... the original arrival date was March 20, 1937, three and a half months earlier than the actual arrival date and the runways had to be completed by that earlier date.
I think that Earhart could be pretty confident that the airport would be waiting for her.
Agreed.
A fairly detailed account of the construction of Kamakaiwi Field is given in
Finding Amelia. That story concludes:
"At long last, on Saturday, March 13, 1937, a message arrived from
Campbell on Howland with apologies that static interference had precluded
communication for the past three days. Two runways had been completed:
the 2400-foot east–west strip and the 3000-foot northeast–southwest strip.
To accommodate Earhart’s expressed desire for 'as long a runway as
possible for takeoff,' the north–south strip would now be nearly a full
mile long. Campbell promised that it would be finished by March 15.
"Richard Black announced that the airport had been officially named
Kamakaiwi Field in honor of James Kamakaiwi, the Honolulu boy who
had been the first Hawaiian to go ashore on Howland when the island
was first colonized on March 30, 1935, and had been the leader of the
colonists ever since." (
FA, 17-18).
William T. Miller was the Bureau of Air Commerce employee selected to head colonization of
Jarvis,
Baker, and
Howland Island (the
American Equatorial Islands).
He was the coordinator for the first attempt to land on Howland. He was someone whom Earhart trusted, and he seems to have been worthy of trust. I have not read the whole of his
correspondence with Earhart and Putnam. Ric and Pat created a
chronological index to the correspondence that gives some idea of how they were kept informed on progress.
The thought that Earhart might have been anxious about the newly-prepared airstrip is undocumented. It is a mere logical possibility derived from thinking in the abstract rather than surveying the available data. The argument, such as it is, is based on the proponent's imagination about what Earhart
would have thought and consequently what she
would have done, if that mental reconstruction of her ideas is correct. Such arguments from imaginary premises are
moot--possibly true, endlessly arguable, and ultimately irrelevant. We can read the actual correspondence that has turned up to date and we can remember that she took off for Howland from Lae on the morning of 2 July 1937. It may be true that anxieties about the Howland airfield affected her decision about the 100-octane tank; it may be false.