"Amelia Didn't Know Radio"

[Martin X. Moleski, SJ]

A very good article from 1993 Naval History Volume 7 number 4.

"Amelia Didn't Know Radio" by Captain Almon A. Gray, USNR (Retired)

In many respects, his statement of the facts and interpretation of events corresponds to what TIGHAR has found and reported in the 37 years since his article was written.

He does not provide any footnotes in this article, so it is hard to evaluate all of his assertions.

So, for example, he says that "After the flight left Lae for Howland, two-way communication with Lae was maintained until about 0720 2 July Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) [now Universal Coordinated Time], when she shifted to her 3105 Kcs. night frequency." I don't see any evidence of that in the transcripts of transmissions heard from NR16020. For him, this means that he has to imagine an inflight failure in the transmit-receive relay in the radio system. By contrast, TIGHAR has found no evidence of an acknowledgment of AE and FN hearing any transmissions made to them, which fits better with the theory that the receiving antenna for voice transmissions was out of service for the entire flight.

Gray does attribute the loss of the aircraft to AE providing a useless frequency for direction finding and failing to find a way around the problems with the receiver and DF systems when approaching Howland. He also recognizes that valid radio messages from the aircraft imply that the plane was on land.

These are his conclusions about the cause of the loss:

"The direct cause of the flight's failure was Earhart's unwitting error in designating 7.50 Mcs. as the beacon frequency for the Itasca.

"The probable cause for the antenna system failure was malfunctioning of the 'send-receive' relay, located physically in the transmitter unit, which left the receiver without an antenna. The relay probably malfunctioned because of damage by lightning or heavy static discharge."

[Don White]

I just read the article. It is very interesting. As you say, he doesn't provide notes for his statements, but I also see he says that from personal observation (flying with Noonan at Pan Am) that Noonan could understand Morse Code better than we have usually been told he could. I've always wondered how he had a master's license without knowing it. The descriptions of some of the radio equipment also seem to differ from what other sources report. Would really like to know where he got this info.

But he also is clear she was on land to transmit, and was writing when this was far less accepted than it is now.

LTM,
Don W

[Martin X. Moleski, SJ]

Noonan could understand Morse Code better than we have usually been told he could. I've always wondered how he had a master's license without knowing it.

The descriptions of some of the radio equipment also seem to differ from what other sources report. Would really like to know where he got this info.

This may be one more decision -- and distortion of the truth -- to place on Amelia's account.

She wanted control of the flight.

If Fred had his own channel of communication, she would be out of the spotlight.

I missed this part of the article. Thanks for mentioning it!

FREDERICK J. NOONAN: "From personal observation, the writer knows that as of late 1935 Noonan could send and receive plain language at slow speeds, around eight to ten words per minute. Recent research by Noonan biographer Michael A. Lang has revealed that circa 1931 Noonan held a Second Class Commercial Radio operator license issued by the Radio Division of the U.S. Department of Commerce. The license, which was valid for two years, certified that the holder was capable of: "Transmitting and sound reading at a speed of not less than sixteen words a minute Continental Morse in code groups and twenty words a minute in plain language.'"

Maybe she alone decided that the trailing antenna and Morse key were unnecessary.


The description of the prototype receiver is what caught my eye. That is the line that was fresh in my mind from our recent thread about the radio equipment on the final flight. TIGHAR certainly turned up a heck of a lot of documentation about the flight that would not have been readily available in 1993 when this article was published.

[Don White]

Amelia would have done it alone if she could. She was concerned that it was clearly her accomplishment, and that her male assistants were not doing her part of the work. Noonan had a pilot's license, and she had the second set of controls disabled.

TIGHAR has a better overview than anyone had at the time, and some details not known at the time or for some time after. What we lack are details that someone knew at the time and that have been lost.

[Martin X. Moleski, SJ]

What we lack are details that someone knew at the time and that have been lost.

So far, anyway.

I am amazed at how many things TIGHAR has learned over the years.

The discovery of the provenance of the sextant box is one of those details that came out of hiding and put a full stop to that line of inquiry.

Hope springs eternal!

So does pareidolia, I guess.

[Diego Vásquez]

So, for example, he says that "After the flight left Lae for Howland, two-way communication with Lae was maintained until about 0720 2 July Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) [now Universal Coordinated Time], when she shifted to her 3105 Kcs. night frequency." I don't see any evidence of that in the transcripts of transmissions heard from NR16020. For him, this means that he has to imagine an inflight failure in the transmit-receive relay in the radio system. By contrast, TIGHAR has found no evidence of an acknowledgment of AE and FN hearing any transmissions made to them, which fits better with the theory that the receiving antenna for voice transmissions was out of service for the entire flight.

Hi Marty -

You are correct that the evidence of two-way communication is not in the transcripts of transmissions heard from NR16020, it is in the Chater report.  The wording in the excerpt below suggests that Lae heard AE report her position to them but could only understand parts of it (i.e. garbled or weak due to local interference,) Lae therefore asked her to repeat her transmission, she did so, but they could still not understand her.

"Arrangements had been made between the plane and Lae station to call at 18 minutes past each hour and arrangements made to pass any late weather information, but local interference prevented signals from the plane being intelligible until 2.18 p.m.  The Lae Operator heard the following on 6210 KC –"HEIGHT 7000 FEET SPEED 140 KNOTS" and some remark concerning "LAE" then "EVERYTHING OKAY". The plane was called and asked to repeat position but we still could not get it. The next report was received at 3.19 pm on 6210 KC – "HEIGHT 10000 FEET POSITION 150.7 east 7.3 south CUMULUS CLOUDS EVERYTHING OKAY". The next report received at 5.18 p.m. "POSITION 4.33 SOUTH 159.7 EAST HEIGHT 8000 FEET OVER CUMULUS CLOUDS WIND 23 KNOTS".

The wording of the report is not precise and somewhat ambiguous (it wasn't written to settle this question), but if one knew nothing else about the situation, the most natural and logical interpretation of the wording is that her first report at 2:18 p.m. was still weak due to local interference, so Lae asked her to repeat it, and she did so in response to their request.  Ergo, two-way communication.  If she simply hadn't replied to their request to repeat, the natural thing for them to have said in their report would be "she didn't reply," rather than "we still could not get it."  "We still could not get it" implies that they "still could not get it" even after she replied to their request to repeat her transmission.  So there is some evidence, admittedly not conclusive and open to interpretation, that two-way communication was established. It should also be pointed out that the Lae report is perhaps second hand (written by Chater, not clear if he was present during the radio transmissions, although he does say, "we" still could not get it, suggesting he was there), and written on July 25, 1937, 23 days after the flight. In some parts of Chater's report, he included what appear to have been quotes from the radio operator's report, but, unfortunately, the above section is just his narrative, not quotes from the operator's report. Of course, I don't know if Gray was relying at all on the Chater report for his claims or if he had some other evidence. 

Credit to Gary LaPook for having pointed this out to me many years ago, and I believe he also posted it here on the Forum.

[Martin X. Moleski, SJ]

"The wording of the report is not precise and somewhat ambiguous."

Yes it is.

If it means what you think it means, it means that something else failed in the receiving circuit later in the flight.

As the 1993 article shows, other things may have happened in-flight to knock that circuit out of commission.

We know that in the last hours, the only transmission AE acknowledged receiving was on the absurd frequency that she asked them to use for direction finding.

That was the last link in the accident chain, I believe.

[Don White]

So we have two theories:
1. That the receiving antenna was lost on takeoff and so she had no receiving capability from the start until she switched to the loop antenna when trying to use it to navigate. The evidence is the puff of dust seen in the takeoff film and the reported discovery of what could be her antenna on the ground afterwards. I have always regarded this as convincing.
2. That a different failure occurred within the radio system during the flight as the 1993 article suggests.

Leads to another question, did they restore receiving capability after landing? There are some post-loss messages suggesting that they were hearing and responding -- where they were asked to transmit dashes, and dashes were heard. Unfortunately we cannot be certain they were the people sending them.

Did they see the antenna was missing, and use a different antenna to attempt to receive (which probably would not have worked well), or see that there was a fault in the radio which they then corrected? Or those signals (responding to a message by sending dashes) were not by them.

[Martin X. Moleski, SJ]

Did they restore receiving capability after landing? There are some post-loss messages suggesting that they were hearing and responding -- where they were asked to transmit dashes, and dashes were heard. Unfortunately we cannot be certain they were the people sending them.

Did they see the antenna was missing, and use a different antenna to attempt to receive (which probably would not have worked well), or see that there was a fault in the radio which they then corrected? Or those signals (responding to a message by sending dashes) were not by them.

Good questions!

I don't have any good answers.

If they did lose the belly antenna, could they have used the DF loop? 

I doubt they had any source of antenna wire on board. They had stripped things down as much as they could.

The things that I don't know about antennas would fill several bookshelves, but the fact that they heard a transmission on 7500 kcs suggests to me that they might have been able to hear something on her normal day- and night-time frequencies.