New Guinea - Amelia Earhart & Fred Noonan, en route to Howland Island, 2 July 1937

[cenazoic]

You can decide for yourself on those.

Oh c’mon, where’s the fun in that?

Seriously though, yes, I’ve read that the object is at 5000 meters. Again bloviating here, but doesn’t it seem likely that if the plane crashed, the wings would have been torn off at some point?

I dunno - pareidolia is real. It looks exactly like a plane, which makes me wonder whether it is.

 

[PrairieWind]

Oh c’mon, where’s the fun in that?

Seriously though, yes, I’ve read that the object is at 5000 meters. Again bloviating here, but doesn’t it seem likely that if the plane crashed, the wings would have been torn off at some point?

I dunno - pareidolia is real. It looks exactly like a plane, which makes me wonder whether it is.

LOL. I tend to actually discount the reports of the radio messages from Amelia after her disappearance. I don't say they are completely impossible, but I am very skeptical.

I think it is possible she could have brought the plane down in the water in one piece. It would have been open ocean, but I don't know of any indication of rough seas. That is hard to answer. Would it have sank to those depths in one piece? Again, I have no idea. To find that small plane, in all that vast ocean at those depths would be beyond needle in haystack stuff. I have always thought most likely scenario is that she indeed ran out of fuel looking for Howland and went into the water somewhere out there. Given that we don't know where, and the vastness of the ocean, I figured her plane would never be found. Not even worth looking for out there really.

 

[PrairieWind]

Oh c’mon, where’s the fun in that?

Seriously though, yes, I’ve read that the object is at 5000 meters. Again bloviating here, but doesn’t it seem likely that if the plane crashed, the wings would have been torn off at some point?

I dunno - pareidolia is real. It looks exactly like a plane, which makes me wonder whether it is.

LOL. I tend to actually discount the reports of the radio messages from Amelia after her disappearance. I don't say they are completely impossible, but I am very skeptical.

I think it is possible she could have brought the plane down in the water in one piece. It would have been open ocean, but I don't know of any indication of rough seas. That is hard to answer. Would it have sank to those depths in one piece? Again, I have no idea. To find that small plane, in all that vast ocean at those depths would be beyond needle in haystack stuff. I have always thought most likely scenario is that she indeed ran out of fuel looking for Howland and went into the water somewhere out there. Given that we don't know where, and the vastness of the ocean, I figured her plane would never be found. Not even worth looking for out there really.

 

[StarryStarryNight]

Amelia Earhart’s aircraft believed to be found in deep ocean, could provide clues in her disappearance

A sonar image of the plane was captured in a part of the Pacific ocean west of where Earhart’s projected landing point is believed to be.

www.wbtv.com

I thought this article was interesting. Y’all might have seen it before but it’s new to me.
It said the exploration team was looking in an area that had never been looked at before. They based it on a former NASA scientist back in 2010 that speculated Noonan may have calculated their navigation wrong because he didn’t factor in that they had crossed the international dateline.
The exploration team recalculated based on that so their search was about 60+ miles away from any previous search.
It would be great if they found the plane but right now, it‘s probably a long shot. The image may look like an image of an airplane but it‘s just as likely it’s a on odd underwater formation of some sort.
As far as the strange radio transmissions some folks claimed to have heard for a couple of days…that is strange to me that nobody between Howland and the Midwest US heard them.
Anyway…it’s all very interesting and I’ll be paying attention.

 

[Richard]

Aircraft long range navigators always use Zulu Time, aka Coordinated Universal Time (Greenwich Mean Time) in all calculations regardless of where in the world the plane happens to be. The International Date line would have no effect on Fred Noonan's Celestial Navigation calculations.

 

[Betty P]

Aircraft long range navigators always use Zulu Time, aka Coordinated Universal Time (Greenwich Mean Time) in all calculations regardless of where in the world the plane happens to be. The International Date line would have no effect on Fred Noonan's Celestial Navigation calculations.

What do you think of this latest information?

 

[Quoththeraven]

https://weather.com/news/trending/video/amelia-earharts-plane-found-new-imagery-may-solve-mystery

Thanks to sonar technology, a potential breakthrough in Amelia Earhart’s disappearance may have been found. Crews captured imagery of what they believe to be the crashed remnants from her fateful flight.

 

[Richard]

What do you think of this latest information?

There are a lot of different possible scenarios in regard to the last flight of Amelia and Fred. Unfortunately, because of Amelia's poor radio communications skills and practices, we do not know where she actually was and what her intentions were.

It is clear that she was not receiving any transmissions from Itasca or any other stations, but that her own transmitter was working well. She should have been more clear in her position reporting and in declaring her intentions.

Her best and most likely decision, after NOT finding Howland Island or Itasca would have been to fly to the west, hoping to find a suitable alternate landing/ditching area in the Gilbert Islands. Flying around in circles until she ran out of gas would not have been her choice.

What this fuzzy sonar blip is could be anyone's guess. A LOT of aircraft went down in the Pacific during World War II, and some were very much like Amelia's Lockheed 10.

 

[Richard]

The Lockheed Electra design was a very successful one which was used in follow-on models as both a civil air transport and in various forms for military purposes. Many different countries purchased Lockheed aircraft, including Japan. The Japanese Air Force even produced their own variation of the plane. Here are some photos of aircraft similar to Amelia's aircraft:


Lockheed 10A Civilian transport.


Lockheed 14 Hudson (aka AT18, A-28 and A-29) patrol plane in British service WW II.


Lockheed model 14 Super Electra


US Navy Lockheed 18-08 Lodestar transport.


US Navy PV-1 Ventura Patrol Plane

 

[Richard]

112 Super Electras would be built by Lockheed and sold to Japan, but licensed manufacturing by Japanese companies would expand on this number.

119 were built under license in the country by the Tachikawa Aircraft Company. While they would be Super Electras by design, the planes would be designated Tachikawa Type LO Transport Aircraft (Thelma). Then, another 121 would be built by Kawasaki Aircraft Company under the designation Kawasaki Type 1 cargo transporter. However, this aircraft's fuselage was lengthened by 1.4 m (4 ft 7 in) to enable the fitting of larger cargo doors.

LINK:

The Story Of The Lockheed Model 14 Super Electra

simpleflying.com

 

[PrairieWind]

There are a lot of different possible scenarios in regard to the last flight of Amelia and Fred. Unfortunately, because of Amelia's poor radio communications skills and practices, we do not know where she actually was and what her intentions were.

It is clear that she was not receiving any transmissions from Itasca or any other stations, but that her own transmitter was working well. She should have been more clear in her position reporting and in declaring her intentions.

Her best and most likely decision, after NOT finding Howland Island or Itasca would have been to fly to the west, hoping to find a suitable alternate landing/ditching area in the Gilbert Islands. Flying around in circles until she ran out of gas would not have been her choice.

What this fuzzy sonar blip is could be anyone's guess. A LOT of aircraft went down in the Pacific during World War II, and some were very much like Amelia's Lockheed 10.

I'd be interested to know how many aircraft were lost in the area of Howland Island though. It can't be all that many, since it isn't easy to get to. There were no battles fought there, I don't think it was really used as a base at all.

 

[Richard]

Japanese Missions against Howland Island and Kamakaiwi Airfield
December 8 - ?, 1941

December 8, 1941
(IJN) Fourteen twin-engined bombers bomb Howland Island and damaged the three airstrips. Killed on the ground are two colonists: Richard "Dicky" Kanani Whaley, and Joseph Kealoha Keliʻhananui. The raid came one day after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and damaged the three airstrips of Kamakaiwi Field.
December 10, 1941
(IJN) A Japanese submarine shelled what was left of the colony's few buildings into ruins.
December 1941
A single bomber returned twice during the following weeks and dropped more bombs on the rubble of tiny Itasca town.

LINK:

Pacific Wrecks

Photo archive of images from the Pacific during World War II and the Korean War.

pacificwrecks.com

 

[PrairieWind]

LINK:

Pacific Wrecks

Photo archive of images from the Pacific during World War II and the Korean War.

pacificwrecks.com

Richard, you proved me wrong. Good information. I was unaware of this. So there very well could be lots of other twin engine aircraft lost in the vicinity.

 

[Richard]

It was 87 years ago that Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan went missing on a round - the - world flight in a Lockheed Electra 10E aircraft.

There are numerous theories as to what happened to them on 2 July 1937, and possibly in the days following.

Low fuel was definitely a factor of concern, as it is with any flight. But even if they ran out of fuel while airborne, Amelia could/would have been capable of landing the plane safely on the water, or on/near an available island or lagoon. A fixed wing airplane doesn't just fall out of the sky like a rock, it glides down, and a part of all flight training is how to do an engine out emergency landing or ditching (water landing).

 

[Alleykins]

It was 87 years ago that Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan went missing on a round - the - world flight in a Lockheed Electra 10E aircraft.

There are numerous theories as to what happened to them on 2 July 1937, and possibly in the days following.

Low fuel was definitely a factor of concern, as it is with any flight. But even if they ran out of fuel while airborne, Amelia could/would have been capable of landing the plane safely on the water, or on/near an available island or lagoon. A fixed wing airplane doesn't just fall out of the sky like a rock, it glides down, and a part of all flight training is how to do an engine out emergency landing or ditching (water landing).

That's interesting. I didn't know that about fixed wing airplanes.
Thanks for sharing.

 

[nhmemorymaker]

It was 87 years ago that Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan went missing on a round - the - world flight in a Lockheed Electra 10E aircraft.

There are numerous theories as to what happened to them on 2 July 1937, and possibly in the days following.

Low fuel was definitely a factor of concern, as it is with any flight. But even if they ran out of fuel while airborne, Amelia could/would have been capable of landing the plane safely on the water, or on/near an available island or lagoon. A fixed wing airplane doesn't just fall out of the sky like a rock, it glides down, and a part of all flight training is how to do an engine out emergency landing or ditching (water landing).

One of the world's longest lasting mysteries....

 

[PrairieWind]

I think it most likely she went into the sea after running out of fuel. But I really doubt she would have been able to make a smooth open water landing like Captain Scully in his US Air jet. She would have been landing in the open ocean with larger swells and waves and her small plane had more forward wings and prop engines that may have had the plane flip nose down when she hit the water. She had elected to leave a life raft off her plane to save weight. The plane would have sank in minutes leaving them no real means of rescue I am afraid.

 

[Sweetluv]

The only thing is, I'm surprised no parts of the plane have ever washed ashore or have surfaced.

 

[Sweetluv]

That's if it broke apart..

 

[PrairieWind]

The only thing is, I'm surprised no parts of the plane have ever washed ashore or have surfaced.

I'm not really surprised. This was a very small plane that crashed in the vast Pacific Ocean. Most of the plane would have just sank. Some debris may have floated but where would it wash up and when? years later and 1000s of miles away. A world war happened a few years later, so any debris would have just been seen as war related.