Earhart's Plane Found?!

[FLYBOYJ]

Mike, a lot of cut and past there that's been read over and over again and beat to death. She had a lot of bucks backing her and there's an old saying in aviation, "more money than brains."

"There have been more than a few (some of the armchair variety) critics who have criticized and rebuked Amelia's flying skills. Let them try flying a heavy, noisy airplane with crude autopilot capabilities for some 10 to 20 hours at a stretch, over vast oceans, hostile unexplored deserts and mountains, through monsoon rains of unimaginable intensities, with virtually no radio navigation aids to help find your way, with no decent charts for visual reference."

Mike, by no means do I consider myself a super pilot but I'll tell you right here and now I'm no armchair and probably forgotten more about flying than you'll ever know and have time in aircraft that you could only dream about, so if you ever want to compare resumes, I'm game.

Some of her accomplishments were incredibly brave but incredibly stupid, but in her defense I will say at times she was a victim of the times and her own fame, again "more money than brains."

In 1928 she had a landing accident as she hit a rut when landing, in 1930 I know she nosed over a Vega. I believe there's a few more.

I'm trying to find where her total flight hours are published.

 

[FLYBOYJ]

Earhart Biography

Read why she stopped flying autogyros

 

[Zipper730]

FLYBOYJ,

I think I get the pattern: She made some bone-headed mistakes

 

[Robert Porter]

From the same page Mike quoted above but farther down:

There is no denying that Earhart had difficulty learning to fly. It took her more than 15 hours of flight time and nearly a year to solo the Kinner, and she had a number of mishaps afterward, most of them during landings. As one biographer noted: Unfortunately, though highly intelligent, a quick learner, and possessed of great enthusiasm, Amelia did not, it seems, possess natural ability as a pilot. This is no disparagement of Amelia, it is simply the view of many of her contemporaries in the flying world. Indeed, given this apparently important drawback, it is to her great credit that she was subsequently able to achieve so much.

Amelia Earhart | HistoryNet

 

[Robert Porter]

Ummm, by the way, we all consider it a nicety to actually mention what part of ones post is copied vs original text. And if possible add a link to the quoted/copied content. This helps when we are reading to understand where something came from, and as importantly where and who it came from. I learned this the hard way here early in my membership by quoting a questionable source. My "hat" was handed to me fairly quickly but it was also a good learning experience for me about checking my sources carefully before quoting them as gospel. In my case I quoted a game site as a reference on Spitfire performance. To put it mildly it was personally embarrassing but as I said I learned. The depth and breadth of knowledge among the members here is astounding and as we all know most are very willing to share it freely. But as I learned, they are just as quick to, nicely, call foul when a faulty source is quoted or used.

Several of Mike's sources are solid, but a few, notably History Channel and Wikipedia have potential issues so it always helpful to know where something comes from.

 

[wuzak]

Ummm, by the way, we all consider it a nicety to actually mention what part of ones post is copied vs original text. And if possible add a link to the quoted/copied content.

Or a citation for parts copied from a book or other source not available online.

Parts copied from other websites could be placed in a quotation box, so we would know that it is a quote!

 

[mikewint]

Mike, by no means do I consider myself a super pilot but I'll tell you right here and now I'm no armchair and probably forgotten more about flying than you'll ever know and have time in aircraft that you could only dream about, so if you ever want to compare resumes, I'm game.

Joe, ABSOLUTELY AND MOST POSITIVELY that was NOT IN ANY SENSE directed towards you. If you took it that way, you have my deepest and most sincere apologies. Your piloting abilities and knowledge has never been and never will be in question by me.
Spent many "happy" hours sitting in various aircraft and jumping out of some perfectly good ones and once or twice a friend who has a small single engine has let me "hold" the controls. Keeping the dram thing straight and level was not easy and that was in a modern aircraft. Can't imagine what it must have been like flying/controlling those 1920's aircraft.

victim of the times and her own fame,

Indeed very true and don't forget Putnam whose only job was pushing her further and further along that path

She made some bone-headed mistakes

Yes, but not as a pilot. That was my point. She managed to fly 20,000 miles and was almost home. In 1937 that was a significant accomplishment. Her bone-headedness was in her lack of ability to use her only two lifelines, the radio and the Bendix DF which was a poor choice to begin with, but they were a sponsor.

 

[mikewint]

stopped flying autogyros

As I understand it, she had 15 minutes of instruction on the machines and I can't imagine what it must have been like to control one. Certainly much different than a standard aircraft. All her instincts and previous experience/training would have been working against her. Just another publicity stunt to get her another first and I suspect money changed hands (Putnams)

 

[FLYBOYJ]

Joe, ABSOLUTELY AND MOST POSITIVELY that was NOT IN ANY SENSE directed towards you. If you took it that way, you have my deepest and most sincere apologies. Your piloting abilities and knowledge has never been and never will be in question by me.
Spent many "happy" hours sitting in various aircraft and jumping out of some perfectly good ones and once or twice a friend who has a small single engine has let me "hold" the controls. Keeping the dram thing straight and level was not easy and that was in a modern aircraft. Can't imagine what it must have been like flying/controlling those 1920's aircraft.

All good

 

[FLYBOYJ]

"Good, very good and great" record breaking pilots of the era were folks like Lindberg, Jeppesen, Byrd, Post, Doolittle, and to keep gender correctness, Jackie Cochran. Read about how they flew, their training, some of the innovations they brought to basic flying (airport directories, approach procedures, checklists) and how they maintained proficiency. At times Earhart was a publicity stunt being pushed and funded by big bucks and IMO it cost her her life.

Fast forward several dozen years later and folks were still pushing young women aviators to do dumb things. There were sooo many things wrong when this happened and to be honest when this stunt was announced I had a feeling it wasn't going to end well.

Girl, 7, Seeking U.S. Flight Record, Dies in Crash

 

[Zipper730]

and don't forget Putnam whose only job was pushing her further and further along that path

Who's Putnam?

Yes, but not as a pilot.

Well she did bang up a few planes, not that I think I could do any better (I'm not sure truthfully that I could even get one started up)

She managed to fly 20,000 miles and was almost home. In 1937 that was a significant accomplishment. Her bone-headedness was in her lack of ability to use her only two lifelines, the radio and the Bendix DF which was a poor choice to begin with, but they were a sponsor.

So she wasn't able to use the navigation equipment and radio: I'm surprised Noonan didn't...

As I understand it, she had 15 minutes of instruction on the machines and I can't imagine what it must have been like to control one.

I know almost nothing about them other than the fact that you have a propeller in the back and a rotating wing.

There were sooo many things wrong when this happened and to be honest when this stunt was announced I had a feeling it wasn't going to end well.

Girl, 7, Seeking U.S. Flight Record, Dies in Crash

I think I know about this one...

 

[wuzak]

Who's Putnam?

He was a publisher. And he was Mr Earhart.

George P. Putnam - Wikipedia

 

[fubar57]

 

[mikewint]

"Good, very good and great" record breaking pilots of the era were folks like Lindberg, Jeppesen, Byrd, Post, Doolittle,

Joe, while all of these had some familiarity to me I did have to do some research. Lindberg and Dolittle were the most familiar followed by Byrd and Post. Most of what I found was a real eye-opener. In those free-wheeling, no government regulations, no insurance safetycrats, times $500 for a surplus Jenny and an hour or so of instruction made you a pilot. The trick was LUCK and SURVIVAL.

Charles Lindburg on 9 Apr 1922 he made his first flight but not alone. He did not have the money to pay for a damage deposit. In June he joined a flying Circus as a wing walker and parachutist. May 1923 he bought his own plane a surplus Curtiss JN-4 and spent a half an hour with a pilot who'd come to buy his own surplus Jenny. He then climbed into his own Jenny and soloed. He returned to barnstorming this time as a pilot. He broke several propellers in bad landings and once ran into a ditch. In 1924 he crashed the Jenny for good when the engine stalled on takeoff. 19 March 1924 he joined the USAAS to become an Army pilot. There were 104 new cadets and only 18 made it to the end. On 5 March 1925 just before graduation he had a mid-air collision with another cadet. He managed to parachute to safety. 25 October he became an air mail pilot flying from St. Louis to Chicago. Due to bad weather he got lost and ran out o fuel twice having then to bailout at night as he approached Chicago. His 33.5 hour flight, New York to Paris is a legend, fighting storms, winds, icing, and fatigue, several times he flew just feet above the ocean to throw spray into his face. In the last hours he began to hallucinate to the point of have conversations with them. Landing in Paris he became a worldwide celebrity, Luck Lindy the Lone Eagle. 27 May 1927 he married Ann Morrow and they eventually had six children the first Charles Lindburg Jr. was kidnapped and murdered. During WWII Roosevelt would not allow him back in the Army Air Force calling him a "Damned Nazi". He did manage to get sent to the Pacific as a consultant where various combat units allowed him to fly combat missions, 50 of them, and in one shot down a Japanese plane. Starting in 1957 during his frequent trips to Germany he began having affairs with 3 German women two of them being sisters and the third his private secretary. He had 3 children with the first and two children with her sister and two more with his secretary. 10 days before his death he wrote to each and asked them to keep the secret which they did until 2001. DNA tests have confirmed their parentage.

Elrey Jeppesen
At 18 joined a Flying Circuis as a ticket taker, prop turner, wingwalker and parachutist. After 2 hours and 15 minutes of instruction he bought a surplus Jenny which he then flew solo. In 1930 he joined the Boeing Air Transport as an air mail pilot. During his many flights he kept a small black book of routes, landmarks, possible landing fields, and farmers willing to help. Initially he gave thes away to fellow pilots but eventually started selling them for $10 each. When Boeing began carrying passengers he became one of the first commercial pilots and was the first to carry a stewardess. On 10 June 1941 while landing his DC-3 in a rain storm he over ran the airport boundary lights and crashed into a 3 foot deep ditch. There were no injuries but the aircraft was badly damaged. Soon after this he and his wife founded the Jeppesen Company and began the commercial production of his charts

Wiley Post
He just managed to complete the 6th grade and had his first airplane ride at 15 in 1913. He enrolled briefly in a flying school but did not get far so he turned to work in the oil field. He join the USAAF but WWI ended before he could complete his training. Jobs were tight so he turned to armed robbery. Arrested and sent to prison in 1921 he was paroled in 1922. In 1926 he joined a flying circus as a parachutist. An accident on 1 Oct 1926 cost him his left eye but the settlement money allowed him to buy his own aircraft and learn to fly. By 1928 he became the personal pilot for two wealthy oilmen who had purchased a Lockheed Vega they named the Winnie Mae. Post used this aircraft to win the L.A. to Chicago Air Derby in just over 9 hours. He then used the Vega to fly his first round the world flight starting on 23 June 1931. Eight days and almost 16 hours later he landed back in New York. On 15 July 1933 he departed New York on his second round-the-world flight this time flying solo using a newly developed Sperry auto-pilot and Radio compass in place of a navigator. After 7 days and almost 19 hours he returned to New York. In 1935 Post decided to develop an Air/passenger route from the US west coast o Russia. Short on cash he decided to build his own aircraft using the fuselage of a Lockheed Orion and the wings of a Lockheed Explorer. Since there were many lakes in both Alaska and Siberia he decided to fit pontoons. When the custom set he ordered did not arrive he decided to use a larger pair from a Fokker aircraft which made the already nose-heavy aircraft even more so. In early August he and Will Rodgers left on their west coast to Russia flight. On August 15th they left Fairbanks Alaska heading to Point Barrow. Almost there the weather turned bad with fog and they became lost. They landed on a lake to ask directions and when they were told that Barrow was only 7 miles away they decided to push on. They had been flying on the forward fuel tanks which were almost empty (plane was nose-heavy) and in their haste to leave Post forgot to switch to full tanks. Just after take-off the engine failed and the aircraft dove into the ground. Post was crushed by the engine being rammed backward and Rodgers had been thrown out of the aircraft. Both were killed instantly.

Richard Byrd
He earned his Naval Aviator wings in August 1917 after which he became very interested in aircraft navigation and developed a Drift Indicator, a sun compass, and the bubble sextant for aircraft navigation. On 9 May 1926 Byrd and Chief Petty Officer Floyd Bennett took off from Spitzbergen Norway flew to the North Pole, circled for 13 minutes, and returned to Spitzbergen, a total of 1535 miles in 15 hours and 57 minutes. Both Byrd and Bennett were awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor in spite of the requirement that it be awarded for action against enemy combatants.
However there has always been controversy about this polar flight which has grown in recent times. In 1958, Bernt Balchen, (Norwegian pioneer polar aviator, navigator, aircraft mechanical engineer and military leader. He also worked on Amelia Earhart's Lockheed Vega preparing it for her transatlantic flight) claimed that Bennett confessed to him that they had never reached the pole. In 1996 Byrd's diary was made public. In it were several erased (but still legible) sextant readings that did not agree with those in his official written report. Dennis Rawlins (American astronomer and member of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry) using Byrd's erased entries calculated that Byrd had gotten to within 150 miles of the Pole when he turned back due to an oil leak in his engine. There are also Byrd supporters who counter these negative claims.

Jimmy Doolittle
The surprise here for me was the vast contributions he made to instrument flying when most felt that human senses/perception/instinct were all that was needed. In 1927 he made that impossible outside loop. In 1929 he was the first to takeoff, fly, and land an aircraft totally blind using only instruments. He developed the Artificial Horizon and Directional Gyroscope. He influenced Shell Oil to produce the first 100 octane AvGas. He was very active in racing aircraft winning the Thompson Trophy in 1932 in that notorious Bee Gee R-1. The Doolittle Raid needs no commentary, while doing little actual damage its psychological effect and its effect on US moral is beyond measure

 

[buffnut453]

Amy Johnson wasn't too shabby when it came to committing aviation.

 

[Robert Porter]

Bessie Coleman is my personal favorite of the era. She was ten times the pilot as Earhart and most male pilots for that matter.

 

[stona]

Amy Johnson wasn't too shabby when it came to committing aviation.

Another person about whom all sorts of ridiculous conspiracy theories have grown over the years. There was a third, unidentified person on board, presumably some sort of VIP on a clandestine mission (zero evidence). She was shot down by the RAF in a 'friendly fire' incident (zero evidence) in an Airspeed Oxford, not exactly a type unfamiliar to RAF pilots at the time, nor reminiscent of any German type likely to be encountered, etc., etc.
Cheers
Steve

 

[FLYBOYJ]

Mike, there's a lot of cut and paste there with some negative overtones, I don't know if that was intentional but most of them irrelevant when you want to discuss their aviator's skills.. What you fail to mention that despite the incidents that those folks I posted had, they were 3x the pilot Earhart was. Each one of them eventually changed aviation and some of their innovations became a standard that could be seen today (Approach charts, Jeppesen, Checklists, Lindberg, Instrument flying Doolittle, etc.) As you said "The trick was LUCK and SURVIVAL" but throw stupidity and/or lack of skill or proficiency into the mix and the end result will be disaster.

So getting this back on track, those folks were innovators and pioneers, Earhart was a mediocre pilot at best with a lot of money backing her who took great risks that eventually caught up with her.

 

[FLYBOYJ]

Bessie Coleman is my personal favorite of the era. She was ten times the pilot as Earhart and most male pilots for that matter.

Agree, unfortunately her death was a fiasco. I use her accident as a case study in FOD training and risk mitigation.

 

[mikewint]

there's a lot of cut and paste there with some negative overtones, I don't know if that was intentional but most of them irrelevant when you want to discuss their aviator's skills.

Joe, actually not a bit but when you read something, like Doolittles outside loop, how many ways are there to say/write it? Skill/luck? In the 1929 Cleveland National Air Races he attempted to repeat the outside loop in a Curtiss P-1C Hawk when the wings came off. Fortunately he managed to parachute to safety though he could have easily been killed.
Negative overtones, again not intentional. My point was that these pilots that you posted took some outrageous chances and through skill/luck/whatever managed to survive while others trying the same thing failed/died. Lindberg could have easily been killed at almost any point. Walking on a wing and parachuting have killed many and old air racers are very rare. Flying at wave height trying to throw up spray could have easily resulted in a wave hitting his plane and it would have been the end of Lucky Lindy and he would have been just another also-ran. Lindburg was actually the 19th person to fly across the Atlantic. John Alcock (pilot) and Arthur Brown (navigator) were actually the first in their Vickers Vimy and their flight was also inches from disaster including getting lost in fog and clouds, a stall that brought them within feet of the ocean, ice and snow that choked out an engine that they barely restarted and landing nose over in a bog in Ireland, skill/luck? Post also could have been killed during his armed robbery career while becoming a pilot with only one eye is truly a fantastic accomplishment. Lockheed flatly refused to have anything to do with his Orion/Navigator hybrid and fitting those outsized Fokker pontoons through impatience was a disaster waiting to happen. Again through skill/luck he flew it until one oops, forgetting to turn a valve, again that was impatience as they could have easily stayed put and flew out the next day in much better weather.
Jeppesen's charts were a tremendous plus for all pilots beyond a doubt and the one bad landing was weather related and all survived, skil/luck?
Byrd, his sun compass, drift indicator, bubble sextant are tremendous pluses to air navigation but his Polar flight (didn't Bennett actually do the flying while Byrd navigated) is under serious doubt though will probably never be settled one way or another.
Joe, I ask most sincerely and openly with no undertones whatsoever,: What makes a great/skilled pilot? Earhart, IMHO, followed much the same path as these men and with a bit more luck would have found Howland and finished her flight. Her biggest fault was in ignoring the technical aspects of her flight and the use of her radio and RDF unit