Failure to communicate

draft

The short answer to the question "What went wrong?" is "What we have here is ... failure to communicate."[1]

Noonan's techniques--a combination of celestial navigation and dead reckoning brought the Electra close to Howland Island. The Itasca radio logs. show that the aircraft was steadily approaching Howland. The men aboard the Itasca could hear Earhart loud and clear (S5). But Earhart and Noonan heard only one transmission from the Itasca on 7500 Khz. Earhart was unable to obtain a null on that frequency. The Itasca, for its part, could not obtain a null on Earhart's transmissions; although the crew could not have transmitted the bearing to the Electra because of the radio problems aboard the aircraft, getting a bearing on Earhart's transmissions could have aided the search for Earhart and Noonan.

Inadequate coordination: George Putnam

"Much careful planning by William Miller, on 'loan' from the Bureau of Air Commerce, well documented and distributed to the US Navy and US Coast Guard, was carried over to the second attempt. Unfortunately, Bill Miller was assigned to investigate the potential for air mail routes to New Zealand shortly after Earhart’'s abortive crash take-off in Honolulu, and was unavailable to provide the detailed planning necessary for a successful second attempt for the world flight. George Putnam took over the logistics and planning, but appeared not to be as well versed in this art as Miller" (Jacobson).

Misunderstanding of equipment: Amelia Earhart

Earhart's resistance to developing radio skills

Randy Jacobson commenting on Earhart's first attempt to fly around the world: On top of all this, a Bureau of Air Commerce official, Mr. Reining, sent a telegram to Earhart, with a copy to Miller saying that she should contact Mr. Marriott or Mr. Bedinger, the supervisory aeronautical inspector, for nonscheduled instrument rating or flight check ability to fly entirely by instruments, as her flight permits would not be released – Earhart’s pilot’s license was about to expire, and she needed to take her biennial flight review prior to take-off from Oakland. The next day, Bedinger gave Earhart the instrument flight check, but the written and radio tests "...not given account her desire to expedite and save engines." This is most curious, as the engines were relatively new and would not need servicing for quite some hours, and a simple one hour test to verify her radio skills would not significantly contribute to engine wear. Nor was Earhart in a big hurry, as there were still four more days planned prior to take-off. The desire to avoid the radio test was probably the first contributing factor to Earhart’s failure to reach Howland in July. Regardless, the BAC in Washington DC put her permit in an airmail package to Oakland.

Apparent ignorance of the limitations of her equipment

• Trying to DF on 7500 Khz was a major error. Where did she get that number?

Abandonment of CW (Morse Code)

Preference for voice communication (telephony)

Earhart and Noonan were ahead of their time in asking that the Itasca communicate with them solely via voice transmissions. That is now the worldwide norm for aircraft. In 1937, the worldwide norm was Morse Code transmitted on Continuous Wave (CW). The Itasca was not equipped for voice communications on all frequencies.[ref needed]

"As the result of a talk with Mr. E. Chater and Mr. Balfour the Lae radio operator it is very apparent that the weak link in the combination was the crew’s lack of expert knowledge of radio. Their morse was very slow and they preferred to use telephony as much as possible."

"On enquiry Miss Earhart and Captain Noonan advised that they entirely depended on radio telephone reception as neither of them were able to read morse at any speed but could recognise an individual letter sent several times. This point was again mentioned by both of them later when two different sets at Lae were used for listening in for time signals."

"Miss Earhart and Captain Noonan spent a considerable time in the radio office and as previously mentioned it was learned that neither of them could read morse at any speed but could only distinguish letters made individually slowly and repeated often; in that case their direction finding apparatus would be useless or misleading unless they were taking a bearing on a station using radiophone which could give the station position on voice. We understand the 'Itasca' was to do this but if the plane was unable to pick up the “Itasca” it is doubtful if the drection finder would be any use to her."

Removal of equipment

500 (kilocycles? Hertz?): CW only. No voice. Universal frequency used by ships at sea. Good for DF.

Trailing antenna

Weight/nuisance savings.

Morse Code key?

Did Earhart leave the only CW key behind in Miami? Or just a spare?

The lost antenna

TIGHAR thinks that the ventral (belly) antenna may well have been lost on takeoff. No firm contemporaneous evidence tells us about the exact radio equipment on board during the final flight nor describes the functions of the various antennas on the aircraft.

Confusing instructions en route

Message: 3 Subject: Re: Failure to Communicate Date: 2/26/01 From: Bob Brandenburg [2] I should have pointed out that on June 26th, Earhart sent the following to Richard Black:

SUGGEST ONTARIO STANDBY ON FOUR HUNDRED KCS TO TRANSMIT LETTER N FIVE MINUTES ON REQUEST WITH STATION CALL SIGN LETTER REPEATED TWELVE END EVERY MINUTE.

Note that here she is asking Ontario to transmit on request. But since Ontario could only communicate on frequencies below 600 kHz, and only on CW, there was no way Earhart could have made such a request.

I neglected to mention that, on July 1st, Earhart sent the following to Black, modifying the previous plan:

ASK ONTARIO BROADCAST LETTER N FOR FIVE MINUTES TEN MINUTES AFTER HOUR GMT FOUR HUNDRED KCS WITH OWN CALL LETTERS REPEATED TWICE END EVERY MINUTE.

This message could indicate that Earhart realized that she had no way to request Ontario to transmit the desired signal, so she changed the procedure from "on request" to "broadcast". This would have fixed the problem had the message been relayed to the Ontario. But there's no record of Black having relayed the message to the Ontario. The message was relayed from Earhart in Lae to Black on the Itasca via the Navy radio station at Tutuila, so it is possible that Tutuila took the initiative and relayed the message directly to the Ontario - - although there is no record of that having happened.

In any case, it would be reasonable for Earhart to assume that the second message was relayed to the Ontario, and that the Ontario would be broadcasting the requested signal on the requested schedule. If Ontario did get the message, the broadcast would have occurred and if, as we suspect, Earhart's DF gear was rendered inoperable on takeoff at Lae, she would not have been able to get a bearing on the Ontario - - and she could have turned back to Lae. If Ontario did not get the message, the signal expected by Earhart in her second message would not have been sent by Ontario, and Earhart would have heard nothing. In this case, as well, Earhart would have had a warning that her DF gear wasn't working, and could have turned back to Lae.

Some other electrical failure affecting the receiver

I think a fuse was replaced in Lae. Why did it blow? Did it blow again? Did AE and FN have a spare fuse with them? Could they have replaced it even if they did? [refs needed] MXM

Failure to follow protocol: Itasca

Use of CW (Morse Code) instead of telephony

At 2015GMT [0615 local], June 29th, Earhart sent this message to Itasca:

Plan midday takeoff here [June 30 local time]. Please have meteorologist send forecast Lae – Howland soon as possible. If reaches me in time will try leave today otherwise July 1st. Report in English, not code, especially while flying. Will broadcast hourly quarter past hour GCT. Further information later.

The radio logs show that the Itasca sent weather reports in morse.

Use of local time instead of GMC

Lost awareness of time difference?--probably stepped on transmissions from the aircraft.

Inadequate problem solving: Earhart and Noonan

Safe on dry land, untroubled by more than twenty hours in a noisy, stressful environment, and with the benefit of hindsight, it is easy to second-guess what Earhart and Noonan should or could have done about their radio problems.

The single message received by the aircraft was the repeated transmission of the letter "A" (dot-dash) as Earhart requested. From this transmission, Earhart and Noonan should have realized that the Itasca was hearing them on 3105 Khz. They might have reasoned that there was a problem with their receiver when it was configured to use the normal receiving antenna and tuned the DF system to 3105 Khz. Switching from an antenna that was known to be working to one that had not yet worked seems to have been a bad decision. If the Itasca radio operators had been able to talk to Earhart, they could have told her to hold her microphone key long enough for them to get a null, determine the bearing, and tell Earhart what direction to fly to reach safety.

So near, and yet so far!