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Amelia Earhart news....

This guy, Gillespie, has been at this for some time, I think. It would be amazing if he indeed found solid evidence on that island.
 
I saw a documentary on this a couple of years ago. they couldn't deciide if they found her final resting place or not. Hopefully, this will shed some light on it.
 
One thing though must be looked at.

If she was able to ditch beside a small island, then the plane should still be there. If they could survive the ditching, then by definition the airplane should be in large enough pieces to survive.

Even in shallow sea water, an aluminum aircraft will not disentigrate in the 70 years since it ditched.

Though I do agree that this is the most likely outcome. She was critically short on fuel and lost, saw a small island and made the rational choice to ditch beside it and swim to land.

Ken
 
It would be nice to find out where she landed or what happened.

Sorry that she has been missing all this time.

She was the pilot on a Ford Tri-Motor that my dad was on once. That really inspired him to be a pilot as he grew up.



Bill
 
Lionheart said:
It would be nice to find out where she landed or what happened.

Sorry that she has been missing all this time.

She was the pilot on a Ford Tri-Motor that my dad was on once. That really inspired him to be a pilot as he grew up.



Bill
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THAT is so awesome!

Kind of like getting flight training from one of the Wright brothers.
 
oakfloor said:
300 miles off course from howland island? Id think that noonan would have been better than that.
Click to expand...

You go fly across the Pacific Ocean, with no landmarks for hundreds of miles, and no weather information, and see how close you come!

Back then, people didn't even know the jet stream existed much less could forecast it.

Being 300 miles off often meant nothing more than a 50 miles per hour wind in an unpredicted direction.

Ken
 
Ken Stallings said:
You go fly across the Pacific Ocean, with no landmarks for hundreds of miles, and no weather information, and see how close you come!

Back then, people didn't even know the jet stream existed much less could forecast it.

Being 300 miles off often meant nothing more than a 50 miles per hour wind in an unpredicted direction.

Ken
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Well they got that far somehow, And wind drift can be compensated for, and jet streams at 5,000 '?
 
If I remember my celestial navigation right, a sun line will only give you one line. You can be anywhere on that line. I those days it was 90% dead reckoning and 10% luck. If the winds were off and he was a degree or two off on heading....

I recall once during the SEA era hearing about a tanker navigator who missed Guam by 400 miles. Luckily for them, the Guam people was able to get a directional fix off the HF and steered them back to Guam.
 
tigisfat said:
Not if he was busy playing round 8 of 9 rounds of grab@$$!!:icon_lol:
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This is the first time I have ever heard someone say something bad or rough about Amelia. Maybe Ive just lived a sheltered life.



On navigation; I know Arizona pretty well as I used to drive it all over daily so all the mountains and valleys are locked into my mind. With Arizona photo real scenery, I have twice been able to get lost in my own state with all its landmarks all over the place. I thought I knew better then the instruments and found myself nearly 100 miles adrift. Imagine being over water... No landmarks. Constant drone of the engines.

Also, I thought they couldnt get to one another in the aircraft when in flight as the center fuel tank was so huge. They had to yell over the top of the tank or talk through the intercom. (Thats what I remember).

From what I know of Amelia from documentaries, she was an outstanding individual.



Bill
 
Lionheart said:
This is the first time I have ever heard someone say something bad or rough about Amelia. Maybe Ive just lived a sheltered life.



On navigation; I know Arizona pretty well as I used to drive it all over daily so all the mountains and valleys are locked into my mind. With Arizona photo real scenery, I have twice been able to get lost in my own state with all its landmarks all over the place. I thought I knew better then the instruments and found myself nearly 100 miles adrift. Imagine being over water... No landmarks. Constant drone of the engines.

Also, I thought they couldnt get to one another in the aircraft when in flight as the center fuel tank was so huge. They had to yell over the top of the tank or talk through the intercom. (Thats what I remember).

From what I know of Amelia from documentaries, she was an outstanding individual.



Bill
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According the the "movie" she did have an affair earlier. However, when she realized how it hurt her husband, she ended the affair and became closer to him. I doubt she was having an affair with the navigator.

I thought the statement was rather crass and juvenile. However, I am sure it was meant as a joke.
 
Well, it may be of interest to some to learn that AE and Noonan were physically separated during the flight by the extra fuel tanks. He, the navigator, was stuck in the rear of the plane, with no glass dome to take star sightings, and no compass to keep track of what course AE was steering, and no intercom between the two. The only means of communication was by a string and pulley system to pass notes to and fro. So 8 or 9 holes of grab*** or anything else was not possible. This I read about in Don McVicar's book “More than a Pilot”. McVicar was a navigator, Ferry Command pilot in WW-II, president of World Wide Airways after the war, and even an air racing pilot. He has a chapter on AE in that book that is very interesting reading. McVicar is a bit critical of AE's experience as a pilot, and especially as a navigator. The principles of long range over-water navigation were well known by 1937. She put her life on the line trying to accomplish things that had never been done before, which is more than many of us will ever do. She paid the ultimate price, and for that she should never be forgotten. But, “The Rest of the Story” is often filled with interesting tidbits that reveal human failings that we all share...
 
jmig said:
If I remember my celestial navigation right, a sun line will only give you one line. You can be anywhere on that line. I those days it was 90% dead reckoning and 10% luck. If the winds were off and he was a degree or two off on heading....

I recall once during the SEA era hearing about a tanker navigator who missed Guam by 400 miles. Luckily for them, the Guam people was able to get a directional fix off the HF and steered them back to Guam.
Click to expand...

I may be the only member of SOH (but more likely just one of a few) who actually did navigate an airplane across the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans using only celestial and pressure line of position techniques.

You are correct. A sun line of position (LOP) merely gives you a line (in actual fact a small segment of a circle) and you can be anywhere along that line. When flying from west to east, as she was doing, the sun line plots along the distance line, meaning more or less perpendicular to your west to east course line.

Pressure line of position can provide a course line, meaning a LOP that runs parallel to your west to east courseline.

I would believe that her navigator would have use the temperature method to plot his pressure lines. It is not all that accurate, but better than nothing.

The jet stream sometimes does come down in altitude and can radically and unpredictably alter the winds from their normal strength and direction, even at altitudes down to 5,000 feet MSL, or lower. It is suspected this happened on that fateful flight. Don't forget also that for celestial to work, you have to be able to see the celestial body you are shooting. Clouds can become a problem.

Back in that era, every cross oceanic flight was a risk, especialy the distance she flew on that leg, which was the longest scheduled leg of her around-the-world effort. So, being off by 300nm is plausible. Noonan's job was to get Earhardt close enough to receive the NDB signal that was supposed to guide her in. But it seems for whatever reason, the radio did not function. She was close enough to establish radio contact for some time, and in theory that meant she should have been close enough to receive and home in on the NDB signal.

But, clearly that did not happen.

Why has remained one of the oldest questions in aviation history.

Ken
 
oakfloor said:
Well they got that far somehow, And wind drift can be compensated for, and jet streams at 5,000 '?
Click to expand...

I frankly cannot understand what you meant by your first comment.

For the second one: Yes wind drift can be compensated for, but you must understand that's true only if you know what the winds are. All they had back then was a mechanical device known as a drift meter. It basically allowed you to determine the angular deflection of the aircraft track to the heading. It worked fairly well when tracing over easily determined ground reference points, ideally a straight road or long furrowed farm field. Over the ocean it was practically worthless.

For the third comment: Yes, jet stream can significantly affect winds down to surface. I live in Portales, NM. Among other facts of life here is that we frequently get winds of 50 to 60 knots when the jet stream pitches down south and with no mountains in proximity to break it up, the jet stream is felt all the way down to surface. At 5,000 feet AGL you can absolutely see classic jet stream influenced winds that ravage at 50-90 knots. Again, it was believed based upon radio traces and estimates that she encountered a signficant shift of wind.

The risks these pioneers took were incomprehensible to our modern understandings. As a former navigator, if you handed me a sheet of paper with detailed and fully accurate winds listed along my planned route of flight, I could plot a running DR (dead reckoning) position and likely be within a few miles of actual position over a course of 1,000 miles. But, if I did not know what the winds were, then it was entirely likely that without other forms of position resolution, such as celestial or pressure lines of position, I could find myself 300 miles off course over than same 1,000 mile course.

Ken
 
I do know that using DR and drift meters in FS, it's still relatively easy to get way off course if you're not minding the store. We've proved that one often enough.
 
Yes, the grab@$$ coment was sophomoric, but funny just the same. It was obviously a joke. As far as getting lost over the Pacific, it would be easy enough to do with that technology. It's a huge Ocean and Islands tend to look alike. I've flown alot of service to numerous islands in the Caribean, and that relatively small body of water seems huge when you're flying over it.
 
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