Venturing forth with a little 'rithimetic.believe that
1. Assume the Miss Doran took off with about 1000 gallons of fuel.
2. Assume the single engine used 30 gallons per hour (might have been as low as 25 gph) at about 90 mph, over water speed
. That gives an endurance between 33-1/3 and 40 hours. .which gives a range ofbetween 3000 and 3600 miles.
3. the DR circle of uncertainty around Honolulu would be 240 miles. If they drifted N and W they prolly would have spotted one of the Islands, so they prolly missed Honolulu to the E and S, putting them around 600 ( 7 hours)to 1200 miles (13 hours) S. Hard to believe that they would have flown that long beyond the expected 27 hours. Let's say 600 miles S when they ran out of fuel and hit the life raft.
4. 600 miles S of Honolulu would put them soewhere about 1300 miles N of Howland (1700 miles from Gardner). The currents in the wake of Hawaii are between 2 to 4 mph to the S and would drift them S into the Northern Equatorial Counter Current which flows East and its counterpart, the South Equatorial Counter Current which also flows East.
5. Drifting (paddling, sailing) at 3 mph (300 miles in 4 days) they might have hit Gardner in 24 days. Not beyond the realm of possibility. Thoughts?
You are wrong on about almost everything.
About 600 miles south of Hawaii is about 10 degrees north latitude. Here is a
link to the Pilot Chart for the Pacific for the month of July, look at it. In the area you mention the current is
not southerly but westerly so the current would not move a life raft south towards Gardner but towards the west. The speed is not 2 to 4 mph but only 0.5 knots. The wind is out of the east 49% of the time and out of the northeast 47% of the time, a total 96% of the time and at force four. These winds would not blow the raft towards Gardner. You would be lucky to paddle a life raft at even one knot, nowhere near the 3 mph you theorize, a life raft is not a canoe or a kayak.
And a full scale test of your theory has already been conducted. In 1943 Zamperini and Philliips crashed in a B-24 in the exact same area in your theory. They did not end up on Gardner. They drifted to the west, moved by the current and the prevailing winds and ended up in the Marshalls after drifting westward for 2,000 miles in 47 days.
gl