NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
Earhart & Noonan in the news again
From: Paul Hirose
Date: 2014 Jul 05, 13:47 -0700
From: Paul Hirose
Date: 2014 Jul 05, 13:47 -0700
A metal plate visible in a 1937 Miami Herald photo may be a clue to the fate of Amelia Earhart. According to a Herald article a few days ago: "Her landing on May 24, 1937 was rough and she stayed in Miami for a week while the plane underwent repairs. "One of them, it appears, was the removal of a specially installed window in the rear of the airplane that navigator Noonan used to take sightings on the sun and stars, the method by which pilots found their way over unmapped oceans, jungles and desert in the days before radar and GPS. The window is clearly visible in photos of Earhart’s plane taken in California at the start of her trip, and even in some Herald photos shot after her arrival in Miami. "But in the photo shot just before her June 1, 1937, takeoff for Puerto Rico, the window is gone, replaced by that odd silvery plate." In 1991 a sheet of aluminum with four neat rows of rivet holes was found on Gardner Island. The hole pattern doesn't match anything on a Lockheed Electra, but it might match the repair job -- if enough detail can be pulled out of that old newspaper photo. The article in the Herald recaps the Earhart story. It even quotes the TIGHAR man Gillespie on the 157° - 337° position line "that Noonan calculated from the sunrise." http://www.miamiherald.com/2014/06/28/4208139/piece-of-metal-may-offer-clue.html I think it's strange that Noonan would tolerate the loss of one of his observation windows!
