IIRC, Howland was on Hawaii standard time, and the Itasca was off Hawaii time by 1 hour.

Hi Ric

----87 octane fuel agreed. You are 2 for 7

----The fuel system modifications during the crash repair, I got from the book Missing by Nesbit, P16 (‘equalising lines added’).

----The weather forecast: according to Elgen Long, P185, ‘...True had sent the message the evening before’.

     In the archivehttps://tighar.org/Projects/Earhart/Archives/Research/JacobsonDatabase/RADIOMES/MSG7.PDF P79, the message has a date stamp 193706302250

----The position report at 2:18pm (4:18GMT): Chater said ‘...the plane was called and asked to repeat the position, but we still could not get it’. That is due to the poor radio reception, so there is a missing position.

 You cannot have it both ways. If the position 150.0E 7.3S is accurate, then it is a dead reckoning position and the time is wrong. If it is not correct, then there is a missing position at 05:19GMT which we have to fill-in. That is why you invented position 157.0E 7.3S and I invented Position 156.

----Sunrise at Howland was 05:45 Howland Local Time. That is specific to the location of Howland and has nothing to do with time zones. It is 06:15 Itasca Local Time when Itasca is in the vicinity and is 07:15 Hawaii Local Time according to whatever convention is in use.

I thought it looked a bit like a cylinder wall, but i could not come up with a very convincing theory of how it would blow up like that. It's just not a common kind of failure. This was a proven design and engineers knew how to build engines that would resist pressure. I came up with two rather weak ideas: 1) that the engine was forcibly stopped at the exact moment of ignition, so the full force of combustion had nowhere to go but through the cylinder wall; 2) that the overheated engine hit the cold water with enough temperature differential to cause the metal to crack (why you don't add cold water to a hot cast iron engine, or put your hot cast iron pans in cold water).

Has anyone tried taking this bit to the actual engine on display to see if it matches anyplace?

As for the type of metal, 12L14 appears to be the current American designation for a very old kind of steel, which has had other names in other times and places. In England it is classed as Bright Mild Steel, which is a common variety for machining. Knowing when it started to be called 12L14 may not answer when it was first made.

Don W.

This Car and Driver article (June 3 2023) has many details about and photos of the restoration process and its results:
https://www.caranddriver.com/features/a44028908/amelia-earhart-cord/

It's always seemed more like part of an oil sump or some such to me.

My earliest idea when we first found it was that it might be part of the oil tank.  There was a 60 gallon oil tank immediately behind the engine, as shown in this photo of the aircraft under construction.  We don't know whether the tank was aluminum or steel, but the photo looks like either unpainted aluminum or painted steel.

It's always seemed more like part of an oil sump or some such to me.

I've always felt the metal in that artifact is too thin to be a cylinder wall.  Could it be from the water cooling jacket around the cylinder wall?  (Assuming it had such a thing.)

Yes, there were water jackets around the cylinders, but they're still too thick and a fragment of a water jacket shouldn't have oil on it.

• A fuel tank was not taken out during repairs.

That is correct, my mistake. The fuel system was modified during the repairs, but the 13th tank had been removed the previous year. 

The repair orders say nothing about modifying the fuel system and the Inspection Report done when the repairs were completed shows no change.

• Howland is not an atoll.

In Wikipedia, Howland is described as an island and an atoll. Howland is an island with a fringing coral reef, therefore an atoll, but does not have a central lagoon.

Wikipedia is often wrong.  Howland lacks the reef flat and central lagoon of a true atoll.  For example (from ScienceDirect):
"Turneffe Islands Atoll does not have a deep central lagoon, its reefs do not form an entire margin, and there is no reef flat, all of which are features of a true atoll."

• The Navy weather forecast was not received the evening before the departure from Lae.

I did not say the forecast was received, I said it was prepared the previous evening. The time stamp on the message was 2250 (GMT according to Chater).

It was not prepared the previous evening and Chater says nothing about a "time stamp"  He said "At 7.30 a.m., July 1st, the following weather report was received from Tutilla ....".  7:30 a.m. in Lae is 2130 GMT.
The forecast sent to Earhart from Fleet Air Base, Pearl Harbor via Samoa was transmitted at 0915 GMT on June 30 which was 10:45 p.m. on June 29 in Hawaii.
In other words, the forecast was over 12 hours old when it was received in Lae and more than 39 hours old when Earhart took off

• The fuel in Lae was 80 octane, not 87 octane.

I said 80 octane.

I had it backward.  You said 80 octane.  87 is correct.

• Sunrise at Howland was at 06:15 local time, not 05:45.  You Google "Sunrise at Howland Island on July 2" you get "05:46 (GMT -12)", but Itasca was using GMT -11.5.

Sunrise at Howland was 05:45 Howland Local Time which was 06:15 Itasca Local Time when Itasca was in the vicinity. Both are correct and equally confusing.

You're still confused.  Howland was using Hawaii Time which was GMT -10.5 in 1937. So, aboard Itaca sunrise was at 06:15.  On Howland, sunrise was at 7:15.

• You explanation for Earhart's obviously erroneous position report to Lae at 3:19pm, “height 10000 feet position 150.7 east 7.3 south, cumulus clouds, everything okay" makes no sense.  Noonan cannot get a precise lat/long position in daylight without a visual checkpoint on the ground. 
The most likely explanation is that Earhart reported her position as 157 east, 7.3 south. That would put her 600 nautical miles from Lae on the coast of Choiseul Island in the Solomons, 130 nautical miles south of her planned course. Noonan could get the latitude/longitude by noting their position on the Choiseul coastline. He could then plot a correction to put them back on course for the next visual landmark, the Nukumanu Islands (which you, for some reason, call the "Numanu" islands).

My explanation makes complete sense based on known facts. The Chater report is unambiguous: she reported 150.7 east 7.3 south at 03:19pm. That position was a dead reckoning position based on standard navigational techniques for avoiding weather, but the time makes no sense. They must have been SOMEWHERE at 03:19pm; we both agree there is a missing position at about 600miles. I am offering a plausible explanation without changing the facts to suit a theory. Noonan may well have made observations based on seeing islands through gaps in the cloud. Numanu and Nukamanu are names on different charts for the same group of islands.

 

There's no missing position at 600 miles and Noonan never gave lat/long positions based on dead reckoning.  The first report at 04:18 GMT does not include a lat/long position because Noonan had no landmark.  The 05:19 report (misunderstood or mis-transcribed by Lae) is accurate.

One valid point out of seven. I suppose you could call that a bad review!

You're still 0 for 7.

There are Earhart reports from the Atlantic crossing where the position was taken from a prior from take-off plot of position along the track assuming dead reckoning and no winds, i.e a projected position as a function of flight time.  However, those positions did not correspond to the time of her broadcasts.  Furthermore, there is no evidence from anywhere on her flights that the position report was according to the time of her broadcast.  Where we do have the navigational charts, the position was calculated prior to her broadcast up to 30 minutes or so.

Hi Ric

Thanks for the feedback. 

• A fuel tank was not taken out during repairs.

That is correct, my mistake. The fuel system was modified during the repairs, but the 13th tank had been removed the previous year. 

• Howland is not an atoll.

In Wikipedia, Howland is described as an island and an atoll. Howland is an island with a fringing coral reef, therefore an atoll, but does not have a central lagoon.

• Manning was not the radio operator.

I said that both Manning and Noonan were navigators. However, Manning was the only crew member competent on Morse code, hence ‘the radio operator’. His absence as a radio operator and the deletion of the Morse keys was crucial to the outcome of the flight.

• The Navy weather forecast was not received the evening before the departure from Lae.

I did not say the forecast was received, I said it was prepared the previous evening. The time stamp on the message was 2250 (GMT according to Chater). So, somebody’s evening, but it took hours to relay the message to Lae, arriving in the morning.

My premise is that the flight plan depended on the forecast, but the execution of the flight depended on ALL available navigation techniques which were substantially foiled by the adverse weather.

• The fuel in Lae was 80 octane, not 87 octane.

I said 80 octane.

• Sunrise at Howland was at 06:15 local time, not 05:45.  You Google "Sunrise at Howland Island on July 2" you get "05:46 (GMT -12)", but Itasca was using GMT -11.5.

Sunrise at Howland was 05:45 Howland Local Time which was 06:15 Itasca Local Time when Itasca was in the vicinity. Both are correct and equally confusing.

• You explanation for Earhart's obviously erroneous position report to Lae at 3:19pm, “height 10000 feet position 150.7 east 7.3 south, cumulus clouds, everything okay" makes no sense.  Noonan cannot get a precise lat/long position in daylight without a visual checkpoint on the ground. 
The most likely explanation is that Earhart reported her position as 157 east, 7.3 south. That would put her 600 nautical miles from Lae on the coast of Choiseul Island in the Solomons, 130 nautical miles south of her planned course. Noonan could get the latitude/longitude by noting their position on the Choiseul coastline. He could then plot a correction to put them back on course for the next visual landmark, the Nukumanu Islands (which you, for some reason, call the "Numanu" islands).

My explanation makes complete sense based on known facts. The Chater report is unambiguous: she reported 150.7 east 7.3 south at 03:19pm. That position was a dead reckoning position based on standard navigational techniques for avoiding weather, but the time makes no sense. They must have been SOMEWHERE at 03:19pm; we both agree there is a missing position at about 600miles. I am offering a plausible explanation without changing the facts to suit a theory. Noonan may well have made observations based on seeing islands through gaps in the cloud. Numanu and Nukamanu are names on different charts for the same group of islands.

One valid point out of seven. I suppose you could call that a bad review!