I’ve already used that title, so this is junior. I’ve got plenty of stuff to post but not enough time to do them justice, and I didn’t want to let the day slip past on this hugely, unquestionably momentous date, and so I’ll link to a post from years back. 84 years ago today, Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan failed to make their rendezvous at Howland Island on their circumnavigation by air, making their last transmission early in the morning without being seen again, and so, I link you to a little bit of a breakdown on their last hours. The purpose of that post was to rebut the idea that they actually made it to Gardner/Nikumaroro Island, so it’s not a complete account of their final flight nor the various proposals of what went wrong, but it still gives some details and ideas regarding that. if you have the interest, there are several books, and if you have the desire for ridiculous, speculative nonsense, there are dozens more. Long story short: too little info is solid, with a lot of variables that cannot be calculated, but the informed consensus (based on the only dependable facts) is, they went down northwest of Howland Island. The water’s extremely deep throughout the entire area, so the chances of locating the plane on the ocean bottom are infinitesimal, at least until our technology expands quite a bit beyond what it is now.
And as I said therein, this really isn’t a mystery: it was a dangerous flight with too little preparation, with a very small region where anyone at all might have been able to see something, so missing this little spot isn’t surprising in any way. But it lives on in our culture.
Anyway, back soon with topical content.