviting prospects, but better than a ditch at sea near Howland. He calculates fuel again to determine when they would need to depart the Howland area to reach 'X'. That is Plan B ... the worst case scenario, with the "bingo fuel" time established only in Noonan's mind as a dark and remote consideration. "If we don't see Howland, surely we'll see Baker," he says to himself in a nervous, self-comforting tone.
So although I don't think Earhart had Gardner in mind when they took off for Howland, I think Noonan certainly had Baker in mind, and thus had Gardner in mind to the extent that the Phoenix Islands represented, literally, the end of the line on the 157 heading.
Whether he shared specifics of Plan B beyond Baker with Earhart prior to their flight is endlessly debatable, but I think once their search time for Howland began to approach the time Noonan had established as "bingo", he would have felt compelled to share the details of the considerations that went in to Plan B with her. And if that is the way it happened, I can only imagine Amelia's change in mindset as that discussion progressed.
This is not to say I do not preclude the possibility that your version of events, i.e. Noonan as in-flight "dispatch" once panic begins to set in near Howland, is the correct one. It's just difficult for me to accept that a Navigator as experienced as Noonan would fail to have a Plan B, and by definition, the primary consideration for any Plan B in aviation is fuel.
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Good point.
Could you elaborate on Noonan having a calculated "bingo" in mind? Are we speculating that he would have been monitoring the fuel in flight or that he took their current fuel situation and came up with his own? While Im sure Noonan was a highly skilled navigator, I have to wonder how much training he had in fuel planning. He had limited flight training. It seems that Earhart would have had a much better understanding of how her airplane burned fuel so wouldnt it, in theory, be Earhart who calculated the bingo? Fred may have had the plan B in his head, but it would have been more likely that Earhart came up with the "divert fuel."
"Hey Amelia, look at this. If we fly south on the LOP, we should see Baker. Do you think we have the gas for it?"
"Im pretty sure we do."
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"Ok, Freddie. We should have seen Baker by now. Got any other ideas?"
"Well, if we keep flying south we should hit the Phoenix group. Lots of places to land there."
"Its going to be pushing it but I think we can do it."
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"Hey look! An Island!
*Cue dramatic music as she comes in for a landing*
-Krystal "Dispatch Betty" McGinty
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My speculation is that he calculated the "bingo" before they ever departed Lae, with the information on the Electra's fuel consumption they had accumulated to date. Earhart, as a pilot, may have had a better understanding of how the Electra burned fuel, but I doubt Noonan neglected this critical area of flight planning, and I presume he consulted her regularly both on the ground and in flight to tap her evolving knowledge. That knowledge would be an important part of the Plan B process that an experienced, disciplined navigator employed prior to every leg of every flight.
I do not speculate as to how they monitored or calculated fuel in-flight on that leg to Howland ... my hunch is that Amelia's posited arrogance biased her to persisting in finding Howland even if that meant going beyond a pre-calculated "bingo" by a few or several minutes, while Noonan's discipline as a navigator biased him to adhering strictly to the Plan B that I believe he devised before they departed Lae. If conflict emerged here as the search for Howland became increasingly fruitless and fuel was running ever lower, it is certainly possible that they would do whatever possible to confirm their existing fuel levels, insofar as this is even possible to achieve to a high degree of confidence (in-dash fuel gauges were known to be notoriously inaccurate) to stretch their time in the Howland vicinity as long as possible.
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My question is not so much "Did Fred have a backup plan" but more "Did he have a hand in the fuel planning for said backup?" I don't doubt he had some kind of "contingency plan" but was he going over the fuel at regular intervals throughout the flight and making those calculations himself, or was Amelia doing it? We they working it out together. Was Noonan peering over her shoulder and secretly making plans to tie her up and take over the plane if she didn't listen to him about bugging out? How much would he have known about how to do those calculations? We see some writing about his time flying with Pan Am but was he solely responsible for navigation or did he perform other pilot-not-flying duties such as monitoring fuel consumption?
Maybe he mentioned his backup plan to her on the ground and THAT is where the rumors about the Phoenix Group alternate came up. And if he did mention it, do you think she listened?
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I think the answer to your question is yes, he had a role in "fuel planning". After all, you cannot execute a contingency plan if you do not have the available fuel. And the contingency plan most certainly required input from the navigator. So it becomes a circular part of the process with just two people on board the aircraft.
Whether or not you believe Gene Vidal's hearsay about Amelia's plan in case they couldn't find Howland, specifically that they would fly a reciprocal to the Gilberts, they must have discussed the possibility of not finding Howland in the flight planning stages before departing Oakland. If not then, they must have discussed it at some point between Oakland and the departure from Lae. How could they not have discussed the contingencies around the singularly most difficult navigational challenge in the history of human aviation to that point?
If Fred heard Amelia say, "in that case, we'll turn around and fly back to the Gilberts", he very likely took out his charts, plotted that course, and performed some calculations. The question underpinning those calculations is: do we have the fuel for this?
That's not just a simple question for an experienced navigator, it is a particularly burning question, because this leg of the around-the-world flight stands out from all the rest. Beyond the simple hazards of flying and the unpredictability of weather, this leg is the only one without a suitable alternative to the primary objective for landing the plane even if conditions en route are perfect.
To me, from the moment that question entered his mind, it matters not when and where he discussed it with Amelia or anyone else involved in the flight planning for that matter. It was a critical consideration, one he could not have ignored as the flight's navigator.
Maybe he kept the question to himself initially and simply inserted himself into an active role monitoring and calculating the Electra's fuel consumption as the flight proceeded east from Oakland, then broached the subject of Plan B fuel considerations with Amelia in Lae.
Or maybe he pulled her aside during the planning phase in May as the aircraft was being repaired, asked her to show him her calculations, and then threw the Baker/Phoenix/157 line out as an alternative to a Gilberts reciprocal.
I don't know. But the uniqueness of that leg of the trip made fuel consumption the primary consideration in navigating for Plan B.
"Amelia, if the Gilberts is your Plan B, we should consider flying along the LOP to the SSE instead. If we find Baker, we will know how to return precisely to Howland and have plenty of fuel to find it and land there with a narrowed search area. But if we don't find Baker as we fly SSE, we will likely encounter one of these islands [MacKean and/or Gardner] in the Phoenix Group, which offer similar prospects for ending our flight as the Gilberts ... undesirable, to say the least. Using the only other identifiable landmark, Baker Island, in the vicinity of Howland in our Plan B is extremely prudent given the fuel considerations we face."
How could she not listen to that? :-\
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How could she not listen to that? :-\
She didn't listen to the radio experts. :-\
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How could she not listen to that? :-\
She didn't listen to the radio experts. :-\
True. But the radio experts weren't on board with skin in the game, either.
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You have to wonder what was going through his head when the radio became hopeless.
There is so little published about Noonan's thoughts through this entire ordeal. Or perhaps it just seems that way because of the overwhelming number of Earharts documents that have been published. His letters home were simple, to the point, and a little dry. It appears he didn't discuss much about the trip, at least in the technical sense. Earharts letters could be overly descriptive and full of emotion and she wasn't shy about sharing the details. You have to wonder if he kept any kind of journal or log that would have revealed his true feelings, thoughts, and opinions of the trip, including any misgivings. I think by the time they departed for Howland, Earhart was just so ready to get the H back to California that she may have been overlooking some thing. Noonan seems like he was probably the quiet voice of reason. It may have gone in one ear and out the other but I imagine he was used to that. So perhaps he kept that Plan B in the back pocket just in case. He knew how much fuel they had on board and perhaps roughly how much they were supposed to have when they landed and kept that in mind. He knew that if they got lost, she would have no choice but to pay attention.
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Its interesting that you mention the term"bingo fuel." Its a term that very common today in commercial aviation. I work as a dispatcher and do divert fuel or "bingo fuel" calculations pretty much on a daily basis.
In all of my years as both a military and civilian pilot, I never heard the term "bingo fuel" used anywhere except during combat operations of the military. Here is a link to what the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (http://www.faasafety.gov/SPANS/noticeView.aspx?nid=3964) has to say about the use of the term.
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Oh I understand where the term came from. This is the third airline for which Ive had the pleasure of dispatching. We have used the phraseology "bingo fuel" in all of them.
I dont particularly care for it, personally. In my opinion its too vague. You will never hear me use the phrase "bingo fuel, x.x" in any ACARS or ARINC communication. I word it as "Divert to KABC at x.x lbs of fuel." When Im dealing with flights in the air, I am direct and to the point. "At THIS amount of fuel, GO HERE."
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I did not introduce the slang "bingo fuel" in this thread to suggest FN/AE used that terminology, nor to suggest that it was common terminology at the time amongst anyone other than U.S. carrier pilots, nor to suggest that we use it here as standard lexicon when discussing contingency planning for the final leg of this tragic flight.
I used it because it is a very convenient (and specific) term, even if just military aviator slang, to use to explain a different conceptual approach to Noonan's possible contingency planning than that put forth by the LaPook hypothesis (i.e. box search Howland) or the Tighar hypothesis (NNW on LOP, then SSE on LOP to Howland), which in fact allows for either (or even both) of those scenarios by starting from the end point: running out of fuel.
If the contingency originally considered was a ditch at Beru Island (closest of the Gilberts) per Gene Vidal's hearsay evidence of Amelia's comments, then Noonan was compelled to consider alternatives because the corresponding equation, max fuel range = ditch at Beru + reaching Howland vicinity with no search time, was not very inviting.
Alternative A = LaPook. Box search for Howland until fuel runs out
Alternative B = Tighar. Reach LOP, then NNW for ???, then SSE until fuel runs out
The "bingo fuel" concept simply constructs the contingency in reverse. Differences in assumptions around max fuel range among the various theorists notwithstanding, what is the most distant landfall achieveable that allows for at least some incremental search time in the Howland vicinity (as opposed to the zero search option offered by the Gilberts)? Manra, in the Phoenix Islands, offers only a slightly better prospect than Beru. The Gardner-Canton line, on the other hand, offers some time on station near Howland. Gardner's a touch closer than Canton. And Gardner has the advantage of being very close to the Howland-Baker line, with McKean and Winslow Reef also in the vicinity as possible "catcher's mitt" markers.
I draw my "X" at Gardner. "Bingo fuel" is the time to depart the Howland vicinity on a heading that approximates the LOP to the SSE to burn my last drops of fuel upon reaching "X". Whether the time between arrival to the Howland vicinity and "bingo fuel" is spent in a box search or cruising the LOP to the NNW and back again, or both, is irrelevant. The point of the "bingo fuel" exercise is to demonstrate that this contingency allows for the same possible outcome as an immediate return to the Gilberts but with three distinct advantages:
1) Time to search in the Howland vicinity.
2) Potential to spot Baker and thus navigate to Howland from Baker.
3) Potential to spot Winslow Reef, McKean or Gardner itself en route to Gardner.
I fully apprciate the criticisms of this approach. i.e. "you can't navigate from an unknown location..." and "a fuel calculation to reach X from Howland requires that you be at Howland...", and also of course the possibility that they didn't have enough fuel to reach Gardner in the first place. But if you're lost, something has gone wrong, and your contingency plan goes in to effect. The margin for error en route to Howland is greater to the North-South than it is for East-West, so if you missed the Howland-Baker "catcher's mitt" on either side (or right in between), flying SSE to 'X' after "bingo" is reached searching (whether box search or otherwise) offers the highest probability solution to the predicament.
(Apologies for duplicating many of the discussion points from the other navigation threads here ... I have read them all, including Gary's posts on his site, but wanted to offer my perspective).
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The LOP does not seem to have been of 'Baker and the Phoenix group' but rather a logical device for finding Howland. We've heard a lot about search patterns - boxes and offsets, etc., but not one shred of radio traffic supports a 'box', but 'LOP 157-337' rings clear as a bell, and we know what it would relate to: it would have passed right through Howland on any reasonable plot Noonan would have been working on.
That Gardner may have been found in lieu of Howland suggests to me that an accident of navigation happened along the way - some will howl, but my belief is that was a likely outcome and because the flight somehow got tragically further south on it's approach to the LOP / what was thought to be Howland, than intended. They had to fly all that night with a lot of blindness if I understand weather and what Earhart had to say; I don't know that they had any great means of tracking for drift, either. In those conditions, that kind of navigation - dead reckoning, can easily put you off several percent - maybe 10 or 15% if winds are bad enough. Maybe Noonan thought he had that pegged and over-compensated, not realizing an error; maybe he had no way of knowing... maybe, maybe, maybe - point being, 'unkowns'. It is not hard to think of the flight emerging at what would be an extension of the LOP (or what they thought was on it) many miles south (I've left off the specific arguments of winds, etc. here for now).
"On the line 157 - 337" at the end of known things about Earhart doesn't sound much like "turning back to the Gilberts", or "about to start a box search" to me - it sounds much more like "we've flown up and down the line and can't see it", if I had to guess.
So what next?
Noonan had to have known something of fuel state - it is fundamental to any notion of navigation. As such, he'd of known that the Gilberts were a bridge too far, in all likelihood. I don't buy that he was ignorant of the Phoenix group, and while perhaps not equipped with specifics, I doubt he'd of missed that at least there was scattered land down there within 300 or so miles - as opposed to flying off to the NNW. Not much of a catcher's mitt, but better than tying to make it to Siberia - and logically may have thought they'd hit Howland yet, just further south than thought.
But what of Earhart's own statement about turning back as a contingency? I suspect Noonan let Earhart go on as she would, but did his own thinking about the details. As Krystal pointed out, he may have known she'd listen if she had to - but probably not so much before she had to. I tend to suspect an eventual Phoenix-direction was therefore a) accidental to some extent, and b) realized by Noonan as a safer error than some others -
And the rest would be pure luck, if they hit Gardner like many of us think they did. It would not be hard to spot from some distance, as opposed to a bitty island like Howland. Last we knew, they were on a 'track' (direction not known, admittedly) that could get them there, too.
That leaves some variables in some of our minds - like has been suggested, Noonan might have gotten a moon shot in the daylight and realized he was too far south (http://tighar.org/smf/index.php/topic,1348.0.html). I've argued that - and maybe he did - and maybe it came too late: fuel might have overruled - go for broke, we'll never hit Howland but may just find a Phoenix group island.
Great mystery, isn't it?
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New member, first-time post (marine celestial navigator). After reading Long, Gillespie and King, here's my present assessment.
Since AE and FN never spotted Howland, nor did the Itasca spot them, it must be assumed that either Noonan's advanced sun sight LOP or his DR (or a combination) were significantly in error. If the assumed advanced 157-337 LOP was good, this would mean that the DR was off by probably 40 miles or more (standard maximum DR error of 10% for air navigation would have been 222 NM). Given how far he was off on the Dakar landfall after crossing the Atlantic, this seems entirely possible.
If the assumed advanced LOP was not good (+/- 10nm errors not uncommon, I am told, in aviation celestial) then, the DR may have been relatively good in terms of course, but they would have turned short or long of the line passing through Howland. Most likely they would have turned short since the prevailing winds were against them and stronger than they apparently assumed.
Thus in the former case they may have been on (or close to) the line passing through Howland, but because of DR errors have been so far to the south of their intended track that when they ultimately turned on the line to search for Howland they were already south of Baker, which would explain why they saw neither island. In the second case (errors in the advanced LOP) they might have turned south 20 or more miles short of the line passing through Howland and Baker even though their track toward Howland was good. Without RDF bearings they could not know.
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Welcome, Steve, great post.
As a marine celestial navigator you are well-qualified of course. What you have shared is very much what I have believed may have happened in my less qualified view.
Your point about a combination of errors, that is with regard to the line of position and DR effort, makes a great deal of sense to me. Had the flight turned onto what was believed to be the line of position too soon, Noonan may have set the flight up to find Gardner quite unwittingly. Secondly, if too far south as you describe, Howland and Baker could easily have been missed during any excursion to the north to find Howland along the believed line of position. This too would put the flight in a better place to run across Gardner during further flight southward.
I have seen many arguments both ways, but do believe that because the Phoenix group does offer some better chance of landfall than would further travel toward the Northwest, that the final exploratory leg along the line of position most likely would have been to the southeast.
My suspicion is that The flight simply and accidentally found itself within site of Gardner island within an hour or so of Earhart's last confirmed call. I believe subsequent calls that may have been made simply were not heard, tragically, due to some problem with her day time frequency.
Of course this view is disputed by some. One argument against it is "you can't navigate to Gardner if you don't kmow where you are in the first place" - and I agree, hence the navigational accident as described. Another is that the Phoenix group is so scattered as to be useless as a 'catcher's mitt' - and I agree somewhat as I believe that the idea may have been secondary: some scattered lands are better than none, so why not use that at least slim possibility in one's favor when calculating the final direction for land or bust? It should beat knowing that no lands will be found if one has erred to the north.
What amazes me is how certain some are as to how wrong this all has to be, and that the flight could only have ended in the open sea. Maybe - but I have severe doubts about that for the same reason Friedell (Capt of the USS Colorado) did - a land plane navigitor should be expected to think in terms of finding alternate land, not fuel exhaustion over open water.
I suppose like so many things about this mystery, however, many are guided more by their particular fixations than by points such as you have made so well. Thanks for sharing such a well qualified view of the Earhart-Noonan navigational conundrum.
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Thanks, Jeff.
I am still agnostic on the whole subject, but my problem with the "search, ditch, drown" theory is that if they had ditched within 100 miles of Howland why did no one on Howland, Baker or the Itasca hear a Mayday? Even though it was after sunrise the propagation was apparently good enough for AE to have been heard 5by7 or something like that after 8am. Despite AE's poor radio skills I cannot imagine that she should would not have transmitted some kind of Mayday or distress call when she knew she was out of fuel or close to it. It is just inconceivable to me that she would not have wanted rescuers to know she was going down.
On the other hand, if she was more than 200 miles away when she made her last in-air transmission, it is conceivable (based on all her strength reports) that the daytime propagation conditions would have been such that a ditch or emergency landing transmission might have gone unheard. As a maritime mobile ham radio operator I rarely bothered to make calls from early morning until mid-afternoon when some of the early nets came up on 15 meters (22khz), and that with a current, state-of-the-art radio.
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I can understand agnostic in this and it's not a bad place to be, actually.
Good stuff, thanks!
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I can understand agnostic in this and it's not a bad place to be, actually.
Yes, a nice safe place to be.
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I can understand agnostic in this and it's not a bad place to be, actually.
Yes, a nice safe place to be.
Not very exciting, however. I thought that might bring you out... ;D
That said, I'll take the honest thought of an agnostic like Van Slyke - and we've at least piqued him, huh?
And you have to admit, it beats Daffy Duck screaming and spitting at us saying "yer WRONG, WRONG, you hear me? WRONG! Woo-hoo!"
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"I will teach you how to escape death.
There is a raven in the eastern sea which is called Yitai (dull head). This dull head cannot fly very high and seems very stupid. It hops only a short distance and nestles close with others of its kind. In going forward it dare not lead, and in going back it dare not lag behind. At the time of feeding it takes what is left over by the other birds. Therefore, the ranks of this bird are never depleted and nobody can do them any harm. A tree with a straight trunk is the first to be chopped down. A well with sweet water is the first to be drawn dry."
---Taikung Jen, in a conversation with Confucius
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A poignant reminder of how tepid safety can be.
Nor can we wish a thing into being. We must labor for it - as we do. I preach to the choir, of course.
The agnostic may serve to remind us that we'd not know of Ahab had he rested, and that there can be no remarkable story without doubt.
This monster will be reached. Those who are safe will have their reward, as will those who risked all.
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I can understand agnostic in this and it's not a bad place to be, actually.
Yes, a nice safe place to be.
and we've at least piqued him, huh?
Piqued enough to be at Niku this summer
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Well, "The Agnostic" has just returned from Nikumaroro.
One bit of information that might be of interest to the Choir...I recall someone mentioning earlier in this thread something about Niku probably being visible at something like 8 to 10 miles or thereabouts.
As we approached Niku on a course of 060 true from Funufuti Atoll in the early afternoon I went up on the Sky Bridge of the Fiji Princess and Niku was already easily visible at 18 statute miles out (my Garmin bike GPS does not offer nautical miles as an option). There were others already on the Sky Bridge that had been watching it for some time, so I am guessing that it was visible at 20 statute miles.
At 1,000 feet above sea level I would think it might have been visible at perhaps double that distance.
FWIW
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One bit of information that might be of interest to the Choir...I recall someone mentioning earlier in this thread something about Niku probably being visible at something like 8 to 10 miles or thereabouts.
The issue is not sighting Nikumaroro, but Howland Island.
Niku has highlands, trees that can grow to 60' tall, and a beautiful blue lagoon.
Howland is just barely above sea-level and was and is covered in scrub.
Niku is bigger than Howland.
The picture below is from the same eye-height for the two islands.
From "The Sight Earhart Sought" (http://articles.courant.com/1997-05-20/news/9705200146_1_howland-island-linda-finch-lockheed-electra-10e):
With binoculars, the island was visible from 25 milesMonday. Without them, the sand could have been mistaken for a cloud. Visibility was much better at 3,000 feet.Albatross pilot Reid Dennis, a San Francisco businessman and amateur aviation historian, said he thought the results of the experiment were inconclusive. There is no way to mimic the exact conditions in which Earhart flew, he said.
``We could not have asked for nicer conditions, and we could have expected a lot worse,'' he said.
The Electra and the Albatross arrived over Howland about 12:45 p.m. local time, two- thirds of the way through an eight-hour flight from Tarawa island to Kanton island. Both are part of the nation of Kiribati.
Earhart intended to refuel on Howland after a grueling 20-hour flight from Lae, New Guinea. She then planned to take off for Honolulu, and to fly from there to Oakland.
On Monday, waves of aquamarine water lapped gently at the reef that fringes Howland.
``It's a damn small island. It's a postage stamp,'' Dennis said, marveling at how Earhart could ever have expected to find Howland before modern satellite navigation systems became common on even the smallest planes.
Finch agreed, but said Earhart had no alternatives because there were few Pacific runways in the '30s.
As Finch approached Howland, she, too, realized how fortunate she was to be able to find the island. It was right in front of the Electra when Finch dipped out of the clouds.
The Niku hypothesis does not depend on how close AE and FN came to Howland. If they had seen it, we wouldn't be here today. That Niku is easier to spot, all things being equal, is a fairly innocuous observation.
Ah--it was Ann Peligrino in 1967 who had trouble finding Howland:
From Ric, Wed, 25 Sep 2002 (http://tighar.org/Projects/Earhart/Archives/Forum/Forum_Archives/200209.txt):
Pellegreno and the three men with her made an effort to arrive in the Howland area at the same time of day as Earhart. They actually hit the advanced LOP (with an intentional 45 mile offset to the NW) at 1855Z or 0725 Itasca Time and spotted the island about an hour later (after much difficulty and almost giving up) at an estimated 10 to 12 miles.
From "Pellegreno, Ann Holtgren": (http://searchforamelia.org/prior-work-pellegreno)
Near Howland Island, as Pellegreno was flying on the Line of Position heading 157 degrees at 1905 GMT (p160), a squall appeared over where Howland Island should be. The flight adjusted course slightly to avoid the squall, but continued to pursue visual acquisition of the island.
With pilot Pellegreno flying, and two dedicated observers (one in the cockpit right seat and one in the cabin), Howland Island could not be found until approximately 1957 GMT, when the person in the cabin spotted what he thought was land. They had less than 20 minutes remaining fuel on station to devote to the search for the Island, and as Pellegreno later said, “we nearly missed it.” This, after searching for nearly an hour.
They were approximately 10-12 miles [units not specified] north of Howland Island at the moment they visually acquired the island.
Pelllegreno’s account of her thoughts and feelings upon arriving and not seeing Howland, then conducting a protracted search with limited fuel resources, is extremely interesting as a human factors and operational comparison to what may have occurred on AE’s mission. Pellegreno writes a compelling narrative here, one that can not help but evoke a sense of urgency, desperation, and elevated tension.
Pellegreno’s flight had the advantage of better navigation equipment, a third set of human eyes, a nearby ship providing good DF bearings, and the luxury of having departed Nauru Island, with a Canton Island destination. With all of these advantages, they nearly missed visually acquiring Howland Island.
This account demonstrates the great challenge attempted by Amelia and Fred, and provides a good assessment of the difficulty in visually acquiring tiny Howland Island.
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In navy aviation the rule of thumb we used for visual line of sight (in nautical miles) was 1.05 * square root of aircraft altitude in feet. For instance at 400 ft. altitude (not a bad altitude for search and rescue) visual line of sight would be 20 NM. If the target is much higher than sea level a better rule of thumb was 1.23 * (SQRT aircraft altitude + SQRT target altitude).
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One bit of information that might be of interest to the Choir...I recall someone mentioning earlier in this thread something about Niku probably being visible at something like 8 to 10 miles or thereabouts.
The issue is not sighting Nikumaroro, but Howland Island.
One of the objections against Nikumaroro theory was, that Earhart and Noonan could hardly find it simply by following the Line Of Position. The bigger is the distance from which Nikumaroro is visible, the bigger are odds of seeing it flying south on LOP. In other words - better visibility of Nikumaroro supports the theory of AE+FN found it and landed there.
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In navy aviation the rule of thumb we used for visual line of sight (in nautical miles) was 1.05 * square root of aircraft altitude in feet. For instance at 400 ft. altitude (not a bad altitude for search and rescue) visual line of sight would be 20 NM. If the target is much higher than sea level a better rule of thumb was 1.23 * (SQRT aircraft altitude + SQRT target altitude).
That seems to be an accurate rule for over water flying. Flying over the Gulf of Mexico on a CAVU, clear and vis unlimited, day at 500 ft, a 90 ft tall Penrod Drilling Rig could be seen at about 30 NM.
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One bit of information that might be of interest to the Choir...I recall someone mentioning earlier in this thread something about Niku probably being visible at something like 8 to 10 miles or thereabouts.
The issue is not sighting Nikumaroro, but Howland Island.
Sorry, I seemed to have hit a nerve. I was not attempting to say that finding Howland was not the issue. I was only trying to offer some ground truth about the visibility of Niku, which obviously, for the reasons you stated, would be much easier to spot than Howland.
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Steve: Why did no one hear a mayday from Earhart?
Why did no one in the vicinity of Howland/Itaska hear anything from Earhart after she switched frequencies from 3105 fo 6210?
Presumably (I have read somewhere on the forum) it was because Earhart waited ~30 minutes for her next scheduled transmission, and by that it time she was out of range due to propagation and her antenna.
If so, she probably thought she had enough gas to fly for at least another 30 minutes. It's possible (maybe likely) that a Mayday, sometime within those 30 minutes, would go unheard because of the same propagation issue.
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Personally, I don't think Noonan ever navigated to Gardner Island. I think he was always looking for Howland and stumbled upon Gardner by accident. If it were otherwise he should have known it was Gardner when he saw it but the content of the post-loss radio messages strongly suggests that Earhart did not know the name of the island she was on.
After reading several pages of the chapter in "Beyond the Harbour Lights" by Chris Mills... I'm convinced that Gardner Island (Nikumaurro) is in itself its own anomaly. This is something you might find in a motion picture such as "King Kong"or "The Mummy" ...You won't know its there until the sun hits it just right or the clouds and fog dissipates at a certain time.
Quote:
"After passing north-west of the Fiji Islands, the ship encountered cyclonic disturbances that lasted for several days. Strong gales, rough seas and heavy rain hurled the ship around and set her badly off course. Overcast skies made celestial observations impossible and, with no land in sight, there was no way of establishing the vessel's (Norwich City) position. By Friday, 29th November Captain Hamer was navigating by dead reckoning which at best could be described as educated guess work. He called Chief Officer Thomas and Second Mate Henry Lott to the chartroom and jointly they concluded that the ship was far from any land. The closest land to them was the low-lying Phoenix Islands, but the three experienced navigators were confident that the Norwich City was well clear of that island group.
That evening Henry Lott was drowsing on the settee in his cabin and at midnight he was due to take over as officer of the watch from Third Mate Caldcleugh. The monotonous thumping of the engine and the ceaseless motion of the ship made sleep difficult, but he needed to rest. Suddenly, he stiffened involuntarily as he felt, rather than heard, an almighty crash. The ship quiivered, the engine-room telegraph jangled and the Norwich City shuddered to a dead stop. Lott looked at his watch, it was 11:05PM. He grabbed his jacket and made his way up to the bridge. The wind was howling and a white foam smothered the forepart of the ship. Neither Captain Hamer nor anybody else had any idea where they were but the ship had obviously driven hard onto a reef. All Hands were told to put their life jackets on and Chief Officer Thomas and the carpenter spent a precarious half-an-hour sounding the bilges to confirm the damage. Meanwhile, Captain Hamer mustered the crew outside the galley where they were best sheltered from the blasting wind and the drenching spray. Apart from the cacophony of the sea, the relentless echoing from the empty holds as the keel grated on the reef was the most ominous sound. It was after midnight and Henry Lott Knew that the seas were too rough to launch a lifeboat. Whatever happened they would have to stay put until the morning. The captain deduced that they were probably on uninhabitted Gardner Island, one of the far-flung Phoenix Group, 1800 miles south-west of the Hawaiian Islands and 600 miles north of Samoa. Wireless Operator Clark, ensconced in his small radio shack behind the wheelhouse, began to transmit a distress call giving their position, and this was eventually picked up and acknowledged by Apia Radio Station in Samoa."
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I have often imagined what it was like for the men on the Norwich City to hit that reef in the dark when they thought they were well clear of any land.
A slight difference in course and they would have missed it altogether.
Don
TIGHAR member 4989A