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  • Please see the most recent updates in the "Where did the .com name go?" thread. Posts number 16 and 17.

    Post 16 Update

    Post 17 Warning

Amelia found???

I was just thinking about flying the Lae to Howland leg, dead reckoning all the way and see if I can make it. Looking forward to this adventure Gera.
 
This isn't really new. I am surprised that the news media is picking this up now - Tighar is looking into this options for endless years already!

I think that Tighar is right with it's conclusion that Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan tried to reach another island. Think about it: You are flying east-north-east towards a small island and when you finally (supposedly) reach the position where the island should be but can't see it what would you do? Would you waste fuel by CIRCLING over the position that is certainly wrong instead of flying in a direction where you will eventually reach another island?

Calculations show that the Electra had sufficient fuel for another few hours(!) and a couple of islands where within range.


On a side note:
Who is to blame? While the Earhart movies focus to blame others than Amelia herself the real story seems to be a bit different.
The accusation that Fred Noonan was an alcoholic and failed in his job as her navigator borders on impudence. He was a pioneer of early aviation and laid the foundation for the PanAm Pacific flight routes.
On the Round-the-world-flight his job was NOT to find the island, but to bring the Electra in radio range of the Itasca (the US Navy ship that anchored near Howland island). From that point Earhart had to make radio contact with the vessel and either use the Direction finding (DF) equipment to get a bearing to the ship or let the Itasca get the job and receive their bearing. That failed.

Tighars research shows that AE was not properly trained on radio equipment (e.g. she didn't know morse code). But bear in mind that radio navigation and communication was quite a new technology and new inventions where made nearly on a daily basis.

Also, the radio equipment of the Electra was changed a couple of times during the flight around the world. The following items where installed:
- a fixed antenna on the bottom of the fuselage
- a second fixed antenna on top of the fuselage (usually one antenna was used to transmit, and one to receive radio signals)
- a loop antenna on to of the cockpit - used for DF (like an ADF unit)
- a trailing antenna - that's basically a wire that you "hang out of the window" once you are airborne.

There is evidence that AE left the trailing antenna at Lae airfield to reduce weight. Furthermore after examining the footage taken from the departure from Lae, Tighar indicated that the fixed aerial at the bottom was damaged during taxiing. That would explain why AE didn't answer to the Itascas messages.

On top of that there was some misunderstanding prior to the flight. The Itasca was unable to send or receive voice on AEs preferred frequency (I think it was 3500 kHz) and although a telegraph sent by the navy to her clearly stated that, she insisted on using that frequency...

And the last bit was the empty battery of the DF unit on board the Itasca. Without a DF unit, the Itasca was unable to get a bearing on her radio signal, but because she didn't receive anything, it wouldn't have helped anyway.

Bottom line: I am not saying that the failure of the flight was entirely her own fault, but after reading a lot of documents about Amelia Earharts last flight, I think that she did some major mistakes. That being said however, she was one of greatest aviatrices of the world. She did some really amazing flights, broke a lot of records and inspired lots of people.

Cheers,
Vitus
 
As crazy as it sounds they could have just ran off together away from the press, they certainly had the money too, in those days if you wanted too you could easily just fly off and never be seen again if you wanted too! Thats probably not the case but you never know!
 
yeaaaaah I read something about this theory too - there is (was?) a guy chasing a woman in the USA for quite some time, claiming that she is Amelia Earhart. She was not amused and at some stage gave an interview to the press denying it once and for all ("I am not Amelia Earhart!") :icon_lol:

Some researchers say that she was captured by the Japanese because she was part of the espionage program of the US and off to take photographs of the islands around Saipan. That doesn't really make sense if you look on a map.

There is another research group stating she went down on the New Britain island. Which from my point of view is also very stupid (just look up the locations in google earth!).
 
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