Guest Editorial By David Bond
There has been a lot of publicity about the fate of Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan in the media of late. One of these was a two hour documentary on the History Channel concerning a photo purported to show Amelia and Fred on the dock at Jaluit Atoll and eventually executed at the hands of the Japanese. This photo was found to have been included in a Japanese book dating from 1935, so it could not possibly depict Earhart and Noonan.
Past expeditions to Nikumaroro Island have failed to come up with any solid evidence. Deep undersea searches by a company named Nauticos by a team led by Ted Waitt have failed to locate any wreckage on the ocean floor. Some other theories abound but none have turned up anything.
However there is a gentleman in Australia, David Billings, who has tangible evidence that Amelia Earhart turned back and headed for the Gilbert Islands when she couldn’t find Howland. No one wants to believe she had enough fuel to make New Britain Island. However there is a very strong probability that Amelia made it all the way to the Wide Bay area of New Britain.
It is rather unbelievable that the David Billings hypothesis has not drawn more attention, especially here in the U.S.A. David’s’ evidence is solid and he has been searching an area on New Britain 17 times. His web site Earhart Search PNG is a long read in 10 parts but well worth the effort.
Let’s take a look at these indisputable proven key facts about Amelia’s disappearance…
- On New Britain Island on 17th April 1945 an Australian army patrol, D company 11th Australian Infantry, stumbled on an all metal, unpainted twin engine aircraft. There were no military markings and it had been there for quite some time. This aircraft is a documented fact but never identified or accounted for.
- One of the soldiers from the Australian Army Patrol found a metal tag attached to an engine mount. He removed the tag to turn in at the end of the patrol with his report and did so.
19 April 1945 Message Form, originally to be sent at 11:00 am; this SITREP finally was sent at 2:00 pm. This message was sent from the 11th Infantry Battalion to its higher headquarters, 13th Infantry Brigade. Note the sentence on the second to the last line, “Report Patrol A1 attached with A/C plates”. Circles with center dots are sentence breaks.
Note the reference “Report patrol A1 attached with A/C plates”
- About five weeks after the Patrol A1 was completed, “D” Company personnel were informed by the U.S. Army that it was not one of their engines. The officer read a radio message to the men mentioning that the engine they found was a Wasp engine and was most probably from a civilian aircraft.
“600 H/P S3H1 C/N 1055” is referenced in the margin of Infantry Patrol A1’s map.
- In Rabaul at the end of WWII, one of the soldiers from “D” Company rescued a topographical map used by the Company, from equipment scheduled to be burned, to keep as a souvenir. Years later a folded margin on the map revealed the following letter/number sequence; “600H/P. S3H/1 C/N1055” This alphanumerical sequence translates to 600 Horsepower, Pratt & Whitney R-1340-S3H1, airframe Construction Number 1055. The 10 in this number means Model 10 Lockheed Electra and 55 means the 55th built. Amelia Earhart’s Lockheed 10E Electra aircraft WAS the 55th Model 10 built by the Lockheed Aircraft Company and known to carry the Constructor Number 1055.
- The handwritten sequence found on the Australian Army Patrol map, “600H/P. S3H/1 C/N1055” is genuine to Earhart’s Electra. The map had been in the possession of the “D” Company clerk Len Willoughby, since the end if WWII, until it was mailed to Don Angwin in late 1993. Neither Len Willoughby or Don Angwin, knew of the details concerning Earhart’s Electra aircraft. The Warrant Officer who removed the tag from the engine remembered that there was a “string of letters and numbers” on the tag that did not mean anything to him. He turned in the tag with the Patrol Report. The Lieutenant in charge of the Patrol A1 believed that the tag and report of the find were sent to the U.S. Army. Due to the fact that it had Pratt & Whitney engines they considered the wreck to be “American”.
- Researcher Fred Goerner had previously found a U.S. Navy radio message and authored a book “The Search for Amelia Earhart”. In his book he writes … at 1030 on the morning of the disappearance Nauru Radio Station picked up Earhart on 6210 Kcs, saying ‘land in sight ahead…”
If the Electra was short of Howland, but Amelia thought she was at Howland or lateral to it, then in turning back for The Gilberts, Amelia would not expect to see land for four hours due to the 600 mile distance.
This call can be shown to have been at 2200 GMT, one and three-quarters of an hour after the supposed last call at 2014GMT. The time of “10:30” can only be 10:30am on the USCG Itasca on July 2nd*. In one and three-quarters of an hour, the Electra could travel 300 miles and be within radio reception range of Nauru.
- On July 3rd* at 6:31pm and at 6:43pm Rabaul time, the radio operator on Nauru Island heard a radio transmission on Amelia Earhart’s stated frequency on 6210 Kcs. The message was unreadable and without engine noise in the background. Again at 6:54pm, the same unreadable transmission happened on 6210 Kcs with no sound of engines. At that time of day, no aircraft from New Guinea or Australia would be flying anywhere in the SW Pacific. Certainly, there would not have been any other aircraft flying within reception range of the Nauru Radio Station, except for Earhart and the Electra.
- Because of a land dispute between two tribes over the sale of land to the central Papua New Guinea government, there is a certain amount of animosity between the Baining and the Pomio people at Wide Bay, in East New Britain. A bulldozer operator, a Baining tribesman, working for a logging company was making a track to remove logs and accidently bumped into the wreck. Because he knew that the Pomio people were looking for it, he buried it because of tribal jealousy. It is considered the wreck was buried in 1996.
A few Important Notes
Amelia Earhart was a brave, daring woman but as an experienced pilot she was no fool. First and foremost on Amelia’s mind would have been the human instinct of survival and the desire to save the Electra if possible. Let’s get real. When Howland Island was missed, Amelia invoked her contingency plan to head for The Gilbert Islands. Any pilot planning a 2500 mile flight over water would be foolhardy not to have an “alternate plan” in case of bad weather, faulty navigation or technical failure.
Some researchers and authors have suggested there was no “Contingency Plan” at all. That she landed “somewhere” never to be seen again. The use of a Contingency Plan is simply “ignored”. Some researchers want Earhart and Noonan to head north and land in the Marshall Islands. Others want Earhart to go to the south and end up at the Phoenix Islands to die as castaways.
David Billings, an aircraft engineer, has put together an MS Excel plot of the flight. Mr. Billings contends the Electra never made it to the vicinity of Howland Island due to stronger than forecast headwinds. When Amelia and Fred could not find Howland after an hour of searching, they decided to turn west for The Gilbert Islands.** Headwinds now became tailwinds and Amelia was known to “care for” her engines. Combined with careful fuel management and a strong tailwind the MS Excel plot shows that making the New Britain area was a possibility.
Despite all the facts and circumstantial evidence surrounding the search for the aircraft wreck in East New Britain, the David Billings search project has been mainly ignored. The evidence says it is “The Electra”.
What is needed now is the next step, raise funding for a LIDAR, “Bare Earth” scan of the target hill. That may reveal where the natural lie of the land has been changed by bulldozer activity.
I am sure that David would be happy to accept any assistance towards achieving the LIDAR expense. What is really needed is a very wealthy individual to come forward to support the whole venture to allow completion and find the wreck.
* The different dates of radio calls noted in facts 6 and 7 is because of the “International Date Line”.
**Amelia had told her close friend, Eugene Vidal, of her contingency plan to land in the Gilberts. It is also mentioned in Mary Lovell’s book: “The Sound of Wings” and Doris Rich’s book: “Amelia”. Both of these authors made the case that Vidal had said that Earhart would search for Howland and if not found, would head for the Gilbert Islands.
Having Met David Billings when I worked in PNG for their Civil Aviation Authority, his evidence is concrete. I am of the opinion the Americans do not want their thunder stolen. David needs the financial support to conduct the search.
Rod, it was through David Bond that I was introduced to David Billings. I had heard of the New Britain Island theory before but never saw many articles on it. So I largely bought into the Nikumaroro Island theory. Reading David Billings’s blog was hugely enlightening…!
I would like to see how this evidense matches with the radio operator aboard one of the US destroyers who was trying to communicate with Earheart. He wrote down S Numbers (Signal strength) on each of her transmissions and determined she was flying a north to south, south to north plan before she disappeared. This was reproduced on TV back in the early 2000’s and found to be a match. If she remained all the way flying south to New Britain then how could the varying Signal strength match that flight plan?
Since I posted the power setting table for Earhart’s Wasp engines on another thread today I realized that it was relevant to the Billings theory. Part of the basis for his theory was that he misinterpreted Earhart’s statement that she had gotten the fuel flow down to 20 gallons per hour on the flight to Hawaii. I pointed out to him that it was not possible to keep the plane in the air on 20 gallons per hour and that she was talking about 20 per engine, about 40 gallons per hour total. The attached power setting table doesn’t even show settings for less than 20 gallons per hour per engine. This is what I had posted in 2013.
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I posted this on Skeptoid back in 2013 and asked Dave to respond to dispute my analysis and he never did.
I posted this on Skeptoid:
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David, there are a number of problems with you analysis. i will get into them in more detail later but a few initial points.
Earhart’s original plan was to fly non-stop from Hawaii to Tokyo, a distance of 3,860 SM so the plane was designed to cover that distance and originally had tanks holding 1200 gallons. The report on page 6 contained this warning:
“(3). The Cambridge Gas Analyzers should be carefully calibrated
in flight to see IF the fuel consumption data used in this
analysis CAN BE obtained. This should be done before at tempt–
ing any long range flight .”
Apparently it could NOTbe shown that the fuel consumption could be gotten down to 0.42 BSFC which was required for the range estimates as shown on page 13 of the report. Earhart then realized there was not a sufficient reserve to make the flight as planned so explored the possibility of being refueled in mid-air over Midway island but the Navy was not too hot on this idea. When Earhart’s buddy Gene Vidal come up with building a runway on Howland the plan was changed so this extreme range was no longer required so one large tank was removed and replaced with a smaller one making the total capacity 1151 gallons. As to the accuracy of the report, the takeoff data was confirmed by the recorded takeoffs so the report is most likely as accurate as it could be especially since it did not guarantee the estimated range values IF the estimated fuel BSFC values could not be achieved and proven in flight.
You believe that somehow she could achieve these unrealistically low fuel consumption rates but the lowest BSFC (BRAKE specific fuel consumption) ever claimed by Pratt & Whitney for this engine (the people who built the engine and who had every reason to claim the lowest possible fuel usage rate so that they could sell more engines) was 0.46 pounds per hour per horsepower not the 0.42 that Kelly Johnson hoped to achieve in report 487. And that is at the optimum power setting, the fuel consumption rate gets WORSE at lower power settings. Look at page 34 of the report, at 250 brake hp the BSFC actually gets slightly worse, 0.47 lb/hp/hr.
You have made some other mistakes in you reliance on report 487. You claim that Earhart stated that she got the fuel flow down to 20 gallons per hour total (ten gallons per hour per engine) and you claim that the power required graph on page 28 shows that at the 120 mph that Earhart claimed that the power required was 250 hp total requiring a total fuel flow of just about 20 gallons per hour and thus confirming Earhart’s statement. If your interpretation of this graph were correct, then it would provide confirmation of your interpretation of Earhart’s statement. Unfortunately, there are three problems with your reading of this graph.
First, Earhart stated that her “indicated” airspeed (IAS) was 120 mph at 10,000 feet. According to my E-6B, 120 mph “indicated” airspeed at 10,000 feet at standard conditions makes the “true” airspeed (TAS) 140 mph. Looking at the graph on page 28 (I have the original graph, there is a problem with the copy provided by TIGHAR as the lines on the graph paper do not line up correctly, I could send you a copy if you like) the power required for 140 mph true airspeed at 10,000 feet is 296 horsepower. Using the P&W BSFC of 0.46 means that the fuel flow was,at a minimum, 22.8 gallons per hour. Not a big discrepancy so far.
The second problem is that the power required numbers on page 28 are NOT brake horsepower but are “thrust” horsepower. Since the propeller efficiency is only 75%, the brake horsepower required is 33% greater making the brake horsepower required for 140 mph TAS 393.7 BRAKE hp. Again using the P&W BSFC of 0.46 lb/hp/hr means that the fuel flow was, at a mimimum, 181 pounds per hour, 30.2 gallons per hour.
The third problem with using the information from the graph on page 28 is that that graph is for a gross weight of 9,300 pounds and we know the plane weighed at least a thousand pounds more at that stage in the flight. If you look at the graph on page 27 for a gross weight of 12,900 pounds you will see that the thrust horsepower required is 412 making the brake horsepower 548, the fuel flow 252 lb/hr, 42 gallons per hour so we know that the actual flow noted by Earhart had to be between these numbers, between 30.2 and 42 gallons per hour. Another way to look at this is to just apply normal aerodynamics which show that the power required varies with the weight ratio raised to the 1.5 power. The plane, at the time that Earhart reported “less that 20 gallons per hour” weighed about 10,500 based on its fuel and oil load at the time of takeoff from Oakland and based on it carrying four people, NOT just two, plus their baggage (Mantz was planning on spending time with his girl friend in Hawaii) and all the equipment and spares listed in the Luke Field Inventory. 10,500 / 9,300 equals 1.13, raised to the 1.5 power makes 1.20 so the brake horsepower would have been 1.20 X 393.7 = 472 BRAKE horsepower and the fuel flow would have been 36.3 gallons per hour, a little less than 20 gallons per hour PER ENGINE. It appears that Earhart was actually reporting the fuel flow PER ENGINE, not the total fuel flow.
You have also misunderstood the information shown on page 33 of the report. You claim that this table confirms the 250 hp required for 120 mph airspeed so supports the fuel flow reported by Earhart. Didn’t you notice that this table also shows the same 250 hp for an airspeed of 140 and 160 and 180 mph? How does this make sense? If 250 hp could make the plane go 180 mph then why wouldn’t Earhart use that higher speed since it could be obtained with the same power setting and fuel flow, thus improving greatly the range of the plane?
The answer is that the numbers in this table are used to plot the “power available” not the “power required” curves on the graph on page 28. You interpreted the 250 hp as the power “required” which is completely wrong. You can check this for yourself, look at the tables on pages 31 through 33, double the shown horsepowers available, and then plot them on the page 28 graph and you will see that you have simply drawn int the “horsepower available” curves.
So much for now, more to follow.
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One more thing David, where did you get the 25 gallons “unusable fuel’ number from, did you just make that assumption or do you have some documentary basis for that statement? I know that you would like it that Earhart had this extra 25 gallons so that she could use it to get closer to NB but I don’t know of any basis for such a claim.
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gl
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I also posted this:
on: June 08, 2013, 06:05:54 pm »
QuoteModifyRemove
I posted this on Skeptoid in response to a post from Billings:
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Reply
Gary LaPook says:
June 8, 2013 at 12:40 am
David, I did a lot of work computing the point of no return to New Britain using the information from Lockheed Report 487 and showed these computations on this TIGHAR thread:
https://tighar.org/smf/index.php/topic,651.0.html
I concluded that the plane could not have made it back to New Britain.
Since you used the same data, but came to a completely different conclusion, could share your computation with me, either here or offline?
gl
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Also see the computation of the point of no return on my website at : https://sites.google.com/site/fredienoonan/discussions/amelia-earhart-s-point-of-no-return
The navigation reference books are there so you can learn how to do the computation yourself.
There is much contemporary information about the Earhart mystery on my website at: https://sites.google.com/site/fredienoonan/
gl
Hi GL,
First off these tables were compiled by David Billings, not by me. He is an aircraft engineer so I trust his judgment. As someone who is keenly interested in seeing A.E.’s disappearance resolved, I am 99.9% convinced that A.E. and F.N. crashed on New Britain. What about the engine tag #1055 found by the Australian army patrol (her aircraft construction number)? What about the number sequence on the patrol map? What about the sit rep? What about the Wasp engine? Etc. etc. These leads hold much more promise than searching for her Electra in the vast Pacific. There could have been things happen on that flight that will never be known. Maybe F.N. was incapacitated. Signal strength of her radio transmissions should not even be taken into consideration because of atmospheric considerations. David Billings is planning another expedition in June after doing a LiDAR scan of the search area. Why not you and other interested parties get on board and do something concrete by donating something to the cause.
David Bond
The “La Pook” comment…
Gary La Pook is a Lawyer, so I am sure he has to be correct….
First of all, I will state here that there are two aspects (or two sides) to the East New Britain Project story, the “Earhart Search in Papua New Guinea”.
The first aspect is the evidence on the WWII Topographical map which links the Situation Reports of Patrol A1 of “D” Company of the 11th Battalion of the Australian Army in New Guinea in 1945, to a reference: “Ref: 600H/P S3H1 C/N1055”. This evidence lay hidden unseen for many years until brought to light in the early 1990’s by the reminding of one veteran from the patrol that the engine that they had seen in the jungle had been described by the U.S. Army as a WASP engine. In 1990 the veteran heard in a TV Documentary that Earhart’s Electra was powered by WASP engines.
The second aspect is the “Hypothesis” of how it would be possible for Earhart and Noonan to get back to East New Britain and at night, finally crash the Electra there into the Jungle. Experts cannot tell us with any certainty what point in miles, what distance from LAE, the Electra reached. We simply do not know what the value of the headwind was during the night. Experts cannot tell us with any certainty exactly “where” the Electra was in ‘position’, relative to Howland at 2014GMT, the time of the supposed “Last Call”. Therefore we can only make a hypothesis what the distance and position were.
I am less concerned with the Hypothesis than I am with the Evidence. My concern is to find the wreck, prove one way or the other “whose” it is and let the experts and geniuses work out how it got there. That, in a nutshell, is my position.
San Francisco to Wheeler Field March 1937. (First RTW attempt)
Earhart remarks that the Electra weighed 14,000 pounds with 947 USG of gasoline. This flight SFO–HI took just under 16 hours to complete.
I refer readers to the book “Last Flight” put together by George Palmer Putnam from Earhart’s notes. My copy is ISBN 0-517-56794-6.
The Lockheed fuel consumption figures set down for a long-range flight were:
0-1 hour 100 USG
2nd, 3rd and 4th hour 60 USG per hour
5th, 6th and 7th hour 51 USGPH
8th, 9th and 10th hour 42 USGPH
11th hour onwards 38 USGPH.
Page 35: By the time the Electra would be at Wheeler Field, something in the order of 779 USG should have been used according to the Lockheed figures, leaving 168 USG in tanks but Earhart says she has, “… more than four hours of gasoline remaining which would give us over 600 miles of additional flying.”
Page 32: “Once aloft, I throttled down. Engines have human attributes – they usually respond to kindly treatment. With a long grind before them, I wished to give mine the least possible treatment.” What this means is that Earhart did not follow the “one hour at 100 USGPH that Lockheed had set down for an all-out climb to 8000 feet. She did what is called “Cruise-climb” which will use less gas and cause the aircraft to climb more slowly but more economically, it will also cover more distance.
Page 34: At about the 7th hour point, Earhart remarked that: “the ship now flies like an airplane with almost 2000 lbs rt up” [my bolding of “rt”]. She is saying that almost 2000 lbs of fuel have been used at this point and by my thinking “rt” should read “et” for “et up” [eaten up] as Earhart’s script “r’s” are very similar to her ”e’s” She is saying she has: “eaten up almost 2000 lbs of fuel “ after 6 ½ to 7 hours. On the Lockheed figures after 6.5 hours she should have used 2445 lbs and by 7 hours 2598 lbs. Surely if those figures were what had actually been used she would have said, “… 2500 lbs et up…”
Page 34: Also at this point, just below the passage above, Earhart remarks, “180 mph Boy oh Boy I hope the navigators know what they’re talking about.” This speed will be a Groundspeed, worked out by the Navigators after taking some Astro. So, Earhart seems surprised that they are making such good speed over the ground so it seems that they had a tailwind.
That they have been making such good speed is evidenced by the following passage.
Page 37: “Daylight comes at last. The stars fade. We are throttled down to 120 indicated airspeed so as not to arrive in darkness. We ae burning less than 20 gals of gas at 10000 feet. We have tuned in in Makapu. Keep it 10 degrees to starboard bow is the order.”
These words are in print and also in Earhart’s handwriting in my copy of the book.
The two key word sets in the passage written by Earhart are: “throttled down” and “so as not to arrive in darkness”, in other words, the navigators have calculated their ETA at Wheeler Field to be in the period of darkness, so they have made “good time”, the groundspeed has been better then expectations. Now, so as not to be faced with a landing in darkness, Earhart backs off the power to reduce the airspeed and this then is not CRUISE power it is “SLOW-DOWN power” the aircraft is at 120 IAS at 10000 feet and she says she is using less than 20 gals per hour. If that were double what she said, i.e; 40 USG per hour she would not be throttled down she would be powered up to above the normal CRUISE power setting of 38 USGH at this time in the flight, the 14 hour point, as per the Lockheed figures for the period after 10 hours of flight.
What I am saying is that Earhart’s use of the Electra used less gasoline than the Lockheed figures.
La Pook says my 2013 figures are wrong, fair enough. I did review my fuel figures for the new website which went up in 2016.
I state on my website that due to the groundspeeds obtained on the Second Attempt at the RTW Flight, Earhart did not get to the vicinity of Howland, the groundspeeds to make it possible that the Electra was “at” Howland or lateral to it, were not available into the headwind and there is no way that the throttles would be firewalled to make the groundspeed increase.
If it is to be argued that there was no turnback as per the Contingency Plan found on tape in the Uni of Wyoming then whoever wants to argue the toss can argue with Ron Bright, Cam Warren and Robert Payne, for it is they who pursued and found evidence of The Contingency Plan, which I obviously believe was activated, if not fully followed through.
What do I believe is in the Jungle of East New Britain in accordance with the First Aspect of the Earhart Search in PNG ?
I believe there is an aircraft wreck lying there on a hillside under cover of a layer of earth for the following reasons:
1: An Army SITREP from the unit involved tells us that “A/C plates will be available at 0900 with the report”. Meaning the Patrol A1 Report. That message therefore tells us that as the Vets have said, an aircraft wreck was found and that they have handed in some plates. The Veterans could only remember one plate being handed in so that “s” in plates may be a typo.
2: The Warrant Officer on the patrol saw the words “Pratt & Whitney” on the detached engine “somewhere”, he could not remember exactly where. He removed a Metal Tag hanging by wire from the engine mount tubing. He said the Metal Tag had “a string of letters and numbers on it”.
3: The Patrol Report was handed in, together with the Metal Tag and the Patrol Lieutenant and Warrant Officer considered that the wreckage was American even though it bore no identification that they could see except for the seen “Pratt and Whitney” and the Tag. The lieutenant was of the opinion that the Metal Tag was also sent with the information about a wreck to the U.S. Army.
4: Some weeks later the men of the Company were at TOL Plantation where they were approached by an Officer who read out to them that the U.S. Army had replied to the Australian Army that the wreckage was “not one of theirs”. The engine was “a WASP engine and may be from a Lockheed as Lockheed were big users of Pratt & Whitney engines”.
NOTE: The U.S. Army said that the engine was a WASP. If the engine had been a TWIN-WASP they surely would have been interested as they had numbers of Twin-Wasp engines operating on B-24 Liberator and A-20 Havoc aircraft.
5: So, as it was twin-engined aircraft, there are actually TWO Wasp engines there.
6: We have “600 H/P S3H1 C/N1055” together with details of patrol A1 on a Topographical Map used by the men of “D” Coy 11th Battalion AIF. The map had always been in the possession of men from that unit. Those identifiers say that with “S3H1” being a WASP engine same as used by Earhart and the rating in H.P is correct and so is the “1055” as the sequential build number of her aircraft, the writing references (Ref:) the L10E Model Electra aircraft used by Earhart.
7: On the evidence it is the Electra 10E aircraft which belonged to Earhart.
Aircraft Identification:
If anyone skilled in aircraft identification involving aircraft types from the era 1930 to 1945, can tell me of a different type of aircraft that this wreckage could be, other than a Lockheed Model 10E Electra, I would be delighted to know what that aircraft could be.
The aircraft has to be an aircraft powered by P&W Wasp engines specifically with the designation “S3H1”.
Finale:
I say again to Mr. La Pook… “If you spent as much time on your own Stratus project as you do messing with mine, you would have yours done and dusted long ago.”
David Billings
http://www.earhartsearchpng.com
The bottom line is monetarily bribing both tribes into an agreement which results in the discovery of the buried wreckage. They will not cooperate for the humanitarian aspects of recovering two sets of remains.
Is the bulldozer operator still alive ?? Pay him as a guide. I realize the jungle swallows everything in a hurry, but he would know the general location.
The Japanese had purchased an Electra in the 1930’s. Has anyone researched what became of it?
Finally, Mister LaPook is a distinguished aviator, navigator, aircraft accident investigator, and has researched the Earhart disappearance for more than 30 years.The fact the he is an Attorney by profession has nothing to do with his research.
If you read Mr. Billings web site you would learn that Alvinus, the bulldozer operator was taken by a crocodile when he tried to ford the Mevelo river.
According to Mr. Billings web site my understanding is that the Lockheed purchased by the Japanese had 450HP engines NOT 600HP as stated on the metal tag retrieved by the Australian army patrol.
My name is Kurt Spehr and I was born in 1953 in Madang, Papua New Guinea to my missionary Parents. I had my share of aerial flying by Cessna and by DC-3 that almost crashed into a mountain when we dropped 300 feet to five feet above ground. We barely made it across the next mountain top! Flying in PNG is very hazardous! It is my strong belief that when Amelia’s aircraft lifted off of Lae airstrip, that she lost her marine communication antenna and the real time video of that departure shows the fuel weight stressed her airframe as soon as her wheels lifted off the runway! There was extreme stress in the area of the fuel load behind her seat that instantly snapped her marine antenna explaining why she never answer the U.S. Coast Guard Cutter or the U.S. Navy Fleet tug half way. It is my theory that her navigator who was known to drink to much aided the crash into New Britain. She never made it to Howland! It is my theory she was having difficulty gaining altitude with the heavy load of fuel and with airframe stress slowing the flight. They must have hit wind sheer and crashed into the heavy hill tree canopy reported by the Australian WWII Army patrol to be 200 feet. The plane was slowed by canopy contact and with the loaded fuel tanks once stopped broke through the canopy and landed right side up. This can happen because while about 8 or 9 years old a Catholic priest flying a load of eggs landed in a coconut tree canopy and safely lowered his eggs to the earth floor with none breaking! Strange things happen in jungle flight. We lost 3 aircraft in the Lutheran Mission Field from Madang, PNG airstrip and 2 pilots. Americans that didn’t grow up in Papua New Guinea are not aware of the extreme flying conditions in PNG. Also, New Britain contains many volcanic mountains…it is possible Amelia encountered volcanic ash in the atmosphere cutting power in her carburetor which could have downed her aircraft on her course which happened to cut directly through the area reported by the Australian Army Patrol! The aircraft is south of Tol Plantation. What is needed is an Australian or American P-3 aircraft to located the GPS of the wrecked Electra 10E.