h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Hi Fred,

Just replying to you on your Personal Space, so that we can keep Peer Review free for comments about your entry.

Regarding the friends list - usually what happens is that you have been in conversation with them a few times, and you are interested in keeping up with what is going on in their lives. Every time a researcher posts to their journal, you will see it on your space. That's pretty much the way it works. I guess everybody is different - I don't have too many problems if people put me on their friends list and you would be most welcome to do it in my case, but I find it better if we have been in conversation once or twice beforehand - it's not necessary to ask my permission or anything. Some other researchers might expect to be asked permission, I don't really know. Probably it's best to err on the side of politeness in general!

Yes, Dougherty - we spell it Doherty and pronounce it slightly differently - is a common name in Ireland, although not specifically in Cork, where Murphy's, O'Briens and McCarthy's reign supreme! Noonan is also a good Irish name. Your grandfather's demise sounds pretty awful. A huge number of Irishmen died in the Great War, but they were never commemorated back home because of the political events that occured around that time.

Thanks for all the help and encouragement.

Would you please look at this http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/brunel/A3831185?s_fromedit=1

and see if it might fit into your "researchers experience" page...Thanks

It certainly does! I'll add it in the next few days.

Done!

Thanks again for your help and encouragement on the Amelia Earhart article.

I really liked your response today to the new researchers. Hope other follow your example.

My name is Blue bird because I used to fly. My navigator was an engineer (the only education with advenced math. under the belt for successful flying)Kept me flying our Debonair for 15 years.

I wrote about my first flying lesson published in THE POST : "Fly like a bird"
Yeah, had a hairdo at that time like Amelia, mind you...

I put your name on my friends list because that is the only way I can orient my self in h2g2. Some names had to be deleted, was no more room. But is good log keeping for me anyway.

Your entry most certainly is well written, though I am not a writer to be accurate. However what ever happened with the Lady-pilot and navigator never came to light.---
Somewhere some time ago I read about a shoe what was found in that critical area and was identified (?) as the type of shoe Amelea used to wear.
Please don't look for correct spelling in my writings, I come from no-one's-land. They did not speak english there.
Also: I do not have the "urge" to be perfect in english as long as I can be understood.bid
P.S. I been grounded for some time with plenty of memories.

See I can not even spell my own name! Still i can fly! Bbird.

Thanks for putting me on your friends list.

There was a woman's shoe and also a sextant case once owned by Fred late discovered on the island of Nikomoru.

There is a website almost entirely devoted to Amelia which incessantly discusses what might have happened to her. Here is a link.

http://www.tighar.org/forum/Highlights61_80/highlights70.html

My bet is that her plane will be discovered in deep water within 100 miles of Howland. Ten Electras were ditched in the water and they all remained afloat about ten minutes.

The engines would have quickly pulled her plane into a nose down position. The liferaft would have difficult to access in the tail evem if she had not been knocked unconscious or killed while ditching.

I don't believe the conspiracy therories because I know how hard Fred's task was and I think he caught some bad weather breaks. I think they got lost, ran out of gas and ditched at sea...just an opinion.

There are many more possibilities, but one version I still like to mention. This was told to me by my pilot ( I mostly were just a co-pilot when he got sleepy) and that is:

There is possible to look down and see a shadow on the water from a cloud if it was land! I have seen such possiblity. It is most likely to happen in bright sunshine but not in overcast.

In any case: I have learned the most important lesson: One do not fight with Nature! If you tired: stop at first opportunity! The other:one always can turn back in bad weather!

This is very true and useful. Once we got into a snowstorm in New Foundland!The feeling was devastating--but we turned and came back where we started. Next day in brilliant sunshine we flu to our next destination in Canada! What a pleasure!
Now is time to hit the sack! Blue bird

Bluebird

Your pilot told you something that is very true. In the sunshine, with clouds overhead, in the Pacific a cloud shadow is hard to distinguish from a small sea level island or reef formation like Howland or Wake Island. That has also been mentioned as a possible problem for Fred and Amelia.

Unfortunately for them, there were no alternative landing sites and not enough gas to turn back or go elsewhere...unless the discovery of a woman's shoe and a Sextant case on Nikomoru belonging to Fred gives you pause for thought.

This is from the TIGAR site that I referred to previously.

Yet another avenue of inquiry provides a possible link between Noonan and Nikumaroro. Among the objects found with the bones in 1940 was a sextant box. In a telegram dated 23 September 1940 (see TIGHAR Tracks Vol. 13, Nos. 2&3, "The Tarawa File") it is described this way:

Sextant box has two numbers on it. 3500 (stencilled) and 1542 --- sextant being old fashioned and probably painted with black enamel.

Hoping that the numbers and description might provide a clue to the box's origin, researchers and sextant experts in the U.S. (Peter Ifland, TIGHAR #2058), Great Britain (David Charlwood, TIGHAR #1978) and Europe (Lou Schoonbrood, TIGHAR #1198) collectively examined something over 500 sextants and boxes in various collections. No luck. Although virtually all sextants came in protective boxes, none of those examined had numbers stencilled or written on them. Military instruments often have a small metal plaque nailed or screwed to the box lid on which numbers are inscribed. Many sextants, both civilian and military, are painted with black enamel. It looked like the sextant box was a dead end.

Help came from an unexpected quarter. After reading about the sextant box in TIGHAR Tracks, officials at the National Museum of Naval Aviation in Pensacola, Florida contacted us to say that they have in their collection an "old fashioned" sextant, painted in black enamel, and manufactured in 1919 by W. Ludolph GmbH of Bremerhaven, Germany. Some numbers are hand-written on its wooden box. On the bottom is 3547 under which is written 173. On the front face is 116 in a similar style.

Although the numbers are hand-written rather than stencilled, this is the first box we have seen with any numbers at all on the outside, and the 3547 seems to resonate nicely with the 3500 on the Nikumaroro box.

But what is most interesting is the certification which accompanies the instrument:

6 June 1968
TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN:
I, hereby, certify that the accompanying
Navigation Sextant was the property of Mr. Frederick J Noonan,
who was copilot-navigator on the World flight with Amelia Aerhardt [sic]
when their plane was lost in the Pacific Ocean.
This instrument was borrowed by the under-
signed who at that time was studying navigation under Mr. Noonan
in preparing for service in the Pacific Division of Pan American
Airways, for use in practice praticle [sic] navigation. Identification
marks are not in evidence, however, the undersigned hereby certifies
as to the authenticity of the above remarks.

W. A. Cluthe
Retired Captain, Pan American
World Airways.
Ex. C.A.P. USN, Number 12.
4312 Winding Way,
Mobile, Alabama-36609


Oddly, the numbers on the box bear no apparent relationship to the serial number on the instrument (XIX 1090). Are they, perhaps, part of some kind of inventory system? Are the sextant boxes of Pensacola and Nikumaroro both part of that system? Ludolph sextants were highly prized as among the finest in the world, but this is not an aviation instrument. Why would Noonan, a professional air navigator, have an "old fashioned" nautical sextant? Fred himself provides the answer in a letter to Commander P. V. H. Weems of the Weems School of Navigation. In describing the techniques he used to navigate the 1935 Pan Am China Clipper flight, Noonan says:

"Two sextants were carried. A Pioneer bubble octant and a mariner's sextant. The former was used for all sights; the latter as a preventer."

Did Fred Noonan, the master navigator, perhaps have a collection of fine nautical sextants? If not, how likely is it that he loaned his only sextant --- a beautiful Ludolph --- to a student and didn't bother to get it back when he left Pan Am? Could the sextant box found on Nikumaroro in 1940 have been that of Noonan's "preventer"? And what happened to the sextant itself? Is it still somewhere on Nikumaroro? These are questions which, until a few months ago, we didn't even know enough to ask. Further research may provide answers and, just as important, more questions.