 The
diagram below is schematic in nature, such that all distances are left
unspecified. It depicts a realistic case pertinent to the final phase
of the Lae-to-Howland flight. The heading was set by Fred Noonan
to the left of course as a conventional strategy for mitigating navigation
errors. The offset angle was chosen to assure that the maximum navigatonal
error to the right would bring the aircraft directly into the gathering
range at Howland, wherein RDF would become functional.
The most extreme navigation error to the left is shown
missing the gathering range.
However, upon reaching the sun line-of-position, Amelia Earhart would be
advised by Fred Noonan to turn with confidence to the right
and onto a course of 157 degrees. The expectation -- indeed,
as it turned out, the hope -- would be that eventually the Electra
would come within gathering range and successfully
complete the flight using RDF.
Sophisticated solvers will observe that even with perfectly
functional RDF equipment and people for both modes of RDF, Amelia
Earhart and Fred Noonan would be deprived of all advanced knowledge of
RDF's operability -- that outside the gathering
range, whether RDF will ever become
operable would not be knowable.
Solvers
of Wages of Flight will be keenly aware that
while approaching Howland Island, the Electra was
getting low on fuel. The offset for landfall navigating would exacerbate
the endurance issue. The plane would be slowed to extend time aloft,
but that also puts final maneuvers into slow motion and increases psychological
pressures on the two aviators who have already been aloft for more than
20 hours and would now be earnestly gazing at the Pacific waters ahead
looking for any sign of Howland or the Itasca.
For our solution, then, we offer the following answer
to the question in the puzzle:.
"What could possibly go wrong?"
-
Noonan called for an offset to the
north, thence for a turn as indicated toward the south onto a heading of
157 degrees
-
By happenstance, cumulative navigation
errors were near the extreme toward the left (green line), taking the flight
outside the
gathering range.
-
After some -- substantial -- period
of time Earhart concluded that the flight should be inside the gathering
range, but gets no joy on the radio.
-
Earhart is unaware that because of
multiple RDF failures, no gathering range
ever
existed that day at Howland Island.
-
She concluded that Noonan's landfall
offset was to the wrong side -- that the gathering
range and Howland lay to the north.
-
As pilot-in-command, Amelia Earhart
reversed direction to 337 degrees and flew toward the north, away from
Howland until fuel exhaustion.
|
Item 6 in our solution is the
most controversial. It is not unprecedented, however. Exclamation
point optional.
Nearly
a month earlier, on June 8, 1937, Amelia Earhart's round-the-world flight
crossed the Atlantic, departing Natal at the eastern tip of Brazil with
Dakar at the tip of the Cape Verde Peninsula as its destination.
The Bendix RDF was known not be working, so Fred Noonan had to rely on
sun-shots and dead reckoning for navigation, using the drift
meter for cross-course corrections.
Upon arrival over the coast of Africa, landfall navigation
called for a turn to the south. Amelia Earhart decided to turn north instead.
Long
described the result this way (p.143), "As it turned out, it was the wrong
direction but the right decision." In 20 minutes, they landed not
at Dakar but at St. Louis in French West Africa, 120 miles north of Dakar.
No such outcome was possible on July 2, 1937.
Sophisticated solvers might take note that the puzzles
in this series deliberately do not make use of information from flights
prior to July 2, 1937. This is the only excerption. |
