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[Stacy Galloway]

Any purveyor of antique nautical charts should be able to tell us what charts of the South Central Pacific were in use in 1937.

I seem to remember that some of the charts Fred Noonan used, with his notations on them, got sent back to the US. Somehow, I've always assumed these were part of a series and that if one took them and walked into a library or antique book dealers shop and said "Would you please get me the whole set", they'd just go and get it. If for some reason they couldn't find the South Pacific section, at least the chart Fred Noonan used would give scale, which in turn would help determine the approximate size of Nikumaroro, which would then tell if Nikumaroro would just be depicted as a blob with no distinct contours or in greater detail. Obviously, that's rather naive and it doesn't work that way. Did aviators in the 1930s use "custom-made" charts? Did early airlines have their "own" (private) charts (if so, are there maybe any of these perserved in the Pan Am archives, as Fred worked for Pan Am?)

(I'm just asking out of curiosity and to get a better picture of how things were done in the 1930s - if I'm "in the way", just ignore me please)

  Please keep posting! Your posts open up entire new avenues of discussion!

[Bruce Thomas]

Stacy, I know you've been doing a lot of reading of the TIGHAR documents. I've been at it for a number of years, and I'm nowhere near done! One of my favorite things to do is to browse through the 28 years worth of TIGHAR Tracks. There are a lot of those that I just haven't gotten to.

So I looked at the nice index of TIGHAR Tracks that's available (I happen to be using the one that's in the Ameliapedia), and just now came across one of those I haven't open before (Vol. 9 #3, 9/15/1983). It's from 20 years ago, and there's an article in it that's probably one of the first instances of TIGHAR folks delving into the 281 message. You probably already know a lot more about the message than what's in there, but I thought you might like to look it over.

Enjoy!

[Jeff Victor Hayden]

From this thread, the maps available at the time show:

The names of groups of islands e.g. Gilberts, Marshall, Carolines etc... Phoenix?
Some name the individual islands, some don't.
Some of drawings of the islands bore little resemblance to the actual island

FN knew the name of the group of islands he was hoping to find, the Phoenix islands, that's about all we can determine from maps available at the time. Is that a fair summary?

[Ric Gillespie]

I seem to remember that some of the charts Fred Noonan used, with his notations on them, got sent back to the US. Somehow, I've always assumed these were part of a series and that if one took them and walked into a library or antique book dealers shop and said "Would you please get me the whole set", they'd just go and get it. If for some reason they couldn't find the South Pacific section, at least the chart Fred Noonan used would give scale, which in turn would help determine the approximate size of Nikumaroro, which would then tell if Nikumaroro would just be depicted as a blob with no distinct contours or in greater detail. Obviously, that's rather naive and it doesn't work that way. Did aviators in the 1930s use "custom-made" charts? Did early airlines have their "own" (private) charts (if so, are there maybe any of these perserved in the Pan Am archives, as Fred worked for Pan Am?)

The chart Noonan used for the South Atlantic crossing, Natal to Dakar, was not an aeronautical chart.  It was a U.S. Navy Hydrographic Office chart called "North Atlantic Ocean, Southeastern Sheet."

The charts Fred (and Harry Manning) used for the Oakland-Honolulu flight in March 1937 were created by Pan Am specifically for aeronautical use.   He used "Pan American Airways System, Pacific Division, California - Hawaii. (East - Half)" and (West-Half).  A notation on the "East-Half"chart says "Compiled from United States and foreign sources. U.S.C & G.S. Chart 5000." (U.S.C & G.S is U.S. Coast & Geodetic Survey)

The chart the 14th Naval District used to manage the Earhart search has the same scale and general appearance as the "Pan American Airways System, Pacific Division, California - Hawaii" charts.  It covers from Honolulu (where the "Pan American Airways System, Pacific Division, California - Hawaii (West-Half)" chart stops, to Guam and has the same scale and style as the Pan Am charts.  I'd bet dollars to donuts that it's the next map in the Pan Am series.

Eventually Pan Am created aeronautical charts for the Hawaii-NewZealnd/Australia route which would cover the Phoenix Islands but I don't think they were available yet in July 1937 or else the Navy would not have had to draw in the lat/long for McKean and Gardner Islands.  The first Pan Am survey flight to New Zealand left San Francisco the same day Earhart left Oakland for Honolulu , March 17, 1937.

So if Pan Am Aeronautical charts were not yet available for the South Central Pacific, what charts were?

[Chris Johnson]

I wonder what type of charts the ships like the Norwich City were using and if they were commercially available?

[Jeff Victor Hayden]

I wonder what type of charts the ships like the Norwich City were using and if they were commercially available?

It would be interesting to find out Chris.

The skipper of the Trongate seemed to know the name and which group of islands the Norwich City ran aground on...

"I, John Harry Swindell, Master of S.S. Trongate, a British ship at present lying in Apia harbour, Western Samoa, hereby solemnly and sincerely declare: 
1. On Saturday 30th November, 1929, at 6 a.m. I received information of the stranding of the S.S. NORWICH CITY at Gardner island in the Phoenix Group..."

Where did he get this information from?

[Chris Johnson]

I read that as well Jeff.  A thought! With the apparent conflicting claims between GB and USA would the British Naval Charts been readily available?

Why did the NC hit Gardner? Was it the storm pushing it off course?

[Ric Gillespie]

There had to be good nautical charts of the South Central Pacific.  Probably Admiralty, widely available to anyone.   

[Chris Johnson]

So could AE\FN used those kind of charts?

[Ric Gillespie]

So could AE\FN used those kind of charts?

Sure.  That's exactly what Fred did on the South Atlantic crossing.  No aeronautical chart available so he used a nautical chart.  Fred knew all about nautical charts.  He was a sea captain.

[Chris Johnson]

Of course we don't know if he had one of these.  If he had, what was the situation with the Phoenix group and Gardner.  The ships involved seemed to have enough information to identify and find the island.

Does that mean that they were using a non Admiralty chart and relying on a US chart?

[Charlie Chisholm]

TWO EIGHT ONE NORTH HOWLAND CALL KHAQQ BEYOND NORTH DON'T HOLD WITH US MUCH LONGER ABOVE WATER SHUT OFF

How about the words 'beyond' and 'water'? And the whole phrase 'don't hold with us much longer'?

I truly am curious as to what folks think about these other phrases.

I think the word BEYOND is the most ambiguous. It's probably not what was actually sent.

The most common mis-readings in Morse code involve extra spaces and lack of a space. For example, when operators want to acknowledge that they heard something correctly, they send the letter "R" for "received". However, it is very common for inexperienced operators to leave a space between the first dit and the dah, so someone copying that would write down en instead of r. And sometimes people run two words together without the required space and it's really hard to know what they are trying to say - you don't hear a pattern of letters that seem to fit into a word so you are left wondering what they were trying to say. Meanwhile, the next set of letters are coming in, so you usually just move on and start copying those. Sometimes you can guess by using the context of surrounding words, but usually you just don't know what they were trying to say.

Not sure if that info helps in figuring out what was meant by "beyond" or the rest of the message, but it could.

Also, since this thread is "The Most Perplexing Issues", I'd like to say that one of the most perplexing issues to me is who was or wasn't hurt during the landing.

An injured Fred changes the dynamic of future transmissions. Amelia would likely have been getting location information from written notes. Or, if she was getting info from an injured Fred, she would have had no idea of its accuracy.

At the time of the 281 message, Noonan was likely in bad shape, but I think Earhart already had the information. Noonan would have likely tried to get a latitude reading immediately after landing, and was probably in much better shape at that time.

[Charlie Chisholm]

Also, long Morse characters at the ends of words tend to leave out the space occasionally, like "best" becomes "Bev", which is confusing because your brain is trying to understand generic words but then hears a proper name.

Long Morse characters at the beginning of words tend to add a space, like the letter B becomes ts, which is confusing because no words begins with ts (well, except for tsunami).

Strings of numbers tend to be copied correctly because your brain is anticipating numbers (after it hears the first number).

And any code being sent with a hand mic will tend to have extra spaces, which means it may be copied as two (or more) letters, when they only meant to sent one.

Pro's may be able to sort most of that out, but not all - hence we have "beyond" which I don't believe was what was actually sent. I don't think the pro's knew it was being sent with a hand mic - or did they?

Hope that helps.

Wish I could work on this, but I have a small business and work 12 hrs per day...

[Ric Gillespie]

Of course we don't know if he had one of these.  If he had, what was the situation with the Phoenix group and Gardner.  The ships involved seemed to have enough information to identify and find the island.

Does that mean that they were using a non Admiralty chart and relying on a US chart?

That's an interesting point.  USS Colorado seems to have no trouble finding its way around the Phoenix Group.  They would use US charts if possible.  Otherwise Admiralty charts.  In any event, there were obviously nautical charts available that showed the islands and their names.  The question is, for flying from Lae to where the (supposed) Pan Am aeronautical chart begins, did Noonan use a nautical chart that also covered the Phoenix Islands?  We need to know what nautical charts of the South Central Pacific were available in 1937.

[Stacy Galloway]

Also, long Morse characters at the ends of words tend to leave out the space occasionally, like "best" becomes "Bev", which is confusing because your brain is trying to understand generic words but then hears a proper name.

Long Morse characters at the beginning of words tend to add a space, like the letter B becomes ts, which is confusing because no words begins with ts (well, except for tsunami).

Strings of numbers tend to be copied correctly because your brain is anticipating numbers (after it hears the first number).

And any code being sent with a hand mic will tend to have extra spaces, which means it may be copied as two (or more) letters, when they only meant to sent one.

Pro's may be able to sort most of that out, but not all - hence we have "beyond" which I don't believe was what was actually sent. I don't think the pro's knew it was being sent with a hand mic - or did they?

Hope that helps.

Wish I could work on this, but I have a small business and work 12 hrs per day...

Thank you, Charlie! Your experience and knowledge in Morse and radio technique is amazing!