NavList:

Hi All

I read all your POSTs when I get up in the morning – AEST - = 11 hrs + GMT (East seaboard Australia) – my in box in generally filled with numerous posts from this forum.

And I think my reconditioned WW II A12A aeronautical sextant from Bob S – is sitting in the post office (there was a bulky parcel note in my PO Box in the weekend) – so really looking forward to finally getting my hands on a ‘REAL’ sextant ……  “ I chuckle”.

I have watched with a weather eye the comments about Amelia Earhart and her navigator Noonan – and have read very little about this history except that most of the “facts” are speculative – and we are unlikely to ever know the truth without true evidence – the wreckage or similar.

As an experienced front line senior aeronautical navigator – chugging across of NMs of ocean in a Bristol Freighter – below 10,000 ft as we were unpressurised – we used just a sextant and a drift sight and RDF (as we closed land) – to navigating 4 engined turboprop P3BOrions with radar, loran, celestial, RDF at 30,000 ft over 1000 of nms of ocean with nothing but sea – no islands or anything ……….. 15 hour submarine ocean patrols at night north of Hawaii with radar, radios, radar alts and everything off – the ONLY navigational aid permitted was the sextant – a periscopic Kollsman.

We dropped sonobuoy fields over huge areas of ocean using ONLY the sextant – and our accuracy for cocked hat fixes was about 10 nms! – that was superb accuracy – and nothing for an aircraft travelling at 6 NMS a minute.

We never turned our radar back on until the end of the patrol when closing land (Hawaii or Moffet Field, California ………..

I am leading into the comment  – “Interesting also that Noonan thought 10nm was reasonable accuracy from a star fix in the air.  It makes you realise that expecting to find a coral island of 640 acres and about 10ft vertical extent looking initially into the rising Sun using celestial navigation alone would have been almost impossible” ……”DaveP”

Again we can all only speculate but I will comment specifically on this assumption that an accuracy of 10 nms for a celestial fix (position line) would make it impossible to find a tiny spec of an island – is erroneous without understanding how an aeronautical navigator would go about finding such a speck!

Whilst I have not read all the details and research on Earhart/Noonan – and I will as I need to see what is dross and what is speculation and what is reasonable diagnostic assumptions …

However, on the subject of navigation (aeronautical of the times) – I have scoured the internet and amazon on books on the subject – most are WW II navigator experiences – of which I have read dozens of accounts ( my father was an ex-WWII bomber command pilot on Wellingtons and Mosquitoes and I have all his gear from that time – but little real information about navigation – except historical documents)  and my own experience as a military navigator.

However, a very good book that I found on Amazon was called ‘On Celestial Wings’ by Edgar Whitcomb – U.S Army Air Force Navigators in WW II – a sombre and sobering collection of stories from WWII – and the evolution of the USAAF navigators – their skill, experience and their extraordinary long flights over 1000s nms of ocean to find a small speck of land.

Back to my opinion – ‘my opinion’ based on a lot of experience about finding a speck in the ocean with only a sextant ….    With an accuracy of 10 nms.

10 nms is nothing in an aircraft – small or large ….. and it is not the definitive parameter for defining whether you can find a speck of an island in a huge ocean or not and I think that is the mistake.

Expressing an accuracy of 10 NMS for celestial (which in my experience is exactly the figure I would use) enables you then to do EXACTLY what you have assumed you cannot do – find that island. Had he stated an accuracy of say 2 NMS – then I would be worried that he was dreaming trying to find that island – but 10 NMS would have given him a very good chance of finding that island.

How so – well when you are navigating to a destination you are using dead reckoning and celestial (assuming no other fixing aids) – and the further you go without a true fix (defined by flying over a piece of land of known location (as there was no radar then) – or cross fix RDF (though this was not much better than celestial) – then the further you DR out from the last known fix the more your DR position becomes inaccurate (circle of error around this DR position).

You extend your DR to the destination and draw your circle of error (based on your accumulated error throughout the trip and based on your assumed accuracy of your celestial) – now if you assumed and accuracy of 2 NMs to 5 NMS on a celestial – I will guarantee you will miss that speck – but assume 10 NMS, your circle of error is greater – you then at the extent of that error fly a creeping line ahead search pattern flight path towards that speck ensuring you would find it. This was a common DR method of finding something you were looking for.

This was a typical search methodology when doing SAR on a last known position of a yacht in distress at sea.

That being said - They were flying at night  - hence 3 star fixing – it was July in the Pacific – (winter – no tropical convergence zone weather - which would really makes navigation difficult)

Their route took them over many atolls/islands on their route to Howland Island (though at night identification of which would be impossible) – but the phosphorescence from the crashing waves is easy to sea even at night. Not sure what altitude they were at but they were at 1000 ft approaching their destination – which is low if you are trying to find and island unless there was cloud cover and they needed to get below it – and the Itasca did receive a call from them around 07:42 local time

“At 07:42 local time, as she flew toward the target destination, Howland Island in the Pacific, with her navigator Fred Noonan, Earhart called the Coast Guard cutter Itasca, stationed at Howland Island to support her flight.

“We must be on you, but cannot see you -- but gas is running low. Have been unable to reach you by radio. We are flying at 1,000 feet,” she said.”

That gives nothing to us about his error of navigation – except he assumed by his dead reckoning to be close to his destination ……. Wishful thinking if he made a gross error – which I assume he has NOT made based on his experience. Has he just ‘missed the island’ easy at 1000 ft – perhaps and the other problem navigating to a destination like a tiny speck is that – if you miss it by a few NMS you don’t know which side of the island you are on – south or north – hence again another navigational method is to offset your course to one side to ensure you ARE north or Sth of your destination  - and then when you reach your destination by DR and time you turn towards your expected direction of your destination – if offset North you turn south.

This would take into account the figures 157/337   a bearing through is destination at right angles to their in-bound course – or a reasonable creeping line a head course if the above offset method of navigation was used.

But we don’t know whether they were heading 337 or 157 – which would give us whether they thought they were NW or SE of the island.

The transmission – “we must be on you” and at 1000 ft suggests they BELIEVED they were close but transmitting on 3105 khz or 6210 (Itasca could on transmit on 3105 khz) – HF travels a long way over the ocean and unless you had an HF DF – (which wasn’t invented until WW II – called huff duff.) – you have no real idea of direction. I cannot find any reference to a direction of transmission given by Itasca.

I make no apology for any speculation or opinion I make – having not read all the speculation that exists – just making an informed guess based on knowledge of extensive aeronautical navigation experience, and having navigated in that very area of the pacific at that time of year – night and day.

We also know they expected to be close to the island at 7:42 AM local and Itasca lost contact at 08:43 AM local – that is 1 hour of fuel to search for the island if your navigation capability is in error 10 NMS of more - ……

I make a humble apology if my speculation and or OPINION stamps with muddy boots over anyone’s opinion on this forum – that is unintentional.

As a very experienced USA politician once said “we are entitled to our own opinion, just not our OWN facts”.

Anyways – this is my take on the mystery – Noonan ‘cocked up’ and made a gross navigational error – but we do not know of what form – I suspect it wasn’t a single error – just an accumulated error of navigation which lead to him actually not knowing which side of the island he was on.

What seems to be the conclusion here is that ‘they were lost and ran out of fuel and ditched’ – a true death sentence in the Pacific Ocean in those times. From numerous accounts of real ditching – not an easy thing to do – and though Amelia an experienced flyer – ditching is not something you get to practice – especially if you have run out of fuel.

A comment on ditching at sea – the frontal aspect of the Electric is of huge gaping big radial engines cowls – unless you go in low, slow and tail down those cowls will be grabbed by the sea and the deceleration will most likely break up the aircraft and kill the crew – and the wreckage would sink quickly.

Hence why no credible evidence of the aircraft has been found – I presume.

I humbly sign off with the above opinion thrown out there for those who wish to comment.

Regards Howard G

From: NavList@fer3.com <NavList@fer3.com> On Behalf Of Gary LaPook
Sent: Sunday, 6 February 2022 02:15
To: Howard George <HHG@raptorbusinessservices.com.au>
Subject: [NavList] Re: International Date Line and Earhart/Noonan