Originally Posted by
aroa
...' If we cant see Howland within the next 15 mins, we must now head for ..'
They did not have plan B or if they did they clearly did not act upon it. The existing radio transmission is the proof - they kept flying in the vicinity of the Howland Island looking for it and did not fly anywhere else. The timeline of their transmissions and the content make it very clear. It also hard if not impossible to come up here with any sensible plan B considering their destination was at the close to maximum range of the aircraft. However I would not use words like sane/insane, they don't apply, this was not a "commercial transport flight" in a modern sense of the world, this was an attempt at something that hasn't been done before, I don't think Lindbergh had plan B either when he was flying solo across Atlantic. This was a stunt, you accept much higher risk when you perform a stunt. Their sensible plan B should have been use of the radio navigation (do some practice runs, learn limits of the technology, etc.) - but they both seemed not to show enough interest in it.