East to the Dawn (83 page)

According to navy records, a final weather report to Fred Noonan showed that the winds had abated; they were estimated to be between twelve and eighteen miles per hour beginning east-southeast and changing to east-northeast, with squalls to be detoured. It seemed as if the weather was improving. The radio must have been fixed—they wouldn't have dared take off otherwise.

The Electra, loaded to the maximum—with 1,100 gallons of gasoline and 75 gallons of oil—began its roll down the runway at precisely zero Greenwich time, ten A.M. Lae time. As the plane reached the road that crossed the unpaved runway near the seaward end, it bounced into the air, went over the drop-off and then flew so low over the water that the propellers threw up spray, according to observers. The flight to Howland Island was 2,556 miles, or 2,201 nautical miles, a very long way, but no one—certainly not Fred's peers—expected that Fred would have any trouble finding Howland.

A cable went out to the
Herald Tribune
that she had finally taken off. The world began waiting.

The fact that they left at zero Greenwich time made it easier for Fred to work out their position from the celestial sights, for now his watch time and GMTwere the same. For everyone else waiting to hear from the
plane—notably the navy and the coast guard—it made it easier to follow the Electra's progress: for even though the Electra would be crossing the 180th meridian, the international date line, they didn't have to make allowances for all the time changes and the date change as well.

The chart of the area then in use, #1198, published at the Hydrographic Office within the navy, contrary to assertions that it showed Howland Island wrongly placed, in fact was reasonably accurate. According to the last chart correction made by the U.S. Government dating from 1995, the coordinates to the day beacon on the west side of Howland are: latitude, 0 degrees 48 minutes, 19 seconds north; longitude, 176 degrees 37 minutes west. The chart Fred was using showed Howland within half a mile of those coordinates. When, years later, emulating Amelia's world flight, Anne Pellegreno used the latitude and longitude coordinates that Fred Noonan had used for Howland, she found they were correct.

Seven hours, 20 minutes into the flight, Lae received a report from the plane that their position was 4 degrees 33 minutes south, 159 degrees 7 minutes east. That meant they were on course flying east-northeast, coming up on the equator but still south of it by some 277 miles, with 1,390 nautical miles to go before they would reach Howland. But it also meant that they had covered, by Fred's computations, only 785 miles in 7 hours, 20 minutes and were therefore making a ground speed of only 107 knots (nautical miles) per hour. Flying at that rate, it would take them another thirteen hours to reach Howland. That meant slightly over twenty-one hours in the air. That longitude reading meant that the headwinds they were encountering were stronger than had been predicted. The flight from Oakland to Hawaii was only some hundred miles shorter, and they had made that flight in 15 hours, 47 minutes. This was going to be different.

Sunrise at Howland was at 1745 GMT. If the headwinds stayed steady on the nose, they would get there about two and a quarter hours after sunrise. Flying into the sun, all Fred had to figure was longitude: he knew they were heading in the right direction—he just didn't know how far they had gone, for the effect of wind, often variable on a plane over water, is hard to determine.

The
Itasca,
250 feet long, painted white, was lying off the northeastern side of Howland Island. It was sending up a plume of black smoke to serve as a signal for the fliers that could be seen for miles. The low-lying island, two miles long by half a mile wide, was marked by a lighthouse erected by the U.S. Lighthouse Service. At sea level the lighthouse could be seen ten miles away. Mariners figure that they are two miles from a shore when
they can see a building's windows, but for aviators, visibility at sea changes in the blink of an eye. An island can disappear under a bank of clouds.

Visibility at Howland Island was good that morning, according to the
Itasca
—the sky was clear to the south and east, the direction from which Amelia was approaching, although it was somewhat overcast about twenty miles to the northwest. There was an east-northeast wind ranging between fourteen and thirty miles per hour.

And so began the tragic last act. Amelia was supposed to contact the
Itasca
at fifteen minutes before and after the hour. They were supposed to send her a steady stream of weather information and position fixes.

Fourteen hours and 15 minutes into the flight, the
Itasca
reported that they had recognized an Earhart voice message, but that it wasn't clear except for the words “Cloudy weather cloudy.” One hour later, 15 hours and 15 minutes into the flight, the
Itasca
heard Amelia asking them to broadcast on 3105 kilocycles on the hour and half hour. She reported it was overcast. Sixteen hours and 24 minutes into the flight, the
Itasca
reported that they could hear Amelia but that her voice signals were “unreadable” with five people listening. Twenty minutes later she broadcast again, and this time her message was clear: she wanted bearings on 3105 frequency and said she would whistle into the microphone. A few minutes later she called again. “About 200 miles out,” the
Itasca
radiomen heard, and she whistled briefly into the microphone. A half hour later, back on the agreed-upon schedule, 17 hours and 15 minutes into the flight, Amelia was back on the radio:

During this time the
Itasca
had been transmitting weather reports to Amelia on the hour and half hour on 3105 kilocycles, as she had requested. She had received none of their transmissions.

It was 17:45 GMT; 17 hours, 45 minutes into the flight: sunrise at Howland Island. There was now enough light so that Amelia and Fred would have been looking to see the island, as Amelia's next transmission, nineteen hours into the flight, makes clear:

Nineteen hours 33 minutes into the night—for the first and only time—Amelia received a transmission.

Earhart calling
Itasca
we received your signals but unable to get minimum please take bearings on us and answer on 3105 kilocycles.

The
Itasca
then reported that they heard long dashes for a brief period but that the high-frequency direction finder could not cut her in on 3105 kilocycles.

Twenty hours and 14 minutes into the flight, Amelia radioed the
Itasca
the following message:

Fred was good at estimating distance covered, he thought he knew how far east they had traveled, and he felt secure using his octant, looking up the Greenwich Hour Angle of a star, then figuring their position from it. “This was a trick that Noonan had used in Pan American navigation many a time. He would make the longitude by time and then he would start looking north and south for the island objective,” recalled Richard Black. But what if during the night the winds had increased, slowing them down more than he expected, and the skies had been too overcast to get a good star fix? As Amelia mentioned twice, it was cloudy. They were, Fred had to have thought, far enough east, so he had started looking north and south for Howland. They had gone the required distance, he would have figured: that was the significance of the communication that they were running north and south. To the southeast, just thirty miles from Howland, was Baker Island. Other than that, there was nothing for hundreds of miles.

The
Itasca
waited in disbelief. At 21:45 GMT—an hour and a half after Amelia's last transmission—they reported Amelia's nonarrival to fleet
headquarters, at the same time giving the weather: “Sea smooth visibility nine ceiling unlimited.”

Ceiling unlimited. And yet Amelia and Fred hadn't seen the plume of smoke, the boat, or the island.

They had never even been close.

23

Later

•••• Prior to her Hawaii—Oakland flight two years before, Amelia had gone over the procedures for landing a land plane in the ocean with Paul Mantz so she knew it could be done successfully. As she had noted at the time, “a craft of that type has been known to float for eight days before the crew were rescued.” For that solo overwater flight, Amelia had worn an inflatable rubber vest and of course carried an inflatable life raft. Now, in 1937, she was a much more seasoned flier than she had been in 1935. She and Fred had a Very pistol to shoot rockets and balloons to raise a flag, and they would have believed that they had a fighting chance of coming out alive even if they did run out of gas and land in the sea. And because the gas tanks on the Electra were empty, they would have acted as floats—another reason to think there would be enough time for them to get out of the plane and into the inflatable raft. The odds of making it with the inflatable, which was stocked with food, were pretty good.

On the other hand, assuming that she made as good a landing as possible under the circumstances, two things could rule against survival: waves, which could break up the plane before they had a chance to get out, and sharks. The crew of the
Itasca
had been catching sharks since their arrival
at Howland on June 23. The sharks and barracuda, observed Air Corps Lieutenant Daniel Cooper, were “plentiful.”