Why The Navy Didn't Find Amelia Earhart
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- Опубликовано: 13 фев 2024
- This episode focuses on the navy's efforts to find Amelia Earhart.
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The views and opinions expressed in this video are those of the content creator only and may not reflect the views and opinions of the Battleship New Jersey Museum & Memorial, the Home Port Alliance for the USS New Jersey, Inc., its staff, crew, or others. The research presented herein represents the most up-to-date scholarship available to us at the time of filming, but our understanding of the past is constantly evolving. This video is made for entertainment purposes only.
As a pilot who started when ADF (Automatic Direction Finding) was still a method of Instrument flight and whose instructor flew transoceanic when sextant/octants were used for navigation, I put a lot of weight into the International Date Line theory. This relies on one of the last messages that was heard from Earhart, where she states she is flying North and South along the sun line that would be over Howland.
Using a sextant, Fred Noonan would be able to get the suns angle above the horizon and using time tables and some math he could determine his position with about a 10NM accuracy. However, if they failed to go back a day (because they crossed the date line) they would use the wrong table and the error would put them 60NM to the West of where they thought they were.
At the altitudes an Electra flew, that is beyond line of sught of a smoke column on the horizon, but well within radio communication. If flying North and South along a line 60 miles West of Howland she would have easily been South of the search area and on islands with zero natural resources for survival.
South sounds very reasonable
Well reasoned.
This is definitely a reasonable possibility
The report on IFO 21 was a political cover up and author James Albright has documented that an unapproved and faulty flight path was to blame.
When I was a navigator you could plot your position within 1 nm in perfect conditions. That would be in stable flight on autopilot, good view of the celestial bodies, and a sextant with an averager. If you are bouncing around with poor visibility taking instantaneous celestial measurements you could be far off. In addition, a computational mistake could lead to significant error especially if your dead reckoning position was questionable to begin with. A lot of opportunities for things to go wrong.
Simple answer, as It was revealed in "Star Trek Voyager" episode "37's" , aliens took plane & Amelia & Fred Noonan, to a planet "FAR,FAR" away.
That was an awesome episode!
It's always aliens xD
LOL
damn lol I came to the comments to type a long diatribe of the whole "37's"
Then ewoks ate them.
Before artificial fertilizer, guano was the best fertilizer available and very valuable. The Guano Islands Act of 1856 says that if you discover an unclaimed Island with a good supply of guano you can claim it for the United States.
Also a very valuable asset in the production in explosives like nitrocellulose.
Which is why that act existed...@@pastorjerrykliner3162
More guano island trivia - the USCG was given jurisdiction of them. They retain that to this day.
That's a bunch of crap.
Holy Sh*tshow.
The lack of reliable information makes any search for Earhart extremely problematic to begin with. I saw that sonar picture. It could be anything including a downed WWII airplane.
Actually that is my guess, that it's a WWII leftover.
Common plane used them during the war
There wouldn't have been many Electra's flying about, but the US Navy used a lot of planes that were similar like the Beech 18 / C-45
Then there were Lockheed's own PV-1 Ventura and PV-2 Harpoon patrol bombers - essentially bigger Electra descendants
The Japanese G3M isn't too dissimilar either.@@Wannes_
@@jaym8027 True
Without something to add scale, it could even be a PBM Mariner or PBJ / B-25
It could also be a case of wanting to see twin tails ...
My grandpa showed me a photo of the uscgc Itasca in the 30s right after the search. In 91, i got to go with my dad, who was in the uscg to Baltimore and visit the Taney for the 50th anniversary of Pearl Harbor. I went back and visited her for the 60th, and Im now in the USCG.
FWIW, early in WW2 the Japanese attacked Howland Island (because of US presence and the airfield) using G3M "Nell" bombers. Like Earhart's Lockheed Electra, G3Ms (and G4M Bettys) are twin engine. The possible/probable plane found by sonar might be a Japanese plane lost in one of these attacks. Or not a plane ... or even Earhart's plane.
Right - twin verticle stabs as well.
Any chance the G3M carried torpedoes under its wings? I swear that image looks like it’s upside down with a torpedo under the starboard wing (so left side of the sonar image).
An interesting side note... Why was guano (bird poop) so important that it was collected? Guano is nitrogen rich; it was used as fertilizer...but even more precious for global powers, it could be refined down for use in explosives, particularly nitrocellulose; which was used in naval guns and shells.
Yup, The Haber-Bosch process killed the whole industry.
Known as Superphosphate in Australia. Also mined on Christmas Island and Nauru.
Well didn't know that thought it was just used for fertility.
I worked in Air Traffic for a couple of decades. When doing SAR (Search and Rescue) the really critical time was FEXHA - Fuel Supply Exhaustion. Once you go past that, you are often looking at finding wreckage, not survivors. Since you've typically already been searching for a couple of hours.
I don't know about the equipment from her time, but the very old transistor based ADF (Automatic Direction Finder) the ancient facility I was exiled to had (pre-chips), that was circa 1950's, was accurate to plus or minus 6 degrees. Anotherwise 12 degrees total. The margin of error becomes HUGE if you are working at 100 miles.
If both your lines are +/- 6 degrees, at Oceanic distances there is a huge margin of error. That is why early on aviation put so much emphasis on landmarks. As long as they are distinctive, there is no plus or minus 6°.
The landmark is precisely where it sits, with certain exceptions such as river courses, which is why all Sectional Maps (color-based accurately scaled topographical maps) have both issuance dates, and next issuance dates, on them. Plus if she could not hear the radio transmissions from the USCGC Itasca, she probably couldn't use her ADF. So now they are using the Sextant and Dead Reckoning. Plus or minus 6 degrees looks good compared to that. Or even worse, they don't realize they are having problems with the ADF, and assume they are further off course than they are as they know they should be receiving some kind of signal.
All the while cruising at 3 miles per minute. So you have your charts out, you are both trying to figure out what's gone wrong, and often people keep double checking the same thing while missing the problem that will kill them. In the time to watch this video you've flown 45 miles. I've dealt with students to experienced pilots with sudden engine failures. Without being in the hot seat, without the mind-numbing realization you may already have killed yourself, and you're just waiting for that final confirmation.
Not aviation related, but about that oh crap moment. 12 hours after an adult tonsillectomy, I had an artery burst from just beneath the the surgical area. The IV was put in wrong, and everbody was trying to figure out why I wouldn't stabilize.
While they were trying to cauterize it while preparing the ER room, the young Canadian doctor was talking to the nurses as they tried to stabilize me. One of the nurses, as my BP slowly dropped to 60/40 and my pulse went over 190 (your body trying to pump enough blood when it's approaching circulatory collapse), commented "It's a shame, he was such a nice patient." I still don't know if I fell unconscious due to blood loss before the anesthetist put me under, or the actual anesthesia.
I woke up the next day in ICU. Those moments when you realize you're dying, and there's jack-all you can do about it, are thoroughly terrifying. And that's without featureless blue ocean from horizon to horizon, or somebody shooting at me...
Death by coconut crab anywhere let alone Gardner Island was a horrific way to go.
@@TheBirdFlu666hey babe 😂😂❤❤❤
How about dinner tonight ❤❤❤❤😂😂
@@lesjones5684hey babe
@@lesjones5684how aboot dinner tonight
Was in Nam during one of the New Jersey delivery of salvos nearby. Entire mountain top was taken out
1) USCGC Taney was one of the Secretary class cutters built as the first installment of a planned (or dreamed of) 36 vessels. Nine were built using the hull and machinery of the USN's Erie (PG50) gunboats. Due to their size and range, along with the medical facilities already built in and their ability to accomodate rescued personnel, they made ideal convoy escort group flagships and eight were used as such in the Atlantic. Only Taney served in the Pacific - banished to the North Pacific on patrol and weather ship duties. They were 327 feet over all, displaced 2000 tons, had a speed of 20 knots and while armament varied, most settled on 3 X 5/51, 3 X 3/50, 6-8 X 20mm and depth charges.
2) Although often claimed to be at Pear Harbor, Taney was not. She was moored at a commercial pier in the Port Of Honolulu. Close but no seegar.
3) Under International Law, just claiming a territory is not sufficient. You need to have civilian settlers there (hence the colonists in the Twenties and Thirties) and have to govern them. The USCG Bear became famous in this role in the early days of Alaska. Every spring she would sail from Seattle carrying a US Magistrate, Chaplain, School Teacher and Public Health Doctor. Arriving at a settlement, the magistrate would preside over the accumulated civil and criminal cases of the past year, the chaplain would perform christenings, weddings and funerals, the school teacher would distribute school supplies and train volunteer schoolmarms from the community and the doctor would hold sick call and distribute medicines. Then on to the next settlement. The cruise reached Point Barrow, then headed south down the Aleutian Chain. After she had made all her port calls, she headed to Hawaii, then back to Seattle to refit and get ready to go north again in the spring.
Pogo - Albert Alligator - seegar.
It might be worth adding an additional subject…”How to pronounce Drachinifel"
Druh kin uh fell
Sounds like one of the shouts from Skyrim lol.
@@30AndHatingIt
I thought it was Klingon.
Ok, sure ... now pronounce Missouri.
@@MrTexasDan😂😂😂he even disagreed with Missouri’s curator about it.
10:37 I note with some humor that the ROTC cadets on board the Colorado were visited by King Neptune on their crossing of the equator, with all due respect and protocol. Navy tradition will not be denied, only delayed as necessary.
Love this episode! My grandfather’s first cruise on Colorado was this cruise. I’ve got pictures and his album with his notes. I’ll have to take some pictures and share, perhaps you would find them interesting Ryan.
My father was on the Colorado during the search and the whole of the war. Wouldn’t it be something if my father knew your grandfather. The greatest generation.
Sailors sail IN a ship, not 'on' a ship.
@@landtuna3469 I was Army, my mistake!🤪
So they ask, permission to come inboard?
I don’t see that grainy sonar image as matching the configuration of a Lockheed Electra. And assuming Earhart was able to put the aircraft down in enough of a satisfactory water landing that it left the aircraft intact (as the sonar image seems to suggest), then the Electra with empty fuel tanks should have floated for about 10-15 minutes. Long enough for her and Noonan to have deployed their life raft and escaped onto the ocean. That would have left them bobbing around in an area that was extensively searched over the subsequent two weeks. And nothing was found.
One of Earhart’s last transmissions when attempting to establish contact with the Itasca suggested she was going to run along on a north/south line in an effort to find Howland Island. If she was north of Howland, she would likely follow the longitude line directly to her goal. But if she’d ended up south of Howland, she’d have been going away from the island, just as the reducing strength of her radio signals were read on Itasca. What lies south along that longitude line? Gardiner Island. An island she might just have reached with the fuel she had. And more importantly, at low tide there was beach smooth enough to land on. And a prominent feature of the island was the wreck of the freighter Norwich City. I subscribe to the theory proposed by Ric Gillespie from TIGHAR - she put down safely on Gardiner Island, used the radio for several days at low tide when the water was low enough for her to spin the prop to generate power for the radio set, and hoped for rescue. With no food or water, she had a very small time window for rescue. Those transmissions were heard and documented. After the third day, rough seas generated by a cyclone documented to have been active in that area at the time most certainly wrecked the Electra, preventing any further transmissions. By then she and Noonan would have been very weak from lack of food and drinkable water.
Part of the extensive search did see aircraft overfly Gardiner Island, and tantalisingly the pilots reported “signs of recent habitation” but no aircraft or people. We will never know what those signs of recent habitation were. But they were looking for an aircraft, something fairly easy to spot, or humans standing on a beach waving. When they saw neither, they flew on. I suspect the aircraft was by then wrecked and mainly in deeper water off the reef, and Earhart and Noonan were too weak to drag themselves to the beach. A few years later, part of a human skeleton was found there. I believe that skeleton was Amelia Earhart, whose corpse would have been devoured (as would Fred Noonan’s) by the huge scavenging coconut crabs that live on the island. Which may also explain the missing pieces of the skeleton. Dragged back to their burrows by the crabs.
Until an ROV drops down to that sonar image’s location and finds a Lockheed Electra, I’ll retain my belief in Ric Gillespie’s theory - she and Noonan did a perish on Gardiner Island after putting down safely on the beach.
Very insightful 😁
In one of the distress calls, she mentions being next to the Norwich City. So just looking on Google maps, it shows the Island at high tide. Looking around at the area near the ship, I spotted a plane like ship next to. And on North side of the shipwreck. Looks like a steep part, and then it goes down onto a ledge or a not so steep part. It does sorta look plane shaped. Just sitting there in or on whatever that is and under water of course.
That could just be coral, but I wish I could show you the exact spot. It's not obvious, and I really have to look. I saved the location so I can find it, put the pin right in front of what looks like te nose. Before seeing this, I looked all over like everyone, then I got to thinking about what James Cameron said about the Titan. Go to last known location and look down. So. If she landed here, her last distress calls said near or next to this Shipwreck. Maybe when she said Norwich City, she meant right next to it. They land, look up and there it is. Possibly she did this deliberately hoping someone would easily spot it, but then the plane washed off the Island before the searchers got there. Sounds Far effected. yes. I know.
Highly fantastical.
It's already been dived on. There is no wreckage anywhere around that island other than the decomposing norwich city.@@TheFarmerfitz
The things coming from Nikumaroro(Gardner) Islandhave always seemed to be closer to plausible than anything else simply due to the volume of coincidental things that do indeed give a circumstantial case to their final location being there.
Ryan, as you and I both know, that many planes were shot down and crashed in Amelia Earheart's alleged wreck site. That sonar image could be any plane
10:45 lol I love that the preceding entry is about a crossing the line ceremony
I disagree with Ryan's hypothesis. If Earhart crashlanded on or near one of the hundreds of islands and atolls in the Howland area evidence would have been found by now. Most if not all of them are surrounded by coral reefs, consequently a crashed Lockheed Electra could not have sunk very deeply, making it obvious to anyone searching by air. Even today there are WWII wrecks of planes and ships that are stuck on reefs and visible above water at low tide (These relics and war graves have been and are still being criminally looted for scrap metal.) Consequently, the greatest likelihood is that Earhart and Noonan crashed in deep water and the plane immediately sank out of sight. Perhaps they got out and died as castaways in a liferaft or they drowned with their aircraft. If they survived to use a liferaft, their chances to live long enough to be rescued were very slim. To my knowledge, neither had any detailed survival training. Much of the specialized training and survival equipment that we have today were developed in WWII and were not available to Earhart and Noonan. In Earhart's day, survival equipment was basically a kapok lifejacket, an inflatable dinghy, some drinking water, and some hard tack. There were no highly concentrated survival rations, no Gibson Girl transmitters. I wonder if Earhart ever had any training in water-landing the Electra. Crashing on land is not a very useful experience for crashing at sea. She was a difficult person who often resented the advice of more experienced pilots. Paul Mantz, one of the greatest stunt pilots of all time essentially gave up trying to advise her. Another advisor, a Navy officer, tried to persuade her to learn to send/receive Morse, but Earhart refused. Consequently, she was compelled to rely on unreliable voice transmission. Amelia Earhart was by far the most famous aviatrix of her time, but she was far from the most skilled.
She could have made any one of the islands around there. The ocean would have tore that plane apart quickly if it had been landed on a beach or near one. However, survivability would have been a short stint, especially if injured.
A Suggestion For A Pedantic Battle Topic - Shiny Shoes
One of my favourite videos in a while. Really interesting to hear about peacetime activity of some of these pre-war active ships
This channel is awesome, informative and cool. Need to visit and appreciate museums near me more often
Great to see all the old movies (videos for you young folks) of the Clippers and early DD's!
My grandfather served in the coast guard for over 20 years he was stationed at the very first station built D-1 Boston ❤
AWESOME VIDEO!!! U guys are great!
More thanks for the nice looks at some Clemson/Wickes DDs.
I really appreciate your research and presentations on things beyond strictly the New Jersey. It's sort of, "the practical things behind naval history."
Wasn't there a bunch of artifacts found on an island in the area that were identified as things she and Noonan would have carried? Further pre-war records also stated two sets of remains were also found, but ultimately lost when the war broke out...
Thought to have been seeded.
For RDF you usually look for the minimum of signal strength rather than the maximum. Reason is simple: The maximum is rather broad, depending on your antenna directivity tens of degrees (40-50° or so with a loop antenna, they most likely used) and is easily swamped by atmospheric fluctuations. The minimum on the other hand, is deep and sharp, you can very precisely find it. The station you are lloking for is just 90° off. Also with an additional unidirectional antenna you can then determine which of the 2 possible directions (180° apart) it is.
Another trick which is useful nowadays with accurate equipment, even at VHF/ UHF, is, when the hunted signal gets quite strong and more difficult to DF, you then tune in the 3rd harmonic of the hunted transmitter, which of course drops the signal level to give you a better DF null
well summarized, Ryan. Your intuition makes a compelling argument, and we can all agree that all this commotion around the subject is moot until we get eyes of some sort down there to confirm.
We are going to visit the constellation and the Taney this summer while visiting Ft. McHenry. 👍🏻👍🏻
Great background to island history thanks for filling in some gaps.
Just got done watching Mail Call S2E3 with the Battleship New Jersey.
She and Fred were taken to Briony Colony planet in the Delta Qudrant.
Is there any chance the museum will be streaming this lecture I would gladly buy a ticket to watch It virtually. No chance to make it in person live too far away
Thanks!
Fascinating topic & enjoyed your presentation. It took 73 years to find the Titanic & think how much smaller the Electra is, literally a tiny needle in a gigantic haystack-there's so many theories based on theories based on theories that everyone goes into this with pre-conceived notions. There's no evidence whatsoever that they reached an island, that's all conjecture. The one thing we know is neither Earhart, nor Noonan, knew squat about radios. My 2 cents is that the highest probability is they ran out of gas, hit the ocean & sank like a rock. They could be literally anywhere in a thousands of square miles region and the USCG & USN would have checked the islands when they were searching hours & days after they lost contact.
Well it's a big ocean but maybe someone will find something one day. You made another great video even if it wasn't specifically about New Jersey.
I suspect the video showing the Wickes class Destroyers (we see DD-122/DM-18, USS BREESE, and DD-123/DM-15, USS GAMBLE,) also includes my Grandfather's ship, DD-121/DM-17, USS MONTGOMERY. In the video all the ships are still DDs, but in the early 1930s all three were converted to DMs (Destroyer/Minelayers), 2 were decommissioned, and then recommissioned just before WWII. All three ships were present at Pearl Harbor on Dec 7th, 1941.
Taney is a great ship to visit, enjoyed my visit a few years ago.
Remember, back then RDF did not have the "sense" antenna (ie, they were a single loop, not two loops at 90deg to each other) The way the RDF works is it looks for when the two sides of the loop are receiving the signal at equal strength, meaning the transmitter is perpendicular to the plane of the loop. The sense antenna tells you which direction perpendicular. Thus going the wrong way was always a danger, and it could be some time before these MF/HF frequencies faded enough for you to realize it. In their searching, they could have gotten turned around and followed the RDF signal back to the west, thinking they'd gone too far. Only to find themselves just flying farther into the abyss.
Actually you do not need a Sense antenna to determine the true direction to the island. You know how fast you are going and have a watch to find the time. A triangle can be solved by one side and two included angles. To make this simple let us say the course is 090 and the first contact is at 135/315 degrees (45 degrees off your path). You are flying at 100 mph. You fly on the same heading and time the how long it takes to get the RDF bearing to be 0/180 degrees. Now you know one side of the triangle length. You know the 3 angles and an included side, so now you know how far you are from the island. You also know the island is to the south. If it were to the north the angle of the second RDF bearing would not have progressed to 0/180, it would have dropped below 45 degrees. At RDF bearing of 0/180 you are 100 miles directly North of your island. An experienced knowledgeable navigator would have known whether the island was north or south just by watching the RDF bearing progress without doing any math. So either Noonan was a dumbass, or drunk.
They had a compas to guide them.
Congrats on the IFR1200, they are good devices. Your radio club must be very radio-active! :D
You do not get the direction by adjusting the antenna to the strongest signal, you null (weakest signal) the antenna which is a sharper notch in the indicated signal reception.
Love Drach!
Nice IFR 1200 Service Monitor on the bench! Always wanted one on mine...
The unit behind you (with the keypad and the blue screen) is not WW2 vintage. It's an IFR 1200S communications analyzer from the 80s or early 90s.
My understanding, first put forth in some technical journals, is that Earhart left a radio operator behind but the Navy did not know that whereupon they took up station with a ship having only a radiotelegraph transmitter which was common. The receivers by default worked telegraph and voice. The Navy had reasonable bearings and transmitted instructions and reports for her to come to howland but she could not understand Morse code and perhaps not even threw the receiver switch to go telegraphy mode.
I don't have any 1st hand experience with a Sextant but a US Navy co-worker of mine did. He said that he could get within a few yards of accuracy. to where he wanted to go with the use of this device and with the proper tables. That being said I would think that Fred Noonan should have been able to navigate.with a sextant to help keep them on the proper azimuth to hit that island. If they ran out of gas then the plane would be somewhere along that azimuth. I understand that Noonan was also a Navy Reserve officer. Navigation devices and Radio Procedures/antennas are the technical factors involved when dealing with this mystery.
What defines the amount of fuel left in regards to Amelia Earhart’s radio message saying, “Gas is running low”? Is it 100 gallons or more? Also …
Does “Low on gas” signify having enough fuel to reach Howland Island or any other island?
Amelia’s radio message saying, “… Low on gas” followed by her last message, “We’re on line running north and south …” were relatively strong signals and considered an S4 and S5 signal strength. If so, then …
The likelihood of Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan deciding to fly another 400 miles south-west to Nikumaroro Island (on low fuel) without ever sending a message to the Itaska ship confirming their ‘alternate-destination’ seems awkwardly strange.
I believe It is more likely that they ran out of fuel and crashed landed in the ocean. Also, -short of a sudden catastrophic event-, why didn’t they transmit a final message saying, “We’re out of gas and ditching in the ocean”? Everything seems all too strange for sure.
In addition, some of the more believable distress messages that were were heard by reliable sources (days after their disappearance on July 2, 1937) were triangulated to have originated from Garland Island (now known as Nikumaroro Island). This is also intriguing to say the least.
Very interesting. Thank you! I have read that Earhart was not very sickle with the radio gear. Also, she and Noonan were not in the same space, separated by a fuel tank, I think, and had trouble communicating with each other. Also that there was a mismatch between the capabilities of her aviation radio and the Itasca’s maritime radios.
I love all the, Night at the Museum references. 😂
Like most aviators, I am fascinated by and have read a lot about her trip and disappearance. Thanks for doing this video and offering your own views and perspective. Like you, I doubt she just ditched in open, deep water. She would have found an island or atoll and tried to ditch nearby or crash land. We may never know.
She's on a private Caribbean island with Tupac, DB Cooper and the 1st and 3rd Elvis
What happened to the 2nd Elvis? Did he get to return to his home-planet after all?
And Epstein
It really is hard to say anything from that sonar image than that it looks like an airplane roughly from the time period. I read somewhere that the searchers have said that they can see that the aircraft seem to have a twin tail, just like the Electra. And it seems to have two engines. But there were several twin engine and twin tail aircrafts from the period, for example the B25 Mitchell and the japanese Mitsubishi G3M. These two aircrafts are larger but are twin tail, twin engine aircrafts that were used extensively during WWII. So the combination of twin tail and twin engines is pretty common. Good photo and film is really needed. A japanese G3M feels like a very likely aircraft in these circumstances.
I hope the drydocking goes smoothly. And do u know how battleship texas is doing?
Almost done. Finished coating last week, planned to leave drydock by the end of Feb. 2024.
Ryan did a final visit to USS Texas last week, in the video 'Battleships Texas VS New Jersey: Drydock Projects' detailing progress further.
@@Tuning3434 sweet
I cant wait for all the dry dock videos
Interesting.....film archives in Alaska, distinctly show the USCG cutter Itasca as being stationed there in ALASKA just prior to Earhearts flight. It was tasked with coastal patrol along the Aleutians and the western coast of Alaska. The film archives show the cutter ferrying a famous priest from village to village along its journey up to Nome. The last of the film archives of the Itasca in Alaska I viewed was dated less than 1 month before the Itasca was shown as stationed for the Earheart flight at Howland Island for picket duty.
The cutters of those days based primarily out of Dutch Harbor, Kodiak, and Ketchikan. One of 2 main cutters in Alaska . they operated along the inside passage from Ketchikan to Juneau and across the Gulf of Alaska to Seward, The second cutter which was where Itasca was mainly operated was from 1/2 way down the eastern tip of the Kenai peninsula to Kodiak, Dutch Harbor, the Aleutians, and the western coast of Alaska to Nome along the Russian border.
There were , several USCG cutter Itascas, beginning with them being a revenue sloop (sailing vessel) to the one we are discussing here a 250 ft lake class cutter WPG 321 all named the same, after Lake Itasca in Minnesota. USCGC WPG321 was launched 16 Nov 1929 and built by General Engineering and Drydock in Alemeda, Ca.
USCG archives and a former ships crew photographs, show her in Alaska primarily, and also being detailed in 1934 -1935 to settle the 1st wave of the American Equitorial Islands Colonization project, on Howland, Baker and Jarvis islands. After that she returned to her Alaska duties.
It is MY distinct understanding that the USCG cutter Itasca was detailed to the EARHEART flight from its Alaska normal patrol duties. The film archives in Alaska back up my assertion.
FYI
Addendum: USCGC Itasca WPG 321 was transferred to Great Britain in 1940 for lend lease and re named the MS Gorleston serving in convoy duty till 1946 at wars end when she was transferred back to the USCG.
She was: Class and type
Lake-class cutter (USCG)
Banff-class sloop (RN)
Displacement 2,075 long tons (2,108 t)
Length 250 ft (76 m)
Propulsion 1 × General Electric turbine-driven 3,350 shp (2,500 kW) electric motor, 2 boilers
Speed 17.5 knots (32.4 km/h; 20.1 mph) maximum
Complement 97 (in 1940)
Armament
As Gorleston[1]
1 × 5 inch gun
2 × 8 depth charges on stern racks
2 × 20 mm Oerlikon
10 × .50 BMG machine guns
There were male and female remains along with some navigation equipment found on the island of Nikumaroro during WW2, which I believe are undergoing DNA testing at the moment.
What we have here, is a failure to communicate!
👀
Hi Ryan. I've seen a YT by an experienced flyer going into navigation practices, wind speeds and so on that suggested that she probably overshot Howden and so should be to the NE of the the island, depending on what she might try when she knew she was overdue.
"Home in" not "Hone in."
Interesting , Thank You. She is Some where
They find her every year.
Oh, man, if only I still lived near Jersey, it would've been so cool to see Drachinifel!
Send Ballard crew after this adventure!
He was pretty excited about skeletal remains that were found some time ago. He was giving a speech at a high school (I *think* the high school he went to) that randomly caught a livestream of. As he was saying it, I swear he got this look like he'd made a minor oopsie by mentioning it but I could be wrong.
The thing is, the location the remains were headed to absolutely tracks. He mentioned Florida and I got really hyped because University of Florida has an AMAZING forensic anthropology lab. (I always call it The Pound; I can never remember the rest of its name.)
It had to have been Fall 2019 (maybe 2018). All I know is Ballard was jazzed. And then nothing came of it.
I've flown over those islands. They are fly specks on the ocean. It would be way too easy to miss one. If the weather is bad you could fly right over one and not see it.
Radio compatibility problems still exist. USN in the Red Sea can't talk to merchant ships in many cases.
Nice service monitor! Looks like an IFR1200
Ryan, you need to do some surfing on Google Earth. Other than Baker Island there is not another island within 350 NM. Also, Earhart was no navigator. Fred Noonan was there as navigator, and it is possible he was in the middle of his DTs. There are many islands to the west of Howland, but more than 400 NM away or about 3 hours flying time when she had about 2 hours of fuel left. Even if they had overflown one the westward islands as a check point, a one degree error in compass reading would result a 200 NM error. Noonan should have been able to provide course corrections that would have narrowed the error to 10 NM or less. Earhart left Lae without testing her direction finder properly. Swiss Cheese effect kills.
Understand she and he didn’t get along and if he said left she would go right
Thanks for your post regarding the disappearance of Amelia Earhart. I have a related experience. In 1964 my ship, USS Brister DER-327 was under the command of COMNAVMAR, Commander Naval Forces Marianas based in Guam. During a patrol of the Caroline Islands south of Guam we received a radio broadcast from a woman flying nearby who claimed to be retracing the flight of Amelia Earhart.
I know the entire flight (as planned) has been done by various aviatrixes over the years.
A fascinating episode which I have studied along with many others. It is fantastic if Earhart's plane has been found.
Earhart relied on:
1. Noonan's navigation. Noonan was a great navigator but would have been fatigued. Most discussion thinks that he was running to the West of Howland. I hadn't heard the IDL theory before but it appears plausible.
2. RDF, which unfortunately she rendered useless by asking for a frequency she couldn't DF on.
3. 2 way voice radio. There doesn't seem to be any evidence of her receiving which ties in with possible loss of her Rx antenna on take-off. Had she realised this she might have been able to use her DF as a receiver ? And then just possibly asked Itasca to transmit on a frequency she could DF ?
Noonan's thinking they were close, Paul Mantz's fuel estimates and the time of passing Ontario all suggest that she was flying with the engines on lean burn most of the way. But that doesn't tie in with running out of fuel some time after her last transmission at 2015Z - she should have had several hours of fuel left.
And sorry, Ryan, I agree with the comments below that there aren't any nearby islands, and diverting a long way to Gardner (without making further transmissions ?) doesn't make sense.
The document you showed, references 3105 Kilocycles. That frequency would likely result in a NVIS pattern and be very difficult to direction find.
direct route between Lae and Howland would have passed two significant sized Gilbert islands about 600 mi before Howland. this would have a good place to check your track. This is assuming they had good maps of Gilberts to note the island shape?
Evidently, she never went to radio school. She did not know how to properly tune the radio, which took some skill back then with the tube sets. She also did not know morse code, which was much more reliable than voice, which she used. Her previous navigator had handled those duties, but the replacement had also never gone to radio school. There is also some question of whether the RDF on the airplane worked, as well as whether she knew how to use it. Again, the early RDF units took some finesse to use. Some people said that they saw the RDF loop antenna get damaged on her takeoff run by contacting the ground on a bump. If so, she might not have known until hours later. Finally, there was a layer of clouds. She would have been forced to either fly above it and descend through it when she thought she was in sight of Howland, or below it, severely limiting her visual range. Not much of a choice. As a pilot, flying that distance on essentially dead reckoning over water with no landmarks with hopes of stumbling on a tiny spec of land seems very iffy to me. I am not surprised she did not make it. Frankly, it would have been lucky if she had. She really was not a very good pilot. There were excellent female pilots at that time, but she was not among them.
It would take some doing to damage the RDF [loop] antenna on top of the cockpit and still fly.
Gardenier island is 400 miles south of Howland island they only had 30 minuets of fuel left while circling the Howland island location oer ships hearing here very close on radio.
I never heard her on my radio 📻 😢😢😢
They haven’t found a Boeing 777 that disappeared in the 21st century, her plane was a lost cause.
To be fair they've found pieces of it, and it wasn't going to try to land on an island in an emergency.
It was in an area thousands of miles from land and appears to have been trying not to be found, though.
Amelia used Paul Mantz as her technical advisor. He determined that to communicate with the Coast Guard ships, she would need a 2,500 foot trailing wire antennae. This was quite a bit of weight. When Amelia was leaving Miami, an aircraft mechanic told her she could get away with a 250 foot antennae, and save weight... she took his advice over Paul Mantz's... and had the mechanic clip the wire off. Saving weight. But when she arrived in the Howland Island area, she could not receive the CG Cutter Itasca's transmissions. She could weakly transmit - but could not hear Howland Island (CG Itasca) calling her.
In a museum, hanging with Robin Williams and Ben Stiller
Why didn't the Navy find Amelia Earhart? Because the Pacific is too big.
I always thought it was because, the Navy was looking for her where she was not.
And if the wreckage is her plane, it's quite obvious why they didn't find it ...
They should pass a law limiting the size so this kind of thing doesn't happen again.
@@robertkelley3437 But the light was better there.
@@robertkelley3437if they knew where she wasn’t, surely they’d know where she was…
I'm a documentary about the Earhart flight, it said that her plane scraped a tree on takeoff, due to a heavy fuel load, and tore off the antenna, which was located on the plane belly. That's why she couldn't hear anything. Her transmitting antenna wasn't damaged, that's why Itasca could hear her.
Don't they transmit and receive with the same antenna? Aviation radios are all half-duplex.
It was common back then to have the receive antenna installed under the fuselage and the transmit antenna above it. In an era when transmitters and receivers were separate devices, that meant not having to switch one antenna to two devices. Those with radio training would have known how to check the receiver by tuning around. Earhart and her navigator did not.
Have followed the search for her for sixty years and I still believe she landed on Gardner Island’s reef / beach at low tide and the radio messages she transmitted the days following her disappearance. 😮
One theory that I find credible is that Amelia was recruited by Naval Intelligence to fly to some area where she could be 'rescued'. In the meantime, America was anticipating a future war with Japan. The massive search and rescue operation was designed to chart the entire area, the location of all of the islands, and which ones could be used for airfields. The crash allowed the Navy to go multiple places without arousing suspicions.
I remember hearing (I don’t remember where) that their loop antenna may have been damaged during their hard landing but the damage was not discovered except later on a photograph of their take-off. Has anyone else heard of that?
Yes, there is a theory that one of their antennas was damaged during the takeoff from Lae. I believe that there is some newsreel evidence of the trailing remains of the antenna. …Or maybe some of _an_ antenna was reported found on the relatively unimproved runway. I’ve always believed that their radio reception was compromised.
Incidentally, Howland Island had _NO_ permanent facilities at the time of the Earnhardt flight. Remember, Itasca heard her but she did not apparently respond to Itasca’s transmissions.
not the loop (which is off the cockpit), but there have been claims that the loop RDF system was a prototype that Amelia was never able to successfully operate). Now re: the receiving antenna that hangs off the bottom of the fuselage...some claim that footage shows a flash where that antenna wire snaps off as they were taking off. That would explain why they could transmit but not receive
By “loop” one could construe that you are referring to a direction finding antenna. @CARLiCON clarified that point. The antenna I was referring to was a cable arrayed along the underside of the fuselage.
The Gairdner Is region seems the most likely area she ditched in. Where exactly is of course the big mystery.
One of her last transmissions advised that they were on a L O P ( Line of Position) which (A)was probably transferred fron an
earlier observation, by Frank Noonan ,based on a DR (Dead Reckoning) position and using an estitmated T A S (True Air Speed)
and T C (True Course) and (B) which they assumed ran througn Howand Island ( ??)
Transfering the L O P to run accurately through Howland Island would depend on the accuracy of the D R +T A S + T C
and it would not provide the aircraft's position on / along the L O P - which could only be determined by either
(A) a second observatio. to deterimine a 2nd L O P - to intersect with the 1st L O P which would result in a more accurate
postion (**)
OR
(B) a radio D F (Direction Finding) bearing - (from the ship or the aircraft)- to intersect with the 1st L o P
(**) In marine navigation known as a ' Running Fix'
j may
vancouver canada
A loop antenna is extremely sensitive. A loop antenna is seen on the Electra, a loop shape above the cockpit. To effectively use one, the user must know the delicate dance of direction, capacitance, and inductance. While at the same time, Nolan must operate the radio, while Amelia points the plane in the direction indicated by Nolan. There is no doubt this contributed t0 fuel loss, and being off course.
Hello sir I have a question(s) that might make a good video. If the Navy recommissioned New Jersey for shore bombardment and you were given the chance to stay on board for the war effort, would you? Let's say you did. What tasks or work would you most like to do if you stayed on the ship? Which ones would you dislike? You could do an awesome orientation for the crew that's for sure.
The solar image looked like an airplane to me but not a Lockheed Electra.
Watch film of your last take off can see she damaged her antenna
Do you happen to know how many WWII aircraft battles took place near Howland?
Off topic? No. Great vid.
Seems like a reasonable theory that they "landed" on a reef just offshore at Gardner and would run the engine with generator for a few hours at low tide to use the radio. Radio intercepts coincide with tides IF the second harmonic of the transmitter was being heard via ionospheric skip.
My grandfather was on the Lexington during the search and had a commemorative poster recognizing the event (it was similar to the posters given out to those who crossed the equator, which he also had). He was still on the Lexington when it was sunk during the Battle of the Coral Sea. He survived and was reassigned to Corregidor in the Philippines, where he was eventually captured by the Japanese. He survived his time as a POW and remained in the Navy until retirement.
Earhart had aboard her round the world flight, in addition to Fred Noonan, was experienced navigator Harry Manning. Interesting that Mannng was aboard for most of the flight until the last jumping off point of Lae to cross the Pacific when he quit the team. Harry Manning later in 1952 became the captain of the brand new superliner SS United States. Manning would have been one to give insight as to conditions aboard Earhart's flight, if there was trouble with Noonan, if his navigation skills lacking, if Earhart was unprepared for such a flight, and an opinion of what may have gone wrong. In histories of Earhart there's never any discussion of Harry Manning, I'm sure he knew a lot.
Nobody talks about the empty fuel tanks working as flotation. Saw a photo of
the plane's interior and it was almost completely filled with rectangular tanks.
I'm not an engineer.
Conceivable that the acft could have remained afloat for some time and been carried away by winds, ocean currents, etc before completely sinking.
I am suspicious of the Romeos' sonar picture of what they think may be Earhart's plane. I think it unlikely that a Lockheed Electra could have sunk intact in 16,000 feet of water. I think TIGAR's discoveries on Nikumoro are more likely.
agree, it almost impossible that its her plane.
Plus, it looks swept wing.
Have you seen the aircraft alongside Lexington CV-2 ?
They are in pretty good shape
The only way to be certain is for somebody to take a picture of whatever is causing that sonar signal.
I'm also aligned with TIGHAR's findings and thoughts regarding Gardner/Nikumaroro landings. That has the more sane answers for all the questions.
Interesting
Interesting ideas you present here; however, there was this article many years go, before cable TV even existed, questioning Amelia Earhart's competency as a pilot. It seems Fred Noonan quit his position as navigator upon reaching Brazil due to Earhart's decisions as to trusting his directions. He just let himself be talked into continuing the flight is all.
She ran out of fuel and hit the water.
To my knowledge, the company who recently got sonar images had not given any details of thd direction from Howland. No coordinates were given, which saying they were due West 100 miles is too much. I believe they said, within 100 miles of Howland, 16,000 feet of water, Howland not within eyesight. So, somewhere between what, 10 or 15 miles and 100 in any direction. They are playing their cards close to their chest because they know what they have and the value of it. They don't want another ship near them when they go back for a better look with a submersible and cameras or recovery equipment. June thru Sept is the best time for that sea to explore. Look next year. $ says they got it! I say its within 60 nm. Just a hunch based on everything