TIGHAR

Amelia Earhart Search Forum => Celestial choir => Topic started by: Gary LaPook on May 21, 2012, 04:00:13 PM

Title: LaPook Hypothesis: Box Search around 157-337
Post by: Gary LaPook on May 21, 2012, 04:00:13 PM

TIGHAR has been claiming the opposite, that Noonan and Earhart abandoned searching for Howland and continued to the southeast because they thought that they were sure to find one of the the many islands in the Phoenixs,

TIGHAR has never claimed any such thing that I am aware of, and has never held that there was any sort of 'guarantee' of landfall - just a better chance of it where 'there be lands' and that it is a possibility.  Friedell thought it at the time based on his logic of how a landplane navigator would rationally operate, as did others whom Friedell had heard from: there is 'less' land (none) with reach to the NNW of Howland; 'there be land there' to the SSE - hence the logic.  But never a 'guarantee' of finding has been claimed at all.


Well maybe "guarantee" was too strong a word but the TIGHAR hypothesis does rest on Noonan abandoning searching for Howland based on, as shown by at least one case, the incorrect belief that there was a very good chance of finding one of the widely spaced Phoenix Islands. My point, for all these years, is that this is incorrect and this point is obvious to anybody who knows the navigation, it was always much more likely to find Howland from their position near that island, based on what they knew of their position, than it was to find any one of he Phoenix group. Because of this, the obvious choice was to expend all fuel available to find Howland, not to fly off across 400 SM of ocean with their fingers crossed that they would bump into one of those islands.

Friedell, looking at the situation after the disappearance, knew that they had not found Howland or Baker so his considerations were different and at that point it made sense to search the nearest piece of dry land. But this was after the event, not at the point that Noonan and Earhart were making their decisions.

gl
Title: Re: LaPook Hypothesis: Box Search around 157-337
Post by: Martin X. Moleski, SJ on May 21, 2012, 05:53:37 PM
... the TIGHAR hypothesis does rest on Noonan abandoning searching for Howland based on, as shown by at least one case, the incorrect belief that there was a very good chance of finding one of the widely spaced Phoenix Islands.

The TIGHAR hypothesis is that AE and FN ended up at Gardner.

Exactly how they got there is speculative.

It makes sense (to me) to think that AE's last transmission (http://tighar.org/wiki/Last_transmission) is a correct account of what they were doing: first flying north, then flying south on "the line" that they thought would lead them to the vicinity of Howland Island.

It may well be that Fred never gave up hope of finding Howland, but stumbled across Gardner instead while doing a search for Howland.  I grant that this places them farther off course that one would expect--but then again, the loss of the aircraft suggests that something went wrong with Fred's navigation.

Quote
My point, for all these years, is that this is incorrect and this point is obvious to anybody who knows the navigation, it was always much more likely to find Howland from their position near that island, based on what they knew of their position, than it was to find any one of he Phoenix group. Because of this, the obvious choice was to expend all fuel available to find Howland, not to fly off across 400 SM of ocean with their fingers crossed that they would bump into one of those islands.

OK.  One of these days you'll have to draw a picture of what Fred would have done if he were you, showing how much territory that he could search with the four or five hours of fuel remaining in the aircraft after the last transmission.  That will show us how far off he had to have been from Howland and Baker in order to search that long using that technique and come up short.  It will be interesting to see how close that point is to Niku. 

I don't trust my mathematics or plotting skills to do the drawing, but it has to be a series of rectangles angled at 357-157, working from the first line flown north and south, then creating ever-larger boxes at some reasonable visual distance apart from each other (whatever that might be--10 NM?  20 NM?).

Quote
Friedell, looking at the situation after the disappearance, knew that they had not found Howland or Baker so his considerations were different and at that point it made sense to search the nearest piece of dry land.

From my point of view, the bearings that point toward the Phoenix Islands still support that line of reasoning.

(http://tighar.org/aw/mediawiki/images/2/2c/Bearingmaplarge.gif)

I understand that you do not find any of these persuasive.
Title: Re: LaPook Hypothesis: Box Search around 157-337
Post by: Bill Mangus on June 03, 2012, 04:27:45 PM
I don't have a lot of experience working/transmitting on radios, but I do have a little.  I think the order in which Amelia stated the numbers in the LOP do indicate which direction she was heading or about to head at the time of the transmission.  "Flying the line 157 337" tells me she's heading 157 degrees.  If she were headed 337 would not correct radio procedure of that time dictate she state that figure first?  Of course with all the other things she didn't do correctly, we've not way of knowing but the the transcripts do seem to indicate she knew correct procedures and generally followed them.  Just a thought. . . .
Title: Re: LaPook Hypothesis: Box Search around 157-337
Post by: Gary LaPook on June 04, 2012, 05:07:13 PM
I don't have a lot of experience working/transmitting on radios, but I do have a little.  I think the order in which Amelia stated the numbers in the LOP do indicate which direction she was heading or about to head at the time of the transmission.  "Flying the line 157 337" tells me she's heading 157 degrees.  If she were headed 337 would not correct radio procedure of that time dictate she state that figure first?  Of course with all the other things she didn't do correctly, we've not way of knowing but the the transcripts do seem to indicate she knew correct procedures and generally followed them.  Just a thought. . . .
But she did NOT say  "Flying the line 157 337" she said "we are on the line 157 337 (http://tighar.org/Projects/Earhart/Archives/Research/Bulletins/37_ItascaLogs/analysis.html)."

Ever hear of "beans and pork"? No? It's hard to
pronounce it, isn't it? The expression "pork and
beans" , however, rolls off your tongue in one smooth complete single
expression. Now try saying "south and north." "North
and south" is also a common expression and also just rolls off the tongue.
My point is don't read too much into the order of AE's
words in the logs. It is also possible that she did say "south and north" but
that the radioman wrote it down in the reversed order
because of common "north and south" expression.

It is also possible that they had already made several passes both north
and south in an effort to find Howland prior to the
transmission.

gl
Title: Re: LaPook Hypothesis: Box Search around 157-337
Post by: Monty Fowler on June 05, 2012, 06:13:34 PM
"Because of this, the obvious choice was to expend all fuel available to find Howland, not to fly off across 400 SM of ocean with their fingers crossed that they would bump into one of those islands."

I'm curious about this statement of yours, Mr. LaPook. Why is this the "obvious" choice. What makes this the "better" choice than what they may have ended up doing, flying southeast and landing at Gardner Island? Let me ask you a question, and I am being completely serious. It is an either/or question, just like the one Amelia and Fred faced 75 years ago:

                                                   ----- Do you want to be stabbed, or shot? -----

Your first reaction is probably neither, correct? But what if those are your only choices? And you have to choose one or the other right now?
Which is the more "obvious" choice now, Mr. LaPook? Which one gives you a better chance of coming out alive? What other factors come into play in your mind that I can't possibly be aware of?

You weren't in that cockpit 75 years ago. Neither was I, for that matter. I don't even want to begin to imagine how Amelia and Fred felt at 20-plus hours when all they saw below them was blue ocean instead of the brown smudge of Howland Island and the white speck of the Itasca.

But flatly stating that the "obvious" choice was to do one thing, with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight, to the outright exclusion of all other evidence, thoughts, information, etc., on the topic, is, to a certain extent, intellectually dishonest. Regardless of how adept you may be in your own chosen field, and I have absolutely no doubt that you are, we can always learn from others.

LTM, who knows what he doesn't know,

Monty Fowler, TIGHAR No. 2189 CER

Title: Re: LaPook Hypothesis: Box Search around 157-337
Post by: Adam Marsland on June 06, 2012, 12:01:34 AM
Hey Gary...Adam here...want to tell you I appreciate your putting forth your ideas to critique, and I always respect when people with expertise bring their ideas to bear.

I try to look at things from the logistical/practical ground view, so to speak, and I want to tell you why I, as an admitted aviation know-nothing, find the search pattern theory unpersuasive. 

Here's the thing:  you have a navigator who's been up for 24 hours straight, there's limited fuel and...here's the kicker:  the noise of the engine makes complex direct two-way communication well-nigh impossible.  So, yes, in THEORY, one could execute a search pattern.  But success or failure would depend on making -- and correct me if I'm wrong -- a series of course corrections that would require careful keeping track of where one thought one was, and how one progressed in relation to it.

I would submit that, under the circumstances, this just would not have been practical in a real world way.  Yes, of course FN was a competent navigator, and he'd been passing AE written course corrections.  But now everyone's tired, stressed, time is running out, and if FN wanted to embark on this course of action, first he would have to explain/persuade it to AE, and then execute the course corrections calmly and carefully.  To me, in that kind of a situation, there's just too much margin of error.  What if AE doesn't understand what she's doing?  What if out of stress or fatigue, someone screws up a course heading, or just fails to keep proper track of the last turn?  Without real time two way communication, there's no way to really work these details out in a crunch situation.  And my understand is this did not exist.  They wrote each other on a blackboard.  So any communications have to be simple and direct.

I anticipate that your response will probably be of course they could have done it...and I agree with you, it is possible.  But it's one of those things where I just don't think under the circumstances, sitting in FN's seat, it would have seemed like a good move.  Far simpler and more goofproof to tell AE to fly the LOP to the best of one's ability, and use the southern islands as a backstop, and it may have seemed just as likely to get them to land as any other option.  I'm not suggesting these people were incompetent...but tired and stressed competent people make stupid mistakes based on bad communication all the time, and that's without having the roar of an engine drowning out any details.  And competent people know this, and compensate for it.  I don't want to say what FN "would" have done, but I am sure that, having been with AE and in that plane for a long time, there is no way he could fail take all this into account.

That's my opinion, and I don't vouchsafe it as being anything else.  I'm neither pilot nor navigator, though I am a student of how things go wrong when people fail to communicate.  But to me, from my admittedly surface understanding of what you're suggesting, it just doesn't take into proper account conditions in the cockpit as they existed at the time, and the practical limits of what people can do with limited time in an emergency situation without good two-way real time communication to work out misunderstandings or make a contingency plan.  To me, whatever they did, given the limits in time, extreme likelihood of error owing to fatigue, stress and fear, and the inability to really communicate, it would have had to be kept simple.
Title: Re: LaPook Hypothesis: Box Search around 157-337
Post by: Martin X. Moleski, SJ on June 06, 2012, 06:52:00 AM
... Far simpler and more goofproof to tell AE to fly the LOP to the best of one's ability, and use the southern islands as a backstop ...

Gary has persuaded me, FWIW, that to a professional navigator, the Phoenix Group doesn't look like a catcher's mitt or backstop.  There are a lot of holes in those two metaphors.   :D

I'm inclined to think that if AE and FN found Niku, it was while searching for Howland.
Title: Re: LaPook Hypothesis: Box Search around 157-337
Post by: John Ousterhout on June 06, 2012, 10:05:08 AM
Keep in mind that Fred was also a pilot.  During a landfall approach, they might have preferred to have both sets of eyes in the front of the aircraft.  If a search pattern was to be flown following Fred's directions, the easiest way to overcome the communication difficulties would be to have Fred sitting in the right hand seat to monitor and direct the course changes.  He could also have flown the aircraft while Amelia was busy with the radio.  He didn't need to stay in the back of the aircraft to navigate.
Title: Re: LaPook Hypothesis: Box Search around 157-337
Post by: Jeff Victor Hayden on June 06, 2012, 11:42:24 AM
Could we discuss the idea of a box search pattern and see where it goes?
I'll start it off with this point...
If we start a box search pattern we must have a start position so, where exactly are we?
Now, there are a number of theories regarding this position, Monte Carlo theory and so on...
The main point to bear in mind is that any box search pattern would start from where they thought they were, at the time.
Title: Re: LaPook Hypothesis: Box Search around 157-337
Post by: Chris Johnson on June 06, 2012, 02:43:02 PM
No flyer/navigator question by me!

To fly a box search is it advantageous to know where you are.

I ask and bear with me as my example is based solely on Terra Firma

I lost a valued cross from a chain as a young man.  I knew i'd put it on in the morning and had been in my flat all day until a friend suggested I go down the road to join an friendly football game (soccer to 90% of Forum ites).  After a pleasant kick around I went home the same way.  Only when I was nearing home did I notice said cross was missing from said chain.

I had 3 options, search flat, search route or do a search of football field.  Knowing that my flat would remain in the same spot I back tracked to the field of dreams and commenced a 'Kris cross' grid search.  Low and behold after a short period of time I found it :)

I knew where I was going, my route and where I’d been.  To find the object I just had to go back and search.

Is this the right idea?
Title: Re: LaPook Hypothesis: Box Search around 157-337
Post by: Jeff Victor Hayden on June 06, 2012, 04:55:45 PM
That's the idea Chris, to get some discussion going.
With the Electra we have a different scenario in as much as they were not exactly sure of their location (otherwise they would have landed on Howland, seen the Itasca smoke etc...)
So, 'we must be on you' indicates they thought they were at Howland. The events that followed showed they were not.
There are two positions to take into account:
Where we think they thought they were
Where we think they actually were
Both of these positions are open to debate.

My thought is that if they instigated a box search pattern from the position they thought they were at they would likely start toward the direction they thought Howland should be from this position.
So for example, if they were actually in the position from the Monte Carlo simulation and they attempted the previously mentioned maneuver then they may have inadvertently headed off into the wild blue yonder in the mistaken belief that Howland must lie in that direction.
Title: Re: LaPook Hypothesis: Box Search around 157-337
Post by: Martin X. Moleski, SJ on June 06, 2012, 06:50:34 PM
To fly a box search is it advantageous to know where you are.

I visited a radio-controlled aircraft flying field one evening and heard that a friend had lost a plane in the woods out in front of the landing area.  Someone pointed at some bushes in the treeline to give me an idea of where to search.

I came back the next day with a compass and walked a search grid, starting in line with the bush and the flight station, and guestimating how far I could effectively search with me eyes in order to decide how far apart to space my search lines.

The depth of the box was determined by a guess about how far away the plane might have been.  There was no strong rationale here--just the thought that measuring distance by eye to objects in the air is difficult.  My rule of thumb is to go farther than I think is likely, and then some.

After four or five fruitless sweeps, my compass heading pointed me into the heart of some thick shrub brush.  I almost turned away from it to follow the well-worn paths around it.  The lost airplane was in the center of the brush, of course.  I didn't see it until I was almost past it--there was only one spot from which it was visible. 

So, I understand the logic of a box search, too.  They can work.
Title: Re: LaPook Hypothesis: Box Search around 157-337
Post by: Jeff Victor Hayden on June 06, 2012, 08:49:32 PM
Very good example of a search pattern and, the logic behind the search Marty.
I am with Gary on this one and, am sure that is what FN would have done. My only concern with the box pattern search scenario is that as history has shown, they were not where they thought they were. Consequently the search pattern began from a mistaken belief that they were at point A when in fact they were at point B. Any search pattern would have been based upon trying to locate Howland from point A which is not much use if you are in fact at point B.
The logic behind this becomes clear when you apply it to 2 different locations on the map. The search box will cover the same size area but, in totally the wrong place.
Title: Re: LaPook Hypothesis: Box Search around 157-337
Post by: Martin X. Moleski, SJ on June 06, 2012, 09:08:23 PM
... The logic behind this becomes clear when you apply it to 2 different locations on the map. The search box will cover the same size area but, in totally the wrong place.

Understood.  The hope is that one is not so far off at the outset, and that there is enough time to expand the box until you find what you seek.

The beauty of the box search is that, if it is done well, you know more and more about where your objective is NOT.  As with my search for the lost RC model, luck was involved as well as planning.  I could easily have taken a step past the model--I was quite amazed at how hard it was to see.  It was nose down in the scrub brush.  I think I had a different image in mind for what I was looking for.
Title: Re: LaPook Hypothesis: Box Search around 157-337
Post by: Irvine John Donald on June 06, 2012, 11:18:03 PM
"I think I had a different image in mind for what I was looking for.". Marty, this is something I think AE and FN also had a problem with. In searching for a tropical island with an airport would AE have imagined a lush tree covered island with neatly cut out runways when looking for Howland?  Could they in fact have "had a different image in mind". Howland was without trees, no real height above sea level and two runways running from one beach sidebof the island to the other beach side.  Quite unlike anything she had ever landed on before. Yes Itaca was there spewing smoke but I wonder.....
Title: Re: LaPook Hypothesis: Box Search around 157-337
Post by: Gary LaPook on June 07, 2012, 01:12:28 AM
Hey Gary...Adam here...want to tell you I appreciate your putting forth your ideas to critique, and I always respect when people with expertise bring their ideas to bear.


Here's the thing:  you have a navigator who's been up for 24 hours straight, there's limited fuel and...here's the kicker:  the noise of the engine makes complex direct two-way communication well-nigh impossible.  So, yes, in THEORY, one could execute a search pattern. 
 To me, whatever they did, given the limits in time, extreme likelihood of error owing to fatigue, stress and fear, and the inability to really communicate, it would have had to be kept simple.
You make it sound so complicated, it's not and all the planning can be done at the beginning so no work needs to be done during the search itself. An expanding square search pattern consists of legs that are at right angles to each other so each leg is followed by a ninety degree turn, all in the same direction. The first two legs are flown for twice the visibility, the next two for four times the visibility, then six times visibility then eight times visibility, etc. A simple example will  make this clear. They have been flying on a course of 157 degrees at a ground speed of 120 knots and the visibility is 20 NM. (We will ignore the wind correction angle for this illustration but that is easily allowed for in computing the headings to use to maintain the desired courses.)

At 1912 Z they have a four hour reserve of fuel and they know that they must have missed Howland. Noonan passes a note to Earhart.

"Turn left now to 067 degrees and maintain that heading until 1932 Z.
Then turn left to 337 degrees and maintain that heading until 1952 Z.
Then turn left to 247 degrees and maintain that heading until 2032 Z.
Then turn left to 157 degrees and maintain that heading until 2112 Z.
Then turn left to 067 degrees and maintain that heading until 2212 Z.
Then turn left to 337 degrees and maintain that heading until 2312 Z."

The first two legs take 20 minutes and cover 40 NM, twice the visibility. The next two legs take 40 minutes and cover 80 NM, four times visibility, the next two legs take 60 minutes and cover 120 NM, six times visibility. At the end of the four hours of fuel they have searched a box 160 NM on a side covering 25,600 square nautical miles, basically 80 NM in each direction from the starting position.

Rather than me drawing a diagram, see flight navigation reference materials available here. (https://sites.google.com/site/fredienoonan/topics/standard-search-pattern)

gl
Title: Re: LaPook Hypothesis: Box Search around 157-337
Post by: Gary LaPook on June 07, 2012, 01:24:06 AM
"Because of this, the obvious choice was to expend all fuel available to find Howland, not to fly off across 400 SM of ocean with their fingers crossed that they would bump into one of those islands."

I'm curious about this statement of yours, Mr. LaPook. Why is this the "obvious" choice. What makes this the "better" choice than what they may have ended up doing, flying southeast and landing at Gardner Island? Let me ask you a question, and I am being completely serious. It is an either/or question, just like the one Amelia and Fred faced 75 years ago:

                                                   ----- Do you want to be stabbed, or shot? -----

Your first reaction is probably neither, correct? But what if those are your only choices? And you have to choose one or the other right now?
  • Stabbing involves a lot of pain, blood, tissue damage, possibly even death if done with a big enough implement, enough times or in the right place.
  • Shooting involves a lot of pain, blood, tissue damage, possibly even death if done done enough times or in the right place, or with a large enough caliber weapon.
Which is the more "obvious" choice now, Mr. LaPook? Which one gives you a better chance of coming out alive? What other factors come into play in your mind that I can't possibly be aware of?

You weren't in that cockpit 75 years ago. Neither was I, for that matter. I don't even want to begin to imagine how Amelia and Fred felt at 20-plus hours when all they saw below them was blue ocean instead of the brown smudge of Howland Island and the white speck of the Itasca.

But flatly stating that the "obvious" choice was to do one thing, with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight, to the outright exclusion of all other evidence, thoughts, information, etc., on the topic, is, to a certain extent, intellectually dishonest. Regardless of how adept you may be in your own chosen field, and I have absolutely no doubt that you are, we can always learn from others.

LTM, who knows what he doesn't know,

Monty Fowler, TIGHAR No. 2189 CER
I'll throw it back to you. Why do you think they would have considered, based on the information they had available to them at the time, that they would have a better chance for survival by flying SSE until the fuel was exhausted?

Without making an exhaustive list of the information they had available, they believed that the closest land was Howland based on their navigation. Even though their radio had not been useful so far, they had finally received a signal from Itasca and, given some more time and effort, it may yet prove to be effective. The Itasca is there so if they don't reach Howland it will be close enough to rescue them. There is a runway there, fuel, people and a successful flight if they find it.

Your choice, turn your back on all this, (and more,) and blindly fly off towards the SSE with the knowledge that any islands in that direction are likely to be about 400 SM (350 NM) away, are widely scattered, not knowing how big any of those islands might be or how difficult they might be to spot. Knowing, that based on the visibility they are experiencing, that they could fly through the whole Phoenix group without seeing any one of the islands (ask Rickenbacker) and the visibility might be worse in the Phoenix islands, they have no way of knowing. There is no way to fly a search pattern in the vicinity of the Phoenix group because they would not know when to start one since they do not know how long it will take to get there since they don't know where they are starting from. Even if they could determine when to start a search pattern they would have very little fuel remaining to make the search with.

And you can't follow the LOP since there is no way to determine that you are staying on it, even Ric agrees with this (https://tighar.org/smf/index.php/topic,447.msg5398.html#msg5398), you only have dead reckoning, (https://sites.google.com/site/fredienoonan/discussions/what-is-dead-reckoning) maintaining a heading, and you can't dead reckon if you don't know where you are starting from. Also see what I wrote here (https://sites.google.com/site/fredienoonan/discussions/why-it-was-not-possible-to-follow-lop-to-nikumaroro).

So, just fly SSE until the engine quits with your fingers crossed, hoping to bump into an island. Is that YOUR obvious choice?

See what I wrote previously here. (https://sites.google.com/site/fredienoonan/discussions/debunking-tighar-s-theory)


gl
Title: Re: LaPook Hypothesis: Box Search around 157-337
Post by: Chris Johnson on June 07, 2012, 02:42:35 AM
"I thinking had a different image in mind for what I was looking for.". Marty, this is something I think AE and FN also had a problem with. In searching for a tropical island with an airport would AE have imagined a lush tree covered island with neatly cut out runways when looking for Howland?  Could they in fact have "had a different image in mind". Howland was without trees, no real height above sea level and two runways running from one beach sidebof the island to the other beach side.  Quite unlike anything she had ever landed on before. Yes Itaca was there spewing smoke but I wonder.....

Marty/Irv

do we know if AE/FN had seen any images of Howland? Shots taken from the air so that they had some idea of what they were looking for?
Title: Re: LaPook Hypothesis: Box Search around 157-337
Post by: Martin X. Moleski, SJ on June 07, 2012, 03:39:37 AM
do we know if AE/FN had seen any images of Howland? Shots taken from the air so that they had some idea of what they were looking for?

I don't know.

I don't remember hearing anyone speculate about this previously.
Title: Re: LaPook Hypothesis: Box Search around 157-337
Post by: Chris Johnson on June 07, 2012, 04:09:38 AM
Its one thing looking for something that you know such as the model plane or my cross, another when you don't know what it is or have only an out dated chart or such like.

Suppose i'm thinking that by doing the box search, spotting an island with ship such as Garndnet may have given the impression of Howland.
Title: Re: LaPook Hypothesis: Box Search around 157-337
Post by: Martin X. Moleski, SJ on June 07, 2012, 05:30:40 AM
... spotting an island with ship such as Gardner may have given the impression of Howland.

For a moment, perhaps.

The illusion would not last long.   ::)
Title: Re: LaPook Hypothesis: Box Search around 157-337
Post by: John Ousterhout on June 07, 2012, 08:41:08 AM
I still struggle with the thought of anyone intentionally flying 350 NM away from the vicinity of their destination.  I live in Washington State, which is less than 300 miles from border to border.  That's like someone who can't find Portland International Airport, so they fly all the way across Washington state to land in Vancouver BC.  That might make sense for a large fast airliner, but not a 120 mph twin.
  If they have any working navigational abilities, I would expect some sort of local search pattern beginning at their calculated position.  If they don't have nav capabilities, I would still expect a search pattern, this time based on their best guess position.  The shape of the implied search pattern associated with each scenario might be different.  If a navigator was certain of their position, with a known margin of error, then the search area might be limited to that known margin of error.  In that case, the assumption might be that the destination had been overlooked, so the assumption might be that the search pattern needed to be repeated.  Marty's search for the RC aircraft is a good example - initial search of the area missed it (been there, done that, numerous times).

The second scenario, in which the navigator cannot determine their position, implies a search pattern that expands indefinitely, but does not repeat.

There is a hybrid scenario, in which one axis of their position is known (or confidently assumed), but the other axis is questionable.  Rather than flying an expanding box pattern, this scenario implies a rectangular pattern, only flying a limited distance from the known axis, while flying increasingly long legs parallel to that axis.

None of these scenarios allow AE/FN to fly patterns that eventually lead to a 350 mile leg - they didn't have the gas.  If they arrived at Gardner, it seems to me that it must have been the result of a terrible error in their DR navigation to the advanced LOP, and failure to determine even approximate position in daytime.  Gardner would need to be within the 160-mile box that Gary described, implying arrival at the LOP nearly 200 miles south of Howland!
Title: Re: LaPook Hypothesis: Box Search around 157-337
Post by: Irvine John Donald on June 07, 2012, 08:51:19 AM
I don't think anyone is suggesting that they got to a point in their journey and said "Well Howland should be right there in front of us. It isn't so let's just fly south and see what happens.". I speculate that pilots doing DR reckoning often miss their target a little and have to search a bit to acquire it.  I further speculate that AE and FN did some form of search when AE radioed that "we must be on you" message.  What the search was our duration is unknown but I can't believe no search was done.
Title: Re: LaPook Hypothesis: Box Search around 157-337
Post by: Irvine John Donald on June 07, 2012, 08:58:35 AM
do we know if AE/FN had seen any images of Howland? Shots taken from the air so that they had some idea of what they were looking for?

I don't know.

I don't remember hearing anyone speculate about this previously. 

Were any aerial shots of Howland even available?  What aircraft would have taken it?  Not a well travelled area.

Remember that search pilot Lambrecht said the island had short bushy trees and so his interpretation of the scale (actually 80 foot tall trees) was off. Could that also be that AE saw a "sandbar" and dismissed it because her scale was wrong and it didn't look like a typical tropical island (no trees and a scant 6 feet above sea level is the maximum elevation)? 
Title: Re: LaPook Hypothesis: Box Search around 157-337
Post by: Jeff Victor Hayden on June 07, 2012, 09:56:27 AM
At 08:43 Earhart said, “We are on the line 157 337. Will repeat this message on 6210.”

At 08:55 she said, “We are running on line north and south.”

http://tighar.org/Projects/Earhart/Archives/Research/Bulletins/49_LastWords/49_LastWords.html (http://tighar.org/Projects/Earhart/Archives/Research/Bulletins/49_LastWords/49_LastWords.html)

Do these two statements sound like the start of a search pattern? Gary?
IMHO they do, “We are running on line north and south.”. North AND South? North, turn 90, South, turn 90 as in Garys example of an expanding box search pattern.
Title: Re: LaPook Hypothesis: Box Search around 157-337
Post by: Edgard Engelman on June 07, 2012, 12:20:04 PM
The "must be on you" message was logged at 07:42, one hour before the "on the line" message. Most probably AE was 'searching' during that hour. Exactly was form this search took, is another problem (only north and south or a rectangular pattern); it is the ltime lag between the 2 messages that also suggest a search pattern.
Title: Re: LaPook Hypothesis: Box Search around 157-337
Post by: Jeff Victor Hayden on June 07, 2012, 01:07:51 PM
The "must be on you" message was logged at 07:42, one hour before the "on the line" message. Most probably AE was 'searching' during that hour. Exactly was form this search took, is another problem (only north and south or a rectangular pattern); it is the ltime lag between the 2 messages that also suggest a search pattern.
That sounds like a reasonable explanation Edgar. That would have given them time for a few North South sweeps with the accompanying 90 degree turns.
Title: Re: LaPook Hypothesis: Box Search around 157-337
Post by: Chris Johnson on June 07, 2012, 01:11:54 PM
When discussing the LOP on another thread I was told that you could not accuratly fly one due to drift, head/tail winds etc..  Wouldn't this apply to a box search as well?
Title: Re: LaPook Hypothesis: Box Search around 157-337
Post by: Jeff Victor Hayden on June 07, 2012, 01:31:08 PM
Chris, if you have a look at Garys post #16 and the links he put in it explains what you need and, how to complete a box search pattern. A typical North/South leg would be anything from 10 to 50 Nm, depending on how lost you are ;) Wouldn't be in the region of 350 Nm each leg, you would get lost again ;)

IMHO
Title: Re: LaPook Hypothesis: Box Search around 157-337
Post by: Chris Johnson on June 07, 2012, 01:42:04 PM
But if you had some drift and other problems then you in theory could 'miss' the object you were looking for?

I'm no navigator, just throwing straw in the wind  ;D
Title: Re: LaPook Hypothesis: Box Search around 157-337
Post by: Jeff Victor Hayden on June 07, 2012, 05:59:00 PM
But if you had some drift and other problems then you in theory could 'miss' the object you were looking for?

I'm no navigator, just throwing straw in the wind  ;D

Nor me Chris that's why I always read Garys input as he seems to be the man. Page 237 deals with the drift part of a search pattern in Garys link. You don't need a LOP, just headings and distances relative to each other for a search pattern (I think  ???)
Title: Re: LaPook Hypothesis: Box Search around 157-337
Post by: richie conroy on June 08, 2012, 07:40:46 PM
for me, this page from the last flight notes, sums up why it went wrong ?

even with 4 people they were all kept busy

because there was only 2 people an the work doubled, if Fred knew there location, i think Amelia would ov been too busy looking for land and checking instruments to even take in Fred's  notes about location speed etc
Title: Re: LaPook Hypothesis: Box Search around 157-337
Post by: Gary LaPook on June 09, 2012, 01:04:22 PM
for me, this page from the last flight notes, sums up why it went wrong ?

even with 4 people they were all kept busy

because there was only 2 people an the work doubled, if Fred knew there location, i think Amelia would ov been too busy looking for land and checking instruments to even take in Fred's  notes about location speed etc
Let me tell you, it's just long boring hours where your main job is just staying awake. As the pilot you check your compass every ten minutes, or so, and reset the directional gyro as necessary, then go back to boredom. For the navigator (I did both jobs both myself at the same time) shooting a three star fix and doing the computations takes about 25 to 30 minutes every two hours or so. Flying a "wind star" to find the wind with the drift meter takes about 10 minutes every one or two hours. Not much of the navigator to do in between, read comic books?

Amelia talks about all the radio chatter but that was Manning on morse code, he was loquacious, Earhart was not.

gl

Title: Re: LaPook Hypothesis: Box Search around 157-337
Post by: Irvine John Donald on June 09, 2012, 08:57:28 PM
Gary, was autopilot reliable in those days?  If AE relied on it like her voice comm gear and DF hardware then could a drift take them off course or would the compass checks catch it?
Title: Re: LaPook Hypothesis: Box Search around 157-337
Post by: Gary LaPook on June 10, 2012, 02:39:31 AM
Gary, was autopilot reliable in those days?  If AE relied on it like her voice comm gear and DF hardware then could a drift take them off course or would the compass checks catch it?
That's the reason that you check you compass every 10 minutes or so, to correct any drift in the directional gyro from whence the autopilot gets its information. There were three compasses in the plane, the standard pilot's compass mounted above the instrument panel, an aperiodic compass mounted on the floor in front of the co-pilot's seat, and another aperiodic compass mounted at Noonan's nav station. An aperiodic compass is much more accurate than the standard pilot's compass. But something to keep in mind, gyros drift very little near the equator. The explanation is somewhat complicated. We are talking about precession of a gyroscope. There are two types of gyro precession, real and apparent. Real precession is caused by friction in the bearings which then causes a torque which causes the gyro to precess. In new gyros this tends to be very little. What most pilots see as gyro precession is not real precession but apparent precession. The gyroscope in the directional gyro keeps its alignment with a spot out in space while the earth turns under it. This means that the gyro appears to drift while, in fact, it is not drifting, or precessing, but merely maintaining its alignment in inertial space. A directional gyro in a plane over the north pole will appear to precess at a rate of 15.04 degrees per hour since this is the rate that the earth turns in relation to inertial space. (In relationship to the sun it turns at a rate of 15.00 degrees per hour.) In the latitude of the U.S., pilots are taught that a DG will precess at about 10 degrees per hour, which is simply the 15.04 rate multiplied by the sine of the latitude as this is what determines the rate of the apparent precession.
The latitude being flown was near the equator, zero degrees of latitude. The sine of zero degrees is zero so the apparent precession near the equator is also zero (15.04 times 0 = 0 ) so Earhart's gyros should not have appeared to drift at all or very little due to real precession due to friction in the bearings.

gl
Title: Re: LaPook Hypothesis: Box Search around 157-337
Post by: Adam Marsland on June 22, 2012, 03:45:08 AM
Hey Gary...Adam here...want to tell you I appreciate your putting forth your ideas to critique, and I always respect when people with expertise bring their ideas to bear.


Here's the thing:  you have a navigator who's been up for 24 hours straight, there's limited fuel and...here's the kicker:  the noise of the engine makes complex direct two-way communication well-nigh impossible.  So, yes, in THEORY, one could execute a search pattern.  But success or failure would depend on making -- and correct me if I'm wrong -- a series of course corrections that would require careful keeping track of where one thought one was, and how one progressed in relation to it.

I would submit that, under the circumstances, this just would not have been practical in a real world way.  Yes, of course FN was a competent navigator, and he'd been passing AE written course corrections.  But now everyone's tired, stressed, time is running out, and if FN wanted to embark on this course of action, first he would have to explain/persuade it to AE, and then execute the course corrections calmly and carefully.  To me, in that kind of a situation, there's just too much margin of error.  What if AE doesn't understand what she's doing?  What if out of stress or fatigue, someone screws up a course heading, or just fails to keep proper track of the last turn?  Without real time two way communication, there's no way to really work these details out in a crunch situation.  And my understand is this did not exist.  They wrote each other on a blackboard.  So any communications have to be simple and direct.

 To me, whatever they did, given the limits in time, extreme likelihood of error owing to fatigue, stress and fear, and the inability to really communicate, it would have had to be kept simple.
You make it sound so complicated, it's not and all the planning can be done at the beginning so no work needs to be done during the search itself. An expanding square search pattern consists of legs that are at right angles to each other so each leg is followed by a ninety degree turn, all in the same direction. The first two legs are flown for twice the visibility, the next two for four times the visibility, then six times visibility then eight times visibility, etc. A simple example will  make this clear. They have been flying on a course of 157 degrees at a ground speed of 120 knots and the visibility is 20 NM. (We will ignore the wind correction angle for this illustration but that is easily allowed for in computing the headings to use to maintain the desired courses.)

At 1912 Z they have a four hour reserve of fuel and they know that they must have missed Howland. Noonan passes a note to Earhart.

"Turn left now to 067 degrees and maintain that heading until 1932 Z.
Then turn left to 337 degrees and maintain that heading until 1952 Z.
Then turn left to 247 degrees and maintain that heading until 2032 Z.
Then turn left to 157 degrees and maintain that heading until 2112 Z.
Then turn left to 067 degrees and maintain that heading until 2212 Z.
Then turn left to 337 degrees and maintain that heading until 2312 Z."

The first two legs take 20 minutes and cover 40 NM, twice the visibility. The next two legs take 40 minutes and cover 80 NM, four times visibility, the next two legs take 60 minutes and cover 120 NM, six times visibility. At the end of the four hours of fuel they have searched a box 160 NM on a side covering 25,600 square nautical miles, basically 80 NM in each direction from the starting position.

Rather than me drawing a diagram, see flight navigation reference materials available here. (https://sites.google.com/site/fredienoonan/topics/standard-search-pattern)

gl

Actually, you yourself make it sound pretty complicated.  Again, I don't see this going down between two people half deaf from a 20 hour plane ride who are limiting to screaming at each other or writing words down on a chalk board (were they even passing paper notes, and as big as the one Gary described?  I don't know, myself).  Once again, you've reiterated something that's certainly theoretically possible and probably quite doable in a controlled environment but does not give any consideration to the actual situation on the plane, and the limits to real-time communication, as far as I can see.

So to me, you've basically restated the premise more or less as I thought it was going in, and not really addressed my point at all other than to reassert that it's simple and could be done, assuming Fred makes this plan correctly on the fly and in a stressful situation that is both changing constantly and where time is ticking away, is sure of his calculations, is comfortable taking control of the situation when he isn't the pilot, Amelia doesn't ask him wtf he is doing in a situation where they can't really discuss it...etc.  Yes, it's possible.  But in the real world, would it happen?  Really, really doubt it. 

It just doesn't seem to me that you've thought through the eye-level realities of the situation at all, just looked at it from a technical standpoint of what would be the most logical thing to do in abstract.  Communication of a even a marginally complicated plan (for that matter, conceiving it) is just not that simple, ever...particularly there's issues of life and death, who is in charge, lack of sleep, etc., and most of all people not being able to have a real two-way conversation.  I think that's assigning a perfect world scenario to a chaotic, noisy environment where such communication was extremely limited and two people were tired, deaf and under extreme stress.  This is rather the same problem I have with your take on the Lambrecht overflight, btw.  So, again, with all due respect, I am unpersuaded, and I've stated clearly and logically why.  Which, I think, is respectful and fair.
Title: Re: LaPook Hypothesis: Box Search around 157-337
Post by: Gary LaPook on June 22, 2012, 11:06:32 AM


Actually, you yourself make it sound pretty complicated.  Again, I don't see this going down between two people half deaf from a 20 hour plane ride who are limiting to screaming at each other or writing words down on a chalk board (were they even passing paper notes, and as big as the one Gary described?  I don't know, myself). 

  I think that's assigning a perfect world scenario to a chaotic, noisy environment where such communication was extremely limited and two people were tired, deaf and under extreme stress.  This is rather the same problem I have with your take on the Lambrecht overflight, btw.  So, again, with all due respect, I am unpersuaded, and I've stated clearly and logically why.  Which, I think, is respectful and fair.


Well all the problems you state are pure speculation. You think that the computations are complicated, they are not and are child's play for any trained navigator. This method is the STANDARD and was used by navigators many, many times. My post showed that after Noonan worked out the headings and lengths of the legs (which, BTW, took me less than five minutes and Noonan was at least as good a navigator as I am) he had nothing to do except look out the windows for Howland since all the information was in that ONE note passed to Earhart, either on the fishing pole or by Noonan crawling over the fuel tanks, which we know he did on prior legs.

All Earhart had to do was to set the first heading into the autopilot then look out the window for twenty minutes, glancing at the clock periodically, and then repeat this after twenty minutes more and then forty minutes, etc. This is a piece of cake for the pilot. You think that this is hard? Try flying a Standard Instrument Departure (SID) or a Standard Terminal Arrival Route (STAR) into or out of JFK or ORD or LAX. I have attached one example of each at Los Angles International Airport. There are 14 different STARs and 18 different SIDs at LAX, and it is similar at most large airports. These are flown thousands and thousands of times every day nationwide.

As to your concern about fatigue, I know that I have landed after ferrying a plane across the ocean after being awake for more than thirty six hours, flying solo without autopilots and doing celestial navigation at the same time. But stronger evidence on this point than my experience is the experience of the many other ferry pilots.  I posted here (http://tighar.org/smf/index.php/topic,383.msg4935.html#msg4935) information showing that there have been at least 6,000 planes ferried across the Pacific to Australia by solo pilots in single engined airplanes that are slower than the Electra with the legs being longer than the Lae to Howland flight and many or most of those planes did not have autopilots. It is 2600 SM from Honolulu to Pago Pago and in a Cessna 172 that only cruises at 100 mph that is 26 hours, or longer if you have a headwind, so the 20 hour flight from Lae to Howland was nothing out of the ordinary for thousands of ferry pilots. In case you are missing the point I am trying to make, "solo" means that your are the only person in plane and if you don't have an autopilot and you fall asleep then you are rudely awakened by the ocean coming through the windshield. With two pilots on board, Noonan was also a pilot, they could take turns napping if necessary and Noonan's navigation duties did not require his full time attentions. On the flight to Hawaii he got star fixes approximately every two hours each of which take less than 20 minutes to accomplish, plenty of time in between to nap or to spell Earhart on the controls.

Deaf, put some cotton in your ears. It is always loud in twin engined planes because the props must be located only inches from the side cockpit windows due to center of gravity considerations. Yet many thousand of the planes are flown safely and the pilots manage to communicate. Prior to intercoms and headsets you turned to your copilot and leaned his way and spoke into his ear, if necessary, you raised your voice. The same when flight instructing in twins. If they needed to discuss something there is nothing to keep Noonan from slithering over the fuel tanks, probably only took 30 seconds, and we know that he did it and Manning did it too. The fishing pole with note attached was merely a convenience for short messages not requiring discussion. You SPECULATE that they would be deaf but ask any multi engine pilot if they ended up deaf after flying in their plane and they will look at you like you are nuts. So, have you got any proof to back up your speculation? Earhart was met at every stop by news reporters, do you have any newspaper stories saying "Right after she landed we met her climbing out of her plane and we attempted to ask her some questions but she couldn't respond to our questions because she was deaf."  Got any stories like that?

In 1935 Earhart flew solo from Hawaii to California, it took 18 hours. Was she deaf on arrival? Was she so fatigued that she just fell out of the plane to go immediately to sleep on the tarmac? The flight to Hawaii in 1937 took almost 16 hours. Were Earhart and Mantz, who sat next to her in between the engines, both deaf when they arrived? Did they fall immediately to sleep due to fatigue?
In 1935 two guys set an endurance record of 653 hours aloft, more than 27 days, without landing. The really exciting part of that record was the necessity of greasing the rocker arms on the engine every 50 hours. They had a bar mounted along each side of the plane, and every 50 hour one guy would climb out on the left side, move to the nose and use a grease gun on the nipples on his side. He then climbed back into the plane, handed the grease gun to the other guy who then did the same on his side of the engine. They had to do this 13 times. They didn't die from fatigue or go deaf. Then, in 1986, Dick Rutan and Jeanna Yeager flew around the world in 216 hours, more than nine days, and didn't go deaf or die from fatigue either.

You come up with speculative problems that do not really exist in practice.

(I just turned my TV on and the movie Spirit of Saint Louis is on, and Lindbergh flew for 33 and half hours solo. And he didn't sleep in the plane the night before so he had to spend some hours prior to the takeoff so he had probably been up 36 to 40 hour by the time he landed at Le Bourget in Paris.)

gl
Title: Re: LaPook Hypothesis: Box Search around 157-337
Post by: Jeff Carter on June 22, 2012, 01:29:49 PM

.....  You think that the computations are complicated, they are not and are child's play for any trained navigator. This method is the STANDARD and was use by navigators many, many times. .....


Your post reminded me of this video.  $245 a month, and didn't graduate from college...  :)

Where would they be without the Navigator?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gu-TZfml9ck

Title: Re: LaPook Hypothesis: Box Search around 157-337
Post by: Gary LaPook on June 22, 2012, 04:53:59 PM


Your post reminded me of this video.  $245 a month, and didn't graduate from college...  :)

Where would they be without the Navigator?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gu-TZfml9ck
Cool, and narrated by General Jimmy Stewart, the same guy portraying Lindbergh.

gl
Title: Re: LaPook Hypothesis: Box Search around 157-337
Post by: John Ousterhout on June 22, 2012, 09:23:42 PM
For those who aren't pilots, "flying a heading" already accounts for the effects of winds.  If FN sends a note to E to "fly 067 until 1932", any trained pilot of her day would have understood that to mean "turn to a magnetic heading of 067 until 7:32pm".  Fred already took the cross-wind effect into account before he told Amelia what heading to fly.   At the same time, she would understand that he was already compensating for wind effects.
Keep in mind that they had a LOT of time working together.  The Around the World Flight up to that point would have required something like 161 hours flying time.  That's a LOT of time to spend together, so I'm willing to assume they had developed an efficient communication system by then.
Title: Re: LaPook Hypothesis: Box Search around 157-337
Post by: Gary LaPook on June 24, 2012, 06:44:12 AM
Since Adam, and probably others, think that doing the computations for a square search would be too difficult for Noonan after being in the air for many hours, I decided to provide the readers of this forum some flight instruction and I won't even send anybody a bill for my services.

Noonan had a Dalton Mark VII Aircraft Navigational Computer which was an early model of the ubiquitous E-6B which was further developed into the MB-4A. We know he had this tool because it said so in a letter which is attached. I have also attached two PDFs, one showing how this computation is done on a navigational computer and the second has the table of computed data for the search.

The first two photos show the computer which consists of a circular base and a rectangular slide that can be moved up and down. The first shows the front side which is used for time, speed and distance computations and the back side is used for vector diagrams that solve the wind correction and ground speed problems.

Look at the second PDF "Square search plan" and the first image shows the form for the plan. The first image shows the information we are starting with. The true airspeed (TAS) is 120 knots to be consistent with my prior "no wind" example, the wind is coming from 090° at 25 knots, and the visibility is 20 nautical miles. Based on the visibility we know that for a standard search pattern that the first two legs will be twice the visibility, 40 NM, the next two legs will be four times the visibility and the last two legs will be six times the visibility (assuming four hours of fuel for the search.) We also know the true courses we will be flying, 067 - 337 - 247 - and 157 degrees. We put this information on the form. We need to compute the Wind Correction Angle (WCA) which we combine with the TC to determine the True Heading (TH) that we will point the nose of the plane at, and actually fly, which will correct for the wind so that we will make good the desired true courses. The Ground Speed (GS) we need to compute the time to spend on each leg. Combining the GS with the distance gives the Estimated Time Enroute (ETE) on each leg and by adding up these times with the original starting time we can figure when to make the turns onto subsequent legs.

We start on the back side. The circular clear surface is used for drawing the vector that represents the wind and it can be rotated through 360°. This is used in conjunction with the slide which has diverging lines starting at the bottom and arcs representing speeds. We start by turning the disk so that the direction that the wind is coming from, "E" or 90° in this example, is under the index at the top. (pic 3)
We then move the slide until the "100" arc is under the center small circle on the disk (called the "grommet".) Next we go up the center line from the grommet 25 units, the speed of the wind. and place a dot on the disk lined up with the 125 arc. (pic 4) This is the only mark that is normally placed on the disk but I have added an arrow from the dot to the grommet to make it clearer. (pic 5) This arrow represents how far the wind would move the airplane in one hour so if you were starting at the position of the dot, after one hour you would be at the grommet.

Next we turn the disk to the first TC, 067°, and move the slide until the TAS, 120 K, is under the dot. (pic 6) We see which diverging line the dot is on top of, in this case 5° right (the lines are every two degrees in this section of the slide) and this is the WCA, R 5° and we put this on the form for each of the 067° TCs. We add the "right" WCA to the TC to arrive at at the TH of 072° which we enter at two places on the form. We then look at the grommet and the arc under the grommet is the GS, 97 knots, which we also enter on the form in two places. (second image) We always check our work by asking the question, "does this make sense?" On the first leg the wind will be from the right so we know the correction must be towards the right and the wind will be a bit of a headwind so the slower ground speed of only 97 knots also makes sense. We then repeat this process for the following three TCs (pics 7, 8 & 9) and (images 3 & 4)

Now we flip the computer over and use the front side to compute the time on each leg. We turn the center disk until the big arrow on the center disk, that represents 60 minutes, is lined up with the ground speed of 97 knots on the outside scale. (pic 10) We then look for the distance on the first leg, 40 NM, (pic 11) on the outside scale and read out the time on the first leg of 25 minutes and put that on the form. (image 5) Then, without moving the disk, we look at the distance on the second 067° leg, 120 NM, and read out the time on that leg of 74 minutes. (pic 12) We then repeat the process for the remaining legs. (pics 13 & 14 and image 6) We enter the time that we will start the first leg, 1912 Z and then add the subsequent times of each leg to determine the times to turn to each succeeding leg. (image 7 & 8 ) One thing to notice, it takes 13 minutes longer with the wind compared to the no wind example, and it always takes more time if there is a wind when flying a search pattern.

That is all there is to it. It took me three minutes to actually do the computations and a lot longer to type up the explanation. Think this would be too hard for a navigator of Noonan's experience? Well, every student pilot, prior to starting his cross country training, knows how to use this computer for this exact computation and they only have about 15 to 20 hours in their logbooks at the time! This is really very basic pilot stuff and even beginner pilots have no trouble doing these computations. Also note that you don't have to do any plotting on the chart to do this search pattern, all the information you need comes off the computer.

(To keep the explanation simple, I left out the additional corrections for variation of magnetic north and deviation of the installed compasses but these corrections were known to Noonan, 9° easterly variation in the vicinity of Howland from he charts he had, including the Williams planning charts, and the compass deviation from the compass correction card on the instrument panel which shows in some of the Purdue photos. Noonan would have applied these also, about 30 seconds more work.)
 gl
Title: Re: LaPook Hypothesis: Box Search around 157-337
Post by: Gary LaPook on June 24, 2012, 06:49:31 AM
For those who aren't pilots, "flying a heading" already accounts for the effects of winds.  If FN sends a note to E to "fly 067 until 1932", any trained pilot of her day would have understood that to mean "turn to a magnetic heading of 067 until 7:32pm".  Fred already took the cross-wind effect into account before he told Amelia what heading to fly.   At the same time, she would understand that he was already compensating for wind effects.
Keep in mind that they had a LOT of time working together.  The Around the World Flight up to that point would have required something like 161 hours flying time.  That's a LOT of time to spend together, so I'm willing to assume they had developed an efficient communication system by then.
I left out the complications of wind and variation and deviation in my first, "no wind," example to keep it simple.

gl
Title: Re: LaPook Hypothesis: Box Search around 157-337
Post by: Jeff Victor Hayden on June 24, 2012, 07:10:36 AM
Thanks for posting that Gary, even I can understand how it works now.
It seems a pretty thorough search pattern and makes you wonder why, if it was implemented, didn't they locate Howland.
Not as close as they thought they were by a huge margin?
Ran out of gas midway through search pattern?
Headed straight for phoenix islands?
Headed back where they came from on reciprocal course?
Gary, they knew they were on the 157º-337º LOP, but not where on the line? would the search pattern be implemented from an unknown position on the LOP? If so what would have been the consequences?
Title: Re: LaPook Hypothesis: Box Search around 157-337
Post by: John Ousterhout on June 24, 2012, 07:54:13 AM
"...would the search pattern be implemented from an unknown position on the LOP? If so what would have been the consequences?"
I think the answer depends on their ability to get a navigation fix, and the accuracy of the location of Howland Island.  As I understand it, you start your search pattern when you have concluded that you're "lost" ('We must be on you but cannot see you').  Whatever navigation methods got you to that point are assumed to have gotten you close to your destination, plus or minus some reasonable error margin.  The search pattern should start small, centered on your initial position, and gradually expand.  That way, you cover the most likely location (the center of the expanding box) first.

To put it a different way, you NEVER know precisely where you are while in flight.  There is always some margin of error.  When they said they were "on the line", they likely knew they were within a short distance of the island, but had no way to determine which direction to fly to get closer (radio DF would have solved that problem).  That's when a search pattern would most likely begin.

While we don't actually know what happened to prevent them from finding Howland Island, by hypothesizing what sort of search they most likely performed helps us identify what might have gone wrong. 
Title: Re: LaPook Hypothesis: Box Search around 157-337
Post by: Andrew M McKenna on June 24, 2012, 01:24:21 PM
Gary,

I've tried to plot out your search pattern on Google Earth (maybe you've already done this?) with the start of the search at Howland  Island.

Looking at the legs, they end up between 40nm and about 50nm (on the diagonal when they reach the corners) miles away from Howland, on the first 4 legs, then out to 90 miles at the end of the 5th leg, 110 nm at the end of leg 6.  I presume that you do not think they would abandon their search at this point, so I've added the 7th leg of 160 nm.  Since you only give them about an hour before the "END" I presume that you think they ran out of fuel some 3/4 of the way down leg 7. 

Abeam Howland on the LOP during leg 7, they are some 80nm away from Howland.  With visibility at 20 nm, that means that they can see all the way out to the 100 nm point along the LOP.

Since we know that they didn't find Howland, and that also presumably means that they didn't find Baker Isl, it follows that they must have started their search at least 100 nm up the LOP from Howland, or down the LOP from Baker Island, and perhaps as far away as 120 nm from Baker on a diagonal if they misjudged where the LOP was, which seems unlikely since most everyone seems to think that Fred was good enough to get to the Advanced LOP through Howland.

so, I'm curious how, with all your descriptions of how easy it is to use celestial navigation, Fred can be 100 to 120 nm off of his intended target?

I find it interesting that the Monte Carlo analysis puts them to the south, and a few point are well to the south where if they were to then navigate to the advance LOP, they might be 80 - 100 nm south of Howland / Baker.

My only other comment is that 20 nm visibility might be optimistic given that Howland has no lagoon, cloud shadows etc.  If you look at the Waite institute video, it was very hard to see from even 12 nm (if memory serves), so using a 20nm visibility as the basis for their expanding square search may have been logical, but may not have served them well.

In any event, since they said they were running on the line 157 337, north and south, it doesn't sound to me like they were engaged in an expanding square search.  They were looking for Howland on the LOP.

Andrew

Title: Re: LaPook Hypothesis: Box Search around 157-337
Post by: Martin X. Moleski, SJ on June 24, 2012, 04:34:00 PM
I've tried to plot out your search pattern on Google Earth (maybe you've already done this?) with the start of the search at Howland  Island.

Nice work, Andrew!  I've been dying for that kind of drawing, but didn't feel capable of making it myself.

Very helpful!
Title: Re: LaPook Hypothesis: Box Search around 157-337
Post by: Gary LaPook on June 25, 2012, 02:33:50 PM
Gary,

I've tried to plot out your search pattern on Google Earth (maybe you've already done this?) with the start of the search at Howland  Island.

Looking at the legs, they end up between 40nm and about 50nm (on the diagonal when they reach the corners) miles away from Howland, on the first 4 legs, then out to 90 miles at the end of the 5th leg, 110 nm at the end of leg 6.  I presume that you do not think they would abandon their search at this point, so I've added the 7th leg of 160 nm.  Since you only give them about an hour before the "END" I presume that you think they ran out of fuel some 3/4 of the way down leg 7. 

Abeam Howland on the LOP during leg 7, they are some 80nm away from Howland.  With visibility at 20 nm, that means that they can see all the way out to the 100 nm point along the LOP.

Since we know that they didn't find Howland, and that also presumably means that they didn't find Baker Isl, it follows that they must have started their search at least 100 nm up the LOP from Howland, or down the LOP from Baker Island, and perhaps as far away as 120 nm from Baker on a diagonal if they misjudged where the LOP was, which seems unlikely since most everyone seems to think that Fred was good enough to get to the Advanced LOP through Howland.



Andrew
You have shown the efficacy of the expanding square search pattern since they would have had to have been a very unlikely number of miles of course to not have been able to find Howland with this search, IF THEY HAD FOUR HOURS OF FUEL.

gl
Title: Re: LaPook Hypothesis: Box Search around 157-337
Post by: Andrew M McKenna on June 25, 2012, 02:50:14 PM
You didn't answer my question, for starters, and I'm not exactly sure what you are trying to say.

Are you saying that if they had flown this search, they would have found Howland?

I'm just working off your calculations for the expanding search, which has an END time at 23hrs plus. 

Are you now proposing a different end time, and if so when do you calculate the END, and why?

amck
Title: Re: LaPook Hypothesis: Box Search around 157-337
Post by: Jeff Victor Hayden on June 25, 2012, 04:15:08 PM
I am still confused as to where they actually started their box search from (if they did)
Where AE and FN thought they were? Image 2
Where the Monte Carlo simulation predicts they really were? Image 1
Some unknown point along on the LOP? Andrews splendid map

If they did start a search pattern, which I am sure they would have, then they must have been hopelessly off-course for the box search pattern to fail to put them onto Howland or Baker.

(http://)
Title: Re: LaPook Hypothesis: Box Search around 157-337
Post by: John Ousterhout on June 25, 2012, 08:32:15 PM
Jeff,
You're asking the right question.  We don't know where they might have been when the started their search.  Neither did they.  That's the whole point of a search pattern - it assumes you're "close", so the initial part of the pattern concentrates near where you currently are.  They thought they were at the coordinates of Howland, but did not see it.  They almost certainly knew there was some potential error in their navigation, so they would likely have known they were within a few miles of the precise location they were trying to reach.  They might have even known that the location of Howland Island wasn't quite where their information told them it should be.  In any case, they should not have been surprised to find empty ocean when they arrived at their best guess Howland location.  That's when they would start their search pattern.  That's also the point where they would have expected to use DF to steer towards the island/Itasca.
They may have used a box search pattern with too many miles between legs, thinking the island would be easy to spot.  They may have made some irrational decision about what sort of search pattern to fly, resulting in "splashed and sunk" in some unexpected location.  We just don't have enough information to know.
Title: Re: LaPook Hypothesis: Box Search around 157-337
Post by: Andrew M McKenna on June 26, 2012, 02:41:29 AM
Or they may have done what they said they were doing, flying north and then south on the LOP, looking for Howland, eventually finding Nikumaroro.

amck
Title: Re: LaPook Hypothesis: Box Search around 157-337
Post by: Jeff Victor Hayden on June 26, 2012, 05:35:06 AM
Or they may have done what they said they were doing, flying north and then south on the LOP, looking for Howland, eventually finding Nikumaroro.

amck

It's a struggle to apply logic to this situation Andrew. An expanding search pattern as described must put them onto Howland or Baker. It didn't.
 
The best I can read into that is, they were close but couldn't see both islands, both?

They were nowhere near Howland or Baker. An expanding search pattern began so far away that they ran out of gas before getting within visual range of either.

Or, as you said, it was a search based upon the LOP and, running North and South. Maybe as a result of FN's calculation of where they were and, the best search pattern FN thought would be needed to nail Howland as a result of his calculation of where they were?

So, ran out of gas on an expanding search pattern or, run out of gas running North and South, or, running North and South led them to gardner?

Place your bets
Title: Re: LaPook Hypothesis: Box Search around 157-337
Post by: John Ousterhout on June 26, 2012, 08:57:30 AM
What I've gleaned from some trivial personal experience and reading a lot of postings and reports is that Howland Island might have been harder to spot than expected.  AE/FN might have assumed they would be able to spot it at a distance of 20 miles, so chose to use 40 mile spacing on their search pattern and simply missed seeing it.  That's too far for anyone on the island to hear their engines.  That doesn't explain the radio silence, although the radio had been of little use to them so far.
If Fred was confident they were somewhere on or very close to the LOP, then the search pattern I imagine might be an elongated rectangle, not an expanding square, and not straying far from the LOP.  They might have arrived at the calculated LOP, flown north on it for a reasonable distance, turned around and flown south on it for some more reasonable distance, then offset their track 40 miles to East or West and turned back north, parallel to the initial LOP.  On the next southern leg, they might have been 40 miles on the other side of "the line", and simply missed spotting the island(s).  It's a big ocean.
If Fred's navigation was terribly far off-course to the south on the LOP, such an elongated rectangle search might bring Gardner island within sight.  Hard to imagine Fred being that far off course, but it seems like a slightly more reasonable scenario to me than simply following "the line" from Howland to Gardner.  If they arrived at Gardner, I don't believe it was by intentionally navigating there.  If they had the ability to navigate that accurately, they would seem to me much more likely to use it to fly to Howland.  Then again, it also seems reasonable to me that they would be squawking on the radio the whole time they were trying to find a safe place to land.
Title: Re: LaPook Hypothesis: Box Search around 157-337
Post by: Andrew M McKenna on June 26, 2012, 09:43:32 AM
I agree, given what we know, Fred "should" have been able to find Howland.  But he didn't.  That is a fact, so something must have gone terribly wrong, and it is hard to know exactly what.  Whatever it was, it is outside the norm, so trying to apply "norms" to this situation - search patterns, logical navigational solutions, "would have" statements - isn't going to solve it because they didn't get there, we have to look outside the norms to something unexpected.

Simply running out of gas as Gary would have us believe, is certainly one thing that could have gone wrong for them.

However, let's put it in context with other events we know happened.

We know that there were many post loss radio signals that were considered credible at the time, enough so that the Navy based their entire initial search on them.  If only one of the receptions was authentic, she had to be on land somewhere.  The Navy decided to go "search" the land and that was the initial tasking of their search.

We know that there was the skeleton of a castaway found on Niku with items, that would indicate that they were not a Pacific islander, that it looks like that castaway had a surplus US Navy sextant of the type Noonan liked to have with him as a back up, and that Gallager and the higher ups in the PISS system suspected (at least for a while) the castaway of being Mrs. Putnam.

The forensic analysis of those bones indicates a likelihood of being a european female of stature similar to AE.

There is a body of island lore about an aircraft wreck being there before the colonists arrived in 1930.

Apparent pre war aircraft material has been found there that is at least similar in nature to what we'd expect of the Electra parts.

The stuff at the 7 site, Etc. 

So, is initiating an expanding square search pattern and running out of gas the simplest answer given the context of some of the other things we know happened?  I think not.

None of these things are proven to be conclusively related to AE's disappearance, but they fit a hypotheses - an unproven thing - that TIGHAR has developed in order to try to understand all these oddities.  They do not fit with the hypothesis that she was flying an expanding square search and ran out of gas.

I think of it like a crime scene.  There are a lot of broken bits of evidence, some eyewitness accounts, rumors, odd stuff that may not initially make sense or seem related.  As the investigators of that crime scene, our job is to try to filter the important stuff, find out how things are related to each other, and integrate what's left into a coherent story of how the crime was committed and see if you can prove your hypotheses.  Right now we've got a pretty interesting story built around the evidence, but we're still trying to get the confession and close the case.  Hopefully this July will be the big break in the case.

Crashed and sank leaves a lot on the table (or swept under the rug?) that still needs to be explained.

Just my 2 cents.

amck
Title: Question about Box Search Procedure
Post by: Jeff Carter on June 27, 2012, 10:59:57 AM
In reading "American Air Navigator", Mattingly (1944) on https://sites.google.com/site/fredienoonan/resources/american-air-navigator-mattingly-1944, I noticed the example problem shows the navigator starting the fixed square search from the plane's current location.  I thought the navigator first flew back to his best guess of the island's location and then started the fixed search. 

If Noonan had flown down the LOP as far south as required by his possible error limits, and then he decides to institute a fixed square search, doesn't Noonan first backtrack and fly north back up the LOP to his best calculation of Howland's location, and then institute a fixed square search?  Or does he start the fixed square search in his current location?

I also note Mattingly's example used a conservative V of only 5 nautical miles, although obviously it depends on atmospheric conditions.

Thanks.
Title: Re: Question about Box Search Procedure
Post by: Gary LaPook on June 27, 2012, 11:09:09 PM
In reading "American Air Navigator", Mattingly (1944) on https://sites.google.com/site/fredienoonan/resources/american-air-navigator-mattingly-1944 (https://sites.google.com/site/fredienoonan/resources/american-air-navigator-mattingly-1944), I noticed the example problem shows the navigator starting the fixed square search from the plane's current location.  I thought the navigator first flew back to his best guess of the island's location and then started the fixed search. 

If Noonan had flown down the LOP as far south as required by his possible error limits, and then he decides to institute a fixed square search, doesn't Noonan first backtrack and fly north back up the LOP to his best calculation of Howland's location, and then institute a fixed square search?  Or does he start the fixed square search in his current location?

I also note Mattingly's example used a conservative V of only 5 nautical miles, although obviously it depends on atmospheric conditions.

Thanks.
Yes, you want to start your square search pattern at you best estimate of being over the destination so I have to disagree with Mattingly as do the other manuals available on my website here. (https://sites.google.com/site/fredienoonan/topics/standard-search-pattern) All these manuals, including Mattingly, assume you got to the target location solely by DR. Where Mattingly goes wrong is to recommend flying beyond the DR position of the target by 20 to 30 minutes, 50 to 75 NM at a ground speed of 150 knots and twice that at a GS of 300 knots. If you started flying a search pattern there then it would take you a long time before you were back in the high probability area near the original DR position of the target. If you think about it, he is making that recommendation on the assumption the the DR is off by your being short of your target when it is twice as likely that you missed it off to the right or to the left.

It is a different proposition when you arrive at the target location by following an LOP because this eliminates any left-right error in the DR and you are left with only the along course, along LOP, error. In this case you would continue to fly the LOP and search beyond the target location by the size of your maximum estimate of the existing DR error. I have shown that when making the normal LOP approach to an island, (https://sites.google.com/site/fredienoonan/discussions/navigation-to-howland-island) the maximum DR error should not have exceeded 46 NM each way along the LOP, a total of 92 NM. Even using Ric's theory that they did not fly the standard LOP approach but went straight in to Howland then turned north to search along the LOP, the same north and south 46 NM legs from the Howland position would need to be searched. The first leg would take them 46 NM north and then the southbound leg would be 92 NM long taking past where Howland should be and ending up 46 NM south-southeast of Howland. In this case it would make sense to go back up the LOP those 46 NM to the closest estimate of where Howland should be found and to start the search pattern there. What makes this interesting, however, is that Baker is about 40 NM south-southeast of Howland so they could start a search pattern at the end of the 46 NM leg in order to find Baker and then it is a trivial flight from there to Howland. But, on the other hand, Howland should be easier to spot than Baker, it was bigger and had a ship next to it sending out smoke it still might have made more sense to spend the twenty minutes going back to the location of Howland prior to starting a search pattern a matter of judgment, these two choices are pretty evenly balanced.

gl
Title: Re: Question about Box Search Procedure
Post by: Andrew M McKenna on June 28, 2012, 02:26:47 AM

It is a different proposition when you arrive at the target location by following an LOP because this eliminates any left-right error in the DR and you are left with only the along course, along LOP, error. In this case you would continue to fly the LOP and search beyond the target location by the size of your maximum estimate of the existing DR error...

gl

Gary. 

If we agree that Noonan was able to navigate to the LOP through Howland, why would they choose to do anything other than search the LOP?  Why take a one dimensional problem - flying a line - and turn it into a two dimensional problem - the expanding square search?  This makes no sense to me.

As you've pointed out, all they have is latitude error to deal with, not longitude error, why induce it?  Howland has to be on the LOP, so why do anything other than search the LOP?  Isn't it better to extend the legs of the LOP search rather than burn fuel going east and west when there is no east / error?

And since they didn't find Howland, and by inference Baker, by flying the LOP, they had to be significantly farther N or S of Howland / Baker to not find it.  Using your 20 NM visibility, they had to be intersecting the LOP more than 66nm north of Howland or south of Baker.

You still haven't clued us in on the part of the LaPook hypotheses that explains how they got so far off course in the first place.

Andrew
Title: Re: LaPook Hypothesis: Box Search around 157-337
Post by: Jeff Victor Hayden on June 28, 2012, 06:43:42 AM
Would it have something to do with the offset approach to Howland island? e.g. Planning to intercept the LOP at Baker island so, a turn to the left at the LOP would point you in the direction of Howland. So all you would have to do is fly the distance from Baker Island to Howland and Bingo, you're on top of Howland. Of course this relies on you intercepting the LOP at the point you planned to which may be a llittle different from the actual point?
I'm no expert in navigation but, I read and learn from Gary et al...

(http://)
Title: Re: LaPook Hypothesis: Box Search around 157-337
Post by: John Ousterhout on June 28, 2012, 07:32:38 AM
Andrew asks "... Isn't it better to extend the legs of the LOP search rather than burn fuel going east and west when there is no east / error?"
As I understand it (and hopefully Gary will kindly provide better analysis),  there is still some error to locating the LOP.  It's just a much smaller error than the north/south error.  That simplifies the subsequent search pattern to (mostly) 1 dimension.  If you're confident that your offset approach has placed your arrival on the line north of your target, then your search pattern is simplified even more, giving you high confidence which way to turn upon arriving at the approximate advanced LOP.  Assuming you arrive north of the target, you fly the 337 heading (accounting for cross winds), and scan the sea ahead and to the sides, covering a swath of ocean several miles to the sides as well as along the line.  I assume at some point a pilot/navigator would decide to turn the plane around and fly back "up" the line, thinking that they missed seeing the island due to being too far east or west of the line.  Call it a "modified box pattern".
Title: Re: LaPook Hypothesis: Box Search around 157-337
Post by: Chris Owens on June 29, 2012, 12:03:50 AM
Take a look at this video, shot from a helicopter by Ted Waitt.  When I see how hard it is to spot Howland from a few miles out, I find it positively chilling to think of AE and FN flying a search pattern.  They really could have been right on it and still not seen it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m9c3yZ0xeHw
Title: Re: LaPook Hypothesis: Box Search around 157-337
Post by: Andrew M McKenna on June 29, 2012, 03:27:21 AM
OK, so here you are, Fred, flying east towards Howland.  Let's just say you haven't been able to get a celestial sighting for quite some time due to an overcast, and you are eagerly awaiting the dawn to get a sun shot.

Up comes the sun, and bing, you get your first sunshot from which you have already computed the time difference calculations between sunrise at Howland, so presto, you know exactly how many miles from your position to the advanced LOP, plus or minus what - 10% of the distance plus the uncertainty of the sun shot which I thing has been estimated at 10nm for a celestial sighting if you are good - Gary help me out here.

So, at sunrise at Howland, when Earhart is calling saying "200 miles out" we might expect that the error in finding the exact LOP through Howland is going to be 20nm plus the 10mn uncertainty in the sun shot = 30nm?  Seems like a lot for a 200 nm distance flight, am I getting this right?

But, as Gary points out, Noonan could have derived the same LOP through Howland for at least another hour after sunrise (I think someone else said 3 hours after sunrise), and if so, they would have been not 200 nm out, but another 130nm closer to the LOP, so lets assume another sun shot 70 nm out, so our error might shrink to 17 nm.  Gary had it figured down to 14 nm, 7 nm on either side of the LOP, in a previous post #504 on this page http://tighar.org/smf/index.php/topic,555.msg11163.html#msg11163 (http://tighar.org/smf/index.php/topic,555.msg11163.html#msg11163),

And, given that 90 minutes go by between the 200 miles out, and the "we must be on you" message, the 200 miles out message, would seem to be fairly accurate.

So, then when you hit the LOP, you are likely within 8.5mn of the actual LOP, well within visual spotting distance of an island, at least in theory.

So, if I know I'm flying on a line and that Howland is within 17 and perhaps 8.5 or even 7 miles of my line, why fly 40 mn off the the east and west of that line looking for something that I know isn't there?

Assuming Noonan chose to be North of the target is just that, an assumption.  Might make sense then, and in our minds now, but given that they were expecting DF assistance, and the fact that AE says they are flying "north and south" on the line 157 - 337, it does seem plausible that they did not employ the offset landfall method and were barreling straight in.  Why on earth would she say she was flying "north and south" if they had used the offset method?  Why are we going to take a "should have - would have statement" offered in hindsight over a primary contemporaneous statement from AE herself?  As I said before, something they did had to be out of the norm, otherwise they "would have - should have" made it to Howland, and we'd not be discussing it here.

It is Gary who is suggesting the expanding square search pattern, not a "modified box pattern", and I'm looking forward to hearing his reasoning why that would be employed over simply searching the LOP 157 - 337, as indicated in the radio traffic since it seems to me that the margin of error for the LOP would be pretty reasonable to deal with. 

They had to hit the LOP well away from their target - beyond search pattern coverage - otherwise they would have found Howland / Baker.  The LaPook hypotheses has yet to suggest why they were so far off, what went wrong?

Andrew

Title: Re: LaPook Hypothesis: Box Search around 157-337
Post by: Jeff Victor Hayden on June 29, 2012, 06:22:48 AM
This is exactly the point that I have the most difficulty with Andrew...

They had to hit the LOP well away from their target - beyond search pattern coverage - otherwise they would have found Howland / Baker

I have read, on this forum and from the internet how good Freddie Noonan was at navigation, Pan Am clippers, ships and so on. I agree, he was probably the best at the time. And yet, here we are discussing the probability of a search pattern that may have been implemented failing to locate Howland. From this I put forward 2 scenarios:

They simply ran out of gas
They were so far of course the search pattern missed Howland

Notice how both are dependent on each other!
Title: Re: LaPook Hypothesis: Box Search around 157-337
Post by: John Ousterhout on June 29, 2012, 08:13:37 AM
"...Why on earth would she say she was flying "north and south"?"
It occurs to me that her poor understanding of DF theory might have included the idea that it would be helpful to a DF operator on Itasca to know what direction she was moving, thinking it would help avoid the ambiguity of a reciprocal bearing.  I don't like this theory because it would have been more helpful to simply state that she was flying 'south on the line for the next 2 minutes, please take a bearing on us', if her understanding of DF was as poor as I've presented.  We just don't know.

Title: Re: LaPook Hypothesis: Box Search around 157-337
Post by: Andrew M McKenna on June 29, 2012, 09:10:28 AM

They simply ran out of gas
They were so far of course the search pattern missed Howland

Notice how both are dependent on each other!

Yes, I suppose they are interdependent.  If they run out of gas first, their search missed Howland, and if their search misses Howland, the'll eventually run out of gas.

Where they intersected the LOP is the big question, and of course we can't know that, but we do have the Monte Carlo analysis that suggests a probability of putting them south, perhaps significantly. 

The post loss signals would indicate that they made it to land somewhere, relatively intact.  Unless you want to completely dismiss that body of data, as Gary prefers, you have to think about what land is within range, and how would they have ended up there.  If they had hit the LOP well north of Howland, and their subsequent search didn't find Howland, they also wouldn't have found any other land, as there isn't any up there.

I'm with the folks who think they were trying to fly the 157 - 337 LOP searching for Howland, and ended up finding Niku instead.  Requires that they intersect the LOP well south of Howland, but evidently it happened given the Monte Carlo analysis, post loss signals, and other lines of evidence like the castaway, sextant box, aircraft material, radio triangulation, and etc. TIGHAR is attempting to prove are related.

Andrew

Title: Re: LaPook Hypothesis: Box Search around 157-337
Post by: Jeff Victor Hayden on June 29, 2012, 10:18:36 AM
Where they intersected the LOP is the big question, and of course we can't know that, but we do have the Monte Carlo analysis that suggests a probability of putting them south, perhaps significantly. 

And of course Andrew, there is also the area THEY thought they were in to consider. If FN sets a corrective course from where THEY thought they were when in actual fact they were at the location the Monte Carlo analysis puts them then, it simply puts them even significantly further away from Howland ???
Title: Re: LaPook Hypothesis: Box Search around 157-337
Post by: Jeff Carter on June 29, 2012, 10:48:26 AM

I have read, on this forum and from the internet how good Freddie Noonan was at navigation, Pan Am clippers, ships and so on. I agree, he was probably the best at the time. And yet, here we are discussing the probability of a search pattern that may have been implemented failing to locate Howland. From this I put forward 2 scenarios:

They simply ran out of gas
They were so far of course the search pattern missed Howland


And, there is a third scenario, they flew a well-structured, textbook-correct search pattern with visibility factor ("V") too high, and simply missed spotting the island even though they passed within "V" distance of the island. 

Title: Re: LaPook Hypothesis: Box Search around 157-337
Post by: Jeff Victor Hayden on June 29, 2012, 12:09:31 PM
Wasn't there some ambiguity over the exact location of Howland Island on maps and charts available at the time, 5 + nm as well ?
Title: Re: LaPook Hypothesis: Box Search around 157-337
Post by: C.W. Herndon on June 29, 2012, 12:53:48 PM
Jeff, in one of the archived forum threads (http://tighar.org/Projects/Earhart/Archives/Forum/Forum_Archives/200712.txt), and I have not figured out how to copy them yet, there was this:

"Date: Sat, 1 Dec 2007
From: Randy Jacobson
Subject: Landing on Gardner

The discrepency in Howland's position back in 1937 was on the order of 6 miles, not 62 miles.

The true position is 48', 6" N, 176* 38' 12"W
The reported position is 49' 0"N, 176* 43' 09"W, as stated in the American Practical Navigator, 1936 edition.

Both positions were known to Bill Miller, who coordinated AE's first flight attempt,....."
Title: Re: LaPook Hypothesis: Box Search around 157-337
Post by: Jeff Victor Hayden on June 29, 2012, 05:31:46 PM
Which of these would have known that Woody, if any.
Paul Mantz, Amelia Earhart, Harry Manning and Fred Noonan
Title: Re: LaPook Hypothesis: Box Search around 157-337
Post by: C.W. Herndon on June 29, 2012, 06:44:26 PM
Jeff, here is the best information I could find. From what I can tell from the reference--nobody knows if any of the crew was made aware of the differences in location for Howland. Apparently Clarence Williams didn't know since he used the wrong location on his strip map flight plan, at least the one for the first attempt.

http://tighar.org/Projects/Earhart/Archives/Research/ResearchPapers/Worldflight/2ndattemptroute.html (http://tighar.org/Projects/Earhart/Archives/Research/ResearchPapers/Worldflight/2ndattemptroute.html)
Title: Re: LaPook Hypothesis: Box Search around 157-337
Post by: Gary LaPook on July 02, 2012, 05:54:24 AM

They simply ran out of gas
They were so far of course the search pattern missed Howland

Notice how both are dependent on each other!

Yes, I suppose they are interdependent.  If they run out of gas first, their search missed Howland, and if their search misses Howland, the'll eventually run out of gas.

Where they intersected the LOP is the big question, and of course we can't know that, but we do have the Monte Carlo analysis that suggests a probability of putting them south, perhaps significantly. 

The post loss signals would indicate that they made it to land somewhere, relatively intact.  Unless you want to completely dismiss that body of data, as Gary prefers, you have to think about what land is within range, and how would they have ended up there.  If they had hit the LOP well north of Howland, and their subsequent search didn't find Howland, they also wouldn't have found any other land, as there isn't any up there.

I'm with the folks who think they were trying to fly the 157 - 337 LOP searching for Howland, and ended up finding Niku instead.  Requires that they intersect the LOP well south of Howland, but evidently it happened given the Monte Carlo analysis, post loss signals, and other lines of evidence like the castaway, sextant box, aircraft material, radio triangulation, and etc. TIGHAR is attempting to prove are related.

Andrew
Here is the reason why they didn't fly so far south  (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YvG9r6G69eA)as to hit Gardner.

I have put the same information up many times before and everyone just ignores it, they just go past it like it wasn't there, kinda like whistling past the graveyard. See:

https://tighar.org/smf/index.php/topic,383.msg5653.html#msg5653

https://tighar.org/smf/index.php/topic,592.msg9901.html#msg9901

https://tighar.org/smf/index.php/topic,555.msg12109.html#msg12109

https://tighar.org/smf/index.php/topic,533.msg7166.html#msg7166

https://tighar.org/smf/index.php/topic,592.msg9901.html#msg9901

https://tighar.org/smf/index.php/topic,320.msg6668.html#msg6668

gl

Title: Re: LaPook Hypothesis: Box Search around 157-337
Post by: Gary LaPook on July 02, 2012, 06:13:38 AM


Up comes the sun, and bing, you get your first sunshot from which you have already computed the time difference calculations between sunrise at Howland, so presto, you know exactly how many miles from your position to the advanced LOP, plus or minus what - 10% of the distance plus the uncertainty of the sun shot which I thing has been estimated at 10nm for a celestial sighting if you are good - Gary help me out here.

So, at sunrise at Howland, when Earhart is calling saying "200 miles out" we might expect that the error in finding the exact LOP through Howland is going to be 20nm plus the 10mn uncertainty in the sun shot = 30nm?  Seems like a lot for a 200 nm distance flight, am I getting this right?
By Jove, you've got it!
Quote

But, as Gary points out, Noonan could have derived the same LOP through Howland for at least another hour after sunrise (I think someone else said 3 hours after sunrise), and if so, they would have been not 200 nm out, but another 130nm closer to the LOP, so lets assume another sun shot 70 nm out, so our error might shrink to 17 nm.  Gary had it figured down to 14 nm, 7 nm on either side of the LOP, in a previous post #504 on this page http://tighar.org/smf/index.php/topic,555.msg11163.html#msg11163 (http://tighar.org/smf/index.php/topic,555.msg11163.html#msg11163), ...

Andrew
Well I thought you got it. Using your example of the sun observation being taken 70 NM prior to intercepting (and no additional observations) the line that runs parallel to the sun line, 157-337°, and passes through Howland, at the time of intercepting the line the uncertainty extends 14 NM on each side of the line, a total of a 28 NM wide band. The original uncertainty of plus and minus 7 NM in the observation plus the additional 7 NM in each direction due to the 70 NM DR leg (10% of 70 NM.) And the DR uncertainty continues to grow at the same rate, 13 knots in every direction (10% of the 130 K approximate true airspeed.) If they were first on the line at 1912 Z after flying 70 NM (your example) then at 1912 Z the uncertainty extended 14 NM on both sides of the line. AT 2012 Z, one hour later, the uncertainty had grown to 27 NM on both sides of the line so would not be accurate enough to assure spotting the island. And, in fact the 14 NM uncertainty at 1912 Z may have been enough to keep them from seeing Howland. (I mean to look further into the visibility of the island issue in another post.)
gl
Title: Re: LaPook Hypothesis: Box Search around 157-337
Post by: JNev on July 02, 2012, 09:49:05 AM
The ambiguity grows by the minute out there under celestial and DR, doesn't it?  Wow.

I like what Marty recently noted - any landfall at Gardner would likely have included a great deal of seredipitous blundering!

Kinda goes back to 'how can you find point b if you don't know where point a is' I think, if I'm still following you right Gary.  Excellent points.

LTM -
Title: Re: LaPook Hypothesis: Box Search around 157-337
Post by: Jeff Carter on July 02, 2012, 10:54:29 AM

 AT 2012 Z, one hour later, the uncertainty had grown to 27 NM on both sides of the line so would not be accurate enough to assure spotting the island. And, in fact the 14 NM uncertainty at 1912 Z may have been enough to keep them form seeing Howland. (I mean to look further into the visibility of the island issue in another post.)
gl

FWIW, I can't find any evidence that Noonan or Earhart had any real-world experience with search patterns.  I know Noonan could calculate a search pattern in his sleep, and Earhart could fly it no problem.   But, if Noonan ever had to fly a search pattern with PanAm, he would have had a large, well-trained crew trying for a visual sighting, and the crew would have been looking for large islands like Wake, Midway, etc. 

But did either one have any experience in estimating "V" visibility?  Had either one ever flown a search pattern to try to spot a ship (Itasca)?  Especially with a pilot in the left seat with limited visibility, and a navigator in the rear distracted with double-checking navigation calculations?  Had either FN or AE ever visited Howland Island, or received any kind of detailed briefing of how small and flat it was?

Title: Re: LaPook Hypothesis: Box Search around 157-337
Post by: Chris Johnson on July 03, 2012, 04:06:16 AM
Jeff,

good points to which i'm sure GLP will have some kind of informed answer to stimulate discussion  ;D
Title: Re: LaPook Hypothesis: Box Search around 157-337
Post by: Gary LaPook on July 03, 2012, 04:36:55 AM
Jeff,

good points to which i'm sure GLP will have some kind of informed answer to stimulate discussion  ;D
I'm working feverishly on it now.

gl
Title: Howland from 7 miles at 1,000 feet
Post by: Jeff Carter on July 03, 2012, 06:21:30 PM
On
http://wid.waittinstitute.org/gallery/search-for-amelia

An image from 7 miles away from the island:
http://wid.waittinstitute.org/wp-content/blogs.dir/5/files/panama-01/amelia023.jpg

Title: Re: LaPook Hypothesis: Box Search around 157-337
Post by: Martin X. Moleski, SJ on July 03, 2012, 06:29:37 PM
We don't know where they might have been when the started their search.

My theory about Gary's theory is that the alleged box search has to start from a point that guarantees the failure of the search (since that is, in fact, the known outcome of any search they did that day).

It isn't a single location, since the size of the LaPook Box depends on independent assumptions about how much gas was available for the search.  The bigger the box imagined, the further the starting point has to be from Howland and Baker.

Or so it seems to me. 
Title: Re: LaPook Hypothesis: Box Search around 157-337
Post by: John Ousterhout on July 03, 2012, 08:17:47 PM
There are some technically complicated ways that they might have missed Howland, and some "stupid" ways.  We tend to concentrate on the technical ways, but I suspect most pilots with any experience remember "stupid" mistakes that could have equaled missing Howland.  I have one such tale:
One of my early cross-country flights was to an unfamiliar airport with no tower and no radar, in a wide valley.  I was in radio communication with the folks at the airport during my approach.  I'd DR'd to the approximate location of the airport, but couldnt see it in the distance.  I had an excellant view of the valley.  As it turned out, I made a radio call at the time I had figured I was at the airport, which turned out to be 90 degrees to my left, but I was concentrating on the view ahead.  The folks on the ground figured out that I was the only plane the could see south of the airport at the time and told me to look to my left.  TADAAA! There was the airport.  I landed, they signed my logbook, and I learned a lesson about approaching an unfamiliar airport.
With that in mind, I can easily imagine AE/FN navigating to a location close to Howland, making their radio call ("We must be upon you, but cannot see you"), then starting a search pattern that actually takes them away from Howland.  Then again, they had a LOT more flying experience than I do, so my example may not count for anything.
Title: Re: LaPook Hypothesis: Box Search around 157-337
Post by: Chris Johnson on July 04, 2012, 04:01:06 AM
John O,

thats interesting as i'd presume that AE was saying "were here or here abouts and can't see you, if you see me say so and tell me where to look"

Of course we now know that they were unable to recieve voice so in this case a "look left/right etc" would not work.
Title: Re: LaPook Hypothesis: Box Search around 157-337
Post by: JNev on July 04, 2012, 05:05:23 PM
Good example, John.

I have a suspicion - which will remain unprovable unless all truths are one day revealed to me on that distant shore, that 'stupid mistakes' were the likely culprit.  Not 'stupid' in the sense that our aviators were indeed stupid, rather in the sense of if they could only realize what really happened it might be a 'you've GOT to be KIDDIN' me...' moment when realized.

I hope the Almighty shielded them from that pain if it is so...

As I've just said above, the '7 mile' photo is daunting.  Personally, I'd not be very happy to be in that vicinity with the clock ticking while a pair of P&W's were starting to pull at the last sips of go juice available to them.

LTM, and with much respect to tiny islands on a big sea -
Title: Re: LaPook Hypothesis: Box Search around 157-337
Post by: Jeff Victor Hayden on July 04, 2012, 05:48:38 PM
how much gas was available for the search.  The bigger the box imagined, the further the starting point has to be from Howland and Baker.

This is the main point Marty. AE 'we must be on you' but, if they started a search pattern from 'we must be on you' then obviously they weren't 'on you' otherwise they would have found Howland easily within a few minutes. They didn't.

Could they have flown so close to Howland to

a) not see it
b) not be heard
c) not see the smoke

Maybe, then logic would be to start a search pattern.
If they implemented a search pattern that again produced a, b and c again then they couldn't logically be anywhere near Howland.

IMHO
Title: Re: LaPook Hypothesis: Box Search around 157-337
Post by: Martin X. Moleski, SJ on July 04, 2012, 06:07:23 PM
Could they have flown so close to Howland to

a) not see it
b) not be heard
c) not see the smoke

Maybe, then logic would be to start a search pattern.
If they implemented a search pattern that again produced a, b and c again then they couldn't logically be anywhere near Howland.

IMHO

I agree with your logic.

Some assumptions have to be made about the visibility of the island, the ship, and the smoke to draw up some kind of "exclusion zone" for different theories about the end of the flight.

What I mean is that if they had entered that zone, they almost certainly would have found Howland.

Since they didn't find Howland, it seems that they must not have gotten into that zone.

The LaPook Search Box (or variations of it) has to be located outside that zone.

I suppose we could start with a 7-mile radius around Howland.  Then blob it out to the west for however far we imagine the smoke might have been visible.  And there'd have to be some guessing for that part of the zone around the smoke trail--would it be more or less visible than the island itself?  How far would it last?

I guess everybody has their own zone in mind, more or less.  I used to think that they might even have come within five miles of the island, east of it, and just missed seeing it while flying the line north and south.  I don't think that is such a reasonable guess any more.  The dead reckoning from a sun shot near dawn to an advanced LOP through Howland should have been pretty straightforward. 

No matter what really happened, Fred must have felt pretty bad about the navigation toward the end.  :(
Title: Re: LaPook Hypothesis: Box Search around 157-337
Post by: Jeff Victor Hayden on July 04, 2012, 06:33:08 PM
Good summary Marty. I watched the last footage of AE and FN plus read about their relationship prior to leaving Lae. Oh dear, she looked and was reported as being 'shattered', 5 hours sleep per night for 40 days? not good even for ex-paras. FN? looked odd, can't put my finger on it yet.

When you have been in charge of men who have been through hell you get the knack of reading their faces and, their minds. You can tell when something isn't right, Woody probably knows what I mean. You can see the cracks appearing and, it's your job to prevent the cracks from spreading.
AE and FN departing Lae, I noticed cracks.

Still, that said Howland should have been a walk in the park, not.
Title: Re: LaPook Hypothesis: Box Search around 157-337
Post by: JNev on July 04, 2012, 07:55:34 PM
Wow, Jeff Victor and Marty -

That gets to be a tough set of constraints for the 'search box' if one believes in the smoke and enough visibility to discern Howland through shadows and such... and it could throw the flight off anywhere to north or south (I still think east-west placement near the LOP within the tolerances Gary has described is fairly reasonable).  Too far north is nowhere; too far south is... well, there's another ship on the way - about 75 years too late.  ;)

I think your illustration is sensible, Marty.  Starting to look like either the smoke trail wasn't so thick after all and the island was just that elusive, or they just never got close enough to that corridor to see either one.

Jeff Victor, I surely respect your experience in reading the faces, but that's a long lens IMHO since we don't really know the people; granted I guess it could be studied against other footage of the two to try to discern a change for the worse, etc.  The fatigue concern is a good point though - something went wrong, for sure.  Lindbergh almost lost it over the Atlantic by dozing off - had only a bit of sleep prior to his 33 1/2 hour flight to Paris.  Post trained himself for weeks in advance to stay alert for hours on-end after brief cat naps before his solo round-the-world flight, and apparently did doze for brief periods while his Sperry autopilot droned him through for short periods. 

I guesss Noonan could have caved to slumber - but I think had I been AE and realized it, I'd of jolted him out of it pretty quickly... good grief, you don't suppose she caused him to hit the door and keep going, do you...  :o

Seriously, I doubt we can ever know what went on in the 'Human Factors' department aboard NR16020 on that flight, for sure anyway.

LTM -
Title: Re: LaPook Hypothesis: Box Search around 157-337
Post by: Jeff Victor Hayden on July 05, 2012, 08:10:49 AM
Don't know if anyone else has noticed the contradictory evidence being put forward in separate threads. When you look at them together it doesn't add up.
The ability of Fred Noonan to navigate accurately, get fixes on the sun, the moon and so on yet, they couldn't see Howland.
The probability of them implementing a successful search pattern that would lead them to Howland yet, they couldn't see Howland.
The ability of the Lambrecht SAR team to see someone waving from a beach yet, the failure of AE and FN too see Howland and Itasca and the smoke and Howland Island, all of which are a tad bigger than someone waving from a beach but, they couldn't see Howland.
When you take all these bits of the jigsaw that have been analysed and shown as likely and, put them together, it doesn't make sense.
Title: Re: LaPook Hypothesis: Box Search around 157-337
Post by: Jeff Victor Hayden on July 05, 2012, 08:53:43 AM
Yes, it is an interesting dilemma, isn't it Jeff Victor?

LTM -

Strange to say the least Jeff. When you look at each point separately it can be proven/demonstrated to be correct. Tables/charts/maps/reports etc... All support this. But when you put the three examples I have selected from recent threads TOGETHER, then they start to contradict each other.
There must be something that can unify these contradictions.
Let's start a list, feel free to add to it, bearing in mind it has to unify the contradictions...
a) Ran out of gas
Title: Re: LaPook Hypothesis: Box Search around 157-337
Post by: Jeff Victor Hayden on July 05, 2012, 01:02:40 PM
I have been persuaded by the overwhelming evidence given that fred Noonan did get a sighting from the sun and the moon. He had no problem in navigating to Howland either by the direct approach or, the off-set approach.
Missed it.
Not to worry though, they couldn’t have missed it by much, Fred would have got them real close. I have also been persuaded that the professional thing to do in this situation would be to implement a search pattern, which I agree with. So, you can’t fly a LOP to Gardner island and, the Phoenix Islands are no ‘catchers mitt’ (missing B17 spent 4 hours trying to find Canton Island) which I agree with. So a search pattern it is then from, ‘we must be on you’ and, Freds excellent navigation to get them close to Howland in the first place.
Missed it again.
Well they must have been close and, from reading countless SAR tables etc… which have been posted informing me of how easy it was to spot a gnats backside from 1000 ft and 20 miles and so on… They didn’t see Howland or the Itasca or the smoke. Itasca didn’t see them or hear them. But they must have been there, navigation on the button, search pattern on the button, good visibility.
But no, nothing.
One or more of these points must be wrong, even if you include the limited gas situation.

IMHO
Title: Re: LaPook Hypothesis: Box Search around 157-337
Post by: Chris Johnson on July 05, 2012, 01:58:43 PM
My 2p's worth;

1. some people try to apply post 1937 standards for things that were in their infancy
2. just look at the waite and Niku Helocopter footage
3. It may not be a catchers mit but from Howland through the Phoenix you've got more than a one in chance of finding an island.
4. As Woody mentions they may both have been less than 100%
5. OK may have missed it so don't flame me but where does it say that AE/FN would have run a box search
6. Lambrecht - a cover up (non illuminati/free mason)
Title: Re: LaPook Hypothesis: Box Search around 157-337
Post by: John Hart on July 05, 2012, 06:56:23 PM
Gary,

Thanks for the point out to the background data.  It led me to this thread where it is now clearer to me what the overall debate is about.  I will admit to less expertise than is exhibited here but I will pose a caution to the debate.  In my time as an aviator (1983-2005) the USAF progressed from basic DR flying to basic spinning mass INS (lots of drift), to ring laser INS, to INS with Kalman filtered GPS, to embedded GPS/INS.  Most of that transformation occurred in a very short time (~1989-2001).  Your references are mostly post 1940 and much was learned during the war years as military aviation dramatically advanced the navigational knowledge.  I had seen a few of your references but not many but I had seen a Weems reference that may have been the same or earlier to your reference at:

[ftp]https://b98f4441-a-62cb3a1a-s-sites.googlegroups.com/site/fredienoonan/resources/weems/weems-396-397.JPG?attachauth=ANoY7crN2oMcDFIs-Z1vBV0CMypbchRttj179c35KuFvER37EVL_ag0bhV17scWgn7aL1gGu0beZvRT5Z3taLFhD28Esyz8GAJ0g4HWdQfeOR4H8-cYIDlwL-sve0CVdTjrbtp1OgPx3zLyzlxaScn1NZtsbhswRSEPXFNGrubV2dYisRMQjg76-pJM6NaZSnC5nrljip2k2AcazIYu07NLZrZ91vQQStXjuCuyF7b17Qji2PAFZ2TCic8VQIUIhv0AKlFwnYGb2&attredirects=0/[ftp]

directing you to page 397 which closely describes the decision making process I described,  Noting this is dated 1938 with the latest info at the time I would expect FN to be at or behind this level of technique, not using much that is found in your other references that date to 1940+.

But as a "driver" I will step back from the debate and wait to see what comes of future research.  Admitting I learned how to use a Wiz Wheel in pilot training and promptly lost it thereafter.  But the historian in me cautions all not to post-strapulate (a word I made up) 1940s procedures to 1937, much less current procedures.

Either way, as I have stated, we have no way of knowing what the atmospheric conditions were for finding an island at that time and what thought process went through their minds as they decided what to do.  So I put myself in the mind of the rudimentary navigation of the time (which obviously isn't hard for me to do) and my knowledge of the islands in close proximity and I stick by the decision I would have made.  Don't fly around in an expanding box, circle, donut, racetrack, or any other fuel burning operation looking for one tiny island.  Rather head for a long line of them and hope you find one.

I found the reference to the gentleman who tested his navigation techniques and compared them to his GPS interesting.  It is one thing to assess your navigation knowing where you are (thank you GPS) and flying only a short distance over water, it is quite another to have flown those great distances in 1937 and needing to decide what to do with no land in sight, with who knows how many hours of fuel remaining, when you get where you expect to be and see nothing.  I will admit, they could have done just about anything that none of us can predict.  So we pick one we think most likely and stick to it.  Funny thing is, in the end, they could have wound up in the same place regardless of which choice they took depending on how much fuel they really had left.  As others have stated a good miss to the south followed by an expanding search pattern could also have led to a landfall somewhere SSE of Howland.  Maybe Mackean, maybe in the water.

By the way, when I flew F-4s the Weapons System Officers (WSOs) made sure we did not call them navigators.  And you could depend on the F-4 INS to find the U.S. 4 out of 5 times if you started out flying over it.  My hat's still off to FN for even getting on that airplane that AM.

JB
Title: Re: LaPook Hypothesis: Box Search around 157-337
Post by: Malcolm McKay on July 05, 2012, 10:15:30 PM
Don't know if anyone else has noticed the contradictory evidence being put forward in separate threads. When you look at them together it doesn't add up.
The ability of Fred Noonan to navigate accurately, get fixes on the sun, the moon and so on yet, they couldn't see Howland.
The probability of them implementing a successful search pattern that would lead them to Howland yet, they couldn't see Howland.
The ability of the Lambrecht SAR team to see someone waving from a beach yet, the failure of AE and FN too see Howland and Itasca and the smoke and Howland Island, all of which are a tad bigger than someone waving from a beach but, they couldn't see Howland.
When you take all these bits of the jigsaw that have been analysed and shown as likely and, put them together, it doesn't make sense.

Well that pretty well sums up my thoughts on the matter - there is no holistic view unless you massage individual parts of the puzzle to fit the hypothesis which I suspect no one would disagree is not a safe means to construct a working hypothesis. It is the same with the artifacts none can be safely given Earhartian provenance yet individually one or some might be - and its the "mights" that drive the argument. I don't like "mights" I prefer "ares".  :)   
Title: Re: LaPook Hypothesis: Box Search around 157-337
Post by: Gary LaPook on July 05, 2012, 10:41:05 PM
Gary,

Thanks for the point out to the background data.  ...  Your references are mostly post 1940 and much was learned during the war years as military aviation dramatically advanced the navigational knowledge.  I had seen a few of your references but not many but I had seen a Weems reference that may have been the same or earlier to your reference at:



directing you to page 397 which closely describes the decision making process I described,  Noting this is dated 1938 with the latest info at the time I would expect FN to be at or behind this level of technique, not using much that is found in your other references that date to 1940+.




directing you to page 397 which closely describes the decision making process I described,  Noting this is dated 1938 with the latest info at the time I would expect FN to be at or behind this level of technique, not using much that is found in your other references that date to 1940+.


JB
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  (https://sites.google.com/site/fredienoonan/resources/air-navigation-afm-51-40-1951/afm51-40-1951-304.JPG?attredirects=0)of navigation so it was not something brand new in 1937.
gl
Title: Re: LaPook Hypothesis: Box Search around 157-337
Post by: Malcolm McKay on July 05, 2012, 11:05:33 PM
Malcolm, are you speaking here specifically of the 'Box Search around 157-337 (search pattern / crashed and sank)' theory, or the 'Niku landing' theory?

What Jeff Victor has illustrated I believe has to do with the 'Box Search' and some attending conflicts that may be among the various assumptions about how that hypothesis comes together.

But the point is well made in any case and is, of course, always a valid concern.  Thanks!

LTM -

Just things in general as what applies with the box search idea seems to be the case with other things. Or put it this way, if TIGHAR come up with identifiable Earhart Electra wreckage this trip then the various ways of shoehorning ideas to fit proposals will become moot which will be a relief.   
Title: Re: LaPook Hypothesis: Box Search around 157-337
Post by: Malcolm McKay on July 06, 2012, 01:05:26 AM

Well, I think there will always be enough ambiguity among the things-found and how they may have arrived that little, if anything, can be unequivocally 'proved' as to those articles, which I think is you main point (along with the point that professionally you don't care for scenarios that seem a bit too contrived for the evidence, etc.). ....

Of course Jeff the irony is that if some clearly identifiable wreckage is found off the reef then it still won't actually provide any proof that the artifacts that are part of the supporting evidence for the current hypothesis are Earhart's. The questions about them which have been discussed ad nauseum will still apply, but such a debate won't see me involved - getting far too old to care much about freckle cream bottles or compacts  ;D . Still if wreckage is found that is the Electra then that won't matter. We wait and see.
Title: Re: LaPook Hypothesis: Box Search around 157-337
Post by: Gary LaPook on July 06, 2012, 02:58:12 AM
Gary,

Thanks for the point out to the background data.  It led me to this thread where it is now clearer to me what the overall debate is about.  I will admit to less expertise than is exhibited here but I will pose a caution to the debate.  In my time as an aviator (1983-2005) the USAF progressed from basic DR flying to basic spinning mass INS (lots of drift), to ring laser INS, to INS with Kalman filtered GPS, to embedded GPS/INS.  Most of that transformation occurred in a very short time (~1989-2001).  Your references are mostly post 1940 and much was learned during the war years as military aviation dramatically advanced the navigational knowledge.  I had seen a few of your references but not many but I had seen a Weems reference that may have been the same or earlier to your reference at:

JB
Things didn't change that quickly for navigators in WW2. They still used the same type of octant that Noonan used, they still used the same computation tables, H.O.208, still used the MK 2 driftmeter like Noonan used and the slightly different B-5 driftmeter that stuck out through a hole in the side of the plane, but the same computation methods were used. The only significant thng that changed for American oceanic flight navigators in WW2 was the introduction of LORAN-A late in the war. Everyting else stayed the same trough the '30s and '40s and the celnav was the same until the present century with B-52 navs still using the same techniques.

gl
Title: Re: LaPook Hypothesis: Box Search around 157-337
Post by: Gary LaPook on July 06, 2012, 04:31:20 AM
-

I wouldn't discount some form of a brief search pattern where FN may have thought Howland should have been as part of the effort (and admittedly consider that most likely to have been a brief 'circling' or box pattern where Howland 'should have been' and a brief excursion to NNW along the LOP before turning to SSE as I see it). 


What you stated is what TIGHAR has been saying for year, search NNW for a bit then run SSE until fuel exhaustion.
My question to all of you is how far do you go NNW?

Let's start with the basics. From much experiece, celestial navigation fixes are taken to have a 10 NM radius of uncertainty and this is documented in all of the manuals, (https://sites.google.com/site/fredienoonan/topics/accuracy-of-celestial-fixes) the regulations and Noonan said the same in a letter to Weems. Although it is possible to be outside this ten mile circle it is very unlikely and you are much more likely to be near the center of the circle than near the edge. Dead reckoning navigation has an uncertainty of 10% of the distance flown (https://sites.google.com/site/fredienoonan/topics/accuracy-of-dead-reckoning) through the air since the last fix, not over the ground, so is related to true airspeed not ground speed. It is possible to be outside of this limit but that would be highly unusual and you are much more likely to be nearer to the DR position in the center than near the edge of the uncertainty area.

So let's see how this works out in practice. Assume that Noonan gets a normally accurate celestial fix at 1623 Z, at the time Earhart transmitted "partly cloudy" and they dead reckon to Howland from there without getting any sun shots with the sextant. Earhart reported being in the vicinity of Howland at 1912 Z, 2 hours and 49 minutes later. Cruising at 130 knots the plane flew 366 air nautical miles during this period making the uncertainty due to DR of 36.6 NM (37 NM.) Add to this the 10 NM uncertainty from the original fix makes the total uncertainty at 1912 Z 47 NM so the plane is unlikely to be outside a circle of 47 NM radius centered on their DR position over Howland making the whole area 94 NM across. See illustration in the attached PDF. Illustration 2 shows the 10% uncertainty area as it expands from the perimeter of the 1623 Z fix circle which is almost exactly a spread of 6° on either side of the course line.

So if this is all the information they have at 1912 Z, what should they do? The answer is to do an expanding square search pattern since, based on the information they have, they are equally likely to off in any direction. This is not exactly true because they are less likely to have flown directly over Howland and so be on the course line past Howland though it is possible, perhaps the island was obscured by a cloud at the wrong moment. What would be the best way to fly the search pattern? Fly the first leg straight ahead for twice the estimated distance you believe you should be able to spot the island or Itasca.

We have to be careful when we talk about "visibility" since it is used in two different senses. Itasca reported visibility of 20 NM or more. "Visibility" when used in this sense relates to the clarity of the air, how far away a large object such as a mountain can be seen, and is similar to the term "search visibility" as used in the Civil Air Patrol inland search manual. For planning a search pattern, "visibility" means how far away you can expect to spot the object you are searching for and is similar to the term "scanning range" as used in the CAP inland search manual. It is possible to confuse these terms. ;) so I will use this later term, as defined by the CAP, to avoid confusion. I think most of us have assumed that since Itasca reported 20 NM plus "visibility" that the island should have been spotted at that distance but I don't think that this is the case and that the "scanning range" was less. (I'll get to this in a later post.)

There is no reason to believe that Earhart knew the visibility being measured by Itasca and there is no way for us to know what "scanning range" Noonan would have used for planning his search. The choice of "scanning range" is very important because if you overestimate it then you plan and fly the search pattern with the legs too far apart which then causes un-searched gaps between the legs so you can miss your objective. On the other hand, if you use an estimate that is too low then it takes much longer to do the search making fuel a bigger problem.  A normal expanding square pattern with a scanning range of 20 NM will search a square 120 NM across with 5 legs totaling 360 NM and would cover the original circle of uncertainly around the DR position over Howland. This would take 2 hours and 46 minutes. I have attached a diagram of this search, each square is 10 NM and the circle of 47 NM radius is the original area of uncertainty. The plane approaches the position of Howland from the bottom on the diagram and searches 20 NM on both sides of this approach track. When their DR shows them over the position of Howland they start the search pattern with the first leg straight ahead for double the scanning range so they go 40 NM and then turn left. This allows them to scan 20 NM on either side as indicated in pink. The second leg is also 40 NM followed by two legs of 80 NM and the 5th leg is 120 NM.

If you assume a scanning range of only 10 NM then it will take 9 legs to search the original circle of uncertainly, totaling 500 NM taking 3 hours and 51 minutes and you will only have searched a square 100 NM on a side. So it takes one extra hour to search the original uncertainty circle with an assumed "scanning range" of 10 NM compared to 20 NM.

(To be continued.)

gl
Title: Re: LaPook Hypothesis: Box Search around 157-337
Post by: Martin X. Moleski, SJ on July 06, 2012, 09:09:39 AM
Dunno, it can't all fit, I have to agree.  But as to spotting Howland - take a look at the island from a few miles out as recorded by the Waitt search effort - same time of day and I believe very possibly similar sky conditions.

I think that we know what the sky conditions were on 2 July 1937 at Howland from the deck log of the Itasca (http://tighar.org/Projects/Earhart/Archives/Documents/Logs/Itascadecklog.pdf) and from other accounts as well.

9 = Prominent objects visible above 20 miles.

3/10 of the sky covered by cumulus clouds.

James Christian Kamakaiwi (http://tighar.org/smf/tighar.org/wiki/James_Christian_Kamakaiwi): "We watched the sky, hoping to pick the plane out against white cumulus clouds which were all around the horizon."

The 1937 Search: The First 24 Hours" (http://tighar.org/Projects/Earhart/Archives/Research/ResearchPapers/first24hours.html): "But sometime in the next few minutes Thompson changed his mind and became convinced that Earhart was not still aloft but was, in fact, already down at sea. At 10:40 (22:10 GCT) he abandoned his station at Howland (after having just told San Francisco he would stay there until noon) and steamed off to the northwest. He indicates in his Radio Transcripts that this was the only area within visual range of the Itasca that had any cloud cover, and would be the most likely place for Earhart to be, as she could not see either the island or Itasca."

So far as I know, we don't have any photos or commentary from people approaching Howland under such good visibility. 
Title: Re: LaPook Hypothesis: Box Search around 157-337
Post by: JNev on July 06, 2012, 12:46:02 PM
'Vis' might not have been the problem as much as the shadows, IHMO.

"3/10 of the sky covered by cumulus clouds" isn't far off from what we can see in the modern photo example.

Quote
James Christian Kamakaiwi: "We watched the sky, hoping to pick the plane out against white cumulus clouds which were all around the horizon."

Ouch (ref: Howland / cloud shadows picture).

LTM -
Title: Re: LaPook Hypothesis: Box Search around 157-337
Post by: Gary LaPook on July 08, 2012, 01:08:45 AM

What you stated is what TIGHAR has been saying for year, search NNW for a bit then run SSE until fuel exhaustion.
My question to all of you is how far do you go NNW?

Let's start with the basics. From much experiece, celestial navigation fixes are taken to have a 10 NM radius of uncertainty and this is documented in all of the manuals, (https://sites.google.com/site/fredienoonan/topics/accuracy-of-celestial-fixes) the regulations and Noonan said the same in a letter to Weems. Although it is possible to be outside this ten mile circle it is very unlikely and you are much more likely to be near the center of the circle than near the edge. Dead reckoning navigation has an uncertainty of 10% of the distance flown (https://sites.google.com/site/fredienoonan/topics/accuracy-of-dead-reckoning) through the air since the last fix, not over the ground, so is related to true airspeed not ground speed. It is possible to be outside of this limit but that would be highly unusual and you are much more likely to be nearer to the DR position in the center than near the edge of the uncertainty area.

So let's see how this works out in practice. Assume that Noonan gets a normally accurate celestial fix at 1623 Z, at the time Earhart transmitted "partly cloudy" and they dead reckon to Howland from there without getting any sun shots with the sextant. Earhart reported being in the vicinity of Howland at 1912 Z, 2 hours and 49 minutes later. Cruising at 130 knots the plane flew 366 air nautical miles during this period making the uncertainty due to DR of 36.6 NM (37 NM.) Add to this the 10 NM uncertainty from the original fix makes the total uncertainty at 1912 Z 47 NM so the plane is unlikely to be outside a circle of 47 NM radius centered on their DR position over Howland making the whole area 94 NM across. See illustration in the attached PDF. Illustration 2 shows the 10% uncertainty area as it expands from the perimeter of the 1623 Z fix circle which is almost exactly a spread of 6° on either side of the course line.

So if this is all the information they have at 1912 Z, what should they do? The answer is to do an expanding square search pattern since, based on the information they have, they are equally likely to off in any direction. This is not exactly true because they are less likely to have flown directly over Howland and so be on the course line past Howland though it is possible, perhaps the island was obscured by a cloud at the wrong moment. What would be the best way to fly the search pattern? Fly the first leg straight ahead for twice the estimated distance you believe you should be able to spot the island or Itasca.

We have to be careful when we talk about "visibility" since it is used in two different senses. Itasca reported visibility of 20 NM or more. "Visibility" when used in this sense relates to the clarity of the air, how far away a large object such as a mountain can be seen, and is similar to the term "search visibility" as used in the Civil Air Patrol inland search manual. For planning a search pattern, "visibility" means how far away you can expect to spot the object you are searching for and is similar to the term "scanning range" as used in the CAP inland search manual. It is possible to confuse these terms. ;) so I will use this later term, as defined by the CAP, to avoid confusion. I think most of us have assumed that since Itasca reported 20 NM plus "visibility" that the island should have been spotted at that distance but I don't think that this is the case and that the "scanning range" was less. (I'll get to this in a later post.)

There is no reason to believe that Earhart knew the visibility being measured by Itasca and there is no way for us to know what "scanning range" Noonan would have used for planning his search. The choice of "scanning range" is very important because if you overestimate it then you plan and fly the search pattern with the legs too far apart which then causes un-searched gaps between the legs so you can miss your objective. On the other hand, if you use an estimate that is too low then it takes much longer to do the search making fuel a bigger problem.  A normal expanding square pattern with a scanning range of 20 NM will search a square 120 NM across with 5 legs totaling 360 NM and would cover the original circle of uncertainly around the DR position over Howland. This would take 2 hours and 46 minutes. I have attached a diagram of this search, each square is 10 NM and the circle of 47 NM radius is the original area of uncertainty. The plane approaches the position of Howland from the bottom on the diagram and searches 20 NM on both sides of this approach track. When their DR shows them over the position of Howland they start the search pattern with the first leg straight ahead for double the scanning range so they go 40 NM and then turn left. This allows them to scan 20 NM on either side as indicated in pink. The second leg is also 40 NM followed by two legs of 80 NM and the 5th leg is 120 NM.

If you assume a scanning range of only 10 NM then it will take 9 legs to search the original circle of uncertainly, totaling 500 NM taking 3 hours and 51 minutes and you will only have searched a square 100 NM on a side. So it takes one extra hour to search the original uncertainty circle with an assumed "scanning range" of 10 NM compared to 20 NM.

(To be continued.)

gl
An interesting thing happens as you continue to draw the search pattern. It turns out that starting with a circle of uncertainty with a radius of 47 NM and a scanning range of 20 NM that you will never search the entire area were is is possible for the search object to be. This is because the circle of uncertainty grows faster than the plane can search it. The 10% DR uncertainty continues while the search is being conducted. After five legs the plane has searched the original 47 NM radius circle of uncertainty but the plane has flown 360 NM to do it. Ten percent of this is 36 NM which must be added to the original 47 NM radius so the circle of uncertainly has grown to a radius of 83 NM at this point and there are areas that have not been searched near the edges of this circle, see attached diagram. If this is hard for you to get your head around then another way to conceptualize this is to think of the plane having perfect navigation with GPS but the search object is a life raft that is not perfectly located and has an uncertainty of 47 NM at the start of the search and is subject to currents of up to 13 knots in any direction. So after flying those first five legs, the raft might have drifted an additional 36 NM outside the original circle in the 2:46 spent so far in the search so now the circle is 83 NM in radius. The search has scanned the highest probability area near the center of the circle so might have found the raft but if the raft had actually been near the edge of the 47 NM circle at the start then it could have been missed if the current moved it further away from the center, outside the original search area. If you continue to draw the search pattern you find that you never can get ahead of the ever growing circle. It works out that with a scanning range of 20 NM then the original uncertainty must not exceed 24 NM or you end up in this situation. It is even worse if the scanning range was 10 NM because it would take flying 500 NM and 3:51 so the circle would grow by 50 NM to a 97 NM radius instead of just the additional 36 NM in the prior example.

gl
Title: Re: LaPook Hypothesis: Box Search around 157-337
Post by: Gary LaPook on July 08, 2012, 04:17:52 AM
Now let's look at the TIGHAR theory, that Noonan observed the sun as it rose, developed a line of position from this observation, advanced this LOP until it passed over Howland, measured the distance that needed to be flown by DR until intercepting that LOP, compute the time necessary to fly this distance based on their known ground speed, fly for the computed time, turn left and search NNW at the computed time of the intercept of the advanced LOP for a certain distance, make a 180° turn and search the other way along the LOP, and then continue to the SSE until finding Gardner. My question is "how far do you search to the NNW before turning around?"

I have attached illustrations of this theory. The first image shows the presumed fix at 1623 Z, the 10 NM circle of uncertainty around (https://sites.google.com/site/fredienoonan/topics/accuracy-of-celestial-fixes) it. Based on the report at 1912 Z the plane would have flown 366 NM in this period after the fix. If no sun line LOP were obtained then, if navigating solely by DR, the uncertainty would grow by 37 NM making the uncertainty circle around Howland 47 NM in radius, 94 NM in diameter.  The second illustration shows that the uncertainty grows at 10% of the distance flown (https://sites.google.com/site/fredienoonan/topics/accuracy-of-dead-reckoning), starting from the circumference of the circle around the starting fix.
Sunrise at sea level at Howland was at 1745 Z and at 10,000 feet above Howland, ten minutes earlier at 1735 Z. By allowing for the rotation of the earth and the movement of the plane (I won't go into the details of this computation) we can calculate that at 10,000 feet they would have observed the sun peeking up from behind the horizon at 1749 Z. This is 1:26 minutes after the fix and the plane would have flown 147 NM in this time so the DR at the time of sunrise is plotted on illustration 3 along with the circle of uncertainty which has grown to a radius of 29 NM. There remains 179 NM to fly to Howland. Illustration 4 shows the sunrise LOP which runs 157° - 337° true and illustration 5 shows the plus and minus 7 NM uncertainty band. The aircraft would have to be located in this band and bounded on the north and south by the circle of uncertainty, somewhere along the 58 NM of the 14 NM wide band inside the circle. Illustration 6 shows this LOP advanced to 1912 Z and the uncertainty grows by 10% of the 179 NM covered, 18 NM, which is added to the original uncertainty of 7 NM making the uncertainty at 1912 Z of plus and minus 25 NM, a band 50 NM wide shown in illustration 7. The aircraft is within this 50 NM wide and 94 NM long band. With an uncertainty of 25 NM, the advanced sunrise LOP is not sufficiently accurate to assure finding Howland since this exceeds the visibility and the scanning range.

(I have said for ten years that it was not possible to take a "sunrise observation" for technical reasons (https://sites.google.com/site/fredienoonan/discussions/the-myth-of-the-sunrise-lop) and the current example shows yet another reason why it would be useless to take an observation when so far away from the destination which results in such a large DR uncertainty that the resulting LOP is of no use.)

Now, according to TIGHAR, they turn and fly NNW along the LOP, so how far must they go? They must go at least the 47 NM of the circle of uncertainty but after flying those 47 NM the uncertainty has grown by an additional 4.7 NM (call it 5 NM) so the plane must go at least 52 NM. At the same time the width of the band has also grown by the same 5 NM in each direction make the band 60 NM at the end of the NNW leg. Illustration 8 shows the area that must contain the airplane, 60 NM wide and now extends 52 NM NNW from the presumed location of Howland.

The plane now turns around and proceeds SSE, how far will it go in this direction? It must go 52 NM back to the starting position plus the 47 NM to the edge of the original circle plus 10 more NM to account for the increase in the DR uncertainty on this leg, a total of 109 NM placing the DR position at the end of the SSE leg 57 NM from Howland, 19 NM from Baker and 300 NM from Gardner. This leg also adds 11 NM on each side of the LOP making it now 82 NM wide, 41 NM on each side and absolutely useless for finding Howland. Illustration 8 shows this and the area that contains the plane at the end of the SSE leg. Noonan knows at this point that he must be SSE of Howland, most likely about 57 NM but with a range of zero to about 115 NM so he is certain the the closest land is Howland and Baker and the next nearest land in the Phoenix islands is at least 230 NM away and more likely about 300 NM away.

So what should they do at this point? Go back to the NNW until their DR shows them close to Howland and then do the expanding square search pattern. It makes no sense to continue further to the SSE where they would have to rely only on luck to stumble onto one of the very scattered islands in the Phoenixs. (https://sites.google.com/site/fredienoonan/discussions/debunking-tighar-s-theory) Proceding in that direction would use all or most of their remaining fuel and they would not be able to do any search pattern in the vicinity of those islands for the simple fact they would have no way to determine that they had gone far enough. The uncertainty in their DR at this point where they had to make their decision is fully 82 NM wide and 115 NM long and their DR accuracy will only get worse on the way to the Phoenixs which is why you can't dead reckon to a destination if you are not starting from an accurate fix. In fact, considering the 50 NM wide band of the LOP at 1912 Z which made the uncertainty similar along both axes, it would have made more sense to ignore the stale LOP all altogether and just start the search pattern at 1912 Z as I have shown in my prior posts and this would have save about 1:40 of fuel that could be used for the search.

gl
Title: Re: LaPook Hypothesis: Box Search around 157-337
Post by: John Ousterhout on July 08, 2012, 10:03:41 AM
Gary,
Great analysis.  If I understand you correctly, the expanding circle of uncertainty can be thought of as growing at 13 knots.  Yikes!  It's as though the island started moving in some unknown direction at 13 knots, starting the moment of Fred's last accurate position, and keeps on moving at 13 kts even when a search pattern is being flown.  That's in addition to the initial uncertainty.
 
Imagine taking off from your local airport for a relaxing afternoon of sight seeing.  An hour later, your airport has moved 13 miles from where you last saw it, and you don't know what direction it went.  So you initiate a search pattern, but the airport is still moving at 13 mph, somewhere, in some direction, while you search for it.   To make things even worse, any alternative airports have also been moving in random directions at 13 mph since takeoff.  This sounds like a nightmare!  The only way to reduce the size of the circle of uncertainty is to obtain another fix.

Have I got that right?
Title: Re: LaPook Hypothesis: Box Search around 157-337
Post by: Jeff Victor Hayden on July 08, 2012, 10:20:32 AM
Good work Gary and thanks for the info on the CofG.
What is the role of FN in the search pattern? Is he plotting the positions, calling out the course changes and plotting the areas covered so far or, trying to look out of both the windows at the back of the plane to try and locate Howland. I read in another post that 2 sets of eyes are better than one when working a search pattern and, the best place for the 2 sets of eyes to be to achieve this is the cockpit, best all round visibility.
Title: Re: LaPook Hypothesis: Box Search around 157-337
Post by: Martin X. Moleski, SJ on July 08, 2012, 11:34:56 AM
I have said for ten years that it was not possible to take a "sunrise observation" for technical reasons (https://sites.google.com/site/fredienoonan/discussions/the-myth-of-the-sunrise-lop) and the current example shows yet another reason why it would be useless to take an observation when so far away from the destination which results in such a large DR uncertainty that the resulting LOP is of no use.

OK.  Then where did the line 337-157 (http://tighar.org/wiki/Last_transmission) come from?
Title: Re: LaPook Hypothesis: Box Search around 157-337
Post by: Gary LaPook on July 08, 2012, 12:22:50 PM
I have said for ten years that it was not possible to take a "sunrise observation" for technical reasons (https://sites.google.com/site/fredienoonan/discussions/the-myth-of-the-sunrise-lop) and the current example shows yet another reason why it would be useless to take an observation when so far away from the destination which results in such a large DR uncertainty that the resulting LOP is of no use.

OK.  Then where did the line 337-157 (http://tighar.org/wiki/Last_transmission) come from?
That's the next installment, stay tuned.

gl
Title: Re: LaPook Hypothesis: Box Search around 157-337
Post by: William Thaxton on July 08, 2012, 05:25:06 PM
Go away for a couple of weeks and look how many writers come over to the dark side!  Seriously, though, good job in describing a box search and the reasons for executing such.  While we disagree on a couple of points, the general thrust of your presentation is one I can readily support.

I'm still surprised at the number of writers who seem to think that (1) it is somehow "presumptive" to think a trained and experienced navigator would act in a manner that is not in accordance with his/her training and (2) that all knowledge of navigation has been gained post-WWII.  For me, the more cogent question is "Why would AE/FN abandonestablished "best practices" and head off looking for a flyspeck in the broad Pacific?"  Such a thing COULD have happened but if it did we need a "why".

William
#3425
Title: Re: LaPook Hypothesis: Box Search around 157-337
Post by: John Hart on July 08, 2012, 07:31:37 PM
Wow, it's great to see my bar napkin numbers are close to Gary's on his attached charts.  Left out Rawaki by the way, you only show the span to Kanton.  The whole cluster of islands is hardly a "fly speck".

Doesn't matter how long someone says, or we think, the airplane will float, only how long FN thinks it will float.  Remember he has been through a lot of seaplane landings, probably a few rough ones, and those were in lagoons.  He knows open water landings are avoided by them.  I would expect he would do anything to avoid having to ditch open ocean.  I believe I read somewhere no liferaft on board.

Again, you are arguing navigation techniques not pilot judgement.  What's your plan when you get to the end of your gas after all these pretty rectangles?  Why if you kept flying in and out of range of Itasca on this search pattern did you not communicate with them again?  Who was looking, who was flying, who was navigating, and from where?  How were you communicating with each other if opposite ends of the airplane?

But once again I will say, you may be right.  But so too may others.  I'll give you yours, why can't you give others theirs?  I can shoot holes in yours, you can shoot holes in mine but we don't need to impinge each other's qualifications to have a theory.  I give you yours.  COAs are exactly that, choices.  FN and AE had choices.  We don't know which they made but we can speculate.

The world wonders...

JB
Title: Re: LaPook Hypothesis: Box Search around 157-337
Post by: JNev on July 09, 2012, 08:14:06 AM
...For me, the more cogent question is "Why would AE/FN abandonestablished "best practices" and head off looking for a flyspeck in the broad Pacific?"  Such a thing COULD have happened but if it did we need a "why".

William
#3425

He wouldn't have had to 'abandon established best practices' to 'head off looking for a flyspeck' -

Go to Gary's site about 'fredienoonan' and read thoroughly among the navigational texts he's posted there: not only is the search pattern discussed, so is alternate landfall when a search fails.  It takes a bit of reading but the point is discussed among those texts (I recall reading it there but am too lazy to find it at moment).

As to 'flyspecks' - Howland was more nearly a flyspeck than Gardner: big difference in appearance.

"Why"?  A hope for dry feet, perhaps; dumb luck, may well have been.  We have to find that they actually got there before we can hope to draw near a real "why", though, and may never know.

Would FN have known that Gardner was more than a 'fly speck'?  Apparently not from his charts as then available.  I think that's been one of Gary's points and it is a fair one. 

That leads to my own thought that IF Gardner was the place of landing, how they got there will likely always be a mystery.  It could have been dumb luck for a crew that was severely lost and in the throws of flying a box search for Howland after all... or, it could have been a lucky stumbling into the proverbial fly speck.  I don't think it can ever be proven.

Gary's work remains fascinating - the guy is a font of navigational stuff!

LTM -
Title: Re: LaPook Hypothesis: Box Search around 157-337
Post by: Jeff Victor Hayden on July 09, 2012, 08:34:43 AM
Fred was a smart guy, he knew the risks. I have no doubt a search pattern was implemented but, to search until zero gas knowing the inevitable outcome of not locating Howland/baker doesn't sound smart. Would Fred be smarter than that with all his experience of navigation and, his work with Pan Am?

Smart route out of an unkown situation, play the percentages.

Part one, a limited search pattern/time to find two dots of land, Howland/Baker
Part two, head towards eight dots of land, The phoenix islands.

Two dots of land versus eight, playing the percentages?
I know the Phoenix Islands, 8, were not a 'catchers mitt' but then again, in comparison to Howland/Baker, 2, ????
How much time and fuel would you devote to looking for 2 when you could be looking for 8 ?


Title: Re: LaPook Hypothesis: Box Search around 157-337
Post by: Martin X. Moleski, SJ on July 12, 2012, 12:07:03 PM
I've just had an epiphany in another thread (http://tighar.org/smf/index.php/topic,805.msg16435.html#msg16435).

I'm hauling this piece over here where it belongs, more or less.

Suppose AE and FN stayed in the air, doing a LaPook search from the south while the Itasca headed northwest.  The absence of the ship and the smoke (however useful it might have been) would reduce the visibility of Howland.  It might not be hard to get the endpoint of the LaPook search within five to seven miles of Howland.  As the Itasca steams away (full speed ahead?) to the northwest, AE and FN work their way closer and closer to Howland from the south.
Title: Re: LaPook Hypothesis: Box Search around 157-337
Post by: Jeff Victor Hayden on July 12, 2012, 12:21:49 PM
Quote
AE and FN work their way closer and closer to Howland from the south.

Which is logical and, at what stage of this search pattern do they decide that it's a waste fuel trying to find the two dots (still not in sight, even more so now as Itasca has headed off in the opposite direction) and head towards the eight dots?
And of course if Itasca did guess correctly and NW was the place and AE and FN have got their search pattern up and running they would be closing in on each other on the 'correct' side of the search pattern.
Title: Re: LaPook Hypothesis: Box Search around 157-337
Post by: Gary LaPook on July 14, 2012, 01:00:18 AM
I think we have all been making the mistake of believing that the visibility reported by Itasca was also the distance that Howland could be spotted. These distances are not the same. To use the CAP terminology, Itasca reported "search visibility" while the distance we can expect to spot the object we are looking for is defined by the CAP as "scanning range." People have also confused the "geographic range," the distance to the horizon based on your altitude. (1.144 times the square root of your altitude in feet, 1000^.5 = 31.6 X 1.144 = 36.2 NM) with scanning range. Here is how we figure out the geographic range, boys and girls. The first step in the process is to calculate the square root of 1,000 so take out your slide rules and line up the hair line on the  cursor with the "1" in the center of the "A" scale. Now look at the "D" scale and you see that the hair line is lined up with 316. To place the decimal point we do a rough approximation in our heads. Ten times ten equals one hundred so we know the square root of 1,000 must be greater than ten. One hundred times one hundred is 10,000 so we know that the square root of 1,000 must be between  10 and 100 so we can now place the decimal point in the proper location making the square root of 1,000 equal  31.6. Now, without allowing the cursor to move, move the slide to the right until the "1" on the "C" scale at the left end of the slide is lined up with the hair line, then move the hairline to line it up with 1.144 on the "C" scale and then read out the geographic range under the hair line on the "D" scale, which is "36," making the geographic range 36 NM. The constant, 1.144, is derived from the size of the earth and the definition of the nautical mile. For those of you without your slide rules today, take out your table of logarithms and extract the mantissa of the "1" in "1,000." O.K. that was a joke because everyone knows that the mantissa of "1" is zero. Now place the characteristic of "3" in front of the "0" and we have the complete logarithm of 1000 which is 3.00000. To find he square root we divide this logarithm by "2" making the logarithm of the square root of 1,000 as "1.50000." We then scan the logarithm table for the mantissa of "50000" and take out the antilog of "3162." Since we know the characteristic is "1" we can place the decimal point and so determine the square root of 1,000 is 31.62 NM. But the beauty of logarithms is that we can skip this step since we are not really interested in the square root, but the square root multiplied by 1.144. So, we simply extract the logarithm of 1.144, which is  0.058426, and add this to the 1.50000 making it 1.558426. Now, looking up "558426" in the mantissa table we extract "3618" and placing the decimal point based on the characteristic of "1" we now have the geographic range of 36.18 NM.

So what is the scanning range for Howland island? Human visual acuity has several facets but the most common aspect is measured by the standard Snellen test hanging on your doctor's wall:
        E
     F P

     T O Z

     L P E D

(these are the most common lines, I memorized them a long time ago.) Standard visual acuity is listed as 20/20 and the line that results in this score has the letters of a size that the thickness of the characters and the spaces between the elements in each letter subtend an angle of one minute of arc, 1/60th of a degree and this is in the doctors office where the air is clear and with a standard, high level of illumination. Some people can see better than this and some objects that are much smaller, like stars (due to the high contrast) can also be seen but the one minute of arc acuity is a good value for us to use in thinking about the scanning range for Howland. The sine (or tangent, it doesn't matter) of one minute of arc is 0.00029 the inverse of which is 3438 which means that the ratio is 1 to 3438.  A common approximation of this value is 1 to 3600 which is one inch high at a distance of 100 yards (3600 inches) and this is used universally by rifle shooters and is close enough for our purposes. This means that a person with 20/20 vision should be able to see something that is one inch high at 100 yards and not be able to see anything that is smaller at that distance. As an experiment I put some pieces of orange tape that were two inches wide on the back of a road sign (see attached photo) and then drove away about a half mile and then drove towards the sign slowly and then stopped when I could first detect the orange tape. I measured the distance with my laser rangefinder and it was 212 yards which is slightly more than the expected 200 yards but it was a highly contrasting color and I knew where to look.

An object that is one foot tall should be visible at 3,600 feet which is about 6/10 ths of a nautical mile. The highest point on Howland island is only 18 feet high so should not be visible more than 10.8 NM away (10.2 NM if you do the actual trig) no matter what the geographic range or the reported visibility (unless those restrict it even more.)

But that is not the end of the story since this just describes the situation of a person looking for Howland from shipboard and Earhart was looking from 1,000 feet above sea level. Think of Howland as a playing card. I have just described the situation of one looking at the card edge on. Obviously you can see the card farther away if you are looking at the front of the card instead of the edge. Howland is about one-half NM wide so how close would we have to be for that 1/2 NM wide island to subtend one minute of arc from a point a thousand feet higher than the island? Think of the playing card laying flat on a table with the short dimension towards you. Since you are taller than the table you will be looking down on the card but from all the way down the hall the card would subtend a small angle and would  look quite narrow to you if you could see it at all. As you move closer to the table the card will look bigger and bigger and when you are looking straight down on the card is will look its biggest. When you get close enough so that it is seen to subtend one minute of arc you should be able to see it.

Doing this computation for Earhart we compute the angle the plane would appear above horizontal from the near shore and from the far shore of the island and take the difference, this would be the angle the island would subtend from the plane. At 1000 feet high and 20 NM away (the near shore), the plane would be 28.3' above the horizon while from 20.5 NM away (the far shore) it will be 27.6' high a difference of only 0.7' so not subtending an angle large enough to be seen. From 18 NM the angle is 31.4' and from 18.5 NM it is 30.6' a difference of only 0.8', still not big enough to be seen. From 16.5 NM the angle is 34.3' and from 17 NM it is 33.3' a difference of 1.0' so should be able to be seen. (See attached diagram) So this should be the maximum distance that the island could be seen, not the 20 NM everybody has been using for their computations. Of course this assumes clear air and good contrast so it is more likely that the island could not actually be seen until closer than this theoretical 16.5 NM

What about spotting the Itasca?
Fortunately we have good scientific information about searching for ships in the National Search And Rescue Manual which uses the concept of "sweep width" instead of scanning range. I have attached table 4-5 which shows the sweep width when searching for a ship between 150 and 300 feet long from an altitude of 1,000 feet the sweep width is 24.7 NM with 20 NM visibility and 34.9 NM if the visibility is 30 NM. This is the new scientific search method. So what does this mean? With 20 NM visibility, one pass of the search plane covers a swath 24.7 NM wide, 12.35 on both sides of the plane and there is an 80% probability that the ship will be spotted if it was within that swath. So one way to interpret this is that Earhart had an 80% probability of spotting the Itasca if they flew within 12.35 NM of the ship. So if you wanted to achieve an 80% probability of spotting this ship then you should plan your search pattern so that the legs are spaced one sweep width apart and when this is done the "coverage factor" is one. If we want a higher probability of success we just have to increase the coverage factor either by searching the same track multiple times or by spacing the search pattern legs closer together. I have attached table 5-19 which shows the cumulative probability of detection based on coverage factor. We can see that with a coverage factor of one (the track spacing equals the sweep width) on pass results in an 80% POD while two passes on the same track increases it to 95% and three passes to 99%. If we space the search pattern at half the sweep width then the coverage factor becomes 2.0 and the POD increases to 98% for one pass. This means that we have a 98% probability of spotting that ship if we pass within 6.175 NM, half the distance of before. We can also use this table to see what happens if we pass farther away from the ship. If we pass twice as far away, 24.7 NM, then the coverage factor is 0.5 and the POD for one pass drops to 47% and for two passes it is only 72%. What would be the probability of spotting Itasca 20 NM away with 20 NM visibility? Divide 12.35 by 20 and you find the coverage factor is 0.62 so the POD for one pass is 55% and 80% for two passes. Something we can learn from this is that when searching for a ship this size, if you equate the visibility with "scanning range" then you have only about a 50-50 shot at spotting the ship. So if they were flying a search pattern with the legs spaced 40 NM appart, twice the visibility reported by Itasca, then they would only have had a 55% probability of spotting itasca and a low probability of spotting Howland.


So the problem might be that Earhart and Noonan overestimated the range that they could spot Howland.

gl
Title: Re: LaPook Hypothesis: Box Search around 157-337
Post by: John Ousterhout on July 14, 2012, 06:41:59 AM
Gary,
Do you know of any guidelines for searchers when the sea surface is dotted with cloud shadows, of approximately the size of Howland in AE's case?  Similarly, are there guidelines for searching for a downed aircraft in a sea with whitecaps that also approximate a floating Electra in size, that is also dotted with cloud shadow?
Title: Re: LaPook Hypothesis: Box Search around 157-337
Post by: Bruce Thomas on July 14, 2012, 07:25:09 AM
People have also confused the "geographic range," the distance to the horizon based on your altitude (1.144 times the square root of your altitude in feet, 1000^.5 = 31.6 X 1.144 = 36.2 NM) with scanning range.

Gary! Groan!  You're too good with math for me (who teaches undergraduate math in a local university) to let that one go without comment.  When my students write gibberish like "1000^.5 = 31.6 X 1.144 = 36.2" they get the dreaded red pen markup.  Because "things equal to the same thing are equal to each other" ... so you're in effect saying that the square root of 1000 is 36.2, and I know you know better. 

One way to write it correctly (and to continue to infer that your readers know that you're giving an example) with an altitude of 1,000 feet:  (1000^.5 = 31.6) X 1.144 = 36.2

Your friendly math pedant.   :)
Title: Re: LaPook Hypothesis: Box Search around 157-337
Post by: Jeff Victor Hayden on July 14, 2012, 07:36:37 AM
We may have inadvertently stumbled upon the reason why no one could see each other. During the Itasca search and, the following larger scale search everyone was studying tables and working out mathematical formulae instead of looking over the side of the plane or ship
 ;)

Title: Re: LaPook Hypothesis: Box Search around 157-337
Post by: C.W. Herndon on July 14, 2012, 07:43:05 AM
People have also confused the "geographic range," the distance to the horizon based on your altitude (1.144 times the square root of your altitude in feet, 1000^.5 = 31.6 X 1.144 = 36.2 NM) with scanning range.

Gary! Groan!  You're too good with math for me (who teaches undergraduate math in a local university) to let that one go without comment.  When my students write gibberish like "1000^.5 = 31.6 X 1.144 = 36.2" they get the dreaded red pen markup.  Because "things equal to the same thing are equal to each other" ... so you're in effect saying that the square root of 1000 is 36.2, and I know you know better. 

One way to write it correctly (and to continue to infer that your readers know that you're giving of example) with an altitude of 1,000 feet:  (1000^.5 = 31.6) X 1.144 = 36.2

Your friendly math pedant.   :)

Way to go Bruce. :)

Sometimes Gary gets so technical in his explanations that I just skim through them. I sure missed that rather obvious error. :o
Title: Re: LaPook Hypothesis: Box Search around 157-337
Post by: C.W. Herndon on July 14, 2012, 07:53:18 AM
We may have inadvertently stumbled upon the reason why no one could see each other. During the Itasca search and, the following larger scale search everyone was studying tables and working out mathematical formulae instead of looking over the side of the plane or ship
 ;)

Jeff, you may be on to something here. :o
Title: Re: LaPook Hypothesis: Box Search around 157-337
Post by: Martin X. Moleski, SJ on July 14, 2012, 09:23:44 AM
We may have inadvertently stumbled upon the reason why no one could see each other. During the Itasca search and, the following larger scale search everyone was studying tables and working out mathematical formulae instead of looking over the side of the plane or ship
 ;)

It seems to me that Fred faced a tradeoff during the search.

He could have his attention directed inside the cockpit or outside, but not both.

Time spent on navigational calculations would be time stolen from doing the visual search, and vice-versa.

I'm sure Gary can calculate how long Fred could spend looking down at a chart before running the risk of not scanning his side of the search path effectively.  That time could be compared to the time needed to calculate something--say, making an estimate of distance and course covered to update the dead-reckoning or calculating wind-drift so as to give AE the right heading to fly to cover the desired search path.

That seems to me to be a possible contributing factor to them winning the "Close, but no cigar" award for their flight.
Title: Re: LaPook Hypothesis: Box Search around 157-337
Post by: Gary LaPook on July 14, 2012, 11:12:41 AM
People have also confused the "geographic range," the distance to the horizon based on your altitude (1.144 times the square root of your altitude in feet, 1000^.5 = 31.6 X 1.144 = 36.2 NM) with scanning range.

Gary! Groan!  You're too good with math for me (who teaches undergraduate math in a local university) to let that one go without comment.  When my students write gibberish like "1000^.5 = 31.6 X 1.144 = 36.2" they get the dreaded red pen markup.  Because "things equal to the same thing are equal to each other" ... so you're in effect saying that the square root of 1000 is 36.2, and I know you know better. 

One way to write it correctly (and to continue to infer that your readers know that you're giving an example) with an altitude of 1,000 feet:  (1000^.5 = 31.6) X 1.144 = 36.2

Your friendly math pedant.   :)
O.K., I went back and fixed it.

gl
Title: Re: LaPook Hypothesis: Box Search around 157-337
Post by: Bruce Thomas on July 14, 2012, 12:02:21 PM
O.K., I went back and fixed it.

I'm so proud!  Two bonus points!  :D
Title: Re: LaPook Hypothesis: Box Search around 157-337
Post by: Jeff Victor Hayden on July 14, 2012, 12:15:12 PM
O.K., I went back and fixed it.

I'm so proud!  Two bonus points!  :D

Bruce, I never thought I would see the good old T183 again. It was the calculator we had to purchase for the mathematics modules on our degree course as it was extremely programable and you could compile and run simple software programs that you had created. The statistical functions were outstanding, ideal for this thread.
I wonder if it's still in a cardboard box in the garage?
Title: Re: LaPook Hypothesis: Box Search around 157-337
Post by: Gary LaPook on July 14, 2012, 05:01:16 PM
O.K., I went back and fixed it.

I'm so proud!  Two bonus points!  :D
Wow! that makes it easy. Of course it's even easier if you just look at table 8 of The American Practical Navigator (https://tighar.org/smf/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=555.0;attach=660) which I posted back in January.

and

https://tighar.org/smf/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=555.0;attach=658

gl
Title: Re: LaPook Hypothesis: Box Search around 157-337
Post by: Gary LaPook on July 15, 2012, 07:25:58 PM
Gary,
Do you know of any guidelines for searchers when the sea surface is dotted with cloud shadows, of approximately the size of Howland in AE's case?  Similarly, are there guidelines for searching for a downed aircraft in a sea with whitecaps that also approximate a floating Electra in size, that is also dotted with cloud shadow?

As the name makes clear, the National Search And Rescue Manual, concerns searching and rescuing people, not looking for islands so has no tables or information for such a search.
There are several correction tables to modify the sweep width and one is for wind and wave conditions which, obviously, includes the presence of whitecaps, see attached.

The tables do not have a listing for floating aircraft so I would approximate it by looking at something about the same size, the 40 to 65 foot powerboat tabulation, which calls out a sweep width of 13.1 NM which equates to an 80% probability of detection (POD) at half the sweep width or 6.55 NM from a fixed wing search aircraft. Looking at the fixed wing speed correction table it is clear that the sweep width table was based on a speed of 180 knots so flying slower increases the sweep width and/or the POD. Looking at the table for helicopter search aircraft it is also clear that they were based on a speed of 120 knots, about the speed of the Electra, so the helicopter tables might be more appropriate for estimating the efficacy of Earhart's search effort which I have attached. For helicopters the sweep width with 20 NM visibility is 26.6 NM, slightly greater than the 24.7 NM for the 180 knot fixed wing search. This increases the 80% POD distance from 12.35 NM to 13.3, about an extra mile. This also increases the POD for a search pattern based on 20 NM visibility from 55% to 60%.

gl
Title: Re: LaPook Hypothesis: Box Search around 157-337
Post by: Jeff Carter on July 23, 2012, 10:26:39 PM
I guess we should take the fatigue correction...   
Title: Re: LaPook Hypothesis: Box Search around 157-337
Post by: Gary LaPook on October 29, 2012, 02:06:26 AM

TIGHAR has been claiming the opposite, that Noonan and Earhart abandoned searching for Howland and continued to the southeast because they thought that they were sure to find one of the the many islands in the Phoenixs,

TIGHAR has never claimed any such thing that I am aware of, and has never held that there was any sort of 'guarantee' of landfall - just a better chance of it where 'there be lands' and that it is a possibility.  Friedell thought it at the time based on his logic of how a landplane navigator would rationally operate, as did others whom Friedell had heard from: there is 'less' land (none) with reach to the NNW of Howland; 'there be land there' to the SSE - hence the logic. But never a 'guarantee' of finding has been claimed at all.


Oh really?

I recently watched the show,  "The Real Amelia Earhart" (2006) on the National Geographic
Channel and  at 21 minutes into the show they show a chart with the LOP through Howland and
Nikumaroro

Narrator:

"Gillespie thinks it makes prefect navigational sense for Earhart and Noonan to aim for Gardner
Island, now known as Nikumaroro, located in the Phoenix Island chain."

Gillespie:

"If Earhart is lost, the only piece of information she has is that she is on a navigational line that
falls through Howland Island. She also knows there are other islands on that line so if she flies
southeastward on that line she is guaranteed of hitting land."
I have attached two video files (I broke it in half to keep the file sizes small) of this segment of the show. Turn your volume up and listen to Ric say "guaranteed of hitting land".


gl
Title: Re: LaPook Hypothesis: Box Search around 157-337
Post by: Tim Mellon on November 23, 2012, 11:39:57 AM
You think that this is hard? Try flying a Standard Instrument Departure (SID) or a Standard Terminal Arrival Route (STAR) into or out of JFK or ORD or LAX. I have attached one example of each at Los Angles International Airport. There are 14 different STARs and 18 different SIDs at LAX, and it is similar at most large airports. These are flown thousands and thousands of times every day nationwide.


Piece of cake. The SID can't be flown without some sort of FMS, and any plane with FMS is likely to have autopilot. AE had no FMS nor GPS. The STAR requires VOR/DME, but no autopilot. AE had neither VOR nor DME. I think ded-reckoning (ded comes from "deduced") is harder, by far. But certainly not impossible.
Title: Re: LaPook Hypothesis: Box Search around 157-337
Post by: richie conroy on November 23, 2012, 05:39:50 PM
Isn't this what it's all about proving a hypothesis.

We have, Sapiens theory, New England theory, Crash an sink theory, Name change theory, Spy theory.

This is Tighar's theory, So if Ric didn't state his belief's, What chances are there of other's believing the Niku hypothesis

Also in Tighar's defense they ! we, Are just following the evidence that is available an compared to the rest Tighar's Evidence is overwhelming in my opinion     
Title: Re: LaPook Hypothesis: Box Search around 157-337
Post by: Gary LaPook on November 23, 2012, 07:26:43 PM
You think that this is hard? Try flying a Standard Instrument Departure (SID) or a Standard Terminal Arrival Route (STAR) into or out of JFK or ORD or LAX. I have attached one example of each at Los Angles International Airport. There are 14 different STARs and 18 different SIDs at LAX, and it is similar at most large airports. These are flown thousands and thousands of times every day nationwide.


Piece of cake. The SID can't be flown without some sort of FMS, and any plane with FMS is likely to have autopilot. AE had no FMS nor GPS. The STAR requires VOR/DME, but no autopilot. AE had neither VOR nor DME. I think ded-reckoning (ded comes from "deduced") is harder, by far. But certainly not impossible.

Well Tim, maybe you  ;D can't fly the exemplar standard instrument departure (SID)  (https://tighar.org/smf/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=696.0;attach=2999) without a flight management system (FMS) but thousands of other pilots can, and do, fly this and other similar SIDs every day without an FMS. The same with the STAR I posted, every day thousands of pilots manage to follow the series of headings listed on STARs and SIDs that are much more complex than flying  the series of only four different headings necessary to fly the standard expanding square search pattern. As I said in my post that you quoted,

"All Earhart had to do was to set the first heading into the autopilot then look out the window for twenty minutes, glancing at the clock periodically, and then repeat this after twenty minutes more and then forty minutes, etc. This is a piece of cake for the pilot. You think that this is hard?"

Tim, do you really think this is hard? If it were not possible for the average pilot to fly the standard expanding square search pattern then it would not have become the STANDARD. See flight navigation texts available here (https://sites.google.com/site/fredienoonan/topics/standard-search-pattern).

gl
Title: Re: LaPook Hypothesis: Box Search around 157-337
Post by: william patterson on November 30, 2012, 04:09:01 PM
To gary, seems you know navigation. I do not. I believe(d) it was a given fact they flew on this line Amelia talks about in her last messages. But if I understand you right, this line curves and there was no way to follow this line to Gardner island?
Can you in laymans terms explain where she would end up if she was on that line, and flew south by Noonans compass, where exactly they would end up? How far away from the Phoenix group? Apologies for my ignorance in advance.
Title: Re: LaPook Hypothesis: Box Search around 157-337
Post by: John Ousterhout on November 30, 2012, 06:29:26 PM
If I may offer a simplistic metaphorical example while we await Gary's response: Imagine that you've been driving across the desert, and think you've reached the location of an oasis, where people are expecting you, but it's nowhere in sight.  You look around a bit, double check your mileage and compass headings and calculations that got you this far,  conclude that you should be on it, but it just isn't there.  You're lost!  You check your map, and the only other source of water within driving range is on a 157 compass bearing line from the (missing) oasis.  There's the problem - navigating down the 157 line to find the 2nd oasis only works if you know where you're starting from, or very lucky.   Since your attempt to navigate to the first oasis failed, why think that following a 157 line from where-ever you are now is going to work any better?  If you're lost, then your starting point is at some random point on the map of the desert, and a 157 heading is most likely to lead to some other random point in empty desert.
You're going to run out of gas shortly at the end of the 157 line, and the gas burned getting there could have been used to conduct a box search for the first island, er, oasis.  At least you know there's help at your original destination.
Is being lost nearer Gardner Island better than being lost near Howland?
Title: Re: LaPook Hypothesis: Box Search around 157-337
Post by: Martin X. Moleski, SJ on November 30, 2012, 06:36:01 PM
If I may offer a simplistic metaphorical example while we await Gary's response: Imagine that you've been driving across the desert, and think you've reached the location of an oasis, where people are expecting you, but it's nowhere in sight.  You look around a bit, double check your mileage and compass headings and calculations that got you this far,  conclude that you should be on it, but it just isn't there.  You're lost!  You check your map, and the only other source of water within driving range is on a 157 compass bearing line from the (missing) oasis. ...

You description of AE and FN's situation is not accurate, and so your conclusion is misleading.

Fred had good reasons for believing that he had dead reckoned from the time he drew the morning LOP (http://tighar.org/wiki/LOP) on his map until he came to the advanced, parallel LOP that passed through Howland Island.  Flying north, then south along the line gave him his best chance to find Howland Island.  This is what the last message said they were doing (http://tighar.org/wiki/Last_transmission).  Searching longer to the southeast (157) than to the northwest (337) makes sense to me because there is more land to the southeast than there is to the northwest.  But they are searching for Howland above all else.  They may even have stumbled on Gardner while doing a LaPook search for Howland if they began far enough to the southeast of Howland.
Title: Re: LaPook Hypothesis: Box Search around 157-337
Post by: John Ousterhout on November 30, 2012, 06:46:09 PM
Marty - you're clarification is appreciated.  I seem to have over-simplified a bit too much.  I'd like to ask William if we've helped clarify his understanding of the situation?
Title: Re: LaPook Hypothesis: Box Search around 157-337
Post by: Gary LaPook on November 30, 2012, 07:29:15 PM
To gary, seems you know navigation. I do not. I believe(d) it was a given fact they flew on this line Amelia talks about in her last messages. But if I understand you right, this line curves and there was no way to follow this line to Gardner island?
Can you in laymans terms explain where she would end up if she was on that line, and flew south by Noonans compass, where exactly they would end up? How far away from the Phoenix group? Apologies for my ignorance in advance.

I don't think that I can make it clearer than in my prior posts.


I've been posting this since 2002.

https://tighar.org/smf/index.php/topic,383.msg5653.html#msg5653 (https://tighar.org/smf/index.php/topic,383.msg5653.html#msg5653)

https://tighar.org/smf/index.php/topic,555.msg12109.html#msg12109 (https://tighar.org/smf/index.php/topic,555.msg12109.html#msg12109)

https://tighar.org/smf/index.php/topic,533.msg7166.html#msg7166 (https://tighar.org/smf/index.php/topic,533.msg7166.html#msg7166)

https://tighar.org/smf/index.php/topic,571.msg10366.html#msg10366 (https://tighar.org/smf/index.php/topic,571.msg10366.html#msg10366)

https://tighar.org/smf/index.php/topic,592.msg9901.html#msg9901 (https://tighar.org/smf/index.php/topic,592.msg9901.html#msg9901)

https://tighar.org/smf/index.php/topic,866.msg18026.html#msg18026 (https://tighar.org/smf/index.php/topic,866.msg18026.html#msg18026)

https://tighar.org/smf/index.php/topic,383.msg5656.html#msg5656 (https://tighar.org/smf/index.php/topic,383.msg5656.html#msg5656)

https://tighar.org/smf/index.php/topic,805.msg16450.html#msg16450 (https://tighar.org/smf/index.php/topic,805.msg16450.html#msg16450)

https://tighar.org/smf/index.php/topic,320.msg6668.html#msg6668 (https://tighar.org/smf/index.php/topic,320.msg6668.html#msg6668)

https://tighar.org/smf/index.php/topic,447.msg5398.html#msg5398

https://tighar.org/smf/index.php/topic,696.msg20882.html#msg20882

https://tighar.org/smf/index.php/topic,440.msg5307.html#msg5307

https://tighar.org/smf/index.php/topic,384.msg4107.html#msg4107




Also see more information about following the LOP here.
 (https://sites.google.com/site/fredienoonan/discussions/why-it-was-not-possible-to-follow-lop-to-nikumaroro)
gl
Title: Re: LaPook Hypothesis: Box Search around 157-337
Post by: william patterson on November 30, 2012, 10:23:01 PM
Marty - you're clarification is appreciated.  I seem to have over-simplified a bit too much.  I'd like to ask William if we've helped clarify his understanding of the situation?
I don't know. I have read pages of Mr.Lapook's reasonings and very interesting arguments with a mr.Van Asten, both disagreeing how to use bubble sextants and marine sextants and it makes my head swim. What is child's play to a pilot, is obviously hard for some to comprehend no matter how simple they try to explain it.
I think I got an answer to my question on one of Mr.Lapook's links, which I believe states that if Mr. Noonan continued south, he could make adjustments to follow the LOP, or a new LOP, I don't know the correct phrasing,  but could still be off by a circle of 110 miles around Gardner.

That would be risky, and I assume Mr.Noonan would know that risk as well.
I thought since he knew the orginal LOP, he could adjust along the way, even if the line moved.
I thought they may have tried a box search for a bit, then headed south.
They either made it to gardner or not, but I did not realize what a big risk it was to fly south.
Making box searches probably wasn't too appealing either if they tried and failed.
Thanks for the explanations and links
Title: Re: LaPook Hypothesis: Box Search around 157-337
Post by: Kent Beuchert on April 27, 2014, 11:10:28 PM
Gary seems to believe that Howland can easily be seen from a distance of 20 miles, judging by the nature of his expanding square search pattern. From the helicopter video that demonstrates Howland not visible
from even 10 miles, I would have to believe that Ric's hypothesis would actually be the better choice.
First, I assume FN knew the Phoenix group contained larger islands (visible from much further diistances than pancake  Howland Island, and for certain knew they were plentiful in every direction. It's sort of like trying to hit a golf ball thru the leafy portions of a tree : even though the probability of the ball touching a leaf at any given position may be small (tree leafy areas are mostly air), the probability of passing thru all the leafs of a tree on a given line without hitting a leaf is quite small (from experience). So my experience as a golfer tells me that if I'm in FN's shoes and want to find land, for certain, I head for the Phoenix Island chain. Gary's assumption of the probabilities of that course of action do not seem plausible to this golfer.
Title: Re: LaPook Hypothesis: Box Search around 157-337
Post by: JNev on April 28, 2014, 06:26:54 AM
It's awfully difficult to know what FN would have done - in fact, impossible in my view.  Gary has cited from reliable text material of the day, I believe, very often in his suppositions of these things - and I guess the box search is a method that was known.

You make good points though in that a greater set of possibilities existed, and in full context it should not be lost on the observer that the Phoenix group did offer some fair chance of alternate land fall.  I don't know what FN knew, but I suspect the fact of the Phoenix group was not lost on that navigator; similarly, I find it difficult to believe that the thought of that as a possible alternative would have been overlooked.  The navy didn't think so in 1937 - and had bothered to know what FN's contemporaries believed about the navigator's habits.  Friedell applied the logic of a landplane navigator instinctively looking for land, as opposed to the sea navigator avoiding same, in time of need.

How well charted the Phoenix islands were I'm not sure.  I believe Gardner (now Niku) was not accurately portrayed on the chart of the day.  Nonetheless, there it lay - a 'Coronado Strand' in appearance per Lambrecht, who overflew it.  Big, bright lagoon, 90 foot trees and all.  True, those islands are scattered - but they exist, and there's a better chance of landfall to SSE on LOP than to NNW, and a better chance of seeing something like Niku than Howland if in any reasonable proximity.

'Pancake' isn't a bad way to see Howland - if it can be seen at all from any reasonable distance.  None can say what 'Fred would have done' with any accuracy in my opinion, but one thing does stand out to me: given all that led up to the "on the line 157-337" call and what the books tell us of LOP navigation, and by what can be understood from Friedell's logic as to the landplane navigator, flying the line NW, thence not having found land, SE with hope - and with the Phoenix group further down as back-up if needed, a box search sounds like a loser.  Just MHO, of course. 

I'm not the navigator Gary is, but that isn't the point.  The real point is that FN can't be channeled and the box search is only one opinion, no matter how well Gary knows the subject matter.  How well it is supported in terms of what FN would likely have done must be up to the observer.  Not sure it can carry more than that unless the bird is found and supports the idea.
Title: Re: LaPook Hypothesis: Box Search around 157-337
Post by: Kent Beuchert on April 28, 2014, 08:20:13 AM
It also occurred to me that if I'm trying to find one of those islands, the higher I fly the better
my odds of seeing one. Cloudy conditions around the Howland  position (and especially to the
Northwest-the reason the initial Itasaca search went thataway) may have led Noonan to
conclude that moving  to the southeast not only would provide many more (and more easily seen)
landing targets, but very well get him into clear sky conditions and thus  allow a high altitude search, which would have greatly improved his  chances of seeing land, any land.
There are also the problems of seeing anything in the direction of the low-lying sun. My experience is that when you're looking  in the direction of the sun in the morning, good luck seeing anything. At a higher altitude,  the sun becomes less of a problem. All this argues against the assumptions made in the search box hypothesis, namely that one can see an island a certain number of miles away, from a low altitude, regardless of viewing direction. That certainly isn't the case. Personally, I would guess that Noonan had had enough experience in finding land targets visually to know what conditions would give him the best odds.
Since all of us presumably believe he landed on Gardner island, we have to agree that Noonan succeeded
in achieving his most important goal : finding land. Any,land. And land that had a beached ship sitting right on the shore, which implied human habitation.
Title: Re: LaPook Hypothesis: Box Search around 157-337
Post by: Mark Pearce on April 28, 2014, 12:52:56 PM
It's awfully difficult to know what FN would have done - in fact, impossible in my view.  Gary has cited from reliable text material of the day, I believe, very often in his suppositions of these things - and I guess the box search is a method that was known.


The 'Square Search' is described (and illustrated) in the 1944 Handbook of Air Navigation, by W.J.
Vanderkloot.

"There are four general types of searches involving single aircraft. They are,

1. Square Search

2. Extended Y search.

3. Closed Y search

Square Search--- This type of search is the one most commonly used in the open sea.  If the search is carried out accurately, it is impossible to overlook an object that may be in the area covered by the search...   This type of search may be used to find a small island after a long trip over the water during which there is no means of checking the navigation.  It can be seen that a very few legs are flown to cover a very wide area."


http://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015006071503;view=1up;seq=159

The "Fixed Square Search" is described in the "American Air Navigator," by Charles D. Mattingly, 1944.

"This is a method by which an aircraft can systematically search a fairly large area to locate a small object such as an island, a disabled ship or a life raft."

http://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=wu.89090518663;view=1up;seq=172