To me one of the most baffling parts of Earharts' attempts at circumnavigating the globe was what appears to be her total lack of learning everything she possibly could about her radio equipment and its' capabilities and proper usage.
Perhaps the most difficult thing, and yet the most important thing, to accept in exploring the Earhart tragedy is the chasm between the public persona created by George Putnam and the real person who was Amelia Earhart.
I am not sure the Putnam version is what survives in public memory.
I would bet if a poll were taken here, few would place blame on Thompson or Cipriani and that is my point. It seems that the vast majority would follow along the lines of Marty's comment that even if the land based high frequency DF was working, she still would have been lost. The perception is she just didn't know, or take time to know her radio, follow training, and make proper planning.
Well today we know to a certain extent that is true.
However, we certainly do not know all the correspondence she may have had, we don't have minute notes of her training, but we do have a widespread perception of a "devil may care, flying by seat of the pants..." We have heard them all.
That is the surviving perception and it seems to have started from the time of Thompson's first comments afterwords.
That has been reinforced by authors through the years, and I am not sure if Thompson or Cipriani and the Coast guard get their
fair share of blame.
As Ric pointed out in 1999 on this forum paraphrased " it was Thompson that slept on the island that night, perhaps he should been supervising Cipriani"
We know her system seemed to fail, but also know the backup failed as well.
Do we blame the primary system or the failure of the backup system for the event?
Three times she asked for a signal within 200 miles on a high frequency. Was she just stupid? Did she not realize the Itasca could not locate her and was she indeed unaware of the land based set? Or was she reassured that even if her faulty system failed, the Navy(or coast guard) could guide her in?
For all the Devil may care attitude Earhart may have had, Noonan seemed no fool, nor suicidal. He knew his radio did not work, knew he did not know code, and must have known after Dakar that would have been catastrophic over water. Long before losing a belly wire, I have to believe Fred knew that radio was in trouble, in fact we know this because he wrote it was trouble. Yet, he is offers no misgivings we know about. For me, this indicates knowledge of a backup system.
If he has knowledge or doesn't, is the primary chute failure to blame, or the backup chute failure to blame?
Thompson quickly wanted everyone to know the backup chute was unknown, experimental, no good, and the Ditzy dame was to blame. You have to read a little deeper to find out about the personnel problems on the Itasca, their transmitter issues and overall radio problems, and add in the potential the Itasca itself as the primary system could have contributed to failure as well.
Does the general public know about all that? I think not so much. Media has generally presented that Earhart bit off more than she could chew.
I think that is the majority perception that has survived rightly or wrongly. It is more than just assigning blame, it's getting the history correct, and assigning responsibility for the event.
I believe the Coast Guard got off easy in Historic hindsight.