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· Amelia Earhart's final flight
0:00 · - [Derek] As the sun rose on July 2nd, 1937, Amelia Earhart knew she was in trouble.
0:07 · Over the radio, she called, "We must be on you but cannot see you. Gas is running low.
0:13 · Been unable to reach you by radio. We are flying at 1,000 feet."
0:18 · Beneath her was water in every direction as far as the eye could see.
0:24 · She got herself into this predicament through a series of unfortunate events and bad decisions.
0:30 · Many of them could have been avoided with a better knowledge of physics. But even so,
0:36 · there was one thing she could have done in this moment, one switch she could have flipped
0:41 · that would likely have saved her life and changed history.
0:48 · This video is sponsored by KiwiCo. More about them at the end of the show.
0:54 · Amelia Earhart was vying to become the first female pilot to fly around the world. - I hope to accomplish something
1:00 · really scientifically worthwhile for aviation. - And she wasn't taking any shortcuts.
1:06 · Other successful circumnavigations had followed a northern route, mostly staying close to land.
1:13 · But Earhart's route would be the longest by following a path close to the Equator.
1:19 · This meant the last part of her journey was the hardest, crossing the full width of the Pacific Ocean.
1:26 · The starting point for this crossing was Lae, a city on the eastern side of New Guinea.
1:32 · At the time, it was one of the world's busiest airports, a hub of traffic from Asia and Australia.
1:39 · At 10:00 a.m. on a hot July day, Earhart piloted her Lockheed Electra down the runway
1:44 · and took off on what would be her final flight.
1:52 · The Pacific Ocean is huge. It's way bigger than the Atlantic. I mean, if you look at the globe from that side,
2:00 · you see almost no land. The problem was, in 1937,
2:05 · most planes could only fly a maximum of a few thousand kilometers, so Earhart removed everything unnecessary from her plane.
2:14 · She ripped out the insulation to reduce weight, but that made the engine noise so overwhelming
2:20 · she had to communicate with her navigator sitting right beside her using written notes.
2:26 · She packed almost nothing, telling her husband, "Extra clothes and extra food would have been extra weight and extra worry."
2:34 · She replaced the passenger seats with fuel tanks, effectively turning her plane into a flying gas can.
2:42 · But even so, the Electra's maximum range was between 6,600 and 7,200 kilometers in perfect weather.
2:50 · It could be just enough to reach Hawaii from Lae, or she might come up disastrously short.
2:58 · So Earhart needed a place to stop and refuel along the way. Now, it might seem like there's no land here,
3:05 · but if you zoom in, there is this tiny island halfway between Australia and Hawaii.
3:12 · Howland Island is just over two kilometers long and less than one kilometer wide.
3:18 · The US had claimed it as part of the Guano Islands Act of 1856. But in 1937, it was barely inhabited
3:25 · with just a handful of colonists. It would be an ideal location to refuel,
3:31 · if only it had a runway. Fortunately for Earhart, by the time of her around the world flight,
· Who was Amelia Earhart?
3:37 · she was already famous. In 1928, she became the first female passenger
3:43 · to cross the Atlantic by airplane. This made her an international celebrity. - [Announcer] She said she could, and she did it.
3:50 · (lively music) - [Derek] But she wanted to fly herself, saying,
3:57 · "Maybe someday I'll try it alone." So, in 1932, she attempted to pilot a plane solo across the Atlantic
4:05 · heading for Paris. She brought with her only a toothbrush, one container of soup and three cans of tomato juice.
4:12 · (thunder booms) But storms, ice, and dense fog battered her small plane.
4:20 · A seam in the exhaust manifold cracked and flames from the engine spewed out into the night.
4:26 · Gas leaked down her neck from a broken tank, and after 14 hours, she landed in a pasture in Northern Ireland.
4:33 · Her face was so covered in grease, a farmhand couldn't tell if she was a man or a woman.
4:39 · He asked if she had flown far. "From America," she replied. - I wish I could have done it faster.
4:46 · - [Derek] These adventures brought her into the orbits of powerful people, like the First Lady, Eleanor Roosevelt.
4:52 · - And Mrs. Roosevelt, won't you go for a ride tonight over Washington? It's really lovely from the air at night.
4:58 · - And using her new connections, she lobbied the president to hire her friend, Eugene Vidal,
5:03 · to head the Bureau of Commerce. Vidal had promised Earhart a runway on Howland Island,
5:09 · but red tape stalled progress only months before her planned takeoff. So Earhart wrote directly to President Roosevelt.
5:18 · She explained that the airstrip funds required immediate approval, writing, "Please forgive troublesome female flyer
5:24 · for whom this Howland Island project is key to world flight attempt." The president approved the project four days later,
5:32 · and three runways were soon cleared. So she had a place to land,
· The flight plan
5:39 · but how would she find this tiny speck of an island in a vast ocean?
5:46 · Well, flying with her in the Electra was her navigator, Fred Noonan, and he would calculate the flight plan.
5:53 · They knew the direction of Howland, so they could use the onboard compass to set their bearing toward it.
5:59 · They knew their air speed and could figure out their ground speed by subtracting or adding the wind,
6:05 · and then they could calculate how long it should take to reach the island. This method is known as dead reckoning.
6:13 · But they wouldn't aim directly at the island, because if they did that and they didn't see it at the prescribed time,
6:19 · they wouldn't know in which direction they were off. So instead, they intentionally picked a point
6:25 · either north or south of the island. Let's say they picked south. They estimated the trip would take 18 hours,
6:32 · so they would fly through day and night. And once they had traveled for the calculated length of time,
6:39 · they could confidently turn north and spot the island.
6:44 · Before takeoff, the ground crew estimated they would encounter a headwind of 24 kilometers per hour.
6:50 · But just 20 minutes after takeoff, Lae radioed Earhart to warn that the headwinds would be stronger.
6:56 · She didn't acknowledge their message. Knowing the correct wind speed was critical
7:02 · because it would affect how long it would take to reach the island. If it took longer, Earhart would have to turn later.
7:08 · So she couldn't rely on dead reckoning alone to reach Howland.
· How celestial navigation works
7:14 · As an independent check on their location, Noonan would take measurements of the sun, moon, and stars.
7:20 · This is known as celestial navigation. He had an almanac that listed 58 navigation stars
7:27 · and the point on Earth each one would be directly overhead for the day and time of his measurement.
7:34 · If they found themselves directly under a navigation star, well, then they would immediately know their position.
7:40 · But generally they would not be that lucky, so Noonan would measure the angle above the horizon
7:46 · to a navigation star and use that to work out how far away they were from the point on the Earth
7:53 · where that star would be directly overhead. So he could trace out a circle on the globe
7:58 · of possible locations, and then he would measure the angle to another navigation star
8:03 · and draw out a second circle. And now they must be at one of these two circle intersections.
8:11 · Normally the circles were so large that only one of the intersections would be a plausible position.
8:17 · That way they could continually update their location and adjust bearings as needed. But even with celestial navigation,
8:24 · errors could accumulate over long trips. Earlier in the journey, when Earhart crossed the Atlantic,
8:30 · they missed their intended airport in hazy conditions. Noonan's calculations were reasonable,
8:36 · but small errors put them off course. Luckily, in Africa, there were plenty of other places to land safely.
8:43 · The same could not be said for Howland.
8:48 · So, for the flight across the Pacific, Earhart commandeered three US Navy and Coast Guard ships.
8:54 · The Itasca would be stationed at Howland Island, the Ontario would be halfway along the route,
9:00 · and the Swan was positioned midway between Howland and Hawaii. The Itasca would send out smoke signals
9:07 · as Earhart approached to help her spot the island. But even more importantly,
9:12 · all ships were equipped with radio. Now, in 1937, radio was still fairly new tech.
· Invention of radio technology
9:20 · German physicist Heinrich Hertz discovered radio waves in the late 1880s. He excited electrons to oscillate back and forth
9:27 · in his transmitter, and a few meters away his receiver was a loop of wire with a small gap in it.
9:34 · When Hertz looked at it through a microscope in the dark, he saw faint sparks jumping across the gap.
9:41 · The sparks were strongest when the receiving loop was flat. If it was vertical, then no sparks were observed.
9:48 · This demonstrated that radio waves are transverse waves with electric and magnetic fields
9:53 · oscillating perpendicular to each other and perpendicular to the direction of the wave motion.
9:59 · When the receiving loop was aligned with the direction the wave was traveling, the changing magnetic field through the loop
10:05 · induced an EMF that created the spark. But if the loop was facing the transmitter,
10:11 · then there was no change in magnetic flux through the loop, and so no spark was observed.
10:18 · Now, Hertz couldn't see the future he had ushered in. He said, "I do not think
10:23 · that the wireless waves I have discovered will have any practical application."
10:28 · But within a few years, people started sending messages using radio. And by the 1920s, radio entertainment broadcast took off.
10:36 · Ships and planes routinely used radio to send Morse code, and some, including Earhart,
10:41 · could send and receive voice messages. In fact, Earhart had five radio antennas around the plane,
10:50 · each for a specific purpose. The largest antenna could be reeled in and out like a fishing line behind the plane.
10:57 · It was 76 meters long, which was necessary to efficiently send and receive Morse code
11:03 · via the 4 or 500 kilohertz radio waves used by ships and remote stations.
11:09 · Ideally, an antenna should be at least 1/4 of the wavelength of the radio wave it's transmitting or receiving.
11:15 · This improves the efficiency of the conversion from electrical energy to radiated electromagnetic energy.
11:22 · Earhart's trailing antenna was only around 1/8 of the wavelength. But it was connected to a high-power transmitter,
11:29 · so its signals could still be detected over 1,000 kilometers away. Next were two antennas for voice communications
11:36 · on higher frequencies. A transmitting V antenna on the roof of the plane and a receiving antenna along its belly.
11:44 · Higher frequencies were useful for two reasons. First, they require smaller antennas,
11:49 · which save weight and can be better accommodated on small sparse planes. And second, high frequency radio waves
11:56 · can travel long distances by bouncing off a layer of the atmosphere called the ionosphere.
· Radio waves explained
12:02 · Starting about 50 kilometers above Earth's surface, radiation from the Sun splits electrons off molecules
12:09 · forming a layer of ions and free electrons. Radio waves with certain frequencies
12:15 · interact with these free electrons and are effectively reflected back to Earth. It's as if they've bounced off
12:21 · a big wobbly mirror in the sky. This effect is called skipping
12:26 · and it scatters radio waves all over the place. These radio waves can then reflect off the ocean
12:32 · and back off the ionosphere, making multiple hops to travel thousands of kilometers.
12:39 · During the daytime, the intense radiation from the sun means the ionosphere starts lower in denser atmosphere.
12:45 · And because of this, lower frequency radio waves are more likely to be absorbed than reflected.
12:51 · So aviators would typically use the higher 6210 kilohertz to skip their signals during the day,
12:57 · and then the lower 3105 kilohertz at night once the bottom of the ionosphere had lifted
13:02 · into thinner air. Four hours after takeoff,
13:08 · Earhart radioed an update to Lae on her daytime frequency of 6210. She reported her altitude at 7,000 feet
13:16 · and speed at 140 knots before concluding with her typical sign-off, "Everything okay."
13:23 · But she never acknowledged calls from Lae about the headwind. They radioed again at 11:20 and 12:20,
13:30 · but never got a response from Earhart. In all likelihood, she never heard them.
13:36 · She did radio six hours into her flight to report stronger headwinds, but she makes no mention of Lae's earlier warnings.
13:44 · It's possible the receiving belly antenna was broken, fell off, or something in the receiving electronics wasn't working.
13:52 · But her ability to receive voice messages was clearly impaired.
13:58 · Nine hours into the flight, Earhart expected to come upon the Ontario. She listened for Morse code Ns on 400 kilohertz,
14:07 · but she heard nothing. The original plan was
14:13 · that the Ontario would wait for her to radio them to request that they start transmitting.
14:18 · But the day before takeoff, Earhart realized she had made a mistake. The Ontario had told her
14:25 · they wouldn't be able to receive any high frequency signals, which meant no voice communication.
14:31 · So she sent an urgent telegram asking the Ontario to transmit the Morse code Ns repeatedly
14:37 · 10 minutes after each hour. The purpose of the Morse code from the Ontario
14:44 · was actually to allow Amelia Earhart to make use of her two final antennas. So she had a loop antenna just like this one
14:52 · and a sense antenna. These were designed to allow her to locate the source of radio waves.
14:58 · This was the final and most critical way that Earhart planned to stay on course and locate Howland Island.
15:04 · She wrote, "I doubt if I'd try the flight to tiny Howland Island without it supplementing Fred Noonan's skill."
15:11 · Woo. Alright, so I have an antenna here
15:16 · and I'm aligning it vertically in this tree. How are we, how are we there? So the Ontario was sending out Morse code signals
15:23 · on their antenna, and here we have a transmitter tuned to about 3.6 megahertz.
15:29 · I'm gonna put on this blindfold and use the loop antenna to try to locate the transmitter.
15:37 · And because I already know where the transmitter is, we'll spin me around a few times to really disorient me. So, Clifford. Oh, sorry.
15:43 · - [Clifford] Oh, which way are you going? - Alright. Whoa, I'm a bit dizzy.
15:51 · So the radio waves are gonna be emitted in all directions radially away from the antenna,
15:57 · the electric field will be oscillating up and down, and the magnetic field will be oscillating back and forth.
16:04 · So if I hold up this loop like this sort of parallel to the direction
16:10 · that the waves are traveling, then the magnetic field is gonna be changing through the loop. And because of that,
16:16 · it's going to create an EMF and current and I can pick that up because I'm tuned to the right frequency here.
16:23 · So I got a fairly strong signal. Woo, it's very strong. But if I rotate the loop like that,
16:29 · well, now the magnetic field is oscillating back and forth but not changing through the loop itself
16:34 · because it's parallel to the loop. And so, in this orientation, I'm gonna get a null reading.
16:40 · If I turn it this way, there's a null. But if you turn it 90 degrees,
16:47 · now all the magnetic field is passing through this loop and so I can hear a maximum here.
16:53 · So this is what Earhart wanted to measure using her loop antenna to detect the repeated N Morse code from the Ontario.
17:00 · She would turn it until she found the null and then she would know the direction to the ship.
17:06 · Something that's interesting is, if I turn it away, we get another null because again
17:12 · there's no magnetic flux passing through this loop. Now, the first time she picked up the signal,
17:18 · she would probably be heading straight towards the ship or close enough, so she would know that it's roughly that way.
17:27 · But there's a chance that she's gone past it. And if you go past it, well, then you also get a null,
17:33 · but the ship is behind you, not in front of you. So that's where the sense antenna comes in. The sense antenna gives you a cardioid pickup pattern
17:41 · so it has a single null instead of two nulls, and so that allows you to determine whether it is in front or behind you.
17:49 · - [Clifford] If you walk a bit, you'll know if it's getting weaker or stronger. - Alright, I feel like I've picked the wrong direction.
17:57 · I'll try the sense antenna to see if I can figure it out. With the sense antenna,
18:03 · the only null points directly away from the transmitter, so it's easy to use the sense antenna
18:09 · to check which null is correct but then only use the loop when navigating because it gives a sharper null.
18:15 · I think using the sense antenna that the transmitter's right in front of me now.
18:22 · I'm looking for another null here. Oh, there's a null.
18:29 · - [Clifford] Give it a go. - There, there. Definitely louder, louder.
18:39 · Oh, it's funny 'cause you move a little bit and then you start hearing signal again.
18:46 · This does not feel like I'm walking in the right direction. - [Clifford] Well, that's either the right way to go or it's the wrong way to go.
18:51 · - Oh no. (Clifford laughs) - Trying to fly a plane and do this would be very hard,
18:56 · especially with the sound of that engine would have been roaring.
19:03 · Oh, I feel like it's getting loud. It's really loud here.
19:09 · It drops out right there. I mean, there's a null here. And I was convinced this was the right way.
19:16 · Yeah, this is a clear null right here. Whoa. Loud, loud, loud.
19:24 · I feel like I've gotta be close. (antenna humming)
19:30 · It's gotta be like right here. Whoa! Ah! (laughs)
19:37 · This worked amazingly well. I had no idea I was that close, that's impressive.
19:43 · - On the nail. - That's awesome. Now, aviators could have used where the signal is loudest
19:49 · and try to go in that direction, but it's actually easier to get a precise null,
19:55 · a point where the signal drops out. The loud section could range for quite a distance
20:01 · and so you wouldn't really know where it is, but the null is more precise so that's why they would look for the point where the signal drops out.
20:08 · If Earhart could hone in on the Ontario using her radio direction finding loop, that would ensure she was on course
20:14 · and eliminate any navigation errors that may have occurred to that point. But her telegram asking the Ontario
20:21 · to transmit 10 minutes after each hour didn't make it to the ship in time.
20:26 · And since Earhart couldn't talk to the Ontario, they never sent out any signals.
20:32 · So they passed like ships in the night.
20:37 · By this point, Earhart was around halfway to Howland. With no other landing strips within 1,000 kilometers,
20:44 · she would have to find the tiny island or return to Lae now. But multiple delays had already plagued her journey.
20:53 · In fact, this was not Earhart's first attempt to fly around the world. Earlier that year, in March of 1937,
21:00 · she had taken off from California for Hawaii, heading west instead of east.
21:06 · On board were Fred Noonan and another crew member, Harry Manning.
21:11 · As a Merchant Marine captain, he was an expert in radio, Morse code, and traditional navigation.
21:17 · He was also a pilot. The flight to Hawaii was successful
21:22 · thanks in part to Manning using the loop antenna to hone in on a radio beacon on the destination island.
21:31 · Three days later, the trio set off for Howland Island. But just as they were taking off,
21:36 · the plane drifted to the right. Earhart corrected by throttling back the left motor,
21:41 · but it was too much. The plane turned to the left and the right wing dipped down. Going up on one wheel, the right landing gear collapsed,
21:49 · then the left. The plane skidded out on its belly, spinning around to face the way it had come.
22:01 · Thankfully, no one was hurt, but the Electra took months to repair.
22:06 · And during that time, the seasonal winds shifted. So, on her next attempt, Earhart would have to fly east instead of west.
22:13 · And most importantly, Captain Manning left the crew. Officially, the press reported
22:19 · that he needed to return to the Merchant Marines, but rumors spread that he had lost confidence in Earhart,
22:25 · or that Earhart believed Noonan was a better navigator than Manning and she could operate the radio on her own.
22:32 · Whatever the case, when Earhart took off again three months later, she was accompanied only by Noonan.
22:40 · And now they had made it 80% of the way around the world. And in the dark of night,
· Earhart makes her critical decision
22:46 · Earhart had to make the critical decision whether to keep going or turn back.
22:51 · The lack of signal from the Ontario must have been concerning, but maybe they never got her telegram.
22:57 · And she knew that at Howland, the Itasca would be transmitting the letter A over Morse code every half hour,
23:04 · even if they didn't hear from her. And they could send and receive voice signals.
23:09 · They promised to be ready on a range of different frequencies. So she flew on.
23:17 · Around 6:15 a.m. local time, radiomen aboard the Itasca heard Earhart clearly.
23:23 · "Please take a bearing on 3105. We'll whistle into the mic. We are about 200 miles out."
23:29 · She then began to whistle. But the men were confused.
23:35 · They expected Earhart to take a bearing on them, not the other way around. And while they had told her
23:41 · that they had radio direction finding equipment, the signal needed to be lower frequency, between 270 and 550 kilohertz.
23:50 · Her voice frequency would skip off the ionosphere and reflect off the ocean, scattering in all directions.
23:57 · So there would be no way to find a null because the signal would be coming literally from everywhere.
24:04 · In the Electra, Earhart heard only static. By now, she must have been worried
24:11 · that they hadn't heard anything from either ship. Almost blind from the rising sun
24:16 · and deaf from the roar of the engines, Earhart twisted the radio dial, listening for Itasca's response. Nothing.
24:27 · She may have expected Howland to have a high frequency radio direction finder called an Adcock antenna array.
24:34 · These systems solve the skipping problem with five vertical antennas at the corners and center of a square.
24:40 · The direction of the radio wave can be calculated from the slightly different arrival times and signal strengths at each antenna.
24:48 · But these antennas were massive, so they were really only installed at larger airports.
· Communication failures
24:55 · Now, as it happens, there was a portable high frequency radio direction finder on Howland Island,
25:01 · but the operator reported that Earhart's transmissions didn't last long enough for him to take a bearing.
25:06 · And trying to conserve his low battery, he missed parts of the later transmissions.
25:13 · Around 6:45, Earhart again asked them to take a bearing on 3105 kilohertz and report back in a half hour.
25:20 · But a bearing taken now and reported back in a half hour would be at best outdated and at worst misleading.
25:28 · This confusion likely had to do with time zones. Earhart was using Greenwich Civil Time,
25:35 · but the Itasca set their clocks to their current position which was GCT -11.5 hours.
25:41 · And to make matters worse, Howland Island used Hawaii Time, which back in those days was GCT -10.5 hours.
25:50 · So the three parties attempting a rendezvous on a tiny island in the middle of the Pacific
25:55 · were on three different time zones. And crucially, Earhart's hours didn't even line up
26:01 · with the others. Earhart told the Itasca she would be using GCT, but somehow it never made it to the radiomen.
26:10 · So, when the Itasca heard Earhart's request, it was 6:45 a.m. But in the cockpit, it was 6:15 p.m.
26:17 · So Earhart likely didn't say "in a half hour" but "on the half hour," which for her was only 15 minutes away.
26:25 · And also it was a prearranged time that Earhart would be listening for them.
26:30 · Earhart was careful to set times she would transmit and times she would listen for the ship
26:35 · because she could only power one antenna at a time. And the ships used the same antenna
26:42 · for receiving and transmitting, so if they both broadcasted at the same time, they would miss each other's messages.
26:48 · If Earhart sent another message at a quarter after the hour, the Itasca blocked it with their own message.
26:54 · "Cannot take a bearing on 3105 very good. Please send on 500, or do you wish to take a bearing on us?
27:01 · Go ahead please." There was no response. But she couldn't transmit on 500 kilohertz anyway
27:08 · because she had removed the long trailing antenna that could transmit lower frequencies.
27:13 · Since it could only be used for Morse code, something neither she nor Noonan were particularly well versed in,
27:19 · she saw it as dead weight after Manning left. So, after the Hawaii crash, it was removed during repairs.
27:26 · So she had no way of sending radio waves that would allow the Itasca to take a bearing on her.
27:33 · But she could take a bearing on the Itasca using her loop antenna, if they sent her the right frequency.
27:41 · Before the trip, the Itasca had asked Earhart to specify the frequency they should broadcast. Earhart was unsure,
27:47 · so she consulted a radio expert in Lae and they recommended the Itasca send Morse code A,
27:53 · just repeated dot dashes, on the half hour at 750. But at that time it was typical to talk about radio waves
28:01 · using their wavelength, so the expert had meant 750 meters or 400 kilohertz.
28:07 · But Earhart made a terrible mistake relaying this plan to the Itasca. She requested the signal be sent on 7,500 kilohertz
28:16 · instead of 750 meters or 400 kilohertz. But she did explicitly say,
28:23 · "If frequencies mentioned unsuitable, inform me." But no one ever corrected her.
· "Gas is running low"
28:31 · At 7:42 a.m., Earhart's voice came through so loud men even went above deck to see if they could hear a motor
28:39 · or spot the plane. She said, "We must be on you but cannot see you.
28:45 · But gas is running low. Been unable to reach you by radio. We are flying at 1,000 feet."
28:51 · On Howland, the high frequency radio direction finder was so low on battery the radiomen didn't even hear Earhart's message,
28:58 · much less take a bearing on it. 10 minutes later, Earhart said, "We are circling but cannot hear you.
29:05 · Go ahead on 7,500." The Itasca immediately sent As on 7,500 kilohertz.
29:12 · In the Electra, Earhart heard the stutter stop of As filling the cabin. The relief of finally hearing something
29:20 · must have been overwhelming. She quickly turned her radio direction finding loop to locate the null,
29:26 · but the signal never dropped out. The frequency was too high, so the radio waves from the Itasca were reflecting
29:33 · and arriving from different directions. Joseph Gurr, a radio mechanic who worked on Earhart's plane,
29:39 · later said that they knew there were limitations to high frequencies which had a tendency to skip and bend,
29:45 · creating a false radio direction bearing. Without a minimum, she was still lost.
29:53 · Earhart frantically called Itasca. "We received your signals but unable to get a minimum.
29:59 · Please take a bearing on us and answer with voice." Itasca attempted to explain the problem.
30:05 · "Your signals received okay. It is impractical to take a bearing on your voice." No response. Without the belly antenna,
30:12 · she probably never heard any of their communications. And it wouldn't have mattered if the Itasca had sent low frequency signals
30:20 · because Earhart's loop was tuned to pick up 7,500 kilohertz.
30:27 · So, why didn't the Itasca correct the frequency she suggested? Commander Thompson of the Itasca
30:33 · was aware of her radio direction finding limits. He had received messages both from Earhart's husband, George Putnam,
30:40 · and the Coast Guard's San Francisco division stating Earhart could only take bearings on frequencies between 200 and 1,500 kilohertz.
30:49 · But he either thought Earhart knew more about her radio equipment, or that it wasn't his place to make suggestions
30:55 · and take more responsibility for her flight. When she asked the Itasca to tell her if these frequencies weren't suitable,
31:02 · she could have been referring to the ship's capabilities rather than her own. The Itasca said they'd be ready
31:07 · on the frequencies she wanted and more instead of giving specific suggestions.
31:14 · San Francisco's Coast Guard division tried to get Commander Thompson to take more responsibility for Earhart's radio communications
31:21 · by suggesting they directly tell Earhart which frequencies to use. But Thompson essentially told them to butt out.
31:28 · The Itasca communicated directly with Earhart from then on.
31:34 · The radiomen continued to try to reach Earhart, and just before 9:00 a.m., Earhart's voice suddenly burst through again.
· Her desperate final message
31:41 · "We are on the line 157-337. We will repeat this on 6,210 kilohertz.
31:48 · We are running on line north and south." Her voice was desperate.
31:53 · It sounded as if she was about to burst into tears or scream. This was the last message the Itasca heard.
32:02 · There are a number of conspiracy theories about what happened to Earhart after that, but the evidence seems clear.
32:09 · She ran out of fuel somewhere over the Pacific and crashed into the sea.
32:14 · Two hours after her last message, the Itasca left Howland to search north and west for the Electra.
32:21 · Other Navy and Coast Guard ships and planes joined the search for over two weeks.
32:26 · To that point in US history, it was the most intensive and expensive search and rescue operation,
32:33 · costing around $4 million, which is almost 100 million in today's money.
32:40 · No one has ever found a trace of Noonan, Earhart, or her Electra.
32:46 · All of these mistakes could have been resolved if Earhart had two-way communication, but her belly antenna somehow malfunctioned.
32:54 · Some theories suggest it fell off during takeoff in New Guinea, but without physical evidence, it's impossible to say.
· The small detail that could have saved her
33:01 · But Earhart did confirm receiving signals on her loop antenna. Her loop could only direction find with lower frequencies,
33:09 · but it could receive signals on a wide range. If she had switched to using the loop
33:14 · for all communications, she could have received Itasca's voice messages
33:20 · and then the Itasca could have requested she take a bearing on a lower frequency, which would have guided her safely to Howland Island.
33:31 · When I began researching this video, I expected to find that Amelia Earhart's demise was inevitable.
33:37 · That what she was trying to do was just so difficult that nothing could have saved her.
33:43 · But instead, I found the opposite. There were at least a half dozen things that if they went differently
33:49 · would have allowed her to land safely. So to me, this story comes down to two things.
33:55 · Knowledge and responsibility. Earhart lacked knowledge of radio systems,
34:00 · which would've allowed her to specify the right direction finding frequency. But Commander Thompson of the Itasca had that knowledge.
34:08 · He knew her direction finding limits, but he didn't take on the responsibility to correct her.
34:14 · When attempting any challenging endeavor, you need someone with the right knowledge who will also take responsibility for getting things right.
34:23 · That's what you need to battle the inherent chaos and disorder of the universe.
34:29 · Otherwise, what you get is disaster.
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