{ title: 'The watchman. (Mattituck, N.Y.) 1937-1940, June 02, 1938, Page 15, Image 15', download_links: [ { link: 'http://www.loc.gov/rss/ndnp/ndnp.xml', label: 'application/rss+xml', meta: 'News about NYS Historic Newspapers - RSS Feed', }, { link: '/lccn/sn96083588/1938-06-02/ed-1/seq-15/png/', label: 'image/png', meta: '', }, { link: '/lccn/sn96083588/1938-06-02/ed-1/seq-15.pdf', label: 'application/pdf', meta: '', }, { link: '/lccn/sn96083588/1938-06-02/ed-1/seq-15/ocr.xml', label: 'application/xml', meta: '', }, { link: '/lccn/sn96083588/1938-06-02/ed-1/seq-15/ocr.txt', label: 'text/plain', meta: '', }, ] }
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h •^melia Earluul, world's most ^H^'amnun birrlwom* H|Ln, and her navi- were winging ^ their way from ^^New Guinea to- ^Kward Hawaii when Hp* brief niessage B^^came through tell- ^ they were in trouble near How- land Island. That was the la»t heard from the III. c/htcd^la Gjuujtt PH QtuteP line * Jslmnds VarrisL I By WOODS PETERS SOME time in June the far South Pa- cific will relinquish the mystery of what happened to Amelia Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan. On a lonely \island three and a quarter thousand miles from where those two vanished the sea will cast up any wreckage that still re- mains afloat, and some time after that, through a half-dozen languages and dia- ^lects, word will come to the world of its finding. Such is the belief ot navigators and^ scientists familiar with the whims of South Pacific Ocean currents and winds. If fortune decrees, that bit of wreckage ^may carry the final written report of Miss Earhart herself. For it is not incon- ceivable that a note scratched on that wreckage or incased in empty and floating tanks or thermos bottle, may be with that J final vestige of a great endeavor to set at rest the long argument as to what actually happened during the long (iays of agonizing search last year. THERE is no need to cepeat the details of that search. Miss Earhart and Fred Noonan had set out from Lae, on the northeastern side of New Guinea, on a projected flight to Rowland Island. They never arrived. The largest ocean search in all history scoured the waters to the east, southeast, south and finally went of the tiny sand spit that is Howland. Islanders say that search was a tragic error, that it should have started in the west. They quote the ocean currentii and prevailing winds for their hypothesis, and now, referring to thoae same sources, they prophesy wreckage of the plane may sopn be found on the eastern coast of Halniuhora Island on the gateway to the Celebes Sea. Earhart, they say, has re- traced her last great flight and journeyed 12200 miles beyond. It will be harshly iroiucal if that prophecy ^ fulfilled, for it is built upon the theory that was projected at the time of the di.^aster and which was then re- jected. It has as its basis Miss Ejirhart's own last -Statement: \We are 100 miles from Howland.\ Navigators and Scientists Believe That Pacific \Drifts\ Will Cast Up Parts of Plane or Message of lll-Fated Ship on Sonr\e South Sea Island and That Mute Story of Disaster Will Finally Be Told to the World Islanders disbelieve that she and her companion overshot their mark. They dis- believe they circled southward to the Phoenix Islands. They are firm in their conviction she and Noonan settled to the sea precisely where she said she did, west^ ward of Howland in the strong equatorial drift that in that section of the Pacific has a set of from twelve to thirty-five miles per day. These ocean drifts are the jinx that has brought death to more than one aerial navigator since brave men and women attempted the conquest of the Pacific. Jestingly, once only, they brought life. Back in 1925 they drove the floating plane of Commander John Rodgers down a nine- day drift almost to the very destination he had attempted to reach by air. They brought him and his companions safely to Hawaii and set those islands up as the American aviation center of the Pacific. Jestingly they picked up the wheels of the daring Post and Gatty, when those adventurers successfully attempted the long flight from Japan to America and months later brought those wheels to shore at almost the very point the avia- tors themselves had landed. But it is rare that the ocean currents jest. They seem to prefer to. clutch their secrets to their watery bosoms and swing them on until time erases all memory of what the secret may have originally been. That, say the islanders, was the fate of C. T. P. Ulm and his two companions during December of 1934. Falling into the sea to the southward of Hawaii, as Ulm'a last messages indicated, they would have been caught by combing wind and ocean forces and sent in a continually narrow- ing spiral whose eventual center is some- where in the vast expanse of waters stretching the 1800 miles between the Line and the Marshall Islands. That was the fate, those inlanders say, of Mildred Doran, John Auggie Pedlar, Vilas R. Knope, Willam P. Erwin. Per- haps it was the fat* of Jack Frost and Gk>rdon Scott, who some say crashed on one of the high island mountains and others feel certain dropped also into the vast Pacific, to be swirled in the endlessly moving Japan current. Those ocean \rivers\ are perhaps the most powerful factor in causing the fail- ure of sea searches. Unless help can almost instantly reach the stricken plane, eac> hour sweeps it farther and farther from the last known position, and month to month variations in those \rivers\ make it impossible to chart accurately the course the victim may have taken while the knowledge may be of any defi- nite value. BASICALLY, there are two major streams in the Pacific area. One of these sweeps westward to the north of the Equator, circles north and east and re- turns again to take up its earlier course. The other, sweeping also westward but to the south of the Equator, swings still further southward, then apparently ambles east to find its jvay in uncertain manner back to its starting point. In between and within the major streams themselves are countless \eddies\ and minor currents that wind their way between islan'ds and along the course of great subsea canyons. IT IS a combination of these that caught the Earhart flying laboratory, so it is said. Howland Island lies almost exactly on the Equator and but three degrees to the eastward of the International Date Line. Only one other island, Baker, is within 300 miles. The ocean current, unob- structed, races due west, augmented by strong trade winds that whip the surface waters even faster. Cocoanuts, logs and other drifting matter are driven west- ward in mid-Summer months 600 miles every thirty days. It was here that Miss Earhart and Fred Noonan came out of the air, many think. If that is true, the navy's search was several hundred miles to the east and the later search in these waters was too late to catch the floating plane, and when it transferred to the Gilbert Islands, off to the west, was too early to have allowed time for the plane to reach that region. Surging west, the current funnels be- The heav7 black lines on the map of the Pacific Ocean show corrcnt drifts. Science says these drifta of ocean streams eventually touch small islands that dot the Pacififu Captain Ulm went down west of Hawaii, and later his ship was picked up after follow- ing the drift as shown in the circle. Amelia Earhart's plane went down near How- land Island. The drift there is westward along the Equator, and scientists fa- miliar with the ocean cur- rents believe some evidence of the disaster will be found along the shores of one of the lonely islands. tween two of the Gilbert Group known as Aranuka and Nunuki, then seta slightly south to skirt lonely Nauru. Thereafter, for 1200 miles, there was n« the slightest chance for any trace of the wreckage to have been sighted, for that ocean is so Isolated that no depth soundings have ever been recorded in that entire area. The trend would next have set slightly northward, driven up by the deep bulk- head of the lifting Solomon and Bismarck Archipelagoes. Swinging close to those latter islands, drifting wreckage would then skirt the long New Guinea northern shore, edging but a few miles a day for- ward in a constantly slowing current until it found itself in the nearer islets of the Dutch East Indies. IN THE early spring there is a consid- erable scattering of the ocean currents in this section of the Pacific, portions plunging south in spiraling eddies, others swinging north, and limited central por- tion of the major stream driving headlong on to the great crescent coast of Halma- hera, finding its way in under-tow back to the open sea. It is this route that the plotted course of possible Earhart wreckage follows, and it is here, on savage Halmahera, that navigators, oceanographers and South Sea Island pilots say the answer to the greatest of Pacific tragic mysteries will eventually be solved. They do not anticipate that immedi- ately, with the arrival of the month of June, a message will be flashed out to the waiting world. They recognize the ever-present danger that the particular beach on which the wreckage may be cast may be one of those that man seldom frequents; they acknowledge that even if it may be found, the finder may be some savage who would not recognize the importance of his find and would merely bury it among his personal treas- ures in some native hut, or worse yet— leave it to disintegrate under the tropic suns and storms. They quote the wheels of Sir Charles Kingsford-Smith's plane, floating for months in the Indian Sea to finally come to civilization. They quote the repeated findings of airship wreckage in the waters of the Pacific Ocean, identified generally as one or another ol the army and navy planes that have in times past vanished \without trace.\
