Can you please provide the link to where you found the animation?
Try this link.
Thanks for the link.
Zamperini and Doran were only about 300 miles apart based on the 600 miles south of Hawaii for Doran mentioned by Harry and Zamperini went down searching 225 miles north of Palmyra according to the book,
Unbroken, and for all we know, based on the information we are working with, they may have splashed down into the exact same wave. But what is important for our discussion is that they both landed within the same west bound North Pacific Equatorial Current so the direction of Zamperini's drift has a high likelihood of representing the drift of Doran, to the west, not towards Gardner.
I think I have found where you guys went wrong with you interpretation of the NOAA animation. I have attached a marked up screen shot from the Google Earth animation for August 1937. I have also attached the image that the animation was created from, it is number 37 at
this site. Here is the
link to the overall site. and
here.. (I picked this frame because it carried the date 9/37 in Google Earth but it is likely that the dates were not real dates but just used to make an animation. Because of this uncertainty we cannot judge how fast the various features move around so cannot judge the speed of movement of these features. If each frame truly represents a month then the animation covers 72 years and the movements we see in the animation are extremely slow. NOAA doesn't say how the animation was developed but, if it was based on satellite imaging, as is most likely, then we know it doesn't actually show the current at the time of Doran's flight since the first satellite was not launched until 1957.)
The blue color is slowest, green a little faster on up all the way to yellow and red. We know from comparison with the pilot chart that the blue represents about 0.5 knots and the green about 0.7 to 0.8 knots. None of these areas have current speeds anywhere close to the 2 to 4 mph that Harry mentioned. Where your interpretation went astray is that you interpreted the movement of the wiggly green lines as representing the direction of current flow when, in fact, these lines represent a slightly higher current speed but does not tell us anything about the direction of movement. In places where there are long lived strong currents then the color may delineate the location of the current but still doesn't tell us the direction of movement. A perfect example of this is the Gulf Stream which is colored red going past the east coast. We know that it flows to the northeast from other sources and from the pilot chart but, if all we have is the red color, then all we know is the location of the Gulf Stream and that it flows either northeast or southwest. The green areas near where you believe Doran ditched show slightly higher current speed but the direction of flow is still towards the west in the North Pacific Equatorial Current and is also depicted on the pilot chart.
To make this clear, imagine a diagram showing the speed of traffic on a very wide freeway, a thousand lanes wide. Let's say there is a section many miles long where the cars are going 40 mph, which we color blue on our diagram, and then there a half mile section where the traffic is moving at 60 mph, which we color green, followed by a 40 mph, blue, section again. When we look at our diagram the green line appears to go across all the lanes of the freeway and you have interpreted this as showing that all the cars in that section had made a 90 degree turn and were driving across the lanes of the freeway when, in fact, they were still continuing along in the same direction as before the green section only now they were going a little faster. And if the traffic started speeding up sooner then the green section would also be drawn further back and it would then appear that the traffic was moving in exactly the opposite direction than it was. Another example, if you watch the animation you will see what appears to be a long green, sinuous line come from the west, moving east and finally ending up at the Big Island of Hawaii. Your interpretation is that this showed an east moving current while in fact it is in the area of a constant westbound current. There is not a chance that there was a current moving eastward to Hawaii against the westbound current and the trade winds. All this green line shows is that the speed of the westbound current west of Hawaii had increased at different times at different spots along this green line. As further proof all you have to do is watch the animation while concentrating on the Gulf Steam and you will see occasions when the high speed red sections move towards the south in the opposite direction to what we know the Gulf Stream is actually moving. All this is actually showing is that he speed of the Gulf Stream was changing in different sections, not the the water had reversed direction and was actually flowing towards the south. If that actually did happen then the world as we know it is coming to an end,(of course this is 2012...hmmmm.)
And even,
arguendo, if your interpretation were correct, that the direction that these green lines moved showed the direction of current flow, these green lines do not move towards the south so cannot represent a south moving current and do not cross the equator.
And you have been ignoring the effect of the wind which has a greater influence on the movement of a raft than does the current. Looking at the data gathered by Zamperini at great cost, we can see that they covered about two thousand miles in 47 days, averaging 42.5 miles a day. The current was only 0.6 knots accounting for only 16.5 miles per day and the additional 26 miles per day was due to being pushed by the trade wind. You can only sail a life raft straight down wind since they have no keel. Large, multi-person rafts ( except the round 20 and 25 person rafts) can be steered about ten degrees to either side of straight down wind but it is unlikely that Doran carried a large raft. So even if Doran could get across the equator she would have been confronted with the southeast trade winds that would blow her raft towards the northwest, not towards the southwest so not towards Gardner. And it would not be possible to paddle fast enough to counteract this drift cause by the southeast trade wind.
gl