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Musings Report 2019-33 8-17-19 Is The Mystery of Amelia Earhart's Last Flight About to be Solved?
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For those who are new to the Musings reports: they are basically a glimpse into my notebook, the unfiltered swamp where I organize future themes, sort through the dozens of stories and links submitted by readers, refine my own research and start connecting dots which appear later in the blog or in my books. As always, I hope the Musings spark new appraisals and insights. Thank you for supporting the site and for inviting me into your circle of correspondents.
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Is The Mystery of Amelia Earhart's Last Flight About to be Solved?
Amelia Earhart was the most famous aviatrix of her era, an American aviation pioneer and author who was the first female aviator to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean (1932). She received the United States Distinguished Flying Cross for this accomplishment. In August 1928, Earhart had become the first woman to fly solo across the North American continent and back.
Shortly before her 40th birthday in July 1937, she set off to circle the globe, selecting Fred Noonan as her navigator. The first attempt failed due to mechanical issues, and the second attempt ended when her Lockheed Electra aircraft disappeared on a long (2,556 miles) leg across the south Pacific, with the intended destination being a small, remote island (Howland Island).
It appears her radio equipment failed; she could transmit voice communications but couldn't detect the homing beacon sent by a US Navy ship stationed off Howland Island, or hear the ship's radio operators' voice responses.
As one of the world's most famous mysteries, Earhart's disappearance has spawned a great many theories, some fanciful and others based on speculations based on existing evidence.
Many experts believe the most likely outcome was Earhart's Electra ran out of gas while she and Noonan searched in vain for low, flat Howland Island while flying through scattered clouds. (Howland was about 6 miles off from its charted position.) In this scenario, her Electra likely lies on the floor of the Pacific somewhere in the vicinity of Howland Island--a real needle in a haystack given the enormous size of the search area, the great depths (17,000 feet) and the relatively small size of the airplane.
One group (TIGHAR) has focused considerable effort on the theory that Earhart turned south on her last reported heading and crash-landed on Gardner Island, several hundred miles from Howland Island. Gardner Island's shallow lagoon was viewed at the time as being suitable for a crash-landing.
A US Navy search plane did fly over Gardner Island a week after her disappearance and reported: "signs of recent habitation were clearly visible but repeated circling and zooming failed to elicit any answering wave from possible inhabitants and it was finally taken for granted that none were there."
Unbeknownst to the pilots, the island had been uninhabited for 40 years. Unsurprisingly, this strongly suggests Earhart and Noonan might have made it to Gardner Island, survived the crash landing and perished for lack of fresh water and food on the small desert island.
Fast-forward to the 21st century, when forensic photographic evidence has turned up a tiny clue in a photograph taken of the lagoon by a British party in October 1937, not long after the July disappearance of Earhart. A barely visible object sticking out of the water of the lagoon (The Bevington Object) could be the landing gear of a Lockheed Electra.
The British visitors reported walking around the island and finding no evidence of habitation or the aircraft, and subsequent searches turned up intriguing but ambiguous clues: bones which have been analyzed as possibly European in origin, male bones according to some reports, possible female according to others.
Now famed explorer Robert Ballard is conducting the first high-tech search of the waters surrounding the island, on the theory that the tides slowly pulled the Electra beyond the reef, where it subsequently slipped down the steep slope of the volcanic island into the depths, possibly as deep at 3,000 feet. The search is complicated by the rough terrain of the slope, the depth and the size of the search area.
These articles present the case for Ballard's search. The search is widely considered a definitive effort to find Earhart’s aircraft: if Ballard's search turns up nothing, the case for a Gardner Island landing is effectively closed, for there should be something left of the Electra even if tides pulled it into deeper waters.
Finding Amelia Earhart’s Plane Seemed Impossible. Then Came a Startling Clue. (NY Times)
The Bevington Object: Earhart Project Research Bulletin #82
Amelia Earhart (Wikipedia entry)
Even if you have no interest in this mystery, the story has a number of points worth pondering. One is the primitive nature of the equipment and charts of the time; the precise configuration of the Electra's radio equipment and antennae is still ambiguous, and both Howland and Gardner islands were incorrectly drawn on the charts. Distress signals that could have been sent from Earhart’s aircraft were detected at the time, but the messages were faint and garbled. Some were clearly hoaxes but others are viewed as potentially authentic. The sketchy nature of these radio signals reflects a lack of planning for emergencies (i.e. carrying a redundant emergency radio) and the deficiencies of the era's radio technology.
Second, how could such an experienced aviator leave on the most hazardous leg of her journey with such haphazard attention to the radio equipment that they were depending on to help them the find a speck of land in the vast Pacific? Various accounts suggest time pressure and exhaustion may have played a part, both entirely understandable. But why didn't such a famous aviator not have a better support staff, even in remote New Guinea? Viewed from a distance, the poor planning and errors of judgment (leaving behind critical radio equipment to lighten the aircraft, etc.) greatly reduced the probability of success. Everything had to work exactly as planned or the flight would be doomed.
Third, it's impossible not to wonder what might have happened had the search pilots and their commanding officers known that Gardner Island was uninhabited; it's inconceivable that whatever "signs of recent habitation" the pilots observed would not have triggered an immediate search of the island had it been known the island had no settlement.
Even the best-planned and executed actions can run aground on the shoals of reality, and so one take-away is it behooves us all to plan for emergencies and failures rather than count on everything going perfectly despite inherently difficult conditions.
Could the mystery be solved in the next few months? Finding parts of the Electra would solve the mystery, finding nothing will at least remove the Gardner island crash-landing from the list of possibilities.
Best Thing That Happened To Me This Week
A rugged 3-mile ascent to a ridge overlooking Marin with buddy A.T. on a very hot day (a 6 mile round-trip hike). Suggestion: always pack more water than you think you'll need; we ran out of water despite carrying what we thought would be sufficient for two adults and medium-sized Lab dog.
Musings on the Economy: A Volatile, Wobbling Market
As the saying goes, a market topping is not an event, it's a process. There are a handful of historically useful characteristics of topping markets:
1. Declining volume / liquidity
2. Increasing volatility--major swings up and down that increase in amplitude and frequency
3. Inability to break decisively above previous resistance levels.
We see all these elements in the S&P 500 over the past few years. A healthy, stable advance in 2017 led to a manic blow-off top that crashed in February of 2018, setting off a period of high volatility.
This set up another stable advance that was shorter than the previous advance, and also steeper. This led to the multi-month period of instability that concluded in a panic crash in December 2018/
Since then, advances have been shorter and steeper, suggesting a more volatile era. Three advances to new highs have all dropped back to (or below) the highs of January 2018. In effect, the market has wobbled around for 18 months, becoming more volatile with every swing up or down.
Notice how the duration of each advance is getting shorter even as each advance is steeper, i.e. more frenzied.
What happens next? No one knows, but a third period of heightened volatility shouldn't surprise us.
From Left Field
Are we really more stressed than ever before? In an essay based on her recent book Stress-Proof, Mithu Storoni explains how modern life may have amplified our anxiety, and the best ways to reduce its impact on our bodies and minds.
Why liberals now believe in conspiracies--insightful....
Apparently world-savers don't need to worry about the little people: Green Leader Elizabeth May's plan to 'transition' the entire oil and gas industry's workforce, without consulting them, is frightening.
The world's first solar road has turned out to be a colossal failure that's falling apart and doesn't generate enough energy-- it's hard to engineer and scale things that look good as concepts in the real world....
It’s 2016 All Over Again--election commentary...
The Campaign Press: Members of the 10 Percent, Reporting for the One Percent: Media companies run by the country’s richest people can’t help but project the mindset of their owners. -- spot-on....
When Black Voters Exited Left: What African Americans lost by aligning with the Democratic Party-- surprising to find this commentary in The Atlantic....
As Hong Kong fights for its life, an embarrassed China has only violence to offer--and repression, surveillance, etc....
Treasury is about to flood the market with debt to fund U.S.’s $1 trillion deficit — and that is a concern
The banana is one step closer to disappearing: A fungus that devastates banana plants has now arrived in Latin America, the Colombian government confirms.-- monoculture crops are at risk....
Chapwood Index: An apples to apples inflation index for US cities: average over the past 5 years is between 8% and 13% annually....
How the Chapwood Index is calculated
"Old age is like everything else. To make a success of it, you've got to start young." Theodore Roosevelt
Thanks for reading--
charles |
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