NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
Amelia Earhart's aerial navigation
From: Frank Reed
Date: 2009 Oct 22, 16:38 -0700
From: Frank Reed
Date: 2009 Oct 22, 16:38 -0700
I thought it might be interesting to get a conversation going about Amelia Earhart's navigation --really Fred Noonan's navigation-- on their ill-fated circum-navigation back in 1937. There's a movie opening this week, "Amelia", produced by and starring Hilary Swank as Earhart. It's getting beat up pretty bad in the early reviews (currently at a dismal 22% fresh on RottenTomatoes.com: http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/amelia_2009/), but I'm sure many of us will see it eventually. So... I know next to nothing about their navigation. Gary Lapook knows lots, and I expect I'm setting you up for some typing, Gary. :-) I'll just start off with some basic questions: what kind of sextant did they carry on that flight? Did they have multiple instruments? Were their different instruments during various legs of the flight? At what altitude would sights have been taken (or did it matter)? I remember a discussion a few years ago of a proposed theory claiming that Noonan didn't understand the correction for the Moon's parallax... that theory struck me as pretty light-weight at the time. Can we dismiss it? Did Earhart herself know any celestial navigation? Thanks in advance to any and all who can fill me in on this. -FER PS: Hey, Gary: when you visited Mystic back in 2008, did you get a chance to drive by the house where Amelia married George Putnam in Noank? --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ NavList message boards: www.fer3.com/arc Or post by email to: NavList@fer3.com To , email NavList+@fer3.com -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---