by Jack Lee
For over 75 years the final flight of Amelia Earhart was a mystery, oddly the evidence of what happened to her was in plain sight, discovered in a photo taken 3 months after she crash landed on a small Pacific Island of Nikumaroro, which is Southeast of her intended destination of Howland Island. Earhart was last heard from on July 2, 1937 when she radioed she was on course for Howland Island, but she wasn’t.
Click on photo to enlarge. The green line indicates where she was supposed to go and the red line indicates where she wound up.
Evidence now reveals her aircraft was far off course and her navigator probably mistook the wrong island as a checkpoint, compounding their situation. This caused her to pass well south of Howland Island where they was going to refuel for the final leg of their 28,000 mile adventure to date.
Once lost she probably circled in an effort to get a radio fix, however she was out of range of Howland and her airplane was low on fuel. At this point Earhard and her navigator, Fred Noonan, spotted the small island of Nikumaroro and attempted to land on it, instead of ditching at sea. Unfortunately, Earhart was a notoriously bad pilot known for her crash landings and once again she made a critical error, she misjudged her glide angle and touched down just short of the beach in the open ocean with her landing gear down. This caused her Lockheed Electra to flip onto its top in shallow water where it would be accidentally photographed 3 months later. A more competent pilot would never try a wheels down landing on sand or water.
After the crash, the plane was mostly intact and there were survivors. This is based
upon evidence found in the photograph taken October, 1937. At the time nobody noticed the Electra’s landing gear sticking above the waves, until 2010 when an unusual object in the waves was notice. The picture was blown up and it revealed the image of the landing gear for the Lockheed Electra. It had been right there all the time and nobody noticed.
The picture was taken by British Colonial Service officer Eric R. Bevington during an expedition to assess the suitability for future settlement and colonization of Nikumaroro, a deserted island between Hawaii and Australia. The grainy photo has prompted a new expedition to find pieces of Earhart’s long-lost Lockheed Electra aircraft.
Bits of aircraft aluminum were found on the island in 1940 by a construction crew and were noted only as possible aircraft wreckage. This year other artifacts were found that are almost certain to have belonged to Earhart, including a unique freckle removing creme that she carried.
The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery (TIGHAR) has assembled an expedition that will depart Honolulu tomorrow in an effort to locate the wreckage and possibly retrieve what may be left.
Earhart left Lae, New Guinnea at precisely 00:00 hours Greenwich Mean Time on July 2. It is believed that the Electra was loaded with 1,000 gallons of fuel, allowing for 20-21 hours of flying. At 07:20 hours GMT Amelia provided a position report placing the Electra on course at some 20 miles southwest of the Nukumanu Islands (this was mostly likely not Nukumanu).
The last weather report Amelia was known to have received was before take-off. The head wind speed had increased by 10-12 mph, but it is not known if she ever received the report.
At 08:00 GMT Amelia made her last radio contact with Lae. She reported being on course for Howland Island at 12,000 feet. There is no real evidence as to the precise track of the aircraft after Nukumanu. No one saw or heard the plane fly over. Her final landing spot of almost 390 miles from her intended destination. The spot where the wreckage was found was almost exactly where the Lockheed would have run out of fuel.
Jack you do know don’t you, you just pissed off every woman who reads PS. Until you spilled the beans, they KNEW the only difference between Earhart, Glenn and Lindbergh was wedding tackle. Now you come out with “Earhart was a notoriously bad pilot” and she landed upside down!
I had read something years ago, it basically said the same thing about Earhart’s piloting skills but because I had never heard anything like it before, I wrote it off as one guys opinion not fact. I would love to tell you what it was I read but I can’t recall. It doesn’t really matter, it doesn’t take away that she was doing something big, something real, and she was willing to die to do it. I will drink to that any day of the week. Great story Jack!
A little info for the story. The ship in the picture is a British frieghter, the SS Norwich City, she ran aground during a storm 11/29/29. She had a crew complement of 35 and 11 fatalities. You guys should read this, http://tighar.org/wiki/SS_Norwich_City . That was one unlucky ship.
Thanks for the additional input and compliment Toby and you are right, I probably did piss-off the ladies and I should have qualified my opinion. Speaking as an aircraft enthusiast with an interest in history, there were and are many, many great women pilots, unfortunately Earhart was not one of them. She was bold, she was adventurous, but her skill as a pilot below average and if wasn’t for a rich husband she would have never been known.
I have no idea if it was her depth perception, inability to focus on the job at hand or what, but her crashes of aircraft were absolutely due to pilot error. They were under good weather conditions and she had more than adequate instruction, she just screwed up…repeatedly. She was a ditz.
“Amelias appetite for new aviation laurels consistently outpaced her competence to achieve them and each move up to a new level was punctuated by accidents. Even in an era when aviation upsets and catastrophes were relatively commonplace, Earhart had far too many wrecks.” http://tighar.org/Projects/Earhart/Archives/Forum/FAQs/pilot.htm
“Earhart Had a Rich and Famous Husband At The Atlantic, Lane Wallace says that’s the only reason Earhart was made into a star while other, better female pilots languished in obscurity. “If none of these women’s names are household words, it’s not because they weren’t worthy. It’s because none of them had George Putnam as a husband,” said Wallace, who is a pilot herself. She wants to see other women pilots like Barbara London (who Wallace profiles here) and Bessie Coleman have their day.” http://www.theatlanticwire.com/national/2009/10/why-amelia-earhart-just-isn-t-all-she-s-cracked-up-to-be/26640/
According to at least one biographer Earhart was not the best female pilot of the day she just loved the spotlight and had a wealthy publisher, her husband, to promote her. She was a feminist.
Her crash record was not particularly bad for the day; no fatalities prior to the fatal flight.
Women of the day considered to be better pilots: Barbara London, Ruth Law, Louise Thaden, and Gladys O’Donnell.
It will be interesting to see what they recover.
LOL, Jack you’ve done it now! After saying you should have “qualified” your remark (to sooth the feminist beast) you go on to say, and I quote:
Feminists will love that one!
Uh, maybe I should have left well enough alone…huh? lol
Amelia’s Lockheed Electra was within 75 miles of her target Howland Island when her radio cut off. Chief Radioman Leo Bellarts said: “Her voice was loud and clear; sounded frantic on her last transmission. Then it cut off.”
Nikumaroro is 350 miles south-east of Howland and at a right angle to her flight path — and she didn’t have charts for those islands.
Airman Richard Beckham flew over Nikumaroro (Gardner) seven days later and said: “We altered course to Gardner Island … we always went low over the islands at 100 feet … we couldn’t see anyone, and we always scanned the beaches.”
The US sent nine ships, 66 aircraft, and well over 3,000 sailors and airmen who covered well over 250,000 sq. miles of open sea and every island within a 650 mile radius of Howland.
Taken from, The Hunt For Amelia Earhart
Douglas Westfall, historic publisher, Specialbooks.com
Att: Douglas Westfall. Thank you for your entry. That was very helpful.
Based upon this, had the Navy extended their radius to 700 miles, (just 50 miles more) they would have found her and Noonan.
Of course hindsight is always 20-20, but it seems a grid pattern search based upon the minimum/maximum probable distance the plane would have run out of fuel would have been better.
There is no way of telling if she was ever within 75 miles of Howland because they did not do a signal triangulation and why she didn’t use her own RDF is another mystery. However, she certainly could have, unless Howland was so far away it couldn’t pick it up. This is why I think 75 miles was a wild guess by the radio man because signal strength depends a multitude of factors, not just the line of sight distance. (see more on her radio below)
If Earhart was every within 100 miles of Howland she should have been able to see the lights. For example, at 100 feet above sea level the edge of the horizon is 11.4 nm, at 200′ you can see 22.8 nm and so on, naturally there is a limit to this based on the atmosphere’s natural distortion and certainly by fog or clouds, but image how far you could see from a plane between 2000-3000 feet. You should be able to easily see Howland Island from a distance of 75 miles.
No…I believe she was much farther away than 75 miles when the strong radio transmission came in and that she was increasing her distance because she quickly went out of radio range.
Consider that the Electra has a cruise speed of 190 mph, it wouldn’t take long to be out of range if you were down on the deck looking for the island. She was probably at 2500′ altitude or less, that’s where most pilots would be if they were searching for something at sea level.
We now know the configuration of her radio antenna could have limited it’s range under certain circumstances and the planes direction of travel.
“The high-frequency antenna installed aboard the Electra in March 1937 was a Vee type running from the tip of each of the twin vertical stabilizers to a mast atop the fuselage, located at Station 176. The antenna was, therefore, a total of 46 feet, doubled back onto itself. This length did not include the lead-in wire which exited the aft fuselage through a feed-through insulator and connected to one leg of the Vee at a point a few feet from one of the vertical stabilizers. This antenna was, then, already 15% longer than optimum; but since the radio equipment had been installed by Bell Labs, it can be fairly assumed that it was tuned properly at that time.
The length of 46 feet was greater than 1/8 wavelength at 3105 KHz (approximately 38 feet) and greater than 1/4 wavelength at 6210 KHz (again, approximately 38 feet; this relationship is due to the fact that 6210 KHz is the exact second harmonic of 3105 and the wavelength at the higher frequency is half that of the lower); or, a non-resonant length at either frequency.
This antenna was unsuitable for low-frequency 500 KHz operation, as the total length would be miniscule compared to the wavelength at this frequency. The wavelength of 3105 KHz is about 97 meters (315 feet), and about 48.5 meters (156 feet) at 6210. At 500 KHz, the wavelength is 600 meters (1950 feet).
For 500 KHz, a second antenna was originally employed. This antenna was the trailing-wire type. The antenna was reeled out from the belly of the aircraft and had a full length of 250 feet. This was still shorter than a resonant length at 500 KHz, but a much larger relative component of the wavelength than the 46-foot Vee. With the addition of a special loading coil, mounted inside the fuselage near the transmitter, connected in series with the antenna to electrically lengthen it, the trailing wire could be effectively matched to the transmitter.
The trailing wires disadvantage was that it had to be reeled out after takeoff and in before landing. A manual switch was also needed to transfer the transmitter output from the H-F Vee to the L-F trailing wire. This switch, necessarily, was located close to the transmitter which was mounted in the aft section of the fuselage next to the navigator’s table. Since the fuselage was almost filled with huge fuel tanks between the navigators station and the cockpit, it was very awkward to change antennas if the navigator was riding up front.
Another potential compounding of the antenna problem may have resulted from the Vee configuration of the dorsal antenna. The doubling-back of the antenna length in the Vee configuration could have played havoc with the antennas characteristic impedance, as the two halves of the Vee may have reacted upon each other. Also, a Vee configuration meant that more of the antenna was in close proximity to the metal skin of the aircraft, which could have further affected its operation and tuning. If the antenna is in close proximity to the metal skin, which is at ground potential, the antennas capacitance to ground is increased, resulting in a lowering of the actual resonant frequency. For more details see … http://tighar.org/Projects/Earhart/Archives/Research/ResearchPapers/ElectraRadios/ElectraRadios.htm#7
Earhart had numerous modifications made to her 10E to maximize it for long-distance flights. She added more fuel tanks for a total of six in the wings and six in the fuselage, increasing the total carrying capacity to 1,150 gallons of fuel. She also modified the electronic equipment, adding a Western Electric radio and a Bendix radio direction finder cutting-edge for the time. This aircraft was easily capable of circumnavigating the globe.
In fact 60 years later another female aviator, Linda Finch, did it in an identical version of Earhart’s plane on the same route she took. She made flight easily.
“Finchs recreated flight began from Oakland International Airport at Oakland, California, on March 17, 1997. This was 60 years later to the month of Amelia Earhart’s 1937 infamous around-the-world flight attempt in her twin-engine plane. Finchs flight took 10 weeks to complete as she flew in increments of eight hours to 12 hours at a time on average. This was her length between landings where she had rest periods.
Retracing the flight path of Amelia Earhart, Finch closely followed the same route that Earhart flew, stopping at 36 way-points in 18 countries before finishing the trip two and a half months (a total of 73 days) later when she landed back at the Oakland Airport on May 28.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linda_Finch
I wish I was going on that expedition, it is going to be a historic conclusion to one of the biggest and most debated mysteries of our time.