Thanks Gary. I share your view of the research behind Waitt's multi-million dollar search. After they put up their website, the folks at the Waitt Institute invited me to engage in a dialog about the Earhart mystery. I was happy to oblige and I submitted the critique below. I'm afraid it wasn't much of a dialog because they never replied.
Your criticisms of their research focus on navigation - and there's plenty to criticize. My criticisms focus on methodology. Here's what I said:
In 2006, and again in 2009, the Waitt Institute for Discovery (WID) tested the hypothesis that the Earhart Electra went down at sea in the general vicinity of Howland Island sometime between 2013 GMT and 2100 GMT on July 2, 1937. Specific search areas were identified based on analyses of a wide range of data including navigation, fuel consumption, weather, radio reports, and Earhart’s performance on previous legs of the world flight. The search of the sea floor was carried out using technology provided by Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute. Although coverage of the target area was impressively thorough, the aircraft was not found.
Until recently the Waitt Institute’s efforts to find the Earhart Electra were kept strictly secret. To the institute’s credit, having concluded its search, it has now made its data public so that “the area explored can be eliminated from future searches.” The WID website
www.searchforamelia.org presents a detailed, if somewhat scattered, review of the organization’s search operations and the research upon which they were based. TIGHAR is pleased to accept the Waitt Institute's invitation for comment.
A Fundamental FlawLet us acknowledge from the start that no one knows what became of the Earhart Electra. In the absence of indications that something else happened, the intuitive default explanation would be that the flight simply missed a tiny island in a big ocean, ran out of gas, and went down at sea. The Waitt Institute chose to test the hypothesis that the Electra is on the bottom of the ocean somewhere near Howland. It is not TIGHAR's purpose here to lay out the case for the airplane being somewhere else but, rather, to look at the Waitt Institute’s choice of where on the ocean bottom to look. The institute conducted an excellent search but the plane wasn’t there. If we accept that the Electra, or some identifiable part of it, still exists, we must conclude that the reasoning that put it in the now-eliminated areas was somehow flawed.
From the information presented on the WID website, one flaw is apparent and fundamental. The WID hypothesis contradicts the WID’s own data. Simply put – the WID hypothesis has the airplane running out of fuel more than an hour before the WID’s own research says it should.
The WID hypothesis holds that the aircraft ran out of gas sometime in the 47 minutes between 2013 GMT and 2100 GMT History (
"Final Flight"). Crucial to the hypothesis is the estimated amount of fuel remaining at 1912 GMT when Earhart said, “We must be on you but cannot see you, but gas is running low.” As stated in
Research>Appendix 1>Fuel Remaining, “The amount of fuel remaining in the Electra at 1912 GMT is important because it determines how long the aircraft could stay airborne, and how far it could fly, before fuel exhaustion.”
WID’s research, as detailed in
Research>Appendix 1>Fuel Remaining, reaches the amazingly precise conclusion that the aircraft probably had 3 hours and 4 minutes of gas left at 1912 GMT - enough to remain aloft until 2216. Why then, does the hypothesis postulate fuel exhaustion less than 2 hours later (by 2100)?
Say What?The only explanation is offered in
Overview>Introduction:
“According to famous researchers, Elgen M. and Marie K. Long, ‘There is no uncharted island, rock, shoal, reef, sandbar or water less than 30 feet deep within 350 miles of Howland Island. The inescapable conclusion is that shortly after 0843 IST [2013 GMT], Earhart was forced to ditch the plane somewhere within 100 miles of Howland Island.”
Long’s statement is a non sequitur. How does the absence of land within 350 miles of Howland lead to an inescapable conclusion that Earhart was forced to ditch the plane somewhere within 100 miles of Howland Island shortly after 2013 GMT? Why couldn’t she ditch at some other time and at some other distance? Why the fixation on 2013 GMT?
Inspecting the FoundationThe answer, of course, is that 2013 GMT (08:43 Itasca time) is the generally accepted time of the last in-flight transmission from Earhart heard by Itasca. The assumption that the 2013 GMT transmission and the silence that followed it are indications of the flight’s immediate termination is the foundation upon which the entire Waitt Institute investigation was based. Given the amount of work that went into speculation about why the aircraft ran out of fuel too soon and the millions of dollars spent searching the ocean bottom on the assumption that it did, it is surprising that the WID website includes no examination of the 2013 GMT message beyond a garbled mention in
Radio Call Log.
Although it’s a bit like examining the latch on the barn door after the horse is gone, a close look at the 2013 GMT message would seem to be in order.
The final in-flight transmission heard by Itasca is described in one of the two radio logs being kept at the time. The 08:43 (2013 GMT) entry in the original log kept by Radioman 2nd Class William Galten, complete with numerous cross-outs and re-typings, is an important record of the confusion and anxiety that reigned in the radio room that morning. The other log kept by Radioman 2nd Class Thomas O’Hare makes no mention of the call.
According to Galten’s log, the call began at 08:43, almost exactly at Earhart’s scheduled transmission time of forty-five minutes past the hour. Earhart did not say she was running out of fuel. She gave her position as best she knew it – “WE ARE ON THE LINE 157 337” - and she said she would send the message again on her other frequency -“WILL REPEAT MESSAGE. WE WILL REPEAT THIS ON 6210 KILOCYCLES.” - then she said “WAIT.” At that point there was apparently a pause because Galten made the notations he customarily made at the end of a call – “3105 (the frequency), A3 (meaning “voice transmission”), S5 (meaning the signal was at maximum strength). But then, on the same line, he added a second message from Earhart “ (?/KHAQQ XMISION WE ARE RUNNING ON LINE N ES S” meaning “Questionable Earhart transmission, We are running on line north and south.”
The log entry raises some interesting questions:
- After saying she would repeat the message on 6210 and asking Itasca to “wait,” the next thing Itasca heard was a different message on 3105. How long was the “wait?” The answer seems to be twelve minutes. Three contemporary written sources – Itasca’s commanding officer Warner Thompson, and the two wire service reporters who were on the cruise, James Carey and Howard Hanzlick – reported that the final in-flight call from Earhart was heard at 08:55 (2025 GMT). For a detailed discussion see
"Final Words".
- Why didn’t Earhart repeat the message on 6210 as she said she would? Maybe she did. Twelve minutes is plenty of time to switch to 6210, repeat the message, receive no response, and come back to 3105 with additional information, “We are running on line north and south.”
- Why didn’t Itasca hear her if she transmitted on 6210? No one knows, but almost every pilot has had the experience of being unable to contact a ground station on a perfectly good frequency with a perfectly good radio. When that happens you simply return to the previous frequency – as it appears Earhart did.
- Why didn’t Itasca hear anything on either frequency after 08:55 (20:25 GMT)? Again, no one can say for sure, but it seems entirely plausible that having failed repeatedly to establish communication on either frequency she simply stopped trying. There is also the point that Itasca did hear signals on 3105 later that evening and over the next several nights.
Perhaps the Electra did abruptly and inexplicably run out of fuel more than an hour before WID’s calculations say it should have, but there is nothing in the last in-flight transmission heard by Itasca to suggest that happened. When last heard from at 20:25 GMT Earhart was still trying to find Howland Island.
MisinformationApparently uncomfortable with basing a hypothesis on Long’s assumption that the aircraft ran out of fuel so quickly after 2013 GMT that there was no time to make a “Mayday” call, the WID hypothesis expands the window 47 minutes to 2100 GMT (even though WID calculates that the plane should have been able to remain aloft until at least 2216 GMT). The rationale for extending the time to 2100 GMT without a distress call is explained in
Final flight: “While continuing to search for a sign of Howland, Earhart’s tanks ran dry between 2013 GMT and 2100 GMT. The left engine likely quit first – it powered the only generator on the aircraft–and the radios required this generator to transmit and receive.”
But that’s not true. The radios on the Electra did not require the generator to transmit or receive. Joe Gurr, who worked on Earhart’s radios, sent a telegram to Putnam on July 5, 1937 saying, “Not necessary have motor running for operation radio on Earhart plane stop two batteries carried will permit operation independent of charging generator mounted on motors.”
The complete telegram is available in the
Purdue archives.
As explained by TIGHAR's radio expert, LCDR Bob Brandenburg, USN (ret):
"The radios, like every other electrical device on the aircraft, got their power via the dynamotor under the pilot’s seat which boosted the voltage provided by the 12-volt main electrical bus which drew from either of the two batteries – the main battery under the floor in the center section and the auxiliary battery in the rear cabin. The generator charged the batteries.
"It was impossible to operate the transmitter from the generator alone because the generator output was limited to 50 amps by the generator control unit, and keying the transmitter would start up the dynamotor, which drew 60 amps. Therefore, it was necessary to have at least one of the batteries on the bus, to provide the additional current required during transmission. When the transmitter was in standby, the battery would receive charge from the generator.
"However, given the battery capacity, it was possible to transmit on battery power alone for a combined total of about 2 hours, if both batteries were fully charged at the outset."
So we’re back to both the engines going silent within a couple minutes of 2013 GMT even though Earhart seems to have been aloft and talking at 2025 GMT and, by WID’s own calculations, the airplane should have been able to continue aloft for another hour or more.
MisrepresentationIn his book
Amelia Earhart – the Mystery Solved, Elgen Long got the engines to quit before they should have by alleging that Earhart mismanaged her power settings to overcome headwinds he imagined that she encountered. The WID Hypothesis gets rid of the unwanted fuel by postulating a failure of the Cambridge Exhaust Gas Analyzer (referred to by WID as the Cambridge Fuel Analyzer or CFA). The justification for the proposed failure is offered in
Research>Navigation Paths>Detailed Fuel Consumption Analysis: “Apparently the CFA was also somewhat fragile, as it was frequently being repaired throughout the World Flight, at many of AE’s intermediate stops where maintenance was available.”
It was?
Research>Navigation Paths>Detailed Fuel Consumption Analysis notes that the analyzer failed en route to Karachi. The plan was for repairs to be made in Calcutta or possibly Singapore, but the only mention of repairs actually being made was in Bandoeng. The analyzer may also have been the instrument that required a return to Bandoeng from Surabaya because it didn’t stay fixed. That’s one failure and possibly two fixes. In Lae, a “new cartridge” was fitted to the analyzer on the starboard engine. See
The Chater Report. To say that the Cambridge Exhaust Gas Analyzer was “frequently being repaired throughout the World Flight, at many of AE’s intermediate stops where maintenance was available” is simply not accurate. Maybe the analyzer failed en route to Howland, but there's absolutely no evidence that it did.
Flawed Science, Great TechnologyThe WID hypothesis was based on a single pre-conceived conclusion - that the supposed failure of
Itasca to hear anything further from the Earhart aircraft after 2013 GMT was due to premature fuel exhaustion. When WID's analysis of the airplane’s fuel consumption resulted in too much gas, events were imagined that would bring the data in line with the pre-ordained moment of crisis. Rather than change the hypothesis to fit the data, the data are skewed to conform with the hypothesis. This inversion of the scientific method is a systemic problem that runs through the entire selection of where to search. The search itself, by contrast, appears to have been well executed. The Waitt Institute is to be commended for valuable experience gained in the application of deep sea technologies.
Until there is proof that something else happened, it remains possible that the Earhart aircraft ran out of gas and went down somewhere in the open ocean. With the mounting evidence that something else did happen, that possibility grows increasingly remote.[/b]