First no one knows if she was burning 42 gallons per hour. If she decided to fly rich for engine cooling purposes or had a any type of head wind that blows that out.
Very true but again base on what is actually documented the 42 gph is reasonable and Yea another assunption. Remember, this issue was discussed at length with Art Kennedy, who had overhauled her engines prior to the second attempt, and who calibrated her engines with PRATT & WHITNEY factory test equipment. His test cell engine records still exist and barring fuel cell leakage and gross mixture control mismanagement, she had between 4.5 and 5.5 hours of fuel remaining after her 20:14 [8:44 am Howland Time] transmission. This calculation was made by Kennedy a man who would know. Secondly, again documented, we can apply the plane's performance during its 2,400-mile Oakland to Honolulu flight in March 1937. Records show that the Electra consumed 617 of the 947 gallons it held during the fifteen-hour, fifteen-minute Honolulu flight, for an average per-hour burn rate of 38.97 gallons. Round that off to forty gallons per hour. At Lae, loaded with 200 more gallons (1,200 pounds) the plane was about 800 pounds heavier, add one gallon per hour for the extra weight (which would decrease with time) and another gallon per hour in consideration of the plane's climb to higher altitudes after leaving Lae. With 1,156 gallons departing Lae, at an average consumption of 42 gph, at 20 hours 15 minutes, she had burned 850.50 gallons of fuel and had close to 6 hours left before fuel exhaustion so dropping that to 4 hours still gives her flight time.
Joe, as a pilot would you ditch in the open ocean given a choice or would you stay in the air as long as possible?
There were many pilots trying to break records that were denied civil flight permits during that period
Yes, there were, but none trying to over fly a Japanese territory that they had been keeping as totally restricted as possible for years and had denied everyone access. The very reason Roosevelt was so anxious to find out exactly what they were up to in this area. Based on this another theory is that Earhart never intended to land at Howland but intended to "get lost" thus giving the US Navy an excuse to search in restricted areas. Joe, think militarily. If you had asked a superior permission to do something and been denied and then did it anyway what would be the result? As opposed to doing without asking and asking forgiveness afterward? So Earhart ASKING and being DENIED makes any type of overflight so much worse if/when captured.
I bet there are at least 1000 people in Nashville alone who had seen Elvis.
Yea, it's the "nutcases" that give conspiracy theory a bad rep. I've been called MUCH worse in my time. I do realize that I can be and possibly am wrong but, IMHO the crash land, rescue, in Japanese hands, imprisonment scenario is highly plausible
The photo was the main evidence of the ship in question and was used to "prove" that specific ship was used
In the sense of "prove" I'd have to agree. In Amelia Earhart : The Final Story, Vince Loomis went to considerable efforts to dig out the records of what Japanese ships were in the Marshalls in July 1937. He was trying to confirm what ship his witness, Bilimon Amaron, had boarded and which had been seen carrying the Earhart Electra on its aft deck. His book claims that he was able to determine that the Japanese really did not carry out the search for Earhart they later claimed to have made, because the ships of the "12th Squadron" supposedly used in the search were, in fact, in port in Japan the whole time. The only ship Loomis could come up with anywhere near the Marshalls was the seaplane tender Koshu. She was in Ponape, about 400 miles west of the Marshalls, on July 2, 1937 and arrived in Jaluit in the Marshalls on July 13. Loomis says Koshu then left Jaluit sailing for Saipan
On Jaluit, Bilimon Amaron, a medical corpsman for the Japanese stated that he was taken to the ship, Koshu, in the harbor to treat an American man and woman. The crew of the ship said they picked them [two Caucasians, a male and a female] up between the Gilbert Islands and Mili Island, on a small atoll. "We treated the man – I personally did. The wound on the front side of the head was not very serious, but the wound around the knee was kind of a four-inch cut, inflamed, slightly bleeding; it was infected and had been open for quite a long time. I could not stitch it but used Paraply on the knee. The head wound required only a bandage." Bilimon told his brother at a later time that the man had some false teeth. Fred had taken a bad fall and broke out several teeth a while before the trip and his dentist had made a temporary bridge or plate to use till he got back The Japanese on board told him that the man and woman had run out of fuel and came down near Mili; the man hurt himself when the plane landed.
Later, in 1984, Bilimon provided additional information when he was interviewed about the treatment he'd provided in 1937: …Bilimon Amaron recalled that the Japanese navy had been taking an exercise in the area at the time of the crash. The crewmen of the cargo ship were military, not civilian, he remembered, and there were guards aboard as well. The wounded man and the woman were not being treated as spies, however.
In fact, Amaron found nothing memorable about the event except the race of the marooned pair. He saw no other Caucasians in the Marshalls during those years. At the time, he had never heard of Amelia Earhart. Only much later did he recognize her and Noonan from photographs and realize what he had actually seen that day. .
The U.S. was not a member of the League of Nations either (why ?) but tightened her watch on Japan since 1933. In 1937 only, the U.S. government frequently asked Japanese government to allow her naval warships to visit Japanese ports. Japanese government accepted them as much as it could but looks tired in the end of the year. What would have happened if Japan had hidden Earhart and Noonan ? Awful to imagine.
League of Nations -
The League of Nations was an American idea championed by President Woodrow Wilson (a Democrat). However, many Americans feared the League's 10th Article. They believed that this article allowed the League of Nations to force the United States to commit its military and economic power in places that were not beneficial to the country. They also wanted to stick with the country's traditional aversion to international entanglements. Senator Lodge (a Republican) and President Wilson had a bitter mutual antipathy and Lodge was very angry that Wilson had not consulted him and the US Senate (a Senate controlled by the members of the Republican Party who viewed him as both an idealist and a political enemy). Then Wilson had a massive stroke in 1919 that limited his ability to negotiate for the Treaty. Without Wilson to back it, the treaty languished for months until the Senate voted it down 49-35 in 1920.
US tightens her watch - because of Japans increasing militarism and expansion:
During the 1930s, Japan's increasingly expansionist policies brought it into renewed conflict with its neighbors, Russia and China.
In March 1933, Japan withdrew from the League of Nations in response to international condemnation of its conquest of Manchuria.
On January 15, 1936, Japan withdrew from the Second London Naval Disarmament Conference because the United States and Great Britain refused to grant the Japanese Navy parity.
In July 1937, a second war between Japan and China began with the Marco Polo Bridge Incident. The attack was condemned by the U.S. and several members of the League of Nations including Britain, France, Australia and the Netherlands. Japanese atrocities during the conflict, such as the notorious Nanking Massacre that December, served to further complicate relations with the rest of the world.
Japan's new military power and willingness to use it threatened Western economic and territorial interests in Asia.
Beginning in 1938, the U.S. adopted a succession of increasingly restrictive trade restrictions with Japan. This included terminating its 1911 commercial treaty with Japan in 1939, further tightened by the Export Control Act of 1940.
Also in 1940 Japan signed the Tripartite Pact with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, officially forming the Axis Powers.
The Tripartite Pact guaranteed assistance if a signatory was attacked by any country not already involved in conflict with the signatory; this implicitly meant the U.S. The Roosevelt administration would not be dissuaded; believing the American way of life would be endangered if Europe and the Far East fell under military dictatorship. Thus, the United States slowly moved from being a neutral power to one preparing for war.
American warship visits - Again apples and oranges. Your documents are for open visits to open main Island ports not a clandestine over flight of heavily restricted areas and ports
What would have happened - Terrible outrage in the US and severe embargoes which is why they had to be quietly and secretly made to vanish into unmarked graves,
Speaking of stamps used for proof...
Actually no one did offer the stamps as proof of anything except as evidence of how widespread the story and belief in it had become in the Marshall Islands as witness after witness came forth