 |
| Earhart at about the time of her disappearance |
Some say she wasn't all that good a pilot. I'm not sure that made any difference and I'm not sure what point they are trying to make by saying that. "Oh, she just wasn't very good, you know?" I think if I had been a contemporary of hers, I'd have surely been a fan.
Here's the thing. She was largely self-taught after primary flight school. She was a pioneer of sorts - chosen to "test" fly a gyro-plane, in which she set an early altitude record. She flew the Atlantic once as "baggage," then flew it twice more before she died. She was the FIRST to fly the Pacific from Hawaii to California and did it solo. She was the first to fly non-stop from California to Mexico City. She was first to fly from Mexico City, across the Gulf to New York. She flew aircraft with complex control systems and intimately understood proper engine management for those engines (mechanics were said to have respected her knowledge). She "SOLOED" an aircraft that was and is more mechanically complicated than today's modern jetliners 3/4 of the way around the world before her disappearance. In all I've ever read about her, I know of only three or four crashes. For comparison, Charles Lindbergh also crashed three times. Airplanes were not as reliable then as they are now. After all of that, I'd suggest that she was an excellent pilot - and all the arm-chair commentators who say otherwise don't know their asses from fat meat.
She was constant and consistent at working to improve her flying skills.. I have known pilots like that. I mean, she had some wrecks. But so did a lot of other pilots of that era. What she had I think, was a keen, natural intelligence and certainly a desire to fly and a desire to stretch the limits, both her own, and limits in general. When she applied herself she could be successful and often was and she was remarkably persistent when it came to flying. There are more than a few competent pilots like that. You have to respect her for that.
Even the best, most well-prepared pilots sometimes disappeared on long pioneering over-water flights back in those early times... Nungesser and Coli for example, the great Jacques Mermoz, even Pan Am's trailblazer, the meticulous Capt. Edwin Musick. Miss Earhart had with her one of the best, most-experienced long-distance over-water navigators of the time. She should have been successful at finding Howland Island because that’s exactly what Fred Noonan was skilled at - finding islands. He was one of Pan Am's top navigators - in fact was the navigator with Captain Musick on the very first trans-Pacific "China Clipper." He was comfortable flying with Earhart, I might add. So those of her own time who denigrated her flying abilities maybe just had problems with women in aviation.
Probably the most telling criticism I have heard about Amelia Earhart is that she was haphazard in her preparations - and that particular flaw very easily could have made a fatal difference. I’ve thought a lot about the different theories about how she might have met her end – but I really doubt we’ll ever know for sure. The odds are against that after all the intervening 75 years. I do know that she was not as prepared as I would have wanted to be, had I been the one attempting that flight. I would not have headed across that beach had I not had a firm grasp on every radio and direction finder in that aircraft as well as transoceanic navigation, whether I had an accompanying Pan Am expert navigator or not. I simply would have been too uneasy about that. And she didn’t (not completely) and went anyway apparently thinking to herself all the while, “I’ve always made it before.” But there is nothing forgiving about the vast expanses of the Pacific.
It has occurred to me that the fatal mistake, upon which every outcome depended, was actually the crash on take-off in Hawaii at the beginning of the first attempt at this flight - which caused delay and a reversal of the direction of the flight. Had she been successful on that first start, the trip would have had a totally different path of events, Howland might have been found and she might have died an old lady. It has also occurred to me that there was one critical moment on that last flight upon which all depended. She was requested to hold her mic open so that the Itasca could get a radio fix on her position. She didn't hold the mic open long enough for them to get it. Had she done so, they might have been able to give her a course to the island.
But none of that matters now. Even a meticulous, careful, expert airman... or airwoman... can make a simple fatal error. Even Lindbergh himself almost got rubbed out once or twice... We can't change what she did or didn't do but in any event that has nothing to do with our care for her or the hopes that we had (as a nation) for her success, or our pain when she was lost. We loved her for who she was and what she represented. You see, she was our "national sweetheart" at the time. You know... [she had] a quirky personality with strong opinions, smart, a sly sense of humor and a certain sweetness? For a woman of her time, she was even a bit unusually outspoken... for her time. There really was a lot going on behind that shy smile. Then you add in her wild abandonment to her sense of adventure, and airplanes, and then well, there you have it. A sure-fire love affair! And by example she was partly responsible for helping some women get themselves out of the kitchen and out in the world alongside the men.
There are different ideas about what might have happened to her. Some posit she was captured by the Japanese while spying for the US and Roosevelt. Japanese records from that time show no involvement in the search for the missing flight or its crew. Japanese researchers have apparently looked back for any information related to those theories and have come up with no connection.
Another theory about her disappearance, perhaps one with a high degree of possibility, is the one being investigated by TIGHAR (a group headed by Ric Gillespie). TIGHAR thinks it is possible that Amelia and Noonan flew down a “line of position” and may have come across Gardner Island (now Nikumaroro Island) where they are thought to have crash-landed on the reef and then, overlooked by those who were searching for them, died of exposure on the island as castaways. As I understand it, a "line of position" is a somewhat perpendicular line drawn across the end of your planned route. If, for example, you know that Howland Island is 2,559 miles from your origin airport, then once you have flown that distance, all you need to do to find your destination (assuming that it is not looming in your windscreen at that point) is fly along the line of position and you should encounter your destination in one direction or the other. All of the possible points where it could be should fall on that line (assuming you calculated things correctly in the first place.)
TIGHAR will search the most likely waters off that reef this summer of 2012 in hopes of finding her airplane's wreckage. While there has been a considerable amount of circumstantial evidence discovered (on Nikumaroro by TIGHAR), to date there has been nothing scientifically definitive – but when taken in total, the evidence they've found, if not a smoking gun, may still overwhelmingly indicate that TIGHAR's theory is the strongest one of several. Perhaps Earhart and Noonan ended on Nikumaroro -- just based on what TIGHAR has discovered so far. When more than one bit of evidence points to that conclusion and there is no other known, or logical, explanation for the presence of the evidence, then that's a fairly strong case.
This is what Amelia Earhart’s last radio message said she was doing -- flying that "line of position" at what she thought was the correct distance from her starting point at Lae (New Guinea). We know she never sighted Howland. But Gardner Island (Nikumaroro) should have been about 350 miles down the line to the south. This all assumes, as she thought and radioed, that she was "on [top of Howland] but [couldn't see it]." (I paraphrased her quote for clarity.) Some say she didn't have enough gas to get that far (to Nikumaroro). I am not so sure. I haven’t done anything more than rough calculations of my own – but I have read the book Ms Earhart was writing as she made that last flight. That’s what it was named; Last Flight. She sent chapters home from points along the way including from that last stop at Lae. Her husband published the book after her disappearance.
Quite a number of times along the way she said she had throttled her engines back and flown slower (and at the optimum altitudes) to conserve as much fuel as possible. She did this repeatedly and I cannot believe she wouldn't have continued the practice on that last, longest, most dangerous leg. Maybe she had more range than we might think. Maybe. No less an expert than Clarence Kelly Johnson had calculated her fuel-consumption tables and power settings. Kelly Johnson was Lockheed's ace of aircraft designers. He was an airplane-designing god. We know she departed Lae with 1000 gallons of fuel - which at her most economical rate of consumption would have gotten her to Howland and several hundred miles beyond - given the right conditions.
But no matter. Not now. If you think about it – in the end there are only a few possibilities for the end of the story. First, the Gardner Island theory is a possibility (or even some other deserted island). However, I’m not so sure this one is the possibility we'd prefer... Slow and miserable desiccation on a mercilessly hot desert island is not my idea of a pleasant or even tolerable death. Perhaps she did make it to the Marshall Islands as some think, and disappeared into Japanese custody.
 |
| Earhart's Electra |
Of course, the other possibilities are not pleasant either. She might have exhausted her fuel at sea
and ditched the Electra in the trackless expanses of the Pacific. She might have crashed while trying to ditch and died immediately in the attempt; ditching at sea is a tricky proposition (though wind and sea conditions that particular day were reportedly not too bad).
Perhaps, after ditching successfully, she and Fred made it into a raft and then drifted at sea undiscovered until they ran out of water and/or food and died. It had to be one or another combination of these possibilities. Any way you look at it though, they died. We know this because they were neither one ever seen again by any credible person during their finitely measurable lifetimes, and while we do not know the exact specifics of their crash and demise, any person with a functioning brain knows what happened to them in that general sense. They likely died immediately in the crash, or soon thereafter of injuries sustained in the impact, or they died of dehydration either on land or at sea. Finally, if they were captured by the Japanese, they didn't survive that captivity either.
So I ask you... what is the point of spending millions of dollars looking for the answers to the how and what of those two sad deaths that probably happened seventy-five years ago in 1937? I don’t deny that what happened to Earhart and Noonan is of great personal interest to me, but in the grand scheme of things today, what is the point really?
Anyway, this summer, TIGHAR will spend some number of days searching the waters off Nikumaroro, looking for Lockheed "Electra" pieces, using all the most modern underwater search equipment. If they find it where they think they will, then the mystery is mostly solved. On the other hand, if they do not find the Electra off Nikumaroro's reef, why don’t we let Amelia, Fred and their story, rest. After this final, intriguing possibility is checked out completely, what else is there to do? If anyone wants to spend a few millions of dollars for Amelia, here’s a better idea…
Don’t spend it going to look for her, she’s been dead for years and years. Use it for something that would have really mattered to her – just add that money to the memorial college scholarship fund in her name at Purdue University and use it to help more deserving women who might not be able to afford a good college education otherwise. Purdue hired her and bought her the plane, after all. I think that would be something Amelia the feminist and ardent supporter of women's rights and advocate for women's opportunities could totally get behind. Just my two cents worth.
Postscript... 2014: TIGHAR did in fact discover some things in their 2012 explorations that could be pieces of the Electra, that while not clear, are remarkably consistent with certain parts of the aircraft's structure. They are now planning further expeditions to the area to check these out further. Additionally, a piece of metal that is almost positively from Earhart's aircraft and specific to it and no other Model 10 (a patch) was recently identified. It was found on Nikumaroro quite a few years ago. While it doesn't PROVE that's where the aircraft ended up - we know at least one piece of that plane did.
2017: TIGHAR is back on Nikumaroro this year using "bone-sniffing dogs" to hunt for skeletal pieces of the castaways. There are no "smoking-gun" discoveries as yet - but definitely some intriguing possibilities they are now investigating.
Last edited on August 10, 2017.
Perhaps, after ditching successfully, she and Fred made it into a raft and then drifted at sea undiscovered until they ran out of water and/or food and died. It had to be one or another combination of these possibilities. Any way you look at it though, they died. We know this because they were neither one ever seen again by any credible person during their finitely measurable lifetimes, and while we do not know the exact specifics of their crash and demise, any person with a functioning brain knows what happened to them in that general sense. They likely died immediately in the crash, or soon thereafter of injuries sustained in the impact, or they died of dehydration either on land or at sea. Finally, if they were captured by the Japanese, they didn't survive that captivity either.
So I ask you... what is the point of spending millions of dollars looking for the answers to the how and what of those two sad deaths that probably happened seventy-five years ago in 1937? I don’t deny that what happened to Earhart and Noonan is of great personal interest to me, but in the grand scheme of things today, what is the point really?
Anyway, this summer, TIGHAR will spend some number of days searching the waters off Nikumaroro, looking for Lockheed "Electra" pieces, using all the most modern underwater search equipment. If they find it where they think they will, then the mystery is mostly solved. On the other hand, if they do not find the Electra off Nikumaroro's reef, why don’t we let Amelia, Fred and their story, rest. After this final, intriguing possibility is checked out completely, what else is there to do? If anyone wants to spend a few millions of dollars for Amelia, here’s a better idea…
Don’t spend it going to look for her, she’s been dead for years and years. Use it for something that would have really mattered to her – just add that money to the memorial college scholarship fund in her name at Purdue University and use it to help more deserving women who might not be able to afford a good college education otherwise. Purdue hired her and bought her the plane, after all. I think that would be something Amelia the feminist and ardent supporter of women's rights and advocate for women's opportunities could totally get behind. Just my two cents worth.
Postscript... 2014: TIGHAR did in fact discover some things in their 2012 explorations that could be pieces of the Electra, that while not clear, are remarkably consistent with certain parts of the aircraft's structure. They are now planning further expeditions to the area to check these out further. Additionally, a piece of metal that is almost positively from Earhart's aircraft and specific to it and no other Model 10 (a patch) was recently identified. It was found on Nikumaroro quite a few years ago. While it doesn't PROVE that's where the aircraft ended up - we know at least one piece of that plane did.
2017: TIGHAR is back on Nikumaroro this year using "bone-sniffing dogs" to hunt for skeletal pieces of the castaways. There are no "smoking-gun" discoveries as yet - but definitely some intriguing possibilities they are now investigating.
Last edited on August 10, 2017.
No comments:
Post a Comment