Originally Posted by
greg47
She would have arrived in the Howland is area with about an hours fuel. The fuel had been sitting in lae for some time . It would have lost performance. Power is mass flow . Lae temps would men less mass due to the expansion relative to temp. Neither knew morse code. Due to an error of installation and consequent incompatibility with antenna loading and frequency they could transmit but not receive. They were tracked across the pacific.The personnel on the ground in their eagerness turned on the primitive NDB to early. With the range considerably reduced as the battery voltage had dropped. It would have given every indication to ground personnel it was transmitting.
I would suggest that her aircraft had a still air range of at least 4,000 statute miles and she could have quite probably rung out another 200 odd miles if she was utilising the techniques she had learnt from proving flights with Pratt and Whitney and from conversations with Charles Lindberg. She should have had plenty of fuel for Plan B, the Gilbert Islands, and if the headwinds had been strong enough for her to fall well short of Howland, possibly enough, or almost enough to make it back to New Britain with a good tailwind.Going by her fuel usage to Hawaii on her first attempt, she was using a lot less fuel than planned.