From Rabaul, also received as Earhart was departing: BARO 29.898 THEMO 83 WIND EASTERLY 3 CLOUDY BUT FINE CLOUDS CI CI STR CU CUMI MOVING FROM EASTERLY DIRECTION SEA SMOOTH. There is definite uncertainty in the positioning of the Electra in the 200 to 100 miles (out) ranges given. Report for the Years 1966 and 1967. January 7, 2023, 1:10pm-0.4m. because in accordance with the Earhart Long Range Plan, for this short sector from Choiseul to Nukumanu, which was expected to be done in a little over an hour and a half, the power setting remained the same throughout and the TAS was allowed to increase while holding the altitude of 7000 feet. In other countries, especially English speaking countries, the phrase Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) is used to mean the same thing as UTC. It is made 2 hours and 12minutes before what should have been the sensible ETA of 2124GMT using previous historical navigation data. To be able to ascertain that this is what Noonan did find out, he would have had to take star shots overhead the Ontario. Where a distance flown is not known, by not obtaining a fix by a known landfall or by a sextant, a navigator is estimating a position from past data, until a next positive fix is obtained. The letter confirms that all tanks were full, meaning that 1151 USG of fuel were in the Electra tanks at engines start. 169 (Rep. Mark Takai) Acknowledging and honoring brave young men from Hawaii who enabled the United States to establish and maintain jurisdiction in remote equatorial islands as prolonged conflict in the Pacific lead to World War II", "Sixteenth Census of the United States: Population, Volume I, Number of Inhabitants, Hawaii (Table 4)", "Welcome to Howland Island National Wildlife Refuge. In 1916, the British annexed Fanning and Washington islands, making them part of the British colony of the Gilbert and Ellice Islands. For the Electra at Sea Level, the tables on page 30 state that VL/D. The terrain is low-lying and sandy: a coral island surrounded by a narrow fringing reef with a slightly raised central area. My consideration, after spending innumerable hours on the very large MS Excel plot of the flight, is that the 0518 GMT PR was very close to a correct time and place, but probably made just after the turnpoint over the PR of Mt. What are the implications if Noonan recognised that Ontario was off station and his G/S is actually higher? Nikumaroro Island, Phoenix Island Protected Area, Kiribati An expedition bringing bone-sniffing dogs to search for traces of Amelia Earhart has arrived on . Updates? 176 37' 51" W. Minimal elevation. Wikimedia (Creative Commons) On July 2, 1937, Amelia Earhart was expected to arrive for a refueling stop on a tiny remote island in the Pacific Ocean known as Howland Island. We have received no reports of travel restrictions in United States Minor Outlying Islands. They then turned northeaston a True bearing of 045o from True North, towards Nukumanu Island. Chater reports one 80 Gallon tank was approximately half full and Collopy writes that one 100 gallon tank was half full. Approximately. She adds that she will: whistle into mic [the microphone]. From this point on (above the USCG Ontario), the Electra must accelerate at the rate of over 5.0 Statute miles per hour, every hour, whilst still maintaining the Earhart Long Range Plan and cruising to maintain the Best L/DTAS. Something went wrong, please try again later. Additionally, the USACE survey failed to locate the architectural features described by Hague though they concede this may be due to the destruction of these features later during the construction of an airstrip. Not only is the distance impossible, the Approximately adds alarm to what we perceive of the navigation. No, it cannot be correct. Want to see the time in Line Islands, Kiribati compared with your home? I can offer a hypothesis of what happened but it will probably never be known for certain what happened to cause a failure to reach Howland because of a lack of pertinent data. We have a check on the average speeds times because of the all important 1030 GMT call of Ship in sight ahead which could only have been the USS Ontariomeaning that the Ontario was ahead and visible and if it took a further 6 minutes to be overhead, wethen know that they were half-way (or just over halfway with the USS Ontario being off-station) and on the original FP, had a further 1278 miles to go to Howland at 1036 GMT (after 10.6 Hours). Both islands are wildlife refuges, the larger of which is Howland Island: Howland Island, Coordinates: 04824N 1763659W. Required, with a resultant fuel usage at an SFC of 0.48 of 60.2 USGPH. The atoll rises to 20 feet (6 metres), is 1.5 miles (2.4 km) long by 0.5 mile (0.8 km) wide, and has a land area of less than 0.6 square mile (1.6 square km). Try our Meeting Planner! Now, if the G/S at the 0518 GMT PR was 131 Smph, it (the G/S) has remained the same after nearly two hours, when in fact due to fuel burn it should have increased by around 2 mph. Required), The difference between The H.P. They came in search of water, wood and provisions. If it is to be 1912 GMT when they are on Howland then the time interval is 11.9 hours and the average G/S over the known 1672 Sm to Howland, has to increase to 141 Smph. The Line Islands, Teraina Islands or Equatorial Islands (in Gilbertese, Aono Raina) are a chain of 11 atolls (with partly or fully enclosed lagoons) and coral islands (with a surrounding reef) in the central Pacific Ocean, south of the Hawaiian Islands.The island chain stretches northwest to southeast across 2,350 km (1,460 mi), making it one of the longest island chains in the world. The next sector of the flight is from the 0718 GMT point which I am using as 10 Sm to the east of Nukumanu Island (at 4o 28S, 159o 45E) to the coal burning tug named the USS Ontario, supposedly positioned at the half-way point between Lae and Howland. ", "Lighthouses of U.S. Pacific Remote Islands", University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, "Earhart beacon shines from lonely island.". We need to know what our minimum flying speed (VMIN) is, before we take-off from Lae because we are in the overweight condition and we need to maintain a speed well above VMINand at least 1.3 times VMINto maintain a 30% safety factor as a minimum. Knowledge of the Wind and a new ETA The effect of the known 26 Smph wind. Then after stabilising and cleaning up the landing gear (and everyone has calmed down), the Electra has to climb. The distance of 224 Sm is 1.5 times the TAS of 150 so it will take 1 Hour 30 minutes or very close to that time to reach Nukumanu Island. A few islands in the Pacific Ocean use the UTC+13 time zone (Tonga, Samoa, Tokelau) and even the UTC+14 time zone (the Line Islands, most notably Kiritimati) instead of the usual UTC-11 and UTC-10: This means that the time on . Vunakanau was a recently opened military airfield. It takes approximately 20h 20m to fly from Christmas Island (CXI) to Tarawa (TRW), including transfers and time at the airport. For . ", "GAO/OGC-98-5 - U.S. Insular Areas: Application of the U.S. While Howland Island National Wildlife Refuge is not a complex, it does fall within the Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument. Earhart climbed the Electra to a new cruising altitude after Nukumanu. f. A continuing headwind is favoured in the hypothesis because of the July 2nd winds reported by USCG Itasca that noted a wind at 7000 feet of 31 Knots (36 Smph) from the east. To be able to do the 1672 Sm and be on Howland at 1912 GMT, the flight time from Nukumanu at 0718 GMT where the groundspeed is 124 Smph, the time to Howland has to be 13.48 hours or 13 hours and 29 minutes. Maetambe PR and we see that we have an angle of 3 degrees between the bearing line and the track line. Howland Island (/halnd/) is an uninhabited coral island located just north of the equator in the central Pacific Ocean, about 1,700 nautical miles (3,100km) southwest of Honolulu. The United States contested the British annexations, based on the U.S. Speed must be reduced to maintain the Best Lift/S Drag speed. Order in Council under the Colonial Boundaries Act, 1895, Annexing Christmas Island to the Gilbert and Ellice Islands Colony, 1919. Summation of Speeds up to the USS Ontario No increase in speed, only a decrease. I think she took somewhere around 800 gallons all up. I have amended the errors in this table below and have also included the Lift/Drag Ratio figures for different speeds and the three weights of the table. Would that be because the wind is increasing? [16], The American Guano Company established claims in respect to Baker Island and Jarvis Island which were recognised under the U.S. Yes, I fueled the Lockheed and did it personally. Returning to the 0518 GMT call, we can now, with some thought and a correction to the longitude figure thatwas recordedas being in the message, understand the reasoning why Earhart reduced altitude. If he did take an Astro shot, he will be correct to within a ten mile circle of position thus lessening any positional error. The Pacific Ocean and the lands in it and around it are shown in a central panel, and around the central panel there are smaller framed-panels, 73 small panels in total, showing enlargements of numbered areas on the central Pacific Ocean panel. 1. We use your sign-up to provide content in the ways you've consented to and improve our understanding of you. It was even the subject of a heated lawsuit between two guano mining companies. In fact to maintain the best Lift Drag Ratio speed requires that as the AUW of the Electra is reduced by fuel burn off, then the True Airspeed TAS, must also be reduced. available at the propellers at a given speed (a percentage of the H.P. If we now adjust the distance to what it actually was, 421 Sm for the 3.3 hours of the sector, then the average G/S over the distance becomes 127.5 Smph which is still well below the required 141 Smph calculated as having to be the required average speed, starting at Nukumanu at 0718 GMT in the hypothetical case using the Law of Averages, as explained above. 2. At 1415 GMT, my plot shows the Electra to be 866 Sm from Howland Island and from then on, over that 866 miles, without Astro Navigation, a ten percent lateral error of 86 miles is possible in theory. It is better economy to climb as a Cruise-climb, slowly gaining altitude at 30 ft/minute while covering the ground, then excess H.P. Fred left the Planet over 12 months ago, hence no response to your letters. We are talking here of radio sets in 1937 and we are hearing Earhart over a crackly radio transmission on High Frequency (HF) radio, with interference from atmospheric activity and also, the Australian radio operator, Harry Balfour, is hearing the American pilot, Amelia Earhart, speaking in a Kansan accentand a low monotone voice. I have also discussed the July Trades phenomena across the Pacific, which surely did exist in earlier years before we came to talk of climate change and El Nino. Pilots carry a circular computer to display the actual speed of TAS by entering the pressure altitude and the temperature at altitude. In practical terms, their G/S over the Ontario is 118 Smph. Areas with +13 hours UTC will have a difference of 25 hours from areas with -12 hours UTC. Did she do that? 0.8102 or 0 48' 37" north. With the weather forecast from Pearl Harbour warning of rain squalls on the Great Circle Route (the straight line route) the choice for the Pilot in Command was simple Avoid the Storm. Earhart had already been through one tropical storm in Asia, which had stripped some of the red paint from the leading edges of the wings. For Earhart and Noonan, operating at Lae must have seemed like the end of the Earth; with bad communications between centres having a role to play in the flight and weather forecasting being a mixture of magic, guesswork and voodoo. The first Coordinated Universal Time was officially accepted in 1963 while the official abbreviations of the aforementioned times were adopted later on in 1967. In fact, Earhart saved more fuel than required for the Contingency Plan and it is my belief that when the Gilberts Islands were sighted on the return, that time, then became a big decision time, as we shall see, later in this hypothesis. For the Second World Flight Attempt where the Electra was lost, the Contingency Plan was the same, head for the Gilberts. . After realising this port-drift has put them to the west of Nukumanu, and in order to be able to work out a wind value, Noonan would count the time it took to leave the turning point (which I strongly suspect was very close to but just before 0700 GMT), West of Nukumanu to the Atoll ring, count the time it took to fly over the width of the lagoon of the Atoll ring (11.5 Statute miles) and arrive over the main island or abeam the island. Howland Island and Baker Island (immediately to the south) are the only places on Earth observing no time zone. Fred Noonan was with me at the fueling and checked it out. Executed in 0.001 seconds. Howland Island was first reported by Capt. Hence, in contemplating the same flight as it was then, in what today would be called an inadequate diorama. In 1937, adequate and meticulous planning, which was time consuming in the extreme, was required and subject headings were required in order to successfully carry out a long range flight around the world. The AoE is considered as the 12th time zone in the USA. Maetambe by at the most, six minutesbut the 0718 GMT call was made 31 Sm past the turning point of the PR (which was west of Nukumanu), and when they were back on track for Howland Island. That has to be incorrect and what Balfour should have recorded was 157o East, which coupled with the Latitude gives a PR over the island of Choiseul in the Solomon Islands group. With all other tanks full, this would result in fuel loads of 1110 USG and 1100 USG, respectively. I consider that the speed transmitted by Earhart as making 140 to be a TAS of 140 in Statute miles per hour. Operate portable firefighting equipment. These figures given for the fuel loads stated are hard numbers or rounded off numbers (except for the 1101) meant to express a figure as an expression of quantity but in actual practical terms the stated numbers could not have been as precise as the figures stated. It is not known whether Earhart even knew of the Phoenix Islands to the south which were not populated, were more remote and to the north, of equal distance to the Gilbert Islands, the Japanese were not welcoming visitors to their mandated islands. As was our custom, we had a drink in the evening 90 degrees F, and 95 percent humidity made it that way. Over a long distance flight, this ETA will change several times when differing wind values become known. Most 18th-century visitors to these isles overlooked these telltale signs of former Polynesian settlement. Simple arithmetic. Howland Island measures about 3.2 by 0.8 km and has a maximum height of 3 m, and Baker Island measures about 1.6 by 1.4 km and has a maximum height of 8 m. This then is the Best Lift/Drag Speed plan to be called here, the Earhart Long Range Plan (ELRP) and it is followed throughoutthis Hypothesis. That is simple mathematics. For the latest travel status, please check the official page for United States Minor Outlying Islands. Throughout all of the considerations regarding the fuel economy and operating of the Electra Model 10E, there was an over-riding principle in use which permeates every facet of the Flight Planning of the aircraft and that the best speed to fly the aircraft during a Long Range flight is and was 130 Knots or 150 Miles per hour True Air Speed. The cheapest way to get from Line Islands to Howland Island is to fly which costs $600-$2,800 and takes 20h 20m. From Pearl Harbour, received as Earhart was departing Lae: ACCURATE FORECAST DIFFICULT ACCOUNT LACK OF REPORTS YOUR VICINITY PERIOD CONDITIONS APPEAR GENERALLY AVERAGE OVER ROUTE NO MAJOR STORM APPARENTLY PARTLY CLOUDY WITH DANGEROUS LOCAL RAIN SQUALLS ABOUT 300 MILES EAST OF LAE AND SCATTERED HEAVY SHOWERS REMAINDER OF ROUTE PERIOD WIND EAST SOUTH EAST ABOUT TWENTY FIVE KNOTS TO ONTARIO THEN EAST TO EAST NORTH EAST ABOUT 20 KNOT TO HOWLAND, A wind of 25 Knots (29 Smph) would surely have been of concern if it had been received.
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