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35 - Daughter of the Sky- The Story of Amelia Earhart by Paul L. Briand, Jr. · Daughter of the Sky- The Story of Amelia Earhart

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  Speaker 1: Section thirty five of Daughter of the Sky The Story
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  Speaker 1: of Amelia Earhart by Paul Brown Junior. This LibriVox recording
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  Speaker 1: is in the public domain. Part three, the Last Flight seven,
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  Speaker 1: the disappearance and the Search. Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan
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  Speaker 1: and their plane were lost somewhere over a possible area
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  Speaker 1: of four hundred fifty thousand square miles in the South Pacific.
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  Speaker 1: The United States Navy was determined to find them. In Washington,
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  Speaker 1: Chief of Naval Operations Admiral William D. Leahey acted quickly
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  Speaker 1: and ordered ships and planes to take up the search
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  Speaker 1: for the missing flyers. In addition to the Atasca, an
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  Speaker 1: aircraft carrier and its full complement of planes, a battleship,
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  Speaker 1: four destroyers, a mine sweeper, and a seaplane were pressed
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  Speaker 1: into service. Together, these ships and planes would search for
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  Speaker 1: sixteen days in an area of more than two hundred
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  Speaker 1: fifty thousand square miles. Commander Thompson of the Atasca made
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  Speaker 1: some quick decisions after Amelia failed to arrive at Howland.
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  Speaker 1: If she had flown to the south, she should have
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  Speaker 1: seen Baker Island, just thirty eight miles south of Howland,
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  Speaker 1: the area to start looking for her. He concluded was
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  Speaker 1: in the northwest quadrant, indicated by the three hundred thirty
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  Speaker 1: seven degrees of her last position report of one fifty
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  Speaker 1: seven dashed three thirty seven. Also, he was far from
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  Speaker 1: abandoning hope. Although Amelia was having radio trouble, there was
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  Speaker 1: every belief that Fred Noonan could make a fix and
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  Speaker 1: yet find Howland. Radio transmissions therefore continued around the clock
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  Speaker 1: at the same frequencies of three thousand, one hundred five,
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  Speaker 1: six thousand, two hundred ten and five hundred kilocycles. If
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  Speaker 1: Amelia were leaning out her fuel at the rate of
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  Speaker 1: fifty gallons per hour at the end of twenty one
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  Speaker 1: hours at nine o'clock a m. On the morning of
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  Speaker 1: July second, she would have had enough fuel left for
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  Speaker 1: two more hours of flying time, for she had had
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  Speaker 1: one thousand, one hundred fifty gallons of gasoline aboard the aircraft. If,
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  Speaker 1: on the other hand, AE were using fuel at just
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  Speaker 1: under forty five gallons per hour, she could have flown
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  Speaker 1: for a total of twenty six hours until twelve o'clock
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  Speaker 1: noon lay time, but two o'clock p m. Howland time.
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  Speaker 1: In other words, just as her tanks were going dry,
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  Speaker 1: her chronometer for elapsed time would have indicated approximately twelve o'clock.
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  Speaker 1: The Navy reasoned, presumably from A's point of view in
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  Speaker 1: the cockpit, that she could stay aloft trying to find
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  Speaker 1: some island somewhere until about noon. If she were slightly
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  Speaker 1: north and west of Howland and realized the fact, she
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  Speaker 1: would have tried for the Gilbert Islands, or if she
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  Speaker 1: were even more north and west, she would have attempted
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  Speaker 1: the Marshal or Caroline Islands, extremely north and west the
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  Speaker 1: Mariana Islands. The last possibility was most unlikely. If they
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  Speaker 1: are down George Putnam wired from San Francisco, they can
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  Speaker 1: stay afloat indefinitely. Their empty tanks will give them buoyancy. Besides,
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  Speaker 1: they have all the emergency equipment they'll need. Everything that
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  Speaker 1: the Navy was unable to find the two flyers defies
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  Speaker 1: understanding if all the conclusions and predications were correct. At
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  Speaker 1: ten fifteen a m. The A Taska steamed north and
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  Speaker 1: a Navy seaplane took off from Honolulu bound for Howland
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  Speaker 1: to help in the search. At twelve o'clock, Amelia was
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  Speaker 1: reported as definitely not having reached Howland. Her time had
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  Speaker 1: just about run out. She was most probably down somewhere
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  Speaker 1: close by. Everyone hoped either riding the wing of the
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  Speaker 1: floating Electra or paddling away from it in the emergency
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  Speaker 1: rubber raft. Holding to the first assumption, the Atasca listened
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  Speaker 1: for a e's s O S on three thousand, one hundred,
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  Speaker 1: five and five hundred because it was believed that the
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  Speaker 1: plane's radio supply was by battery and that the antenna
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  Speaker 1: could be used from on top of the wing. The
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  Speaker 1: Ataska pressed the search and kept calling the Electra continuously.
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  Speaker 1: Because only portions of Amelia's transmissions had been received during
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  Speaker 1: the night, and those garbled amid static, the Navy concluded
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  Speaker 1: that the Electra had been flying through or above thunder
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  Speaker 1: storms after her last report to Lay at five twenty
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  Speaker 1: p m on July second. Something had happened to put
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  Speaker 1: her off course after sunset at five fifty five p
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  Speaker 1: m and during the night until sunrise at six twelve
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  Speaker 1: a m. The next morning. She had somehow become lost.
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  Speaker 1: The navigation procedures of Fred Noonan tend to confirm this
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  Speaker 1: last view. It was his practice, according to those who
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  Speaker 1: knew him, to follow course and to correct it by
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  Speaker 1: taking infrequent fixes during the night. Then just before dawn,
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  Speaker 1: he would correct course for destination by determining a line
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  Speaker 1: of position near the end of the estimated run. This
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  Speaker 1: procedure would allow a flight of about three hundred miles
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  Speaker 1: during the morning without a good fix. If the compasses
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  Speaker 1: had tumbled during the night, and if the chronometers were
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  Speaker 1: badly out of calibration, then there were navigation errors of plenty,
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  Speaker 1: especially where Amelia depended on a faulty radio to make
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  Speaker 1: her landfall at Holland. The seaplane out of Honolulu had
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  Speaker 1: to turn back to base because of bad weather. During
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  Speaker 1: the initial part of its eighteen hundred mile flight to Holland, however,
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  Speaker 1: it constantly received transmissions from the Atasca. Obviously there was
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  Speaker 1: nothing wrong with the ship's radios. The lockeed engineers were
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  Speaker 1: contacted to find out whether the electrass radio could operate
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  Speaker 1: if the plane were floating. Their answer was the first
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  Speaker 1: heavy note of discouragement. The Electra's radio definitely could not
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  Speaker 1: operate if it were on the water, they wired, because
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  Speaker 1: it needed the right engine for power. But they added
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  Speaker 1: the plane could float from the buoyancy provided by the
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  Speaker 1: empty tanks for a maximum period of nine hours. It
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  Speaker 1: was now hoped for radio purposes that the Electra had
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  Speaker 1: made an emergency landing on land. The Atasca searched an
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  Speaker 1: area of ninety five hundred square miles without success, in
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  Speaker 1: addition to constant transmission on three thousand, one hundred, five
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  Speaker 1: and five hundred. During the day, it set up a
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  Speaker 1: smoke screen, and during the night it played its searchlight
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  Speaker 1: against the sky. These measures were in vain. On July seventh,
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  Speaker 1: the battleship Colorado and the mine sweeper Swan joined forces
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  Speaker 1: with the cutter Itasca. The Colorado, with its planes went
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  Speaker 1: south and east through the Phoenix Islands, exploring the one
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  Speaker 1: hundred fifty seven degrees reciprocal of three hundred thirty seven
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  Speaker 1: degrees represented in ae's last reported line of position. The
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  Speaker 1: Swan and the Atasca turned north and then west to
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  Speaker 1: the Gilbert Islands. On July ninth, the aircraft carrier Lexington
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  Speaker 1: was sixty three planes accompanied by the four destroyers Perkins, Cushing, Lambson,
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  Speaker 1: and Drayton, sailed from Hawaii. They arrived in the Howland
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  Speaker 1: area on the thirteenth to lend their support to the search.
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  Speaker 1: For the next five days, the Lexington's planes logged one
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  Speaker 1: thousand five hundred ninety one hours looking north and west
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  Speaker 1: for the missing flyers. The plains covered an area of
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  Speaker 1: one hundred fifty one thousand, five hundred fifty six square
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  Speaker 1: miles without turning up a trace of the Electra or
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  Speaker 1: its pilot and navigator. Each ship was required to send
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  Speaker 1: out the same broadcast. We are using every possible means
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  Speaker 1: to establish contact with you. If you hear this broadcast,
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  Speaker 1: please come in on three thousand, one hundred five kilicycles.
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  Speaker 1: Use key if possible, otherwise voice transmission. If you hear
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  Speaker 1: this broadcast, turn carrier a steady key transmission for one
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  Speaker 1: minute so we continue. You in. Then turn carrier on
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  Speaker 1: and off four times, then listen for our acknowledgment. All
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  Speaker 1: attempts by the ships and planes were in vain. After
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  Speaker 1: exploring an area of one hundred sixty one thousand square miles,
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  Speaker 1: nothing was found of the Electra. The liefraft Amelia Earhart
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  Speaker 1: or Fred Noonan newspaper and radio stations across the country
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  Speaker 1: told the story of the disappearance and the search. Americans
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  Speaker 1: could not believe that Amelia Earhart was missing and would
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  Speaker 1: not believe that she was dead. Everything about the story
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  Speaker 1: was too sudden, too tragic. False signals and false reports
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  Speaker 1: now began to give spark to a despairing hope. On
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  Speaker 1: one of the ships, two lookouts and an officer of
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  Speaker 1: the deck had seen a distinct green flare on the
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  Speaker 1: northern horizon. It was known that Ae's rubber raft had
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  Speaker 1: emergency flares. The Ataska steamed north and east to investigate.
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  Speaker 1: At the same time, it asked AE on the radio
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  Speaker 1: if she were sending up flares and if she were
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  Speaker 1: to send up another one. A few seconds later, another
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  Speaker 1: green light appeared at a bearing of seventy five degrees.
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  Speaker 1: It was seen by twenty five witnesses. The Atasca now
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  Speaker 1: checked with other ships in the area to find out
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  Speaker 1: if they had seen the flares. The replies were all
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  Speaker 1: in the negative. The signals, they cautioned were probably heat lightning.
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  Speaker 1: Holland Island then reported flares to the northeast. The men
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  Speaker 1: on the island in immediately set flame to three drums
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  Speaker 1: of gasoline, hoping that the fire would serve as an
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  Speaker 1: unmistakable beacon. The Swan reported more lights, but thought that
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  Speaker 1: they were meteors Because of the position, appearance, and timing
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  Speaker 1: of the lights. The Atascas seriously thought that they were flares,
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  Speaker 1: but because of the other dissenting reports, it was now
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  Speaker 1: decided that the lights were merely a meteor shower. There
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  Speaker 1: were all kinds of radio reports. Amateur and professional radio
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  Speaker 1: operators from Honolulu, from up and down the West coast
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  Speaker 1: of Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Seattle, from across the
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  Speaker 1: Rocky Mountains in Cheyenne, and from as far inland as
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  Speaker 1: Cincinnati now reported hearing SOS signals from Amelia Earhart. If
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  Speaker 1: Amelia had landed on an island a reef and were
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  Speaker 1: using her radio, it was possible that her signals had
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  Speaker 1: skip waved back and forth and forward between ionosphere and
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  Speaker 1: ocean across thousands of miles. Yet if there were s
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  Speaker 1: O S signals, they were not heard in the Pacific
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  Speaker 1: by the official radio operators on any of the assigned
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  Speaker 1: Navy and Coast Guard ships or on any of the
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  Speaker 1: shore stations. From the Gilbert Islands through the Hawaiian Islands
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  Speaker 1: to San Francisco Radio on the West coast. In exploring
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  Speaker 1: the Gilbert Islands, the ATASCA sent a party ashore to
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  Speaker 1: Tarowa to confer with the senior British administrator of the islands.
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  Speaker 1: He had been informed of the Earhart search and was
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  Speaker 1: surprised that neither the station at Tarowa nor the one
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  Speaker 1: at Beru had been notified about the flight before it began.
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  Speaker 1: From lay both stations, although they heard no elector transmissions,
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  Speaker 1: could have helped for Amelia's course had lain just twenty
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  Speaker 1: miles south of Aurore, the most southern island of the
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  Speaker 1: Gilbert Group. The concentration of the search to the northwest
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  Speaker 1: had been based on a very careful analysis of the evidence.
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  Speaker 1: The weather conditions at the end of the flight were
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  Speaker 1: a clear blue sky to the south and east of Howland,
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  Speaker 1: but heavy cloud banks about fifty miles north and east
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  Speaker 1: of Holland. The Atasca had laid a heavy smoke screen
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  Speaker 1: for two hours on the morning of July second. It
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  Speaker 1: would have been visible to AE flying at an altitude
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  Speaker 1: of one thousand feet for more than forty miles from
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  Speaker 1: the south and east, but only twenty miles from the
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  Speaker 1: north and west. Evidently, judging from her reports, Amelia had
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  Speaker 1: been flying earlier during the night at a high altitude
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  Speaker 1: and above a thick overcast of clouds. Her signal strength,
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  Speaker 1: if direct and not the result of skip waves, indicated
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  Speaker 1: a maximum distance of two hundred fifty miles from Howland
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  Speaker 1: and not nearer to the island than thirty miles. Such
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  Speaker 1: was the conclusion of the Atasca. All available land areas
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  Speaker 1: were searched, and hundreds of thousands of miles of sea area.
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  Speaker 1: On July nineteenth, nineteen thirty sive, the Navy released the
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  Speaker 1: Ataska from any further search. The cutter's mission was completed.
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  Speaker 1: Back in California, George Palmer Putnam had called on Jaqueline Cochrane.
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  Speaker 1: He remembered Amelia's having told him about her friend's strange
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  Speaker 1: and marvelous powers at extrasensory perception. He was very excited
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  Speaker 1: when he came into miss Cochrane's Los Angeles apartment. He
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  Speaker 1: begged her to help him locate Amelia. Miss Cochrane told
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  Speaker 1: gp where the plane had gone down, that it had
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  Speaker 1: ditched in the ocean, that Fred Noonan had fractured his
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  Speaker 1: skull against the bulkhead, that Amelia was alive, and that
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  Speaker 1: the plane was floating on the water. She named the
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  Speaker 1: Atasca as a ship that was in the area, although
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  Speaker 1: she had never heard the name before, and she named
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  Speaker 1: a Japanese fishing vessel in the same location. She told
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  Speaker 1: GP to get ships and planes into the area immediately
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  Speaker 1: to begin the search. For two days, Jacqueline cockran and
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  Speaker 1: followed the course of the drifting electra. Ships and planes
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  Speaker 1: searched the area of her insight, but to no avail.
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  Speaker 1: Miss Cochrane was racked with disappointment. If her ability were
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  Speaker 1: worth anything, she reasoned, she should have been able to
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  Speaker 1: locate and save her friend. Giving up, Jacqueline Cochrane went
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  Speaker 1: to the cathedral in Los Angeles and lit candles for
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  Speaker 1: the repose of Amelia's soul. She never tried her powers
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  Speaker 1: at esp again. Amelia had unquestionably disappeared. At best, her
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  Speaker 1: attitude toward her radio plans for the flight was casual.
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  Speaker 1: At worst, A combination of poor coordination, faulty radio receiver,
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  Speaker 1: and imperfect navigation instruments had sent plane, pilot and navigator
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  Speaker 1: to a watery grave. The search over. Rumors now began
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  Speaker 1: to abound and multiply about what really happened to Amelia
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  Speaker 1: Earhart and her navigator, Fred Nuw. Each would cause Noonan's
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  Speaker 1: wife and Emilia's husband and mother untold hours of anguish
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  Speaker 1: and false hope. End of Section thirty five