Earhart & Noonan in Papua New Guinea Theory
I have been keeping a glass eye on this thread for the past week.... 350 views so far today and a total of 2650 views in one week.... That shows a lot of interest in an eighty-year-old mystery.
I "re-discovered" this thread one week ago and decided to enliven it with the new website address.
Some things have changed in my appraisal or in my thinking about the Earhart "Last Flight" as to the detail but the story basically has not changed. The Australian Army Patrol A1 commencing on the 15th April 1945 did find an all-metal unpainted twin-engined aircraft with Pratt & Whitney Wasp engines, that is the fact. The "how" of how that aircraft, which, from the evidence is the missing Electra, got to be there remains to be seen. Whatever the aircraft is, be it the Electra or something else, my pragmatic view is that it has to be found, because if it is not the Electra, then it will be removed from the possibles list. For me, I consider it is the Electra.
If it is the Electra, and I consider that it is, then it is a complete answer to where Earhart and Noonan ended their lives and we can start to unravel the whys and wherefores from there. The aircraft clock would be my first target in that case....
To catch up on a few questions asked within this thread:
"Was there a plan to fly DAKAR-ADEN direct ?"
Yes, there was. Earhart engaged ex-USN Commander Clarence Williams to prepare a series of strip maps for her, which encompassed all the proposed sectors which she had planned to fly on the RTW flight. The strip maps were made out as per great circle flights taking into account the Earth's magnetic changes and, for instance, the LAE-HOWLAND flight shows adjustments of magnetic course at around every four hours as the change in Magnetic Variation went from 6 degrees to near 10 degrees. The outbound Magnetic steer is shown as well as an inbound steer in case the flight was conducted for either "Eastbound" or "Westbound"'
All the strip maps were produced for NIL Wind conditions and for a Groundspeed of 150 Statute Miles per hour. This then moves anyone researching the Earhart flights to consider that all that Earhart had to do, was to convert the G/S to a forecast actual G/S by deducting a forecast headwind or adding a forecast tailwind or vectoring the value for whatever wind was forecast.
The DAKAR-ADEN Strip map shows a flight of 28 Hours and 40 Minutes for the 4307 Statute Miles of the distance (28.66r x 150 = 4300).
The LAE-HOW strip map in similar vein, shows 17 Hours and 01 minutes for the 2556 Statute miles of the distance (2556 / 150 = 17.04 hours). In this case, as Earhart received a forecast of 12-15 mph wind as a headwind, she deducted 12 from 150, divided 2556 by 138 and came out with 18.52 hours or 18 Hours and 31 Minutes. To people who asked she said that the flight would take over 18 hours. Logic says that if she had considered that she should take the worst case of a 15 mph headwind then she really would have been better saying "Nearly19 hours" ( 2556 / 135 = 18.93 hours), but she didn't say that. In the event the wind turned out to be worse still.
We are looking for a range of about 4170 miles into a headwind and returning with a tailwind. In the website I speak of a return path back to NUKUMANU Atoll and thence onward towards New Britain passing overhead Mortlock Island (T'au Group) and Carteret Reef and if that line is continued to the West, it does actually make landfall on New Britain at Wide Bay and pass over the area where we have been searching since 1994.
LIttle Sammy says:
"I've read some of your posts and have a few questions. Can the report to and reply from the US Army Air Corps be documented?"
I do suppose that the find was documented and went in signal traffic within the Australian Army from 13 Brigade HQ to 5th Division and from there by signal to the American Army. However, at Jaquinot Bay there was an entire Company of the American Army Regiment called the 594th EB&SR (Engineer, Boat and Shore Regiment) which had about 12 Officers and 100 or so enlisted men running 30 odd Landing Craft and assorted boats. There was an Australian Officer attached to this American Unit as a Liaison Officer and his chain of command was direct from 5th Division. As I see it, any notification of what was thought to be an "American" aircraft down in the jungle would be brought to this Officers attention to be passed on to the American Unit. Hence, we had the story of the two U.S. Army Officers visiting "D" Company of the 11th Battalion A.I.F. to speak to Lt. Backhouse but he was out on Patrol again and they left. I discuss this fully in the website.
The other companies of the 594th EB&SR were at Hollandia (now Jayapura), preparing for the Philippines and the administrative control of the company at Jaquinot Bay was handed over to another EB&SR Regiment in the Western Pacific, so we have two HQ Groups Records to go through. I have one member in our group who has searched some NARA Records in WAS but nothing found to date.
"Same question for the Australian Army Patrol."
There is a missing record (listed on the map edge) which we cannot find in the Australian War Memorial and it is numbered "63A". The "A" denotes it as an annex report and so far it has eluded us. Two personal visits to Canberra and one Professional Researcher visit have failed to produce it. As an "Annex" report it probably did detail extraneous subjects of Patrol A1, like the find of an all-metal twin-engined aircraft....
"It really is absurd to think that Amelia would have continued to fly the 157-337 line. Circling to search for Howland Island for a while, might have made sense, but only until fuel got low enough to make returning unlikely."
I agree where some do not. A square search was likely but on what was heard, this did not happen. Earhart transmitted "On the line 157-337..." only. The Contingency Plan is discussed in the website at Part 7., and is as told to me by researcher Ron Bright of Washington State, as he was involved.
"But, if returning was the backup plan, everybody should have known it. And I've never heard a word about that until I came across this site.... What's up with that?"
Earhart was to put it mildly, "secretive" and didn't discuss a lot of her plans with people, many were left in the dark, that was just her modus operandi.
"I have several books on Amelia and one says the long trailing antenna was damaged in the crash in Hawaii and not replaced. Another says she had it removed in Miami. I imagine if she had it at the time, she'd have used it? Perhaps that explains why she could not rdf Howland? It worked and brought her into Honolulu. It might also explain why the Itasca couldn't locate her?"
The trailing antenna was for Tx on 500 Kcs and so that she could contact shipping and ground stations over long ranges "if" she so desired. The website has a notation about the lack of communication possible between Earhart and the
ONTARIO stationed roughly at the half-way point of the LAE-HOW flight, the Electra had HF Radio and the
Ontario had LF Radio and the pair of them could not communicate...
The Trailing antenna according to reports was removed at Miami. RDF or "DF" was another matter, her Loop antenna was there for DF but again, another hitch when she asked
ITASCA to TX on a frequency (7500Kcs) which was not correct... "But", she did hear letter "A's"' by listening on her DF Loop aerial. Perhaps she was just too far away from
Itasca to receive a strong enough signal to obtain the null she desperately needed.
Itasca had not been asked in advance to provide bearings and this took them unawares.
I am really glad I unzipped this thread because 2650 views in a week and a big spike in the website statistics means that there is still a lot of interest out there in the Earhart Mystery and in the solving of it.
When I speak to people about the revelation that came in 2016 when my memory kicked in about the house-block sized "bare patch" where a bulldozer had been working and which I saw in 1996 and which I now suppose could well be the burial site.... People are incredulous as to think that someone buried the aircraft wreck "on purpose". Well, incredulous or not, we are dealing with some people in PNG who have distinct tribal instincts. There has been a simmering land dispute in this area and the bulldozer driver was not from the local area but was from one of the tribes in the dispute and he was not in the claimants camp. We are friends with the claimants and therefore in the opponents eyes we are "with" the claimants. Ergo: "Bury it". The locals there have called the burial "Tribal Jealousy". People here in Australia (or anywhere else) who cannot visualise that, have never been to PNG...
To Wes: Yes, Wes... we'll be safe when we get there (God and Air Niugini willing that is). Thanks for the thought.
To LKinnon and aroa: Thanks for your good wishes.
Regards,
David Billings
www.earhartsearchpng.com