NavList:

Frank Reed you wrote: “ I'm still wondering if that leg looked like a critically dangerous gamble to any navigators back in 1937. It would help to answer the question: just how relevant or irrelevant is our hindsight ...from almost a century later?”

Posing a question on Google such as “What were …………….’s Charles Lindbergh’s, Anne Morrow Lindbergh’s, Arthur Whitten Browns, Gago Coutinho’s, Weems’, and Harrold Gatty’s opinions of Amelia Earhart’s choice easterly route across the Pacific”? is not very productive because as soon as you specify Earhart there’s just too much to go though, most of it is the same old stuff about Earhart.  You might find something around page 46 but is it worth chasing?  That’s why I mentioned Harry Manning, because he opted out after the Hawaii crash although the reasons why are uncertain.  We also have the problem of the early pioneers perhaps being a little more taciturn over their views of their fellow aviators actions than they might be today. 

Another line of enquiry is to try and find their own views on landfalls.  We know Francis Chichester’s method, and we know that Lindbergh advocated paying great attention to flying planned heading and speed accurately plus carrying extra fuel at the expense of less important items (lecture to Cadets at the RAF College, Cranwell).  As far as finding tiny islands, Harrold Gatty probably had the greatest experience.  He’d pioneered landing at Howland Island but in a flying boat and presumably with a bigger crew and better navigational equipment although I’ve not checked.  Neither do we know if he’d flown there or just looked at the chart.  However, readers might find this article useful. https://www.aahs-online.org/pubs/journals/files/643186.pdf  (“While working with Juan Trippe and Pan American Airways in creating landing zones in the Pacific, Gatty, recognizing that the British and the French owned colonies could block their way, began to explore little known atolls that did not even appear on some contemporary maps. This project was so new that geography had not yet caught up with ambition”.). I’m afraid that’s the best I can manage, so nothing on eastwards v westwards. DaveP