As far as comparing Amelia and Fred's Pilot Qualifications: Fred held a "Limited Commercial" (required 50 hours Flight Time and was limited to carrying passengers for hire within 10 miles of the airport). Amelia had a "Transport Pilot's License" (required 250 hours Flight Time).
Are you saying that Noonan was not capable of keeping the plane right side up? He had
at least 50 hours in 1930 when he got his license and we know that most pilots have a lot more than the minimum required flying hours when they get their licenses. How many more hours did he log in the following seven years? BTW, your source said he got his license in 1930 from the Airman Certification Branch of the FAA but the FAA was created by the Federal Aviation Act of 1958 so there was no FAA in 1930.
The Electra represented Amelia's very first experience with a retractable gear aircraft.
Based on their experience with fixed gear aircraft, they may not have even considered the advantage a retractable gear aircraft would have in a water landing. With a fixed gear, it would usually be wise to avoid a water landing if possible, unlike the retract; you are just about guaranteed an instant 'flip' to inverted accompanied by a very quick stop.
As far as Fred's Navigation expertise: He may have been one of the worlds leading Celestial Navigators, but he had previously always relied on Radio Direction Finding as the final approach for finding islands.
You've been flying long enough so I'm sure you were taught during your instrument rating training how to do an NDB approach with the use of an ADF and that you flew a number of NDB approaches during this training. Let's say that after you got your instrument rating that it just happened to work out that every airport you flew into had an ILS approach so you never had to fly another NDB approach so there was no record of you having done an NDB approach, only ILS approaches, for a number of years. Then, several years later, you have your Jepps out and turned to the page for the anticipated ILS 31 Left approach at MDW that you have always flown in the past and you then hear on the ATIS, "THREE ONE LEFT I-L-S OUT OF SERVICE, THREE ONE LEFT N-D-B APPROACH NOW IN PROGRESS, INFORM CONTROLLER ON INITIAL CONTACT THAT YOU HAVE MIDWAY INFORMATION DELTA." So, do you die now or do you still remember how to use the ADF, when it becomes necessary, and fly the NDB approach to a safe landing? In real life I have never flown a back course localizer approach, I have trained many pilots how to do them and I have no doubt that I would have no trouble flying a BC LOC APP if the situation presented itself.
(For the non-pilots, ILS is Instrument Landing System which has the "localizer beam" and the "glideslope beam" to guide the plane to the runway down through the clouds. NDB is Non Directional Beacon which is a homing beacon that a pilot can navigate to using the ADF, Automatic Direction Finder, like the Hooven radio, and also used with an RDF, Radio Direction Finder, like Amelia's. Both the ILS and the NDB approaches will get the plane to the runway but the ILS is more precise so can allow landings in worse weather than the NDB and many pilots find it more difficult to fly the NDB approach than the "just keep the needles in the center" ILS approach. Using the NDB requires more thinking. A Back Course Localizer approach uses the localizer "beam" to line you up with the runway but you are landing in the opposite direction so the needle moves the wrong way so you have to think about it more and "fly away from the needle" takes some training.)
The use of the the single line of position approach was taught to PAN AM navigators by Noonan and to all the flight navigators in WW2 and since, it is still required on the FAA Flight Navigator test, see
FAR part 63. Pan Am did establish radio stations on their island stations but the landfall approach was always available if needed. Of course Noonan did not go out of his way and did not fly the extra miles necessary to fly the landfall approach when he could fly straight in by using the radio just like you do not do a full instrument approach if you are in VMC (visual meteorological conditions) and have the airport in sight, you request a visual or a contact approach so that you can take the shortcut direct to the airport. This does not mean that you
could not do a full approach if necessary just as Noonan could do a landfall approach if that proved to be necessary. Our WW2 navigators used the landfall approach to find islands because they had to find them the first time without the use of radio because they had to bomb them first before our guys could go ashore and set up radio beacons for future flights, not the benign environment that Pan Am had when setting up its bases prior to the war.
I seriously doubt that he had Gary LaPook's ability to plot a "Search Pattern" to locate Howland Island. His "Weems Bible" recommends RDF and as an alternative, using "The Precomputed Curve" which involves turning 90 degrees and watching for increasing or decreasing plotted LOP's to determine if landfall is ahead or behind. Sounds like "flying the 337/157 North and South Line" to me.
Not really, the use of a precomputed curve is the easiest way to compute the landfall approach but is not the only way,
see the texts available on my website. Here is
a sample of the precomputed altitude curve for Noonan's arrival at Howland. The method that you mention is useful if you headed straight in to the destination so that when the LOP is intercepted you don't know which way to turn so that method will help you determine if you turned the wrong way. This whole issue is avoided by doing the standard landfall procedure and aiming off to the side so that there is no ambiguity. Mantz quoted Noonan describing this exact procedure to him. Here is a
recent example of how this is done. Also see
this description of an approach to Howland using the standard method.
I don't have a scanner, but I have seen where Gary has posted pages from "Weems Air Navigation" I have the 1943 edition and it is on pages 336-339 and is credited to Lt. W. C. Bentley, Jr. US Army Air Corps. The example given (Fig. 229) takes three hours of flying time, but if done properly; it should have taken them to Howland Airport and we know that did not happen.
The same information is on pages 395 and 396 of the 1938 edition of Weems
available on my website. You find the same basic information in Weems, 1931 edition which I didn't have when I put up the website. Weems and Noonan were friends and Noonan contributed to the techniques found in the Weems manuals so there is no doubt that Noonan knew these techniques. Chichester used this procedure in 1931 crossing the Tasman sea in a Gypsy Moth biplane and he is given credit in the English speaking world for developing this technique but Portguese Admiral Coutinho used the same technique making the first flight across the South Atlantic in 1922.
AFM 51-40 lays out the long history of this type of navigation so it was not something brand new in 1937.
You may just want to
browse the other reference documents available on my website.
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