I have attached a compendium of stories concerning Amelia Earhart from all the 1937 issues of TIME Magazine.
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Before the hop-off, when capable Navigator Noonan inspected what he supposed was an ultra-modern "flying laboratory," he was dismayed to discover that there was nothing with which to take celestial bearings except an ordinary ship sextant. He remedied that by borrowing a modern bubble octant designed especially for airplane navigation.
Someone on the Forum recently posited that perhaps a sextant was part of the equipment with which the airplane was stocked, rather than an instrument belonging to FN. I wonder if there is independent evidence of such a purchase, perhaps a receipt with manufacturer and Naval Observatory numbers!
When you read something like this you know it must be true, after all how could the writer have just dreamed up such a detailed story, who would expect a magazine writer to have even heard of octants and sextants so he must have heard this story from somebody "in the know." But the story is apocryphal nonetheless.
Noonan joined the Earhart team on March 12, 1937 only five days before the flight to Hawaii. Manning had joined in early February. On February 17 and 18 Earhart flew the plane from Newark to Burbank with Putnam and Manning was in the back practicing his celestial navigation. At one point Manning computed their position as being over southern Kansas and Putnam was upset with this report since they were actually over Oklahoma and this made Putnam have doubts about Manning's abilities as a flight navigator. Manning had been taking celestial observations in order to derive these positions.
When we say mariner's sextant, the word "mariner's" refers to using it at sea and both Kansas and Oklahoma are far from any sea. A mariner's sextant uses the visible
sea horizon as the reference for measuring the height of the sun and stars and it is useless for that purpose over land. Manning was using an aviation bubble octant for these observations and this was almost a full month prior to Noonan meeting with Earhart and agreeing to fly with her. Because of Putnam's doubts they decided to contact Noonan.
I have attached several photos of Manning using a bubble octant and this was before Noonan was hired. I don't know the exact date that these photos were taken, it might have been on the flight from Newark to Burbank or later, on March 10th, when they flew the plane over the ocean to test Manning's navigation. I have also attached a photo of Manning using the MK II B pelorus, drift meter. Marine sextants had been used by several pioneering aviators for oceanic flights in the 1920's but after bubble octants, designed specifically for flight navigation, had been perfected in the early '30s, nobody used marine sextants anymore for oceanic flights.
So we have proof that the Earhart team had a bubble octant prior to Noonan's arrival on the scene so the story in Time Magazine was wrong and probably the result of somebody playing a joke on the reporter.
Noonan first flew in the plane on March 13th and didn't like the bubble octant that they had, it was a Bausch & Lomb instrument and he was used to using a Pioneer instrument at Pan Am, so arrangements were made to borrow a Pioneer instrument from the Navy and this is the Pioneer octant, serial number 12-36, that was carried on the flight to Hawaii and that
Noonan signed a receipt for on March 20th while they were embarked on the Malolo for the return to the mainland after the Honolulu crash. Here is a link to
photos of the Pioneer octant so that you can compare them for yourself the photos of the Bausch & Lomb octant shown in the Manning pictures. Here is a
link to more information about the Pioneer octant.
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