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Mysteries column brings response from Australia
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Published: October 18, 2009
It's not often that I get e-mail from Australia, but when I came into the R&L office Monday morning, there was an e-mail about the Amelia Earhart mystery I had mentioned in last Sunday's column. For you who missed my column, I briefly recounted five perennial historical mysteries that have so far eluded satisfactory solution and suggested that readers might want to pursue some of these riddles by reading this summer.
One of the five was the mystery of what happened to the aviatrix Amelia Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan, on her attempt at an around-the-world flight in 1937. I presented several popular theories as to what might have been the duo's fate.
Imagine my interest when I read an e-mail from David Billings of Nambour, Queensland, Australia.
Wrote Billings, "Can I help solve the mystery of where the Electra is and where Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan are to be found? I certainly can.
"Please read: www.electranewbritain.com, which is my website and tells the story of our project based here in Australia.
"In World War II in mid-April of 1945," he wrote, "an Australian Army patrol on New Britain Island came upon an old aircraft wreck which they could not identify as it bore no identity or national markings that they could see. They reported the find to the U.S.Army as they had seen 'Pratt & Whitney' on one of the engines. They also removed a metal tag off the detached engine.
"In 1993 a WWII map from the patrol was found which when examined closely in 1994 was found to carry a penciled notation: '600 H/P S3H1 C/N1055' and this notation identifies Earhart's Electra.
"Her Electra had the serial number '1055' and was powered by P&W R-1340 S3H1 engines which delivered 600 horsepower when 100 octane fuel was used.
"The story is fascinating, intriguing and all the other words you can think of and the Electra is there waiting to be found."
Billings continued: "I have mainly been ignored by America because America has been fed the tale that Earhart and Noonan went down in the Pacific (as your story suggests) but if America cared to take a good strong deep breath and studied our evidence, then we might get some help. I and my team have been at this for 15 years and we are sure of our evidence."
I e-mailed Billings for more information and went to his Web site.
Billings maintains that the finding of the wreckage was reported to the American Army in May of 1945 with serial numbers, but, of course, it was not one of the U.S. military's aircraft, and this information was ignored.
Billings says he has made 12 expeditions, on foot, into the rugged, heavily foliated area since 1994 to attempt to find the Electra's remains. To further complicate things, there are probably other aircraft from World War II rusting in the jungle. Wouldn't it be great if this mystery were finally solved, or at least the major part of the puzzle were found! Assuming there are no bodies in the plane, there would still be questions as to what happened to Earhart and Noonan, and how their aircraft wound up so far off course: Why would the Electra have been on New Britain Island at all?
Billings speculates that winds at the 10,000 foot cruising altitude on the flight from Lae, New Guinea, to the Howland Island refueling point 2,556 statute miles away, were much stronger that Earhart and Noonan expected to encounter and were the cause of navigational error, and Earhart, finally realizing the plane was hopelessly off course, decided to turn back.
Vacuum tube radio communications broke down. Earhart could transmit, but not receive transmissions from the USCG Itasca, stationed near Howland as a radio navigation aide, while those aboard the ship could hear most of what she said, but could not reply. If she announced that she was turning back, this transmission was missed.
Writes Billings, "I figure she had about 300 US gallons of fuel [left] at turnback. She could not find Howland and she is in the middle (seemingly) of a trackless ocean. She turns back for the Gilbert Islands which she 'thought' were 550-600 miles away. This was her contingency plan. If she is 250-300 miles short of Howland, she is only half that way away.
"How did she get back to East New Britain and why go to East New Britain? ENB had the only two airstrips between Lae and Howland; there were no others.
"She had damaged the Electra at Luke Field in March 1937 and would not want to do it again...At that altitude and now with a tailwind, the Electra can make an average groundspeed of 150 mph, she can make Rabaul with its two airstrips and save the Electra.
"If [they] turned back at 2015 GMT (Greenwich Mean Time) for the Gilberts, which was her contingency plan, then the Electra can travel around 300 miles in one and three-quarters hours.
"She came very close. The wreckage seen in 1945 and which has the identity '600 H/P S3H1 C/N1055' is about 40 miles from Rabaul. The problem was that she would have arrived there at night, just on 7 p.m."
The island of New Britain, the largest island in the Bismark Archipelago (14,600 square miles), would be a nightmare to a pilot attempting a night landing. The island has mountains with peaks higher than our Mt. Mitchell, the tallest of the mountains in the Appalachians. Some of New Britain's mountains are 2,000 feet taller than Mt. Mitchell and some of them are active volcanoes. The island is heavily forested.
Billings' theory sounds plausible to me. Go to his Web site and come to your own conclusion. As the X-Files used to tell us, "The answer is out there."
* * *
The Iredell County Library has a number of books on Amelia Earhart, including books specifically for juveniles and young adults. Two I plan to read are "Amelia Earhart's Shoes: Is the Mystery Solved?" by Thomas F. King (2001) and "Amelia Earhart, the Final Story," by Loomis and Ethell (1985).
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