NavList:

Hi David

Not going to get any argument from me over your conclusions - they are all relevant - and we both as retired experienced military navigators know the rigour of our training and rigour of operational flying and read the errors made by these 2 as an accident waiting to happen.

Airmanship - the broadbrush description of rules of sensibly of getting from A to B in an aircraft. Military flying, cannot be paralleled in anyway to enable sailors to understand getting somewhere in the air. One major difference is that our energy source is limited and when it runs out you just got to gone down and that is, in general messy and fatal.

Notwithstanding the navigational aids of the time - pretty standard stuff up until navigational aids such as NDB (a point towards a radio transmission - eg a dedicated beacon - or a transmitting source of some kind - eg . a radio station - and an appropriate means of getting a directiion from within the aircraft - Earhart had this but it was useless for Howlett ( I will come back to this); LORAN and then GPS in the last few decades - up to recently - the sun gun was it!!! - drift sight, astro compass.

I cannot find a direct reference to her directional compass but I suspect there was a wet compass probably high up above the instrument panel clear of error creating iron - however. though it gives a rough direction it is useless except for emergency fall back. So I suspect there was a Sperry gyro-compass which makes accurate heading flying and turns easier. How accurate this was we don't know but assuming Amelia was a competent pilot we must assume she kept a good heading check. However, as I have mentioned before - after the big crash in Honolulu I see no evidence she did a recal of the compass and assume it was probably accurate +- 5 deg - however did they fly a true heading - allowing for local variation between magnetic and true - over that distance it would change.

It was of my opinion ( and it seems I am right - read article re Air Navigation)  that the Electra 10E was poorly equipment for navigation. 

No astro dome

No periscopic sextant 

I don't think a drift sight

No astro compass as no astro dome

Radio-directional equipment was experimental and both were totally untrained in its use.

So for the sailors on this forum - all around astro shooting was likely limited - there is a hatch behind the pilot but It opens upwards so opening that is unlikely - so you then got to shoot out the side windows - if you pick low stars you have alot of atmospheric error and less window error - or if you pick high say 45 to say 75 deg alt you have - less atmospheric error but your windo error would be large, notwithstanding that the Electra probably didn't have an auto-pilot or it was basic at most. 

Astro shooting in an aircraft is a skilled event between navigator and pilot - because you have a bubble that will be deflected by acceleration of the aircraft it was better to pick a star at 90 deg to track and get the pilot to fly accurate heading ( as heading changes would deflect the buble) - this sort of shot was got for checking your track - and a star forward (backwards was not possible ) and flying accurate TAS - as changes in this would give deflection of the bubble fore and aft. But this shot was great for G/S checking.

However, these accelerations are cyclical and so the bubble sextant, which uses a false horizon - if you average a shot over say 2 minutes these errors, if the pilot is skilled, generally average out - bit hard when it is turbulent but still reasonable astro lines are still possible. There are also other corrections that need to be applied, height, window error, coriolis, atmospheric - so astro shooting in an poorly setup aircraft aint a romp in the park - The Electra 10E was such an aircraft.

So, with accurate astro - 2 shot - not 3 - and knowing the errors created by your aircraft systems and applying corrections it was still possible to navigate accurately long distances.

However, the Electra was poorly equipped and the Electra a poor astro platform - and reading the article (link below) - Earhart was not a good navigator or a good pupil - Noonan should have been - but a good navigator and a poor aircraft and poor equipment you are just going to pile error upon error.

However, as David alluded to, as I alluded to, and the article the link has - the errors started before they got airborne - the Electra was a poor choice of aircraft for such a distance and once they got airborne the accumulation of errors that existed in getting airborne just piled up to simply push them well north of track - and a the most critical part of their journey - short of fuel and no airfield in sight and the icing on the cake of errors upon errors - their total and absolute belief ( in untrialled technology)  and strangely - little or no training in how to use it - a homing becon to get them heading towards the needle in the hay stack.

I could talk for some length on the bad decisions made by them both - even before they got to Lao - but they got away with those errors - and landed safely where-ever they were heading - but there are a lot of errors.

Before I close - to get a true understanding of air crash investigation - watch them on Netflix, SBS, or whatever feed you get - there are plenty of them - and truely fascinating to watch true detective work -  none - I repeat none are just 'the aircraft crash was the result of unpredicatable, unforseen and unfortunate circumstances' - i.e. they were all a collection of accumulated errors, that singlely in in the absence of accumulation would not have caused the crash - but together resulted in the crash. Look up "Swiss Cheese Model of Air Accidents".

Princess Earhart was an accident going somewhere to happen and there is just no mystery what-so-ever on the cause of their crash - none.

I know it, David P knows it,  Gary LaPook knows it and a few other aero navigators to boot on this forum know it - basically, because of a poor decision before takeoff - to NOT take off - the aircraft's less than optimal performance - increasing head winds, poor directional control and a tiny target that actually ( may not have been where they thought it was - that apparently has been aired as another problem - again - as an aside - not a big problem if you have plenty of fuel - it is just a sort of search and rescue type problem and you allow for this)  - but they had no reserves and essentially bargained on a functioning radio beacon to home in on - their accumulating errors finally caught up with them and they just ran out of options. 

Despite all the conspiracy theories aired - they air lack the simple fact of starting from the simple fact that 'their options had run out' - they ran out of the stuff that could have kept the conspiracy theories aflota (or airborne). 

They simply ran out of fuel - and crashed - and doing a ditching in such an aircraft - no seat belts, no emergency equipment, no knowledge of ditching in an electra - likely they died or were fatelly injured and the aircraft sank quickly.

Regards Howard G

https://airandspace.si.edu/stories/editorial/amelia-earhart-and-profession-air-navigation