Just getting back to something Gary said about the Monte Carlo Simulation after the symposium
"If you agree with TIGHAR, that the Monte Carlo simulation produces the most accurate estimate of the position of the aircraft at 1912 Z, then you must also agree that this means that they couldn't have landed on Gardner. I am attaching a marked up copy on the Monte Carlo printout. The circle I placed around Howland is 69 SM (60 NM) in radius. I drew the 157° line through Howland that goes to Gardner but the simulation shows that they were unlikely to be closer than 55 SM offset from this line with a higher probability of being more than at a 100 SM offset. I drew in lines that are parallel with the 157° line to Gardner offset by these distances. Since Euclid said parallel lines never cross, these lines maintain their spacings forever. This means that if AE turned to fly the 157° line from where the simulation places them, then they would fly down the offset line, not the correct line to Gardner, and that when they flew by Gardner they were at least 55 SM and, more likely, they were more than 100 SM to the west of that island, which makes it very difficult for them to see the island.
See: Monte carlo offsets-2.pdf (194.6 kB - downloaded 28 times.)
gl
"
As Randy Jacobson pointed out at the symposium, the MC simulation tries to take into account as few variables as possible, so the result of the simulation does not include the assumption that Fred managed to get a celestial sun shot that am, and therefore was unable to calculate the distance between his position on the sun LOP and the distance to the advance LOP that ran through Howland. The MC simply shows that there is a probability that they ended up SW of the LOP through Howland.
However, if Fred had been able to get his sun shot, he would have been able to calculate the distance to the advanced LOP through Howland, and if SW of Howland, he would have then navigated the aircraft to the advanced LOP and intersected it at a point South of Howland. How far south is dependent upon where you put them in the MC simulation, but looking at the MC results, if they were at the SE side of the MC probability results when they took their sun shot, and then navigated to the advanced LOP, they could have intersected the LOP well south of Baker Isl. This leads to the scenario where AE would say "we are on the line 157 - 337" and "we are flying N and S", i.e. the intersect the line, fly north for a bit, don't find what they are looking for, and then turn south assuming that Howland is down the LOP somewhere, only to find Niku instead.
The point being that flying the 157 LOP from the end of the MC simulation doesn't really accurately portray what we might expect from a Navigator such as Fred as it don't include a morning sun shot as one of the variables. I think even Gary would agree that FN was a good enough navigator to get them to the advanced LOP through Howland, what he couldn't control (and this assumes Fred was unable to get proper star sightings overnight) were the variables that might have driven them south of course and therefore put them on the LOP south of their intended target.
Gary is a far superior navigator than I am, so no doubt he will shoot holes in my understanding, but one of the takeaways from the symposium for me was that the MC simulation did not include the assumption of a sun shot. The sun shot would help them correct for E-W position, but not for N-S position.
Andrew