Second –
We don't need Gary LaPook. We seem to be able generate pages upon pages of pointless postings without his help.
Ric, you’ve made an assertion as to where the flight would have arrived on the LOP to fit a Gardner arrival scenario - some 230 NM south of Howland. Your assertion of that particular was something I'd not realized before and it drove me into the navigation issues more deeply. I learned a few things I’d not grasped before, that’s all.
For one, arrival at that point does not look like a given considering the things I have outlined – which I believe are well validated. It
could have happened, I don't doubt that.
As much as I admire and have enthusiasm for the Gardner arrival hypothesis and support exploring it, I still believe that other possibilities remain until irrefutable evidence is found. That is of course just MHO, your's and other’s MMV from one end of the spectrum to the other, no foul from here. That position is not meant as disloyal to anyone or any reasonable idea, merely that I see the mystery as remaining potentially broader than some others might. As to the strength of the evidence found at Niku, IMHO the sheet metal article 2-2-V-1 and the plexiglass shard are among the most promising and interesting - that may well be because of my background, but if those could ever be tied to the Electra then we'd certainly have a concrete case IMO.
So -
- Dead reckoning all the way from Lae involves around 2556 statute miles +/-, so a 10% error would be in that case around 230 nautical miles or 260 statute miles. That would be the expected outcome if the flight had had to slog all the way from Lae to Howland in clouds, without benefit of fixes along the way.
Ric: DR accuracy depends almost entirely upon the pilot or navigator's knowledge of, and correction for, winds aloft. We know that the forecast Earhart received was a wild-ass guess by a meteorologist in Hawaii who had no current data to work with. The only report we have of winds aloft anywhere is at Howland at noon on July 2 and it only goes to 2,650 feet because they lost sight of the weather balloon in the clouds.
Nauru reported winds that were consistent with the forecast. Itasca reported ENE at 30 on July 1st and at 22 the day earlier. That does not tell all but it’s better than a WAG. The weather was settled so far as we can tell, so it is reasonable that no big changes in the winds should have been the case. Agreed – we cannot know for certain. But, Noonan was equipped to determine drift for himself by computation between fixes with his drift meter, so an amendment of forecast information was likely possible aboard the plane.
Ric: We have no information about winds aloft anywhere along the route. Earhart's one mention of wind in a position report is ambiguous and useless. Blithely postulating a 10% error for DR in the Earhart case is classic LaPook-style assignment of probability in the absence of facts.
I believe that Noonan did determine winds aloft at 23 knots of wind by himself at one reported point – if that relates to the ‘ambiguous and useless’ report, as you have declared it, then perhaps our MMV, but honestly and respectfully so.
Blithely? LaPook style? It’s
your forum, present it as you will.
I recall the navigational assumptions from my own training, Ric. I’m not dependent on Gary for advice on navigation. I have a living uncle who is a Georgia Tech graduate (engineering) and who served in the navy as a navigator aboard the navy’s version of the B-17, flying out of Hawaii for long distances over open water after WWII. Another uncle (now deceased) was a WWII carrier pilot and instructor who retired in 1968 and shared these things. A brother was a career naval aviator who retired as a navy captain. His aviation and sea experience were great. I grew up with them sharing a great deal I continue to explore ideas with the surviving uncle and brother. I also had a great flight instructor who was my first employer and in earlier years an early hurricane hunter pilot in the navy (P2V Neptunes, which he said ‘leaked a lot’ - they drove
through the weather in those days, and later, Super-Connies - which could get above some of the weather). He ‘shot the stars’ for fun quite well, and sailed extensively in the Pacific by DR and celestial means with another former instructor of mine - a fellow who left my hometown to go to work for a tiny outfit in it's early days as a Falcon captain: Federal Express. Both of those gents knew a great deal of navigation and had lots of experience with open-water sailing and flying. The first gent mentioned earned a bronze star flying a Catalina to pick up downed airmen in the open Pacific under Japanese fire and returning them to a remote island, safely.
Great teachers, all.
Admittedly we cannot know all the facts – but the purpose of probabilities is to use them to consider and weigh the reasonable possibilities as best we might.
Benjamin Disraeli had a point – but as inconvenient as they can be, the numbers do speak. YMMV, of course.
- The flight had a fix at 0718 Z near Nikumanu Island - still 1700 SM from there to Howland; expected uncertainty from there to Howland would be about 170 SM;
- Then we believe they may have seen the Ontario at 1030 Z - about 1270 SM from Howland; uncertainty by the time of arrival at the 1912 Z call would then have been only about 127 SM;
- Then the flight passed Nauru at about 1130 Z - about 1143 SM remaining to Howland; uncertainty drops to 115 SM by the time they would reach the call point at 1912 Z;
- We believe they flew over Tabituea - only 613 SM remaining to Howland; that drops the uncertainty by dead reckoning to about 61 SM.
Ric: A house of cards. "Expected uncertainties" based upon a totally bogus assumption and bad "facts." Earhart probably saw SS Myrtlebank, not USS Ontario, but nobody knows for sure. There is no evidence that Earhart knew either. All she said was "Ship in sight ahead." Nobody knows how far the flight may have been off course when it passed Nauru and the 1940 anecdotal story of an airplane being heard high over Tabituea can hardly be called a "fix."
“House of cards” is a bit strong IMO. I did not depend on
all those points to make my
point, and really only 'played one card' – I used the reasonably reliable Nikumanu fix. BTW, that actually provides more margin of error to support your own supposition of a LOP-fall 230 NM south of Howland because of the fairly extreme distance involved – potential error is directly proportional. Can you really validate the ‘assumption’ as ‘bogus’?
Consider - if Earhart saw SS Myrtlebank, and not USS Ontario, wouldn’t that put her around 25 NM further to the north of course than your extreme southerly arrival (230 NM south of Howland) would suggest? Had the flight been 25 miles further north at that point then the likelihood of arriving 230 NM south is diminished accordingly. That seems to inject a far more radical assumption of navigational ambiguity than I have used.
- It was around 990 NM from Myrtlebank I believe – which would make LOP-fall of 230NM south of Howland in the range of a 26% deviation error – more than 5 standard deviations (there go those pesky numbers again, I hear you Benjamin…).
- BTW, I goofed around with my old E-6 a bit – if the plane did overfly Myrtlebank and then wind up 230 NM south of Howland, then it must have hit sudden northerly winds (‘from the left’) of around 56 knots. That event would not just rob the flight of a reasonable arrival point, but fuel as well – that’s a lot of crabbing (there goes some of my fuel for running the generator on the reef). BTW, yes – I checked this with Gary, as a matter of fact, via pleasant email. I am not a ‘TIGHAR hater’, nor is Gary, IMHO - and I am NOT a member of any other forum on Earhart, just to be clear.
I said “we believe” the flight went over Tabituea – clearly, we don’t “know” and I never “assumed” that. We have a latter-day “anecdotal” report of a flyover heard, as you said. Perhaps I should have elaborated further in that regard, much as we have admittedly “anecdotal” evidence from Betty Klenck, Dana Randolph, Emily Sukuli, et al, etc. Respected, but of course we can only take those things for what they are – and accept the ‘odds’, or not.
Notice again that I did not use Tabituea or any other place in my actual navigational assumption other than Nikumanu. That actually gave you the maximum benefit of DR error rooted in that fix, some 1700 miles before Howland. For the sake of illustration I put the flight in the soup from Nikumanu only by using the values I gave. I also believe Nikumanu is fair as a ‘fix’ because of the position report there – and it is conservatively favorable to your own presumption of a large deviation upon arrival at the LOP.
All numbers, all probabilities, all based on what we know of Dead Reckoning.
Ric: And absolutely worthless.
Then without any idea as to probabilities, we should have no clue as to where the flight ended – including arriving on the LOP some 230 NM south of Howland or so. Without probabilities, things like artifacts found in at least somewhat ambiguous settings have no value. If nothing can be considered probable then we have a theory in a vacuum – one among a possibly infinite many, including that of a LOP flight to Gardner – and voila, lots of circumstantial if intriguing evidence. Possible. Perhaps ‘probable’ – within this universe of chaos. Which I have never called ‘worthless’, BTW. Probabilities exist whether convenient or not, that's all.
I believe the Nauru passage is reliable as a report from Earhart, but if I am wrong I will happily stand corrected. There are other fixes I believe, so one need only do the basic math from those points and YMMV, of course - but odds is odds.
Ric: Earhart never made any reference to Nauru.
Thank you, I stand happily corrected, as I had offered.
Ric: Earhart is known to have transmitted only two lat/long positions - one a little over 5 hours after departure which is clearly wrong and probably a transcription error; and the other two hours later which indicates a position 21 nautical miles NE of Nukumanu Island but she made no reference to seeing an island.
True –
Earhart did not report seeing land at Nikumanu, but the position reported seems to have been approximately 12 NM west of the western end of Nukumanu, not NE (yes, I happen to buy Gary’s take on this – YMMV, of course). Gary has made a convincing case to me that this is often gotten wrong variously because they use the published coordinates of the island, which are actually for the southeast point of the island – which is 12 NM long east to west. If we differ, it is an honest difference of our interpretations of the data from that time.
The root of this difference lies in a difference of interpretation - Gary has said he believes that Jacobson's interpretation of the minutes of the coordinates in decimal form is incorrect. I had puzzled over that myself and having reviewed it with Gary, do favor his view of it – YMMV, of course. That is no aspersion on Jacobson, a fine and smart man.
- The 0718 report was “4.33 south, 159.7 east” – but it has been shown to me from other parts of the Chatter report that his usage of the decimal (".") is a separator between degrees and minutes – which I had come to believe myself, actually.
- That, of course, is an opinion, but as such, my belief is that the correct interpretation would be 4° 33' South, 159° 07' East whereas Jacobson seems to have interpreted this as 4.33° South, 159.7° East.
- It has been pointed out to me that pilots and navigators of the day (and still, so far as I know, lest GPS gadgetry, etc.) used minutes and not decimal degrees for coordinates.
- That is not an attack on Jacobson or TIGHAR or any who agree with him, it is merely a differing opinion based on navigational experience from a few who know it better than I do, and I do know a bit of it too.
So which was missing, Fred? Or the moon?
Ric: All the discussion of the moon ignores the fact that Earhart said they were "running on line north and south." Why would they be doing that if Fred had shot the moon and had a fix that told him whether they were north or south of Howland?
That is kind of the point - if Fred could see the moon, why not shoot it and determine N-S position? The moon had nothing to do with establishing a LOP and then running by DR ‘up and down’ the line, of course. The point is they could have done so under cloud cover - and we really don't know how reliable even the LOP call was: it
could have been tragically and inaccurately estimated by DR. In fact, I happen to believe the LOP itself
is questionable – it is not clear that Fred could have gotten a clear sunrise shot with the clouds that may have been about. The 'clouds' are the potential spoiler here, IMO. Next is 'where would they have been to have been limited by cloud cover - did Thompson have a point?'
But, further to my point above – “where was Noonan? Where was the moon?” Your own presumption of an arrival 230 NM south of Howland raised the point for me, which I had not considered well before. Had they the moon, they well should have been able to determine how far south along the LOP they were; if they believed in the LOP, which apparently they did, then it could have become a simple choice as to 'which way Howland'.
So, ‘the big question’ remains, for me at least – “where was the moon”…
Now I start thinking of Earhart's mention of clouds - and clouds to the north and west of Howland.
Ric: References to clouds to the north and west of Howland only turned up days later when Itasca was trying to explain why Earhart didn't see Howland.
Was Commander Thompson lying? See pages 5 and 6 therein for the 2 July, 1937 entry. His early search actions were largely based on this observation.
Ric: There's no evidence that cloud conditions north and west of Howland on the morning of July 2 were any different than around Howland.
To the contrary -
From Thompson’s ‘Cruise Report’, for 2 July, 1937 –
“During the last half hour prior to getting underway an estimate of the situation was made based upon the following facts and assumptions:
“FACTS”
(J. Neville comment – this can be read on page 6 of 12 via the above link, so I’ll only quote the cloud stuff; the visibility comments are, however, also interesting – and suggest the flight might not have gotten within 30 or 40 miles, I believe).
(c) Visibility north and west of Howland excellent to horizon but beyond that continuous banks of heavy cumulus clouds.
(d) Plane transmissions had indicated that dead reckoning distance had been accomplished.
…
(h) Stellar navigating possibilities, south and east of Howland and close to Howland, were excellent throughout the night.
Now, where was the moon?
Ric: I won't continue. My point is that facts count.
My point exactly.
It is not my intent to 'tear down' anything here. My intent is merely to sharpen the sense of the quest for those of us who seek to learn and to work all the problems inherent in testing the Niku hypothesis, that's all. Others MMV, but in my view we are stronger when we openly and thoughtfully challenge points of dependency - if that is what a 230 NM arrival south of Howland on the LOP is (I took it to be, but perhaps over read the matter?).
As an example, recall that a found 'navigator's bookcase' once generated a great deal of interest and speculation here about what Fred might have had installed in the Electra for his stuff. Finding it to be likely not related did not kill the search - it merely meant sharpening focus elsewhere and continuing to work with the other possibilities.
Thanks for this place and the opportunity to explore among all that TIGHAR has provided.