Hi Ric
I am willing to correct any errors. What are they?
Colin
In Part One:
• A fuel tank was not taken out during repairs.
• Howland is not an atoll.
• Manning was not the radio operator. He was the sole navigator until 3 days before the March 17 departure for Hawaii.
• The Navy weather forecast was not received the evening before the departure from Lae.
Guinea Airways manager Eric Chater, in a letter written three weeks later, recalled that the forecast had come in via Samoa at 7:30 the morning of Thursday, July 1 (Lae time). U.S. Navy records contradict Chater and show that Lt. True’s forecast was not transmitted from Hawaii until more than an hour after that time. Messages relayed through Samoa were taking a minimum of three and a half hours to reach Lae, if they got there at all, so True's forecast probably arrived in Lae around 11:00.
Whenever the forecast actually reached New Guinea, the picture it painted of the weather to be expected along the route was typical for the region:
" Earhart, Lae. Forecast Thursday:
Lae to Ontario – Partly clouded. Rain squalls 250 miles east Lae. Wind, east south east, 12 to 15.
Ontario to longitude 175 – Partly cloudy, cumulus clouds about ten thousand feet. [Visibility] mostly unlimited. Wind, east north east, 18.
Thence to Howland – partly cloudy. Scattered heavy showers. Wind, east north east, 15.
Avoid towering cumulus and squalls by detours as centers frequently dangerous.
––Fleet Air Base, Pearl Harbor."
The forecast was for “Thursday,” but who's Thursday? True had sent the forecast at 12:20 Hawaiian time on Wednesday, June 30. Across the International Date Line in Lae, New Guinea, at that moment, it was 8:50 A.M. on Thursday, July 1. Was this a forecast for Earhart’s today or for True’s tomorrow? Unclear as the intended day may have been, the prognostication was so typical of the region that it did not much matter.
Your premise assumes that Noonan's navigation relied entirely upon an ambiguous forecast that was well-over a full day old.
• The fuel in Lae was 80 octane, not 87 octane.
• Sunrise at Howland was at 06:15 local time, not 05:45. You Google "Sunrise at Howland Island on July 2" you get "05:46 (GMT -12)", but Itasca was using GMT -11.5.
• You explanation for Earhart's obviously erroneous position report to Lae at 3:19pm, “height 10000 feet position 150.7 east 7.3 south, cumulus clouds, everything okay" makes no sense. Noonan cannot get a precise lat/long position in daylight without a visual checkpoint on the ground.
The most likely explanation is that Earhart reported her position as 157 east, 7.3 south. That would put her 600 nautical miles from Lae on the coast of Choiseul Island in the Solomons, 130 nautical miles south of her planned course. Noonan could get the latitude/longitude by noting their position on the Choiseul coastline. He could then plot a correction to put them back on course for the next visual landmark, the Nukumanu Islands (which you, for some reason, call the "Numanu" islands).
All of your conclusions in Part One are unwarranted assumptions based on sloppy research and bad data. I don't have the time or the stomach for Part 2.