The link posted by John five posts back "Search for Howland" contains a a good example of ridiculous.
Hi Pilot Art. I'm (notpilot) John, the guy wanting to know about AE's perspective during her approach to Howland. It seemed to me that the Search for Howland video replicated the conditions described in Finding Amelia, Chpt. 10: "She was down low, flying below the base of the clouds at one thousand fee" (per AE's 0742 transmission ...we are flying at 1000 feet) and that she had the rising sun in her eyes.
Clearly, the video struck you as "ridiculous," which I read as it being off track relative to capturing AE's perspective. Would you please explain so I can 86 that puppy from my files! All Best, John #3245
John,
The story that accompanied the video made the statement about the 'supposed' loss of their Cambridge Fuel Analyzer and
"That would mean an unavoidable, nearly 48% reduction in fuel reserves upon reaching Howland’s vicinity." "ridiculous poppycock"This instrument is an aid in precisely setting mixture and its loss would just mean that you would need to adjust the fuel mixture for which ever engine that lost it manually. It is true that you can damage an engine by setting the mixture excessively lean at high (over 65% of maximum power) power settings, but at max range power settings, you can safely lean an engine to the point of roughness and then en-richen to the point of smoothness. and the loss of that instrument would not prevent you doing that. You also have other instruments, like Fuel Flow Rate (pressure) that aid in setting, after you have been flying that aircraft for a while, you get to know what Fuel Flows to expect. At high power settings, especially in a climb, you would need to keep it on the 'rich-side' for increased engine life. This would not reduce your fuel reserve at Howland by 4% never mind 48%....
As far as the assumption that they would have lost one, the likely way they fail is from burning their probes placed within the very hot exhaust of each engine and fresh probes just installed at Lae should have lasted longer than 4 to 9 hours.
Another un-substantiated assumption was that they 'missed' Ontario, where did that fact come from? You may have read here last week where Gary LaPook attributes their confirming their RDF capability at the Ontario (only transmitted on Low Frequency) and continuing without realizing that they needed to RDF on
Only their Low Frequency Radio Band. If only she had confirmed that fact.
"Critical Navigational Error" based on a "100 miles out report at 148 miles" and speculating when she would begin a descent. TIGHAR's experts have studied all the radio logs and it would seem that an Itasca operator inserted that "100 Miles out" from his speculation.
"Search for Howland" I would agree that fatigue and possibly hypoxia may have further reduced their navigation performance, but
"Seeing nothing west or east, she circled for a few minutes to clear her mind, and set about a systematic plan to search for Howland and Itasca." Really...

The question at the LOP is north or south, not east or west.
"Where is Howland Island?" It should have been along FN's 337/157 line and that is the only line that was confirmed that they took. Gary LaPook has a
website full of information, like how they 'should' have used an "off-set" method (only need to search the LOP one way) and other useful information that would have improved their situation. One example is given for a no-radio, no celestial "lost" search pattern and it shows where you should use an elongated rectangle (towards some identifiable reefs in that case) rather than a 'blind' square which in the example given, would run them out of fuel. Circling would be an even greater waste of fuel.
"After searching for 61 minutes, Earhart had used nearly two‐thirds of her entire fuel reserve, which was critically low." Such a precise guess based on faulty information...
"Despite her best efforts, she could not get a bearing on the Itasca’s position via her Bendix radio direction finder." From the Itasca Radio Log, she only tried one time and that was on a High Frequency Radio Band (75 mHz), which was impossible for her Loop to show direction on, if only she had tried their Low Frequency Band on 400 kHz (like the Ontario), she would have found the Itasca.
All her previous Radio Direction efforts were to ask the Itasca to "Give
her a Bearing" and she was transmitting on a High Frequency Band that the Itasca's Loop could not show direction from either. The only High Frequency Direction Finder was that Experimental Setup on Howland that had its Batteries Discharged and she did not transmit long enough signals for it to work anyway.
"Earhart’s tanks ran dry between 2013 GMT and 2100 GMT. The left engine likely quit first–it powered the only generator on the aircraft–and the radios required this generator to transmit and receive." Generator was mounted on right engine, I believe. The storage batteries would allow transmissions until they were depleted, the generator would charge the batteries, but not transmit without the help of the batteries.
The video: While it is definitely true that pilots can get into trouble chasing cloud shadows, Howland Island was quite visible to me in their video, might have been even more visible with the White Itasca 'blowing black smoke' nearby.
Looking into the sunrise can be a problem, especially below the haze top, but they should have been looking 337/157 more than 067 anyway or go 10 miles past the LOP and look 247 as you 'run-the-line', one advantage of finding islands in the morning is that often the first clouds will form over islands and later in the day, clouds over islands will show more vertical development, just like they do over parking lots and mountains on land. (For the best visual possibility, it would have been a lot better to time the arrival for a little before dawn and take advantage of Itasca's powerful searchlight. {See my very
first topic "Why 10AM from Lae?" here} and that was called 'woulda-coulda-shoulda'

)
There is no doubt that Gardner would have been far more (than just its size) visible than Howland or Baker.