Do we know for certain that FN had AE fly NW? I realize that it fits the theory and is the logical thing to do, but are there other scenarios that might have FN and AE flying SE along the LOP without having traveled NW first?
As Tonto is said to have said to the Lone Ranger, "What you mean 'we,' white man?"
I believe this is the natural reading of the
last transmission: "We are flying north and south on the line 157-337." 337 is NNW; 157 is SSE. She said "north" before "south." Did she mean what she said? Or was she just indicating a general plan to search the line both ways?
You get to make up your own mind whether the last transmission satisfies your own standards of certitude.
One thing that I never understood about the Monte Carlo simulation (https://tighar.org/smf/index.php/topic,169.msg1051.html#msg1051) is why it puts the 10E so far off of the LOP.
Wild guess: it puts the 10E so far off the LOP because if the aircraft had reached the broad band of LOPs that pass within visible range of Howland, they would have landed safely. I don't know whether Randy coded it that way or whether it is the consequence of other assumptions he made.
It seems to me that any reconstruction has to incorporate some "zone of exclusion": the area that the plane must not have reached because, if it had gotten inside that zone, AE and FN would have seen Howland or Baker. Calculating the size of the zone involves many imponderables:
- Fred's skill as a navigator.
- The quality of FN's instruments and chronometer.
- AE's pilotage--how well did she follow Fred's directions?
- Visibility on that morning at 1000' feet ASL.
- Visibility of Itasca's smoke signal (hotly disputed).
- Accuracy of charts.
- Accuracy of compasses.
- Field of vision.
- Visual acuity after a night at high altitude without oxygen.
Whether you come up with a large zone or a small one, we must agree that they didn't enter that region--for whatever reason.
Note, this doesn't change the radio propagation numbers and therefore the received signal strength that is being discussed. But might it not be possible that the 10E were actually further south of Howland and therefore closer to Gardner? This would give them more fuel reserves to reach the island, and also more fuel to run the radio after a possible landing.
The Monte Carlo simulation is an estimate of probabilities based on millions of variations in the variables. It does not say that the couldn't have been somewhere other than in the most probable region. All it says is that the further you get away from the mass of particular instances that clump together, the less likely that outcome seems
from the standpoint of the assumptions made in construction of the simulation. Strange things do happen. People do get royal flushes in poker every now and again. The longest of long shots occasionally wins a race and pays off ridiculously huge amounts of money.
Which is a long-winded way of saying, "Yes, it's possible that they hit the band of LOPs that pass through the neighborhood of Howland and Baker well south of those too islands instead of west of the band of LOPs."
On this drawing, the letter "A" represents the whole cloud of possible routes that would have brought them close to Howland and Baker, but just a little too far west to catch sight of them, while still placing them on a LOP that comes close enough to Niku for them to find it. "B" represents the whole cloud of possible routes that are within the Howland-Baker zone in terms of longitude (East-West location) but too far south in terms of latitude to find Howland and Baker after searching northward for a length of time that is unknown to us.
It seems to me that these are the two most likely scenarios. In either case, we have to judge that Fred's navigation was off (east-west or north-south).
