At 06:15 a.m. Earhart
said that she was about 200 miles out and asked the Itasca to take
a bearing on her signal. No reply. She tried again half an hour later
at 06:45. Still no response to her call. Unbenownst to her, the Itasca
was hearing her just fine but they were unable to get a bearing on her
and she was not receiving their replies.
An hour later, at
07:42, Earhart transmitted, “We must be on you, but cannot see you
– but gas is running low. Have been unable to reach you by radio. We
are flying at 1,000 feet.”
Had she been talking
on the telephone instead of a radio she might have said, “Fred’s
watch says that we have reached the advanced LOP but we can’t see
the island. We must be either too far north or too far south, but now we’re
starting to burn into our four hour fuel reserve. We know that you are
somewhere on this 157/337 line but we have been unable to reach you by
radio so we have not been able to get a bearing and we don’t know
which direction to turn. We’ve descended down to 1,000 feet to get
below this scattered deck of clouds so we can look for the island.” Still
she heard nothing in reply.
Fifteen minutes later
she decided to try something different. Instead of asking the Itasca
to take a bearing on her signals, she would try to take a bearing on theirs
using her own Radio Direction Finder – if she could just hear something.
At 07:58 she said, “We are listening
but cannot hear you. Go ahead on 7500 with a long count, either now or
on the scheduled time on half hour.” (Amelia was using Greenwich
Time so, for her, it was 19:28.)
Itasca did
not have the capability of sending a voice message (“a long count”)
on 7500 kilocycles but they immediately sent a series of Morse code letter
“A”s – dit, dah; dit, dah; dit, dah.
For the first time,
Earhart’s headphones delivered something more than static. The letter
A was the prearranged signature for code signals from the Itasca
and she must have been thrilled to have confirmation that they were at
least within radio range of their destination. However, any elation she
felt was short-lived because it quickly became apparent her Direction
Finder would not give her the direction from which the received signals
were coming.
At 08:00 she said,
“We received your signals but unable to get a minimum. Please take
a bearing on us and answer on 3105 with voice.” Then she sends long
dashes on 3105. She has given up trying take a bearing on the Itasca
and has gone back to trying to get them to take a bearing on her – but
it’s just not working. Itasca replies that they can’t
take a bearing on such a high frequency but, of course, AE hears nothing.
So here she is, on
the advanced LOP. She knows that Howland Island is somewhere on this 157/337
line, close enough for the Itasca to hear her radio calls, but
that could be several hundred miles. What to do now? Turn left? Turn right?
By happy coincidence, Howland is not the only island on the 157/337 line.
Although there is no land to the northwest of Howland for thousands of
miles, just forty miles to the southeast is Baker Island, another U.S.
possession and, like Howland, occupied by Department of the Interior “colonists.”
About 350 nautical miles down the line is Gardner Island, a British possession.
And far, far down the line – over 600 nautical miles – is Atafu, also
known as Duke of York Island. Of course, the island they want to reach,
and hope to reach, is Howland – the only place in the entire Central
Pacific where there is an airfield – but the fate to be avoided at all
costs is running out of gas over the open ocean. The most reasonable course
of action is obvious: fly northwestward (337°) along the line for
a short way to see if Howland is nearby in that direction. If it is not,
turn around and proceed southeastward (157°) until you come to an
island. If you’re lucky it will be Howland. If it’s Baker you’ll
know where you are and still have enough fuel to reverse course again and
fly to Howland. If it’s Gardner, chances are that you won’t
have enough fuel to double back all the way to Howland, but at least you
won’t go in the
drink and you may even be able to land safely, figure out what’s wrong
with the radio and call for help. If it’s Atafu, it means that you
hit the advanced LOP much further south of course than you thought, but
it’s
still land.
It is important to
understand that a decision to fly southeastward on the advanced LOP was
not a decision to abandon hope of reaching Howland and proceed to an alternate
destination. On the contrary, it was the only available course of action
for trying to find Howland that also virtually guaranteed a landfall of
some kind even if it wasn’t Howland. In that context, Earhart final inflight
radio message heard by the Itasca at 08:43 makes sense:
“We
are on the line 157 337. We will repeat this message. We will repeat
this on 6210 kilocycles. Wait.”
This, like her previous
transmissions, was heard on 3105 kilocycles. Having had no luck hearing
replies to those transmissions she was going to try her other frequency.
But after a moment, suddenly, unexpectedly, and contrary to what she just
said, she was back on 3105 saying something that was logged as a “questionable”
transmission:
“We
are running on line north and south.”
Nothing further was
heard on 6210 or 3105. Some believe that the silence meant that the aircraft
ran out of fuel at that moment, giving Earhart not even enough time to
send a distress call. TIGHAR notes, however, that the aircraft should
have had several hours of fuel remaining, that the message came at Earhart’s
regularly scheduled transmission time, and that the known vagaries of
radio frequencies may easily explain why no further transmissions were
heard.
In the last inflight
transmission heard by the Itasca, Earhart gave the only position
information she had, “We are on the line 157 337” and described
the only reasonable course open to them under the circumstances: “We
are running on line...” Perhaps she said “We are running on
line north and south.” Or maybe it was “We are running on line
north to south.” Or maybe it was “We are running on line north
then south.” The Itasca radio operator wasn’t sure and
we’ll
never know exactly what she said, but there is no mystery about what line
she was talking about and its significance to any investigation of her
disappearance.