"We cannot see you . . . We cannot hear you at all."

CCXXXV

It was a hot and humid day, and the thick air didn’t provide much lift as the Electra barreled down Lae’s 1000 foot runway eating up every inch of it as the plane struggled to get airborne. The Flying Laboratory was heavy with fuel, a full 1,050 gallons, enough for twenty four hours of flight in optimum conditions.  It was 00:00 GMT.*

The controllers at Lae all held their breath. At the end of the runway, a berm angled upward, a kind of low wall between the runway and the cliff-edge that marked the absolute end of any departing airplane’s ground run. Everybody expected the Electra to roll right over the edge in a spectacular wreck, but when the plane hit the berm it bounced into the air and disappeared for just a moment as it nosed over the cliff. A second later, it was well and truly airborne, and rising into the sky. Everybody on the ground who’d watched the takeoff cheered as the Electra dwindled to a speck in the distance. Nobody could imagine that that would be the last sight anyone would ever have of the Electra, Amelia Earhart, and Fred Noonan. 

What happened? The plane “simply didn’t vanish.” In fact, it would be a full 23 hours later that the captain of the U.S.C.G.C. Itasca declared Amelia Earhart overdue and presumed missing. Until then, the Worldflight went on as it had for more than a month. It is hard to determine from the incomplete record at what precise moment the Lae-to-Howland flight became something other than just the next leg of Earhart’s journey. 

Certainly, nothing seemed wrong at the outset. Harry Balfour, the radioman at Lae spoke with Earhart within a few minutes of liftoff, conveying his good wishes, and then several times within the first hour. 

As the flight settled down, Amelia transmitted on the quarter-hour and then on the three-quarter hour: The reports were good. They concerned elapsed mileage and flight conditions. Amelia discussed a huge bank of cumulus clouds; later, she remarked on the headwinds which were steady. 

At 7:20 GMT (seven hours and twenty minutes into the flight), she gave an actual position report, her only one of this leg, placing her at 4’ 33.5” S 159’ 07” E. She was 846 miles from Lae, directly on course for Howland, and slightly behind schedule due to increasing headwinds. They skirted the Nukumanu Islands about that time, confirming their position. Fred’s computations precisely matched the Great Circle route Amelia had chosen. 

After 8:00 GMT everything becomes speculative: 

 

Eight hours after leaving Lae her communications with Balfour were becoming spotty due to distance. He heard her announce that she was switching from 6210 kilocycles (her daytime frequency) to 3105 kilocycles (her nighttime frequency). Balfour objected, advising her to remain on 6210 kc, but Amelia either didn’t hear him or ignored him. She messaged that he should advise the U.S. Navy of the change, and that was the last he heard from her --- and almost the last anyone else heard either.

At 8:00 GMT she had 1,700 miles to go to reach Howland Island. Night was falling. The headwinds had not slackened despite the prognostications of the meteorologist at Lae, forcing the plane to burn more gas and cutting significantly into her ground speed. 

At 10:30 GMT the Electra overflew a ship which lay right on her track, and passed on. Most listeners heard her reporting that whatever ship it was was “in sight,” though several reported her saying that she saw “lights.” 

No one knows what ship or lights she saw. At her reported altitude of 10,000 feet she might have been seeing either the Ontario or the night glow of the bright lights of the phosphate works at Nauru, which had been left on overnight as a guide beacon for her. Or she may have spotted the U.S.S. Myrtle Beach, standing off near Nauru. Perhaps she saw all three. 

Nauru lay 40 miles due north of her last reported position. People have argued that if A.E. had seen the “lights” of Nauru that meant that she was already significantly off course, and that would be true if she’d directly overflown Nauru. It would also be true if she’d overflown the Myrtle Beach rather than the Ontario, neither of which, parenthetically, heard her engines; however, that doesn’t account for the intensity of manmade light (or any light) against the ebon backdrop of the night sea and sky. Night glow would carry far in such blackness and any light source could be confusing and unidentifiable. In the mid-Atlantic, Ed Musick had once mistaken Jupiter rising for a lighthouse beacon in a place where he knew there could be no lighthouse.** 

Then too, the weather had turned squally across her track, so she may have been seeing Nauru’s phosphate works reflected in the cloud tops. Given her terse description it is impossible to say. 

There were thousands of ears listening for her. Not only were there three U.S. Navy vessels, but Balfour in Lae could still hear her intermittently, listeners in the Nukumanu Islands and on Nauru could hear her, her messages were being picked up in bits and pieces in the Gilbert Islands, and the radioman at Howland, Frank Cipriani, reported picking up her signal. Besides all these, ham radio and shortwave listeners around the globe were tuned in, picking up scraps (and sometimes more than scraps) of her broadcasts. Yet, she never responded to any hails along this length of her track. Sometime during the night she passed over the darkened Gilbert Islands but didn’t raise anyone there, and nobody heard her broadcasts or her engines.

Almost everyone who was listening later remarked on the poor quality of her signals --- “garbling” was the most common complaint --- and her lack of responsiveness. The weather may have been to blame in some degree but it also seems that things began to turn to hash right around the time she switched from 6210 kilocycles to 3105 kilocycles at 8:00 GMT.

Earhart was, as has been noted, still unfamiliar with the complexities of her radio system which was, like most radios of the day, festooned with knobs and dials and (unlike most radios) capable of picking up virtually any frequency in use --- if it was tuned correctly The Bendix RA-1 transmitter had five preset receiver bands, marked 1 through 5 on Earhart’s machine. There were also five separate preset RDF bands also marked 1 through 5 though the RDF bands and the receiver bands worked on very different frequencies. 

It is possible, though unprovable, that in switching from 6210 kc to 3105 kc she may have hit a wrong switch. Certainly, the RDF (which had been having intermittent troubles) didn’t seem to be operating any more correctly than the radio. All this, of course, begs the question as to why Earhart just didn’t switch back to 6210. In point of fact, she seemed not to know that her radio was malfunctioning at all for quite a while despite receiving no transmissions. She also had a Morse Code key which she never used.

It is important to recall that Amelia’s night flying had been limited during the Worldflight, because she generally flew in daylight and put down for overnights. The Lae-to-Howland hop included the most significant stretch of night flying she would do.  It’s quite likely, given her casual attitude toward her radio training, that she rarely switched over to her night frequencies, and didn’t know how to properly do so. Or, perhaps the unfindable gremlin that lived somewhere in her electrical system took up sudden residency in her radio at the worst possible moment in time. 

In any event, it was not until 14:15 GMT that Itasca picked up Earhart on 3105 kc, but couldn’t decipher her message. Other listeners though heard her remark about the overcast and clouds. 

This was a red flag. Although the weather had been unsettled further east at 10:30 GMT, the track of the Electra should have put the ship into clear air. There was, however, a heavy storm front to the northwest of Howland Island and it would have contributed clouds if Earhart was north of her intended track. The overcast would have also made it impossible for Fred Noonan to take any star sights, and thus made it impossible to regain their true course.

Why did they drift north, as it appears they did? No one knows why. It appears*** that lateral winds may have been pushing the Electra to the northwest all night long. With no landmarks and no star sights possible and in utter darkness it’s likely that neither Fred nor Amelia knew they were off course --- and because she wasn’t receiving (apparently) no one could advise her. 

It wasn’t until 15:15 GMT --- fifteen hours and fifteen minutes into the flight --- and an hour after her last transmission that the Itasca picked up a clear message from the Flying Laboratory. Again, Amelia complained about the overcast. She advised Itasca that she would be listening for them on the hour and the half hour on 3105 kc. 

There was just the slightest tinge of trepidation in her voice. After more than fifteen hours at the yokes she must have been exhausted. The fuel gauges must have been an uncomfortable reminder of the passage of time, more so than any clock. And the silence must have been deafening. 

Itasca responded with a spate of information and a request for a position. 

There was no answer.

  

It wasn’t until 16:24 GMT that Itasca heard Earhart, again remarking on the cloud cover. No position was received. But was one given? Even if Noonan couldn’t take star sights he should have been reckoning their progress along his charts and maintaining some record of their position, however erroneous it may have been. It would have given Itasca and the other ships a general idea of where Earhart thought she was, at the very least. Computations based on speed and time might be inaccurate, but they could have at least established an estimated longitude, and thus a speculative Line Of Position (LOP). It would have been at least a starting point for a search. Noonan obviously wasn’t unconscious nor drunk since he provided a very specific LOP, and exactly the LOP that Howland lay along, later in the flight.

What was going on aboard the Electra? Was Fred Noonan so immersed in navigating that he and Amelia weren’t discussing their situation? Was Fred insisting that Amelia give a position? Did she? Was it not heard? Or did she not want to admit she was lost? Did they not know? 

Although garbled messages were intermittently picked up by Itasca for the next hour and fifteen minutes, it was not until 17:44 GMT that Amelia Earhart came across in the clear, and loudly: Want bearing on 3105 on the hour. Will whistle in mic. 

A moment later --- not on the hour --- Amelia whistled into her microphone, and this is where her unfamiliarity with the radio doomed her. She was doing the exactly correct thing if she wanted Itasca to give her an RDF bearing --- but she stopped whistling too soon. 

Anyone who has watched police procedurals on TV understands that a phone trace requires that the cop keep the suspect on the line for more than a few moments. In this case, Amelia --- “the suspect” --- hung up on Itasca --- “the cop” --- before they could lock in on her.  Had she paid attention during her lessons with the radio she would not have made this beginner’s error. The frustration in Itasca’s radio room was intense. They called out to Earhart to resume whistling. They asked for an estimated position. Nothing. 

The morning sun was climbing up the sky when Amelia Earhart next raised the Itasca. It was 18:15 GMT on July 2, 1937**** aboard the ship, when Earhart once again asked for an RDF bearing and offered to whistle into the mic again --- and again failed to give Itasca the time to take a bearing on her. 

Again the question has to be asked --- what was Fred Noonan doing? He was arguably the best navigator on earth, he had flown tens of thousands of miles with Pan American Airways, he knew how planes operated and how a radio was used to establish and confirm a position, he held both a maritime Captain’s license and a pilot’s license --- and why didn’t he tell Amelia to keep whistling? 

It was at 19:12 GMT when Amelia came on the air again. This time, the anxiety in her voice was palpable:

KHAQQ calling Itasca. We must be on you but cannot see you. Gas is running low. One half-hour left. We cannot hear you at all.

The Itasca answered back that her signal strength was 5 x 5, and proceeded to Morse, maintain voice communications, send a high-pitched radio signal (equivalent to whistling) and make smoke. At 19:30 GMT Amelia answered:

We received your signals but cannot get a minimum. Please reply with voice on 3105.

It was the only time since she had switched from 6210 to 3105 that Amelia heard any transmissions. And though the Itasca repeated and repeated, she never heard them again. She was undoubtedly close by --- 5 x 5 was as strong as a radio signal could get, and she remained 5 x 5 until 20:15 GMT when she announced boomingly in the headsets of Itasca’s radiomen:

We are on the Line Of Position 157-337. We will repeat this message on 6210 kilocycles. Wait. We will listen on 6210 kilocycles. We are running north and south.  

They were never heard from or seen again.

*All times are given in Greenwich Mean Time (GMT). Due to the crossing of time zones, the International Date Line, and the use of U.S. Navy and various local times, the use of GMT is the only practical method of determining “what time” something occurred during this stage of the Worldflight. 

**The incident occurred over the Atlantic during a test of the S-42B, and gives some indication of how disorienting night flying can be even to a veteran pilot like Ed Musick. Amelia’s night flying skills were underdeveloped. This blogger is a recreational sailor. One night, skirting the coast of Long Island, our skipper took a bearing on what was assumed to be a red navigational light but turned out to be a living room lamp with a red shade shining through the window of a house onshore.

*** To this blogger at least. It strikes this blogger as odd that no Earhart theorists he has come across have examined the issue of wind direction that night. As a sailor, both lateral wind and water currents can push a sailboat well off course without correction. The same would hold true of an airplane in relation wholly to wind (it is instructive to realize that a sail and a wing operate identically in terms of aerodynamics, except that one is vertical and the other horizontal). With absolutely no waypoints in the inky dark that surrounded them on all sides it would be difficult to assess the effects of wind drift on the Electra’s course. During daylight Noonan may have been able to release smoke bombs to estimate wind direction and speed but they would have been useless in the dark. It may have been that the wind blew the Electra off its compass course, and that by correcting Amelia Earhart compounded the problem, running on a track parallel but further north than her original flightpath. As they traveled onward this error would have increased. The only land between Nauru and Howland were the Gilbert Islands and they were not illuminated at all overnight or the overcast hid them. Had they had lighting, Fred Noonan could have taken a bearing on them and regained the proper course.

**** It had been 10:00 A.M. July 2, 1937 when Earhart and Noonan left Lae. They both lived to see July 3^rd, but “lost” the day by crossing the International Date Line overnight. It was not even 9:00 A.M. Howland Island time on July 2, 1937 when they were presumed overdue. By the vagaries of human timekeeping they were already dead when they’d left Lae 23 hours before.