I feel it was probably arrogance, going without a radio operator, not testing and making all sorts of radio operation errors was a sure way to die in a place where there was no other option but to land using radio signals
My introverted friend Emily was invited to our Halloween party. She dressed up as Amelia Earhart, sent us all a photo and said she’s on her way, and then never showed up. Truly iconic.
In Apollo 11 there were 3 Astronauts and 1 of them is always left out even though he had the most important job of waiting for the 2 that went to the surface all alone. If you don't know who I'm talking about I rest my case. It's Michael Collins by the way.
@@jotrutchhahaha well if you consider flying a plane was relatively new still And being a female pilot she definitely would have backed into after the First strike
right? i remember when i was young watching documentary about here. from what i watched i thought she got missing because she didn't have enough fuel. i was thinking to myself why would anyone do that? it was bad and stupid documentary it only focusd on that she is a woman pilot
Growing up I used to think Earhart was some sort of legend, flying literally solo, in a tiny plane. But after watching this it really makes me feel she was unprepared and naive for what she was up against. Kinda like the Oceangate CEO.
Also there was so much job done to make this happen - new flying strips, three guarding ships... It's huge recourses that only a celebrity could pull up. All this sounds much less of an a solo achievement.
She was, but that is why the navy commander shouldve taken charge and told her what waves to use so he could guide her home had she had the proper guidance the trip wouldve been easy and she wouldve been remembered as the first woman to ever fly around the world, but now because of his arrogance she remember as the one that died with crew during the around the world trip, she wasnt completely unprepared she was 80% done the trip
One word: preparedness. If you want a fantastic example of preparedness, look at how Amundsen organized his South Pole expedition. Leftover fuel cans were found over 50 years later and were completely full. He marked his supply depots with rows of red flags for 1200 m in _each_ direction (E and W as he was travelling S and then N on the way back). He got to the 1200 m by taking the largest possible error on navigation, and then doubling it. They had enough food to miss a depot and still make it to the next one. His entire team were expert skiers and dog-sledders, so everyone could do everyone else's job. All this in 1911.
I believe that he didn't bother with (converging)latitude measurements when he got close to the pole - kept it simple. Opposed to Scott calculated both, time and complexity.
@@jurgenpeters1373 The runway is what made the expedition physically possible, the strategy by Amundsen outlined in the comment above seems to take it from physically possible to a slam dunk. Having two navy ships assisting your journey is very useful, but not that much considering the size of the pacific. The nature of the endeavour makes it a more difficult thing to be prepared for
@@herrk.2339 I haven't looked into it, but at the point where she found a mistake, sent a telegram to one of the ships before the departure but never waited for an acknowledgement (and the correction did indeed not reach the ship in time), wasn't there an element of haste in this? It might be harder to prepare for, but I do think she rushed too quickly into this.
IMHO, the larger factor in this: "Get there itis", a mental issue that has killed many pilots, as evidenced by: A. Leaving when conditions were less than ideal. B. Sending VITAL communications to ships about radios frequencies & etc. and not ensuring said communications were received, understood, AND that they made sense. C. Not turning back when she had a chance, and things were already going wrong. In other words, she was SO focused on getting there, she just kept blowing of potentially huge issues.
The fact that she appears to not have been receiving voice communication and did not turn back on such a radio dependent flight is quite remarkable. It's always good to exercise vital equipment before your life depends on it and part of her radio array had from out point of view shown no capacity to work. Perhaps she didn't expect to receive the weather updates and so didn't know that she was missing them, but the absence of a handshake communication protocol was a clear failure in the plan.
@@cidiousblack2136 Dude, it was 1937. People hadn't worked this stuff out yet. It's flights like this which are the reason we have these procedures today. We learn from others mistakes.
@@qarnos I'm sorry, what? We hadnt figured out the basic logic of "this entire project depends on the radio, we should make sure it works?" Even before ships went terribly wrong, I think we could figure out "the sailboat trip I set up needs a sail."
@@qarnos Nah mate. You know what you don't know and plan for it. In this instance, she did not know what she did not know and went ahead anyway. Her hubris or arrogance was astounding.
This was the absolute best documentary on Amelia Earhart's final flight that I've ever seen. Despite seeing dozens of depictions of the flight over the years, none of the radio mistakes/malfunctions were ever explained. Most of the documentaries wanted to focus on the conspiracy theories instead of the science. The science is infinitely more interesting. Thank you for this!
@Machoman50ta Doesn’t stand up to analysis, financier and organizer was Palmer Putnam, navigator and radio operator was Fred Noonan. Incomplete preparation was the culprit.
This is absolutely maddening. It's error after error, messages not being received nor acknowledged, fundamental misunderstanding of radio frequencies, and on and on. So incredibly frustrating.
women have evolved to expect to have a man to fall back on, this is why they make such terrible leaders. this is also why they seemingly have no real understanding of risk, risk assessment is what men evolved to do.
I'm 77 years old and this video is by far the absolute best presentation and explanation on Earhart's disastrous last flight. You did an excellent job of breaking down the technical problems and explaining it to a general audience. Would love to see the bonus Patreon vid, but I am disabled, below poverty line. I do not understand why almost 99% of other media does cheap tabloid versions of Earhart's final flight. Thanks again for such a superb investigation and researched video. Dima
All thanks to AI, I think he probably outsources everything to a Chinese and Indian video editing sweatshop and he usually stands in a studio and the entire environment in the back is cgi including the grass lands he is standing on cuz all those places he gets to access is insane cuz no one can enter those places but how him lol something to think. He's fooling a lot of people. Thankfully an old head like me who is 45 yrs old can spot these classic tactics 😊
I sailed in the US Navy as a Radioman/IT for 25 years and then 5 years on commercial ships. An old hand on my first commercial ship told me "You get careless out here, danger will find you". He was correct about sailing and life in general.
I never considered how complex radio communication was back then, having multiple antennas tuned to different frequencies. I grew up on video games that have a map marker to the destination. I've always wondered if modern planes have something similar to that because they use GPS. Is flying today as simple as portrayed in the video games? Just point your nose to the map marker?
That is true in many fields. If you are surrounded by danger, you will eventually stop seeing it. I am a chemistry teacher and handling dangerous chemicals on a daily bases makes you careless. You need to constantly remind yourself that the safety measures are necessary, because if something goes wrong, even if it is unlikely, the results could be devastating.
This is the best explanation of what happend to Earhart I have ever seen. No mysticism, science based explanations and addressed in laymans terms. Great video
I'm amazed at how ill-prepared the expedition to cross the Pacific was. Amelia Earhart certainly had ambition and bravery, but it seems she was seriously lacking in her understanding of risk and how to mitigate that risk with redundancies. Instead of resolving uncertainties and potential issues before takeoff, she just hoped for the best.
She was brave and everything, but her behaviour seems incredibly stupid. It blows my mind how you can go on a journey like that and be lacking this amount of certanity and understanding...
It's common when you make mistakes but get away with them. You start to belive that it always be that way or even that you are special. It's even worse if other people praise you for your acheivments and bravery.
@@cyrkielnetwork The problem with complacency is that it DOESN'T get you every time. Also it's crazy that she didn't check her equipmet once in the air after takeoff.
We must remember that aviation in the 1930s was an ENTIRELY different beast than what we know today. Obviously in equiment and knowledge, but even more important in mentality. Today it is the best regulated, best trained and best controlled sector short of nuclear technology. There is an in depth investigation into ANY relevant accident or almost accident with recommendations published to reach everyone. Every failure has been analysed, chewed through by multiple experts. And even then, we have tragic accidents like Air France 447. A situation where a minor malfunction combined with misinterpretation leads to a desaster and the death of hundreds of people. That was just 15 years ago. In an era where communication was a challenge under the best conditions, technology often unreliable and understood by very few, training scarce and daring counted for much it is perfectly understandable how Earhart ended up with her plan. Nobody of her peers would have acted much differently.
I have a bone to pick with public education. They way Amelia's story was told essentially boiled down to: "she disappeared mysteriously over the Pacific ocean and nobody know what happened". The full story is so much more interesting.
My public education included a filmed dramatization of the actual communications between Itasca and Earhart. It was clear to everyone in the classroom there were radio issues. It was also understood her amateur understanding of radio technology - that there was literally a communication breakdown somewhere. It did not attempt to lay 'blame" or make conclusions - just that during the attempt great effort was put into guiding her flight but through accident or bad luck or the enormity of the challenge with the technology of the era, that it failed. And that she likely had to make a water landing and was probably killed or dead from exposure not long after. Public education typically sucks when it comes to history - I learned far more reading in the library than was ever presented in class - but in the case of Earhart and her disappearance, it got a pretty fair and unusually intesnive treatment for elementary school in the mid 1970's.
The absolute minutia of every significant historical event is really hard to cover. How detailed you get into what topics also depends on your teacher, school, state, textbook supplier, and other factors.
I've heard this story told many times over the years. Never have I heard of the detailed breakdown of the radio communications errors explained in such detail. Great show. Subscribing now!
This story is a chilling reminder of how small errors can cascade into tragedy, especially in high-stakes situations. It makes you think about all the "what ifs" and how important clear communication and shared responsibility are. RIP Amelia Earhart.
We call it the "swiss cheese effect" in aviation (and probably lots of other places). Sometimes the mistake makes it through all the holes and doesn't get stopped by the cheese, and that's when there's an accident.
SMALL errors? And she stacked up a whole slew of large risks on top. The possibility of the outcome realized was predictable, at some fairly high percentage.
@dannymaxx510 I have only heard the Swiss cheese effect in discussions about aviation safety, but I bet it is a common engineering term too. I just started to think about the Therac-25 incident
I knew I would be sad, but I didn't think I would get this angry at the lack of preparation on Earhart's part. I always figured it was just adventurism hitting the limit of the technology. But I can't understand not having complete understanding of vital equipment and complete synchrony with the people you relied on for such a bold journey.
I can’t believe she didn’t know how to use Morse code. How basic is that and she didn’t bother to learn it. Instead she insisted that the US Navy paid by American tax dollars call her by voice. WTF.
@@VS-yu5wk And also: insisting going around the globe the hardway. That she was, at best spotty for flying. And no one was the adult in the room and told that the plan was literally a deathwish, and hell no, and why.
As a pilot who's been lost before as well as one who's flown over large bodies of water in single engine aircraft, I have at least a basic understanding of just how challenging what she attempted was and how your mind can start to run away with incorrect or fatalistic assumptions if not trained or rested properly. My heart sank for her as the story progressed. She had a lot of odds stacked against her and she has my deepest sympathy and respect.
Agree, the Pacific is vast, the understanding of radio waves before WW 2 was limited as was the equipment. Much was learned during WW 2. Dad spent his adult life flying in the Canadian Arctic he was a very good navigator he could find the trappers cabin at night on the vast tundra, lake shore, or where it was.
As a student pilot, I kept getting both amazed and mortified more and more about what early aviators had to do to find their way. In a more amusing note, while VORs are going out of fashion in lieu of GPS, they're not THAT different than what they had finding the dips in signal with their loop antenna.
About 20 years ago in my country, a 737-300 lost their navigation and communication (according to national transportation safety board, both device was malfunctioned) in the middle of sea. The pilot decided to turn to the right which according to map, land should be somewhere to the right. But they could only guessed since they had no devices to measure how much degree they were turning. Their only hope was they could spot a land then try to figure from the land features to guess where they were at. They ended up landing on small airport around 800 kilometer away from their origin and destination.
What this made me realize is how far we’ve come in terms of navigation and communication since. And even with all the technology we have today, mistakes happen.
"When attempting any challenging endeavor, you need someone with the right knowledge who will also take responsibility for getting things right." This is so true. Too many projects fail due to unknowledgeable people in charge or knowledgeable people not taking enough responsibilities.
Yah the knowledgeable people are walked over by unknowledgeable people because of nepotism,wokeism and the sort. So guess what, the knowledgeable people give up and watch the disaster happen.
One can only speculate why the navel officer didn’t take responsibility for her, but one can imagine her personality and connections made it impossible
This video made me appreciate even more having a device that fits in my pocket and can tell me precisely where on Earth I am. Not knowing about radio waves nor stars.
9:18 - God could you imagine discovering you think will be absolutely pointless, only for it to essentially redefine the course of humanity. To think, radio waves were literally the impetus for Radio, Television, eventually Wifi and Cellphone signals. It potentially altered the course of WW2. Hertz was so incredibly humble for how monumental this discovery was.
@@otterlyso As with almost everything we discover, they're always standing on the shoulders of giants. I'll never discount how important the discoveries of those that come before us were and still are.
Amazing, isn't it? Although you can see where he was coming from. Tiny sparks you could only see under a microscope? And with the emitter super close by? Yeah, what do you do with that? It's mind-boggling to think that despite the square-cube law we can use these same waves to communicate with spacecraft outside our solar system and even see the very beginning of the universe!
I mean, light and sound were always available as wireless communication methods, so... I'm assuming he didn't know about the atmosphere being a mirror to radio waves. How could he have predicted any usecase?
This was one of your best videos: science & tech that few of us learned growing up, demystifying something that gets onto the conspiracy websites, and a basic message about preparation and organization that people often never hear.
@@musafirgauravv AI must have been gotten really good to umm... what did the AI do again, can you elaborate?? If it's done the whole thing it certainly wouldn't look this good at the current level of AI; if they just did the animation well I've got bad news for you buddy, 3Blue1Brown did a video on how to make these style of animations using Manib(m). Nevertheless, I still wanna know what you meant when you said it was made by AI
What happened to Earhart is similar to the lost colony of Roanoke: the outcome is somewhat clear but it obscuring details makes it seem more mysterious.
@ The survivors likely went to live with the Croatan Indians, and due to disease they likely died with the tribe. Or, the English quickly became absorbed by the tribe-and the English genetic traits disappeared upon a couple generations of intermarriage. Walter Raleigh and his financial backers could chalk up the colony’s demise as an act of God and not their fault in order to take heat off of their backs from the Crown or investors.
@@captainjack8319 The english would not suffer from europian deseases. I find it more likely they simly assimilated. Hunter gatherers spend less time working than farmers and back in the day civilization provided very little as compared to the fun of not having to stick to a rigid christian code.
This story perfectly shows how important two things are anyone should live by: - Prior Proper Planning Prevents Poor Performance. - Good communication is key.
Of his own skills he once remarked, "Navigation in bad weather was my specialty. One passenger remarked, "You don’t always get a glad hand when you sail with Manning, but you feel damned safe." He retired to a quiet and private life of lecturing and consultant work. He died at his home in Saddle River, NJ on August 1, 1974. Manning was smart to call it quits. Survival of the smartest.
Yeah, he surely was. He saw this coming after that take off blunder. I don't know why they were so desperate and didn't prepare well for this world travel. Maybe they thought that there was no way this could go wrong.
@@ShubhamKumar-wm9vg Maybe they just feared that someone else would beat them if they delayed it too much. She was certainly on a rising trajectory and it probably got to her and her crew heads in some way.
@@sailormatlac9114 she obviously became a star for no reason. Things just played out in her favour all of her life and she became the first woman to cross the Atlantic but she was just a passenger in that journey, Anyother woman could have been given this opportunity. But she got all the fame and awards for that. She must be desperate to keep rising. Their preparations had a lot of shortcomings and the journey decisions were wrong too. This all led to that ultimate demise. This could have been a different story if she just would have put some time into learning more about radiophysics.
Well in the end Manning has managed to dodge a bullet. Later surviving U-Boat encounter and manage to become a Vice Admiral in the Navy. All because he bail out immedietly after seeing AE incompetence after just a simple take off.
The last message of the video was truly a powerful one. As an engineer, it resonated with me. You have to have proper knowledge to take on the responsibility.
Amen from another engineer. Knowledge seems to be in good supply. Responsibility seems to have fallen off. But to be fair, it seems that taking a stand for engineers is a greater risk than in days gone by. Just seems so to me.
As a wildland firefighter I was taught that the cause of almost every single fatality could be traced to a breakdown in communication. The most recent ones all occurred because their radio signals stopped working. The technology has improved but the same risks and challenges still exist and still cause deaths.
I think it’s true in almost every fatality, when it comes right down to it. Clear and concise communication saves lives, failure to communicate often leads to catastrophic outcomes and for more than just yourself.
@@leprechaunbutreallyjustamidgetNot when the guiding intent is ill-informed and malicious. Greed, EGO and hate make these times especially perilous for the United States. The ignorance, avarice and corruption of one man almost seals our fate. Hopefully, we will have a few good men of character and integrity from within who will guide the ship and do the right thing to save Democracy!
This is not really true. Major incidents happen because a chain of errors that are not mitigated by procedures and equipment. This is as described by Dr James Reason. The Swiss Cheese model.
I know Earhart was a huge celebrity at the time from comments by my parents, who were 20 and 16 at the time. They lived these events, through the media as it was then. I never really knew anything of what happened. I only ever saw the conspiracy theories. This, for me, is a kind of closure. So, thank you. Thank you for shining the light of reason on troubling events.
Fun fact: The Electra originally had a very different tail, until a young guy told the chief designer the plane would be unstable like that. The young guy turned out to be right, and got to running the extra wind-tunnel tests to re-design the tail. His name? Clarence "Kelly" Johnson, and he'd go on to heading development on the first US jet-fighter (P-80), the U-2, and the SR-71, and his division of Lockheed (now Lockheed Martin) would create the idea of a Skunkworks division and the first stealth-plane - the F-117. The hypersonic test-plane "SR-72 Darkstar" in Top Gun: Maverick was designed with the support of Skunkworks, and if you look close you see on the tail the traditional skunk logo.
@@dumbahhpersonI was also skeptical but I just went a searchin in the internets and can confirm the parts about the “Model 10 Electra”. Didn’t care to confirm anything about the Mavrick movie but the career part was true and very impressive
That sounds very Kelly Johnson: later in life someone else at Lockheed was known to say of him "that damn Swede can see air." He was a proper legend of aircraft design.
Industry I worked in for many years, we always trained, "Okay, but what do you do if THAT doesn't work.... and if THAT doesn't work? What if..." Seems like she relied on things working just right and didn't really have any backup plan.
Not entirely true. The video mentions they had dead reckoning, celestial navigation, and multiple radio systems. They had backup plans, but they didn't do the due diligence to ensure each plan was fully baked and operable, that all parties involved were well informed and prepared.
@@error.418 I think celestial navigation is a bit overrated in aircraft. At the start of WW2, the RAF bombers could barely find the right city to bomb using celestial and dead reckoning, in fact they often found the wrong city. In fact Switzerland was bombed several times, and that's not even the right country.
@@dougerrohmer Oh I'm making no comment as to what is viable, just that they did have multiple methods. I also have no clue if it's reasonable to compare Noonan's abilities with those of WW2 bomber pilots.
I think it's very much a sign of the times. Just look at workplace death rates throughout the last century. Today, we do what you say, having backups for backups. Back then, "try not to die" was sort of the equivalent of current OSHA standards. And @error.418, having a backup plan that isn't tested and confirmed is virtually the same as not having a backup plan. It's the difference between going on a summer camping trip and bringing jackets vs. saying "ah, it shouldn't rain I think"
Look up Prof Reason Swiss Cheese model of accident prevention. At every event of the story, I hear how she slipped thru another hole in the Swiss Cheese. But this was in the early days of aviation and radio. Accident investigators note all the mistakes they can find and try to write regulations to avoid other accidents. As they say, the regulation rules are written in blood. Lookup Mentour channel, Gimli Glider episode.
After listening you explaining, I can see that there are tons of mistakes and careless preparation for the journey. Great video! Keep up good work. I love your voice, it's very thrilling
this is literally the first time in my years of fascination with Amelia Earhart that I’ve actually seen someone talk about what scientifically was planned and what scientifically went wrong. Thank you!❤️❤️❤️❤️
What 'scientifically' went wrong is despite her socialite status; best friends with Eleanor so had the Presidents ear, had runways built for her and a friggen *navy* escort she still messed it up. As pilot in command it was entirely her fault - especially so as she didn't even know half the expected things required. It's called being coddled through life and told you are a genius amazing women even though she did nothing men hadn't done before (who actually had the correct skillset). Things have only gotten worse since then.
Noonan the Navigator was not sitting beside her in the cockpit. He was actually sitting behind her with a large fuel tank between them...they used a fishing line with pulleys to send notes with navigation numbers and fuel burn rates between each other
The sheer incompetence, although surprising, doesn't actually seem unusual compared to other daring adventures of the time. It'd be interesting to get a historical overview of risk tolerance across the 20th century. Even now is different from the 80s, which was drastically different from the 50s, and so on. Everytime i learn about some disaster of the early/mid 20th century, it always like "bruh"
The problem with that is that every generation’s risk awareness is shaped by incidents at that time… like no one really thought about the danger of yard darts until someone took a dart thru the head… all sorts of things seem safe enough until someone dies and then everyone’s view of the risk associated with that activity shifts. Would be cool to see a list of things considered safe from each decade that we wouldn’t dream of doing now - along with your sense of risk tolerance across time.
amount of miscommunication and small errors is mindboggling, but understandable for the times and how difficult it was to properly communicate across distances.
I wouldn't call it mind boggling. Communication wasn't everywhere, and was "primitive" today. The margin for error was small, and this was a VERY risky trip from start. Just over confident and adrenaline fueled.
I really appreciate you saving the sponsorship for the end. I find it almost polite and classy?😂 as funny as that sounds. Your research is amazing in this video ❤
I also love how it helps him make his own signature style of ending videos. _"I wanna thank xyz for sponsoring this video, and I wanna thank YOU, for watching"._ It is obviously inspired from Michael Steven's signature _"and as always, thanks for watching"_ and although it's not as iconic, it's nice.
Same with Danny Gonzalez, I love it when people don’t put their sponsorships smack dab in the middle of their video, we already have ads (unless people have bought UA-cam premium) it’s just much better and I’m glad their thinking about the viewers and what is nice
I have much more respect for people who either do their ads at the very beginning or very end. When you throw it in the middle, and it cuts the sentence they were saying, in half, it's frustrating and feels so in-your-face.
One word: preparedness. If you want a fantastic example of preparedness, look at how Amundsen organized his South Pole expedition. Leftover fuel cans were found over 50 years later and were completely full. He marked his supply depots with rows of red flags for 1200 m in each direction (E and W as he was travelling S and then N on the way back). He got to the 1200 m by taking the largest possible error on navigation, and then doubling it. They had enough food to miss a depot and still make it to the next one. His entire team were expert skiers and dog-sledders, so everyone could do everyone else's job. All this in 1911 .
I wonder what Manning's private thoughts may have been after the flight went missing? "Whew, glad I didn't go I thought this might have happened." Or, "Had I gone, this never would have happened." I suppose he was interviewed, and someone here may have read something about what he may have said, if any thing.
IMO, it seems like he left the mission because he knew there were flaws in the plan, and perhaps Earhardt wasn't willing to listen to him about it? Either way, after the previous crash which he'd been in, he was probably thinking "I'm not surprised"... Edit to clarify this is my opinion not something I've read.
@@deehaws4334 It's a fairly well educated guess. If I were in a car wreck with someone I would certainly never let them drive me anywhere again. Doubly so for an airplane. Airplane problems may occur less frequently, but when problems do occur it's fairly rare that one simply walks away from the incident unharmed.
Her preparation was clearly lacking and she was taking unnecessary risks with her and her crew's life, he clearly cottoned on to her recklessness and bailed before she got him killed.
Thanks for your post. In the fall of 1964, I was aboard my ship whose homeport was Apra Harbor, Guam. We were assigned to the Trust Territories of the Pacific. We were cruising between Guam and Koror, Palau. One afternoon we received a radio telephone call from a woman who said she was flying a route, attempting to recreate the flight of Emelia Earhart. Needless to say, that got our attention.
Jerrie Mock or Joan Merriam Smith? They both attempted the flight in 1964 but both completed their journeys before the fall. Jerrie flew a Cessna 180 Skywagon, and Joan flew a Lockheed 10A Electra.
@@theyellowishlimeace4735 the Trust Territories of the Pacific seems to be known as Micronesia now, fall for them goes from April to December, they're near the end of the flight and Jerrie Mock's flight was from March 19, 1964 to April 17, 1964 Therefore it must have been Jerrie Mock, right?
Communication is key to everything. It’s so sad this story ended so tragically when so much could have been prevented and properly for. RIP Earhart and Noonan.
34:15 - 34:33 LOVE IT!!! So true in so many different aspects. Great video!! Learned more in your half-hour video about this story than public education ever thought about teaching me. Thank You!
The best analogy for Earhart I ever heard was that of a person that throws a baseball pretty well but doesn't understand the game. She could fly a plane pretty well but didn't understand flight.
Barely - she was known as poor to decent pilot at the time. Her flight instructor Neta Snook Southern described her as a nice person but a poor pilot. Even her husband and promotor tried to hire Louise Thaden as her ''mechanic''. Thaden was an accomplished pilot who was supposed to handle the take off and landing in secret but was insulted and rejected it. As is in many of these cases, it's not the skilled that are remembered but those with good marketing...
There's enough IMO to speculate that the experienced merchant marine (and pilot) Captain Manning left because he was genuinely afraid for his life considering what a raging ego fraught with dangerous compulsion Earhart was. She was a flying deathwish. I always wondered where Fred Noonan stood on all that. Naive perhaps or just as reckless as Earhart.
@@justincase4812what gets ne about all this and Noonan, is that despite how smart and accomplished he is, everyone just seems to accept that he had 0 say in any choice that happened during the journey
Taking responsibility is a risk-taking behaviour. I remember when on a summer job at a power supply manufacturer, I found out an issue with the product that had to be corrected - when boxes were already about to be loaded into the shipping truck. So I said wait, we have to fix this. Later that day, my boss said, it's great that you stopped the shipment, it was a responsible decision. But you should have gone straight to my office, because you did not have the right to stop the shipment. And he was right - I had no such right. I just had the responsibility to pretend I did, because the alternative would be a recall. Some people are primarily mission-oriented: they want to accomplish the end-goal. Others are more process-oriented, they are motivated to follow the procedures. Aviation is an interesting combination of the two, because following procedures is critical to safety. That means it is very risky to start improvising, and there is a strong requirement to avoid doing it. There were two key elements that were missing in Earhart's flight: understanding of radio propagation on her part, and a strict, mutually-agreed to, detailed communication plan. Given that there was no possibility to divert, disaster was a distinct possibility. And yet, everyone seemed to have thought "we'll make it - somehow." Of course, hindsight is 20-20.
I was underwhelmed when I heard neither Noonan nor Earhart was fluent in Morse code. Depending on voice only, in those conditions, in that era, for two way communication? That was ill prepared.
@Peter-ff1tp don't forget the famous photo of the DNA double helix taken by Rosalind Franklin...that was actually taken by her PhD student Raymond Gosling.
Wow, learned a lot of interesting things from this video. 1. More details about Earheart's disappearance than just "she vanished without a trace." And 2. A whole lot more about old radio communication and equipment. I never understood what that loop antenna was for or the field with the 5 large antennas in it. Didn't know those were primarily for navigation. Very interesting. Thank you.
Failing to fix her position with the USS Ontario was her BINGO fuel moment. The fact that she did not return to her departure point but instead proceeded on is proof enough of Manning's doubt about her airmanship and decision making.
the mirage of global fame must be so powerful... few of us can really comprehend its impact on one's actions and decisions... history is full of examples of 'silly' decisions by powerful and skillful individuals who got 'blinded' by this mirage. i imagine the feeling to be intoxicating, a form of inebriation capable of twisting realities. as expected some comments refer to her abilities as a woman but some great worriers led entire armies on futile paths (against the pleads of other experienced worriers) just to 'prove a point' or 'make history'.
I spent my entire life thinking she was a great pilot and navigator who was lost due to unavoidable disaster. Now i realize she was lost due to sheer, insane, and unfathomable incompetence by all parties
Agree, i think she was rather reckless and ill-prepared. She didn’t equip herself with adequate knowledge and preparation, leaving the entire journey by hoping for the best. I would say she was brave but naive.
My grandpa was a radio operator in WWII and a passionate aviation fan, and I took my geeking about those topics from him. I'm sure he would have loved this video as much as I did. Thank you Veritasium.
I flew on USAF cargo planes for 9 years as a loadmaster. We learned basics of radio physics and tips and tricks. I mostly forgot about them until we were flying over the Indian Ocean one night and were making position calls in the blind on HF. When we finally got a response somewhere between Diego Garcia and Thailand, it was from Boston Center who kindly relayed our message to the appropriate controllers in our hemisphere.
As a retired broadcast engineer after 40 years in the industry and an Amateur Radio Operator for over 45 years, in a short explanation he did not too bad. One must take into account the year which determines what technology was available. The differences between night and day propagation on the different frequencies. The level of experience of the operators. It is truly complicated.
41 here, been hearing about this for years. never has it ben explained so clear and concise. Its amazing what the entire story and truth can do. Absolutely awesome video of this story. Side note, I'm a utility pipe line locator, your examples helped me finish understanding visually what I am doing. I use the pipehorn HL800.
That was a fun afternoon. The receiver is one I built about 8 years ago using a design by Nick Roethe DF1FO. This video only includes audio from one ear - the other ear has a "whoopee" tone that makes it much easier to DF, but Earhart didn't have that
I've read several books, articles and watched several docs about this. My hat off to you and your team. This was the most comprehensive and logical explanation of what happened. Now.... To find the Electra....
I still have a lot of respect for Earhart and what she accomplished. But it is shocking how sloppy she was about such critical communication issues. Maybe she was just used to either being over land or flying over oceans but knowing that a huge continent would eventually appear even if she was off course. But trying that over the largest expanse of water on Earth was downright crazy.
@@MrJdseniorI feel like you have to be to try something like that. People at the frontier are a little nuts. Imagine being the first person to strap themselves to an ICBM and orbit the earth? Imagine being the first person to make it to mars? There’s always the risk of death. There’s a reason the first astronauts were fighter pilots and test pilots
@@berengerchristy6256Of course, you need to have a certain level of risk taking in order to try this, but the smart ones do everything they can to reduce the inherent risk, control for the variables that they can to give the best possible chance of success.
@@berengerchristy6256 there's always risks for any great historical achievement. However, sometimes there's completely UNNECESSARY risks, and completely stupid decision making (even based on the limitations of the time); that Amelia demonstrated on the most dangerous leg of her journey.
Hitting a tiny island in the middle of he biggest ocean in the world would seem to be daunting enough for her to take a few extra precautions. I think she was always going to push the envelope until it pushed back.
This is the same effect that allows for polarized light. It’s just operating at much higher frequencies. The elegant parallels among EM phenomena were a big reason I got hooked into electronics engineering.
YES ! You said "elegant parallels"........ I think it is really spooky that very different forms of stored energy eg Kinetic, Magnetic, Electric all seem to follow the same rules......... Energy of a moving body is = 1/2MassVel(sqd) Magnetic Energy around an inductor is = 1/2LI(sqd) Electric Energy in a capacitor is = 1/2CV(sqd)
@@mosubekore78 no, it was mistakes of many peopel involved. she even asked wether her suggested frequency was good for transmission, and noone bothered to correct her. she certainly wasnt the only technician/engineer working on the craft, such issues should have been brought up beforehand. if not, then theres another mistake of not involving enough engineers.
The footage of her constantly struggling to keep the plane straight while taking off was already concerning and made the wreck from her attempted take off make so much more sense
@@jcrosby4804 during that period of time, flying small planes was a somewhat popular hobby, if u look at the night witches from the soviet union, the all female pilots division who had experience flying as a hobby from before the war
I will be sending this to my friends who are getting into ham radio. This is one of the clearest demonstrations of the basic principles of radio waves and equipment I think I've ever seen. Makes it very accessible. Thank you for this.
This radio direction finding demonstration is a BEAUTIFUL explanation and demonstation of one of the simplest, most basic, and most comon methods of radio direction finding in existance. Most now days are higher tech, but use exactly the same ultimate method. As a licenced ham for 30 years, I've built and used several antennas of this type, though now days I prefer to use doppler based methods.
I’ve been getting into learning about ham radio and I heard that they have field days and contests in order to test their equipment and make sure they know how to communicate effectively, because you can’t just assume everything will work the first time in an emergency if you don’t test yourself often.
@@drivers99 There are two big activities hams do for this reason, one is the anual "Field Day" contest which you mentioned, and the other, relevant to the demonstration in the video, is hidden transmitter hunting, commonly known as "Fox Hunting" in which someone hides a radio transmitter, and others attempt to find it with whatever direction finding equipment they have. The hunt might cover a small city park, or an entire large city, depending on the teams, and the gear to be used. The hidden transmitter could range from someone in their car transmitting with 50 watts, to a tiny microcontroller based transmitter powered by a hearing aid battery and hidden in a camera film can under a log in a city park.
Hey thank you guys. I did my first ever Research paper on this exact topic in the late 90's. at the time No one really knew what happend and the military didnt share information. thanks for completing something i been tring to look in to for 30 years
The amount of budgeting and resources they were willing to spend to aid her on the trip really shows just how different the world was in terms of aviation. Imagine asking three US naval ships to just wait for you and help with navigation nowadays.
Neil DeGrasse Tyson described the difference between JFK's "we will put a man on the moon before the end of the decade" (i.e. USA will land on the moon under MY watch), and Obama's "we will reach Mars in 20 years" (aka a Mars mission under a future, unnamed president and a largely imaginary budget to be decided later) He then said political will is as necessary as scientific knowledge when it comes to making large scale progress
It's more a reflection of someone with the right connections able to amass more resources then their abilities should otherwise allow. For more modern day examples see Elizabeth Holmes or Richard Stockton.
@@DavidKiviat That is very true as well. It’s certainly a component to it here; likely more than was explained in the video. I’d assume it has to take more than just aviation interest to organise this, but I’m not exactly familiar with who Earhart was socially. I assume she wasn’t a multi millionaire but she was clearly a celebrity of some significant calibre, since it doesn’t exactly immediately appear directly similar to the Oceangate fiasco.
Simply failing to obtain confirmation the ship received her telegram instructions and would be broadcasting at those intervals. Any one of those things, if ensured, would have provided what was needed to navigate. Failing to obtain ANY verification for any of these various technologies was incompetence.
These type of stories always humble me and help me realise what amazing communication capabilities we have nowadays. There is so much we take for granted, and besides basic concepts I have no idea how they really work and how small changes or mistakes in interpretation can have a big impact. I will think about this the next time I complain the WiFi on the plane doesn’t work.
Yeah, there are like 4 different technologies today, any of them making this navigational task trivially easy (VOR beacons, GPS, radar, and ADS-B or even it's more primitive transponder predecessors).
Good analysis of the communications aspects of the flight. The cloud pattern that morning was exactly what you didn't want when searching for an island below -- broken patchy clouds -- all looking like islands themselves.
This video goes miles, and I mean it MILES above the quality of any documentary and/or science video. 37 minutes ago I had never heard about Amelia Earhart's story and I was all the time on the edge of my chair watching. As if this were an S-tier rated thriller. 10/10 storytelling, 10/10 animations 10/10 science inputs. And what touched me the most, was 32:10 - although without a shadow of a doubt Derek had practiced his script and knew the story by heart, telling what the most propbable demise of the plane was, made him grieve and I could feel tears in both my and his eyes. This has to be my favourite Veritasium video so far and would be insanely hard to outclass it. Props to everyone involved in it and may A. Earhart rest in peace. If you made it this far in my comment, have a nice day and like the video, it truly deserves it!
Dang. The detail in this video is absolutely wild. Having wheel in the Electra 10-E is incredible. I dont think anyone else would put that much detail in.
Your videos usually have a good bit of great info. That one was 35 minutes of amazing information. Thank you, I didn't have a clue about all the limitations of navigation at the time of her flight.
There is an old grainy video of her takeoff on that leg of the trip that shows a puff of smoke coming from underneath the plane, apparently corresponding to damage to the receiving antenna. That would explain why she apparently could not receive subsequent voice transmissions.
Yeah, this is the one 'easy' mistake that had me shaking my head. Radio check after take-off given the stakes seems vital. I am surprised no one suggested it.
Doesn't matter. What matters is their refusal to abort the mission and return to the airfield once they figured out nobody was responding to them. This was very easy to confirm simply by talking to the departure airport over their chosen frequency before leaving the area. Failing to obtain a radio fix at 51% fuel remaining was a serious point of no return, where they could easily have turned back and landed safely.
@@mrfahrenheit677 That was my assumption but I figured anyone really familiar with radios would be familiar with how easy it is for them to not be working properly -- maybe radios were just built way better back then?
Even today, with the most precise and highly calibrated sextants, a position error of two miles is considered extremely good, and 10 miles is more common. So you are not at an intersection of two lines, unless you drew the lines with sidewalk chalk. Navigators always draw a position circle, called a circle of error. The important question is not "where are we" but rather, "how large is the circle of error?"
Navigators? Is it just not safe to rely on GPS? GPS truly is a marvel that we all take for granted, myself included. Is it a bad idea to rely on it in at sea?
GPS is more than adequate. Even integrated conditions in the south Indian Ocean the maximum sort of error you might experience would be a range of about 100 m. Typically GPS has you within 1 to 3 m. OP is talking about navigation without GPS
@@Tyler-z8rGNSS (of which GPS is one such system) uses trilateration to calculate your location - which is not much different to what is discussed in the video but in 3 dimensions instead of 2. Think of it as plotting multiple spheres, your location is most likely within the area they all overlap. As such, the accuracy and precision (please note, they're not the same thing) is still within a certain radius. Both will likely improve with more satellites visible to the receiver but there is still a "circle of error" as the OP of this comment said.
Well actually, you typically do not (in my experience) navigate on a chart by using a "circle of error." You navigate on a chart using either a "fix" or a running fix or estimated and assumed position. Which are all single points. An estimated/assumed position incorporates your idea of vagueness and uncertainty but is nevertheless represented as a single point. I've never seen or used a navigational chart by advancing a series of circles. If you draw a circle on a chart (which navigators do not usually do) then you cannot thereafter advance your position, you are just advancing ever widening circles which is not common and probably does not work. I'm nitpicking here, but since your circle of error is essentially unknowable while underway, navigators do not go around questioning how large their circle of error is, either. Today's sextants give better positions primarily due to better timekeeping devices and better optics. Large sextant position errors -say over two or three miles- is primarily due to being bounced around by waves, or lousy viewing conditions. I'm sure you'd agree. Not that anyone still uses celestial navigation much these days, although you still master it (somewhat) to earn your Coast Guard licenses.
It also helps if you use 3 stars per fix--as that "circle of error" can be more precisely known by the triangle it forms. Of course for Fred, that morning, he was using only the Sun, which didn't tell him if he was north or south of Howland--unless he had a super-precise compass, and precise magnetic variation charts. Performing a "landfall procedure" at 1,000' made it impossible to see the island unless they got within a few miles of it. Sextant errors on aircraft can usually range as a high as a dozen miles. Celestial navigation from an airplane is much more difficult than from a ship.
Good video, however the ending message is incorrect. The responsibility for learning the radio communication effectively is Amelia’s only. If she had a deficiency, it is her responsibility to get better, not the ship captains. Amelia took risks, knowing the consequences and paid the ultimate price.
So, my Father worked at Lockheed, from the 60's until he retired (his first project was the L-1011). The lore around the Company was that she wasn't known as a great pilot. Apparently, she was bringing her Electra's back for repair a lot.
I was an Ame working on a DHC 6 Caribou. Flying from Inuvik to Melvin Island the RH engine started to wander betwee max and min RPM 2hoursovertheBeaufortSea. As this was before GPS we were usung Loran VLF which was affected by static build up on the Imron paint. We turned back intentionally heading east of Inuvik with the same strategy. Too far north for reliable magnetic compas and the VLF flitting between dead reckoning and actual heading depending on airframe static charge. We flew VLF dead reckoning,the course corrected when the VLF worked until we hit the coast then turned right until we found Tuktoyuk. A few of the scariest hours of my life.
I've been in that region of the world (Norad work) and also flew single engine monoplanes but never that far north. It is one of the scariest part of the world to start having mechanical problems. People have no idea how desolate and isolated it is.
I've been in that region of the world (Norad work) and also flew single engine monoplanes but never that far north. It is one of the scariest part of the world to start having mechanical problems. People have no idea how desolate and isolated it is.
I enjoyed your description of radio. I used to carry a shortwave radio around with me at Uni, since I usually did the time-consuming analyses at night and there's not much going on between the dorm and the lab. At night, I could pick up signals from Sweden just sitting in my Appalachian lab. Though the BBC would be more clear. Once, I caught a signal from Cuba.
I'm a pilot. I've been flying for 8 years. I've studied sense and loop antennas. I've taught other pilots about sense and loop antennas. And I've never understood them as well as I do now! Your videos are great, thank you for your dedication and effort.
@@clinch4402 No, he didn't say he didn't understand or know how to USE these systems; he simply said that he never understood them BETTER than after watching this. That doesn't make him unqualified to fly, or use them. There is always more to know about the technology we use every day, whether or not the knowledge we gain is theoretical or practical. This is how we become better at what we do. No one starts out - or uses technology effectively for many years - knowing EVERYTHING about the many forms of technology used in aviation, or any other technical endeavor. Are you an unqualified driver because you don't understand every intricacy of how and why the hydraulic braking system in the car you drive works? If you don't (or pick any other critical system you have used/are using), does this make you 'unqualified' to operate it? If this were so, we would have NO astronauts, drivers, pilots, or any other people to operate any machine or system in the world. By your metric, how many things are YOU unqualified to operate, that you DO operate?
21:58 I may have missed it, but I believe you failed to mention that during the repair process, Lockheed replaced her Western Electric 20B receiver with an early experimental version of the Bendex RA-1, at the time no one had ever used that receiver before and it would be years before the commercial version was available.
@@cadenbiglerMost likely. As part of the new reciever and transmitter, Joseph Gurr had modified the new system to transmit and recieve at 500 KHz. Derek is incorrect at 27:07 in that she was told she still had the capability to send and recieve at 500 KHz even without the trailing wire, but the modifications were made on an already experimental system and had never been fully tested.
yes we came across this in our research. We thought about mentioning her limited training with the new loop - I don't even think they had a user's manual. But we left this detail out of the script. Another interesting note - the loop on the Itasca may have been very similar (or in fact identical) to Earhart's.
"When attempting any challenging endeavor, you need someone with the right knowledge, who will also take responsibility for getting things right." - so true.
I was just thinking that a lot of the errors here sound like exactly the sort of things in Mentor Pilot videos that get pilots killed. Improper and insufficient preparation and "flying by the seat of the pants" until something goes wrong and not enough redundancy to recover.
I disagree with you giving some blame to Commander Thompson, this was her project, she and Noonan were taking the risk, and they should have immersed themselves in the information and knowledge to complete their objective. She prioritized being the first, over learning the how.
Agreed. Also in his defense: The thing that is implied in this video but never fully stated is how difficult it was in that era to have fully resolved conversations with multiple parties scattered around the globe. Anyone who has ever tried to resolve a complex topic among multiple people by email alone knows this. A five minute group voice chat can solve more than days of emails. And email is still orders of magnitude higher bandwidth than telegrams. But our modern idea of communication was far from possible at the time. Hence these frustratingly unresolved issues in all these telegrams.
Yea maybe not blame but considering he was an expert , a simple suggestion would have went a long way . If I see someone who doesn’t know how to ride a bike & that person is trying to ride it backwards , i’m going to tell them to turn around .
All I have to say is that she had Presidential backing, the complete resources of the nation, an air field made for her, 3 navy/coast guard vessels, all for her to achieve a self serving/pointless title for flying. I mean with all that "help" does it really count as her accomplishment even if she nailed it? Also, on Thompson's end, he was seeing this massive undertaking going all the way up to the president. So what do you think he thought when he got the wrong instructions? I guarantee you he believed all this stuff was worked out by someone else and that Earhart knew what she was doing if she had so much support behind her. I believe she was impulsive and unprepared, but no one stepped in because it was a "feel-good" story that the freaking president was behind.
If you enjoyed this video and want to go deeper, you'll find an exclusive bonus video on our Patreon: www.patreon.com/posts/amelia-earhart-116754675
I feel it was probably arrogance, going without a radio operator, not testing and making all sorts of radio operation errors was a sure way to die in a place where there was no other option but to land using radio signals
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What actually happened to Amelia Earhart?
Good thing America voted for Trump. Because Kamala is disaster incarnate.
@@veritasium what about the continuation of the thermite and action series?
My introverted friend Emily was invited to our Halloween party. She dressed up as Amelia Earhart, sent us all a photo and said she’s on her way, and then never showed up. Truly iconic.
Lol that sounds like a great idea 😂
😭
i should not laugh on this😭
this never happened
Amazing 😂
If you ever feel forgotten, just remember there was another person in the plane when Amelia Earhart went missing (Fred Noonan).
Right!? I didn't even realize he was with! I used to think she was alone.
In Apollo 11 there were 3 Astronauts and 1 of them is always left out even though he had the most important job of waiting for the 2 that went to the surface all alone. If you don't know who I'm talking about I rest my case.
It's Michael Collins by the way.
He was an experienced airline pilot and expert navigator... but you do see his elbow in some of the animated shots.
Yeah, and he had an amazing career and history of his own.
🤣🤣
I have seen SO MANY Earhart documentaries over the years. I have never seen one that painted so clear a picture of what went wrong. Fantastic job.
Well yea, they were there.
If the Pacific Ocean had a world trade centre, Amelia woulda found a way to crash into it
@@jotrutchhahaha well if you consider flying a plane was relatively new still
And being a female pilot she definitely would have backed into after the First strike
right? i remember when i was young watching documentary about here. from what i watched i thought she got missing because she didn't have enough fuel. i was thinking to myself why would anyone do that? it was bad and stupid documentary it only focusd on that she is a woman pilot
great one !!
Growing up I used to think Earhart was some sort of legend, flying literally solo, in a tiny plane. But after watching this it really makes me feel she was unprepared and naive for what she was up against. Kinda like the Oceangate CEO.
Also there was so much job done to make this happen - new flying strips, three guarding ships... It's huge recourses that only a celebrity could pull up. All this sounds much less of an a solo achievement.
not solo
With the backing of the entire US government. Then after all that, she’s sending last minute telegraphs that never arrived in time.
She was, but that is why the navy commander shouldve taken charge and told her what waves to use so he could guide her home had she had the proper guidance the trip wouldve been easy and she wouldve been remembered as the first woman to ever fly around the world, but now because of his arrogance she remember as the one that died with crew during the around the world trip, she wasnt completely unprepared she was 80% done the trip
Yeah we were definitely sold a feminist lie about her in school.
One word: preparedness. If you want a fantastic example of preparedness, look at how Amundsen organized his South Pole expedition. Leftover fuel cans were found over 50 years later and were completely full. He marked his supply depots with rows of red flags for 1200 m in _each_ direction (E and W as he was travelling S and then N on the way back). He got to the 1200 m by taking the largest possible error on navigation, and then doubling it. They had enough food to miss a depot and still make it to the next one. His entire team were expert skiers and dog-sledders, so everyone could do everyone else's job. All this in 1911.
I believe that he didn't bother with (converging)latitude measurements when he got close to the pole - kept it simple. Opposed to Scott calculated both, time and complexity.
Another word: Money
@@herrk.2339 I mean she got the contacts to let runways build on remote islands and move 3 navy warships into position. I doubt money was an issue.
@@jurgenpeters1373 The runway is what made the expedition physically possible, the strategy by Amundsen outlined in the comment above seems to take it from physically possible to a slam dunk. Having two navy ships assisting your journey is very useful, but not that much considering the size of the pacific. The nature of the endeavour makes it a more difficult thing to be prepared for
@@herrk.2339 I haven't looked into it, but at the point where she found a mistake, sent a telegram to one of the ships before the departure but never waited for an acknowledgement (and the correction did indeed not reach the ship in time), wasn't there an element of haste in this? It might be harder to prepare for, but I do think she rushed too quickly into this.
IMHO, the larger factor in this: "Get there itis", a mental issue that has killed many pilots, as evidenced by:
A. Leaving when conditions were less than ideal.
B. Sending VITAL communications to ships about radios frequencies & etc. and not ensuring said communications were received, understood, AND that they made sense.
C. Not turning back when she had a chance, and things were already going wrong.
In other words, she was SO focused on getting there, she just kept blowing of potentially huge issues.
Closely related to "Go Fever" in rocketry.
The fact that she appears to not have been receiving voice communication and did not turn back on such a radio dependent flight is quite remarkable.
It's always good to exercise vital equipment before your life depends on it and part of her radio array had from out point of view shown no capacity to work. Perhaps she didn't expect to receive the weather updates and so didn't know that she was missing them, but the absence of a handshake communication protocol was a clear failure in the plan.
@@cidiousblack2136 Dude, it was 1937. People hadn't worked this stuff out yet. It's flights like this which are the reason we have these procedures today. We learn from others mistakes.
@@qarnos I'm sorry, what? We hadnt figured out the basic logic of "this entire project depends on the radio, we should make sure it works?" Even before ships went terribly wrong, I think we could figure out "the sailboat trip I set up needs a sail."
@@qarnos Nah mate. You know what you don't know and plan for it. In this instance, she did not know what she did not know and went ahead anyway. Her hubris or arrogance was astounding.
This was the absolute best documentary on Amelia Earhart's final flight that I've ever seen. Despite seeing dozens of depictions of the flight over the years, none of the radio mistakes/malfunctions were ever explained. Most of the documentaries wanted to focus on the conspiracy theories instead of the science. The science is infinitely more interesting. Thank you for this!
Only now years later do we realize what a waste of time discovery channel was :)
@Machoman50ta Doesn’t stand up to analysis, financier and organizer was Palmer Putnam, navigator and radio operator was Fred Noonan. Incomplete preparation was the culprit.
@@PRH123 Behind every successful man is a woman. Behind every unsuccessful woman is a man.
@@clinch4402 To us it doesn't matter if you're successful or not, we're always right behind you clapping them cheeks.
Ok bootlicker
This is absolutely maddening. It's error after error, messages not being received nor acknowledged, fundamental misunderstanding of radio frequencies, and on and on. So incredibly frustrating.
women have evolved to expect to have a man to fall back on, this is why they make such terrible leaders. this is also why they seemingly have no real understanding of risk, risk assessment is what men evolved to do.
I'm 77 years old and this video is by far the absolute best presentation and explanation on Earhart's disastrous last flight. You did an excellent job of breaking down the technical problems and explaining it to a general audience. Would love to see the bonus Patreon vid, but I am disabled, below poverty line. I do not understand why almost 99% of other media does cheap tabloid versions of Earhart's final flight. Thanks again for such a superb investigation and researched video. Dima
Bless you dmitry ❤ you seem lovely
Bless you dmitry, you seem super chill and lovely
God bless you bro
Agreed. This is probably hands down a great presentation on how and why she disappeared.
"Disasterous" - Yes, indeed!
The sheer amount of veritasium content released recently is a true blessing
They are freaky 😲
All thanks to AI, I think he probably outsources everything to a Chinese and Indian video editing sweatshop and he usually stands in a studio and the entire environment in the back is cgi including the grass lands he is standing on cuz all those places he gets to access is insane cuz no one can enter those places but how him lol something to think.
He's fooling a lot of people.
Thankfully an old head like me who is 45 yrs old can spot these classic tactics 😊
@@muazunais2378 Take your meds
yeah less than a week since last upload
@@muazunais2378 1/10 trolling attempt. You made it WAY too obvious.
I sailed in the US Navy as a Radioman/IT for 25 years and then 5 years on commercial ships. An old hand on my first commercial ship told me "You get careless out here, danger will find you". He was correct about sailing and life in general.
Complacency. It’s so so easy to relax when you didn’t die last time.
"Luck favors the prepared" - Edna Mode
Yep, that's why mostly highly experienced professionals are KIA...
I never considered how complex radio communication was back then, having multiple antennas tuned to different frequencies. I grew up on video games that have a map marker to the destination. I've always wondered if modern planes have something similar to that because they use GPS. Is flying today as simple as portrayed in the video games? Just point your nose to the map marker?
That is true in many fields. If you are surrounded by danger, you will eventually stop seeing it. I am a chemistry teacher and handling dangerous chemicals on a daily bases makes you careless. You need to constantly remind yourself that the safety measures are necessary, because if something goes wrong, even if it is unlikely, the results could be devastating.
This is the best explanation of what happend to Earhart I have ever seen. No mysticism, science based explanations and addressed in laymans terms. Great video
The hands on radio demonstration really helped me understand what all the documentaries on this subject have always described. Thank you!
+
I wondered how direction trackers worked, and that demonstration was great.
what part of the video do you refer to with your comment?
@@Xevo234like 16:00 - 20:00
We still use these systems in modern aircraft today
I'm amazed at how ill-prepared the expedition to cross the Pacific was. Amelia Earhart certainly had ambition and bravery, but it seems she was seriously lacking in her understanding of risk and how to mitigate that risk with redundancies. Instead of resolving uncertainties and potential issues before takeoff, she just hoped for the best.
It had worked out before, so she thought shes doing good enough.
She was brave and everything, but her behaviour seems incredibly stupid. It blows my mind how you can go on a journey like that and be lacking this amount of certanity and understanding...
It's common when you make mistakes but get away with them. You start to belive that it always be that way or even that you are special. It's even worse if other people praise you for your acheivments and bravery.
@@cyrkielnetwork The problem with complacency is that it DOESN'T get you every time. Also it's crazy that she didn't check her equipmet once in the air after takeoff.
We must remember that aviation in the 1930s was an ENTIRELY different beast than what we know today. Obviously in equiment and knowledge, but even more important in mentality. Today it is the best regulated, best trained and best controlled sector short of nuclear technology. There is an in depth investigation into ANY relevant accident or almost accident with recommendations published to reach everyone. Every failure has been analysed, chewed through by multiple experts.
And even then, we have tragic accidents like Air France 447. A situation where a minor malfunction combined with misinterpretation leads to a desaster and the death of hundreds of people. That was just 15 years ago.
In an era where communication was a challenge under the best conditions, technology often unreliable and understood by very few, training scarce and daring counted for much it is perfectly understandable how Earhart ended up with her plan. Nobody of her peers would have acted much differently.
I have a bone to pick with public education. They way Amelia's story was told essentially boiled down to: "she disappeared mysteriously over the Pacific ocean and nobody know what happened". The full story is so much more interesting.
My public education included a filmed dramatization of the actual communications between Itasca and Earhart. It was clear to everyone in the classroom there were radio issues. It was also understood her amateur understanding of radio technology - that there was literally a communication breakdown somewhere. It did not attempt to lay 'blame" or make conclusions - just that during the attempt great effort was put into guiding her flight but through accident or bad luck or the enormity of the challenge with the technology of the era, that it failed. And that she likely had to make a water landing and was probably killed or dead from exposure not long after. Public education typically sucks when it comes to history - I learned far more reading in the library than was ever presented in class - but in the case of Earhart and her disappearance, it got a pretty fair and unusually intesnive treatment for elementary school in the mid 1970's.
We have worked out a lot more of the details since I was in school. And schools are slow to get updates on ALL the things they have to educate upon.
The absolute minutia of every significant historical event is really hard to cover. How detailed you get into what topics also depends on your teacher, school, state, textbook supplier, and other factors.
@@PaulNechifor That's the wrong lesson to take away from this, mate
The curriculum probably doesn't have much room for stories like this, what with all the wars and stuff
I've heard this story told many times over the years. Never have I heard of the detailed breakdown of the radio communications errors explained in such detail. Great show. Subscribing now!
This story is a chilling reminder of how small errors can cascade into tragedy, especially in high-stakes situations. It makes you think about all the "what ifs" and how important clear communication and shared responsibility are. RIP Amelia Earhart.
We call it the "swiss cheese effect" in aviation (and probably lots of other places). Sometimes the mistake makes it through all the holes and doesn't get stopped by the cheese, and that's when there's an accident.
SMALL errors? And she stacked up a whole slew of large risks on top. The possibility of the outcome realized was predictable, at some fairly high percentage.
@dannymaxx510 I have only heard the Swiss cheese effect in discussions about aviation safety, but I bet it is a common engineering term too. I just started to think about the Therac-25 incident
@@savagesarethebest7251 Only on over lightened components.
Yeah, like, what if she'd gotten another radio operator to fill in.
I knew I would be sad, but I didn't think I would get this angry at the lack of preparation on Earhart's part. I always figured it was just adventurism hitting the limit of the technology. But I can't understand not having complete understanding of vital equipment and complete synchrony with the people you relied on for such a bold journey.
Might have been better to arrive near Howland at night, to use Itasca's searchlight.
I can’t believe she didn’t know how to use Morse code. How basic is that and she didn’t bother to learn it. Instead she insisted that the US Navy paid by American tax dollars call her by voice. WTF.
Poor Noonan. 😢
@@VS-yu5wk And also: insisting going around the globe the hardway. That she was, at best spotty for flying. And no one was the adult in the room and told that the plan was literally a deathwish, and hell no, and why.
Redirect your anger towards marx ideology and its revisionism
As a pilot who's been lost before as well as one who's flown over large bodies of water in single engine aircraft, I have at least a basic understanding of just how challenging what she attempted was and how your mind can start to run away with incorrect or fatalistic assumptions if not trained or rested properly. My heart sank for her as the story progressed. She had a lot of odds stacked against her and she has my deepest sympathy and respect.
Agree, the Pacific is vast, the understanding of radio waves before WW 2 was limited as was the equipment. Much was learned during WW 2. Dad spent his adult life flying in the Canadian Arctic he was a very good navigator he could find the trappers cabin at night on the vast tundra, lake shore, or where it was.
As a student pilot, I kept getting both amazed and mortified more and more about what early aviators had to do to find their way.
In a more amusing note, while VORs are going out of fashion in lieu of GPS, they're not THAT different than what they had finding the dips in signal with their loop antenna.
About 20 years ago in my country, a 737-300 lost their navigation and communication (according to national transportation safety board, both device was malfunctioned) in the middle of sea. The pilot decided to turn to the right which according to map, land should be somewhere to the right. But they could only guessed since they had no devices to measure how much degree they were turning. Their only hope was they could spot a land then try to figure from the land features to guess where they were at. They ended up landing on small airport around 800 kilometer away from their origin and destination.
She put this odds in place herself
@@noisycarlos VORs are much more advanced than what they were using. That is the difference--a very significant difference.
What this made me realize is how far we’ve come in terms of navigation and communication since. And even with all the technology we have today, mistakes happen.
Not mistakes, but ignorance and hubris, often fueled by greed.
"When attempting any challenging endeavor, you need someone with the right knowledge who will also take responsibility for getting things right." This is so true. Too many projects fail due to unknowledgeable people in charge or knowledgeable people not taking enough responsibilities.
@@ben-z similarly her grandson Dale didn't know not to hit the wall at Daytona in his NASCAR
FSD
Simple, people with the right knowledge don't want to get blamed, they think it's not their problem, better someone else to take the responsibility.
Yah the knowledgeable people are walked over by unknowledgeable people because of nepotism,wokeism and the sort. So guess what, the knowledgeable people give up and watch the disaster happen.
One can only speculate why the navel officer didn’t take responsibility for her, but one can imagine her personality and connections made it impossible
This video made me appreciate even more having a device that fits in my pocket and can tell me precisely where on Earth I am. Not knowing about radio waves nor stars.
We do tend to forget about it!
So, if that device malfuntion you’re in big trouble hah. At least have backup, like packing 3 of those 😂
So what you are saying is that, if we lose all electricity, we are completely screwed.
@@qfnkdv4771 lol it's hilarous yet very effective solution,
@@JaasauBINGO!!!!
9:18 - God could you imagine discovering you think will be absolutely pointless, only for it to essentially redefine the course of humanity. To think, radio waves were literally the impetus for Radio, Television, eventually Wifi and Cellphone signals. It potentially altered the course of WW2. Hertz was so incredibly humble for how monumental this discovery was.
He was looking for radio waves because Maxwell had predicted a world of electromagnetic waves beyond those already known
@@otterlyso As with almost everything we discover, they're always standing on the shoulders of giants. I'll never discount how important the discoveries of those that come before us were and still are.
At least he got a car rental business out of the deal! 🙃😇🤣
Amazing, isn't it? Although you can see where he was coming from. Tiny sparks you could only see under a microscope? And with the emitter super close by? Yeah, what do you do with that? It's mind-boggling to think that despite the square-cube law we can use these same waves to communicate with spacecraft outside our solar system and even see the very beginning of the universe!
I mean, light and sound were always available as wireless communication methods, so...
I'm assuming he didn't know about the atmosphere being a mirror to radio waves. How could he have predicted any usecase?
This was one of your best videos: science & tech that few of us learned growing up, demystifying something that gets onto the conspiracy websites, and a basic message about preparation and organization that people often never hear.
Being an ex airline pilot, who flew across the Pacific regularly, I found the presentation utterly fascinating, thank you! 🙏🏻
You're not an ex airline pilot.
@@cx3622 How can you be so sure? I’ve seen rarer circumstances
I read this in a very sophisticated British accent. Like a Butler accent
@@cx3622I agree, once a pilot, always a pilot.
"Joe Bullwinkle" sounds like the name of a dominant gay man in adult entertainment.
Vertitasium must have hired so much (many) more people recently, the amount of videos recently at this production quality is astonishing
there's an open job listing for Veritasium for a writer/researcher that's been up for a few months now
I don't like correcting people's grammar online but it's *many, not much.
*many more people
AI bro
@@musafirgauravv AI must have been gotten really good to umm... what did the AI do again, can you elaborate?? If it's done the whole thing it certainly wouldn't look this good at the current level of AI; if they just did the animation well I've got bad news for you buddy, 3Blue1Brown did a video on how to make these style of animations using Manib(m). Nevertheless, I still wanna know what you meant when you said it was made by AI
@@matercan5649 Empty vessels make the most noise, hence why they can't back up their statement.
What happened to Earhart is similar to the lost colony of Roanoke: the outcome is somewhat clear but it obscuring details makes it seem more mysterious.
what's the clear outcome of Roanoke?
@ The survivors likely went to live with the Croatan Indians, and due to disease they likely died with the tribe. Or, the English quickly became absorbed by the tribe-and the English genetic traits disappeared upon a couple generations of intermarriage. Walter Raleigh and his financial backers could chalk up the colony’s demise as an act of God and not their fault in order to take heat off of their backs from the Crown or investors.
@captainjack8319 ohh ok thank you for explaining
@@captainjack8319 The english would not suffer from europian deseases. I find it more likely they simly assimilated. Hunter gatherers spend less time working than farmers and back in the day civilization provided very little as compared to the fun of not having to stick to a rigid christian code.
@@baltulielkungsgunarsmiezis9714That was only the puritans.
This story perfectly shows how important two things are anyone should live by:
- Prior Proper Planning Prevents Poor Performance.
- Good communication is key.
Of his own skills he once remarked, "Navigation in bad weather was my specialty. One passenger remarked, "You don’t always get a glad hand when you sail with Manning, but you feel damned safe."
He retired to a quiet and private life of lecturing and consultant work. He died at his home in Saddle River, NJ on August 1, 1974.
Manning was smart to call it quits. Survival of the smartest.
Yeah, he surely was. He saw this coming after that take off blunder. I don't know why they were so desperate and didn't prepare well for this world travel. Maybe they thought that there was no way this could go wrong.
@@ShubhamKumar-wm9vg Maybe they just feared that someone else would beat them if they delayed it too much. She was certainly on a rising trajectory and it probably got to her and her crew heads in some way.
@@sailormatlac9114 she obviously became a star for no reason. Things just played out in her favour all of her life and she became the first woman to cross the Atlantic but she was just a passenger in that journey, Anyother woman could have been given this opportunity. But she got all the fame and awards for that. She must be desperate to keep rising. Their preparations had a lot of shortcomings and the journey decisions were wrong too. This all led to that ultimate demise. This could have been a different story if she just would have put some time into learning more about radiophysics.
Well in the end Manning has managed to dodge a bullet. Later surviving U-Boat encounter and manage to become a Vice Admiral in the Navy. All because he bail out immedietly after seeing AE incompetence after just a simple take off.
@@ShubhamKumar-wm9vgi feel even back then there must've been some ppl saying "first women passenger to fly across the Atlantic? So what? Passenger"
The last message of the video was truly a powerful one. As an engineer, it resonated with me. You have to have proper knowledge to take on the responsibility.
Get it. Resonated.
Amen from another engineer. Knowledge seems to be in good supply. Responsibility seems to have fallen off. But to be fair, it seems that taking a stand for engineers is a greater risk than in days gone by. Just seems so to me.
@@mrcat5508😊
@@mrcat5508As an amateur radio operator, it resonated with me too.
Clearly you were on the same wavelength as the message
As a wildland firefighter I was taught that the cause of almost every single fatality could be traced to a breakdown in communication. The most recent ones all occurred because their radio signals stopped working. The technology has improved but the same risks and challenges still exist and still cause deaths.
Quick, another burning bush meeds saving!
I think it’s true in almost every fatality, when it comes right down to it. Clear and concise communication saves lives, failure to communicate often leads to catastrophic outcomes and for more than just yourself.
Star link will fix this
@@leprechaunbutreallyjustamidgetNot when the guiding intent is ill-informed and malicious. Greed, EGO and hate make these times especially perilous for the United States. The ignorance, avarice and corruption of one man almost seals our fate. Hopefully, we will have a few good men of character and integrity from within who will guide the ship and do the right thing to save Democracy!
This is not really true. Major incidents happen because a chain of errors that are not mitigated by procedures and equipment. This is as described by Dr James Reason. The Swiss Cheese model.
I know Earhart was a huge celebrity at the time from comments by my parents, who were 20 and 16 at the time. They lived these events, through the media as it was then.
I never really knew anything of what happened. I only ever saw the conspiracy theories.
This, for me, is a kind of closure.
So, thank you.
Thank you for shining the light of reason on troubling events.
Man, veritasium has become one of the best youtube channels on youtube period. The quality and length of these documentaries are just top tier.
It's ok. Calm down.
Lemmino
@@ZackScriven Lemmino when he was on his prime
One of the best youtube chanels on youtube eh?
@@Carguylogan Yo what does the comment say?
Fun fact: The Electra originally had a very different tail, until a young guy told the chief designer the plane would be unstable like that. The young guy turned out to be right, and got to running the extra wind-tunnel tests to re-design the tail. His name? Clarence "Kelly" Johnson, and he'd go on to heading development on the first US jet-fighter (P-80), the U-2, and the SR-71, and his division of Lockheed (now Lockheed Martin) would create the idea of a Skunkworks division and the first stealth-plane - the F-117. The hypersonic test-plane "SR-72 Darkstar" in Top Gun: Maverick was designed with the support of Skunkworks, and if you look close you see on the tail the traditional skunk logo.
how do u know this man
@@dumbahhpersonI was also skeptical but I just went a searchin in the internets and can confirm the parts about the “Model 10 Electra”. Didn’t care to confirm anything about the Mavrick movie but the career part was true and very impressive
His name? Albert Einstein
That sounds very Kelly Johnson: later in life someone else at Lockheed was known to say of him "that damn Swede can see air." He was a proper legend of aircraft design.
@@dumbahhperson What can I say, I'm a big nerd, and I like seeing connections
Industry I worked in for many years, we always trained, "Okay, but what do you do if THAT doesn't work.... and if THAT doesn't work? What if..." Seems like she relied on things working just right and didn't really have any backup plan.
Not entirely true. The video mentions they had dead reckoning, celestial navigation, and multiple radio systems. They had backup plans, but they didn't do the due diligence to ensure each plan was fully baked and operable, that all parties involved were well informed and prepared.
@@error.418 I think celestial navigation is a bit overrated in aircraft. At the start of WW2, the RAF bombers could barely find the right city to bomb using celestial and dead reckoning, in fact they often found the wrong city. In fact Switzerland was bombed several times, and that's not even the right country.
@@dougerrohmer Oh I'm making no comment as to what is viable, just that they did have multiple methods. I also have no clue if it's reasonable to compare Noonan's abilities with those of WW2 bomber pilots.
I think it's very much a sign of the times. Just look at workplace death rates throughout the last century. Today, we do what you say, having backups for backups. Back then, "try not to die" was sort of the equivalent of current OSHA standards.
And @error.418, having a backup plan that isn't tested and confirmed is virtually the same as not having a backup plan. It's the difference between going on a summer camping trip and bringing jackets vs. saying "ah, it shouldn't rain I think"
Look up Prof Reason Swiss Cheese model of accident prevention. At every event of the story, I hear how she slipped thru another hole in the Swiss Cheese. But this was in the early days of aviation and radio. Accident investigators note all the mistakes they can find and try to write regulations to avoid other accidents. As they say, the regulation rules are written in blood. Lookup Mentour channel, Gimli Glider episode.
After listening you explaining, I can see that there are tons of mistakes and careless preparation for the journey. Great video! Keep up good work. I love your voice, it's very thrilling
this is literally the first time in my years of fascination with Amelia Earhart that I’ve actually seen someone talk about what scientifically was planned and what scientifically went wrong. Thank you!❤️❤️❤️❤️
What 'scientifically' went wrong is despite her socialite status; best friends with Eleanor so had the Presidents ear, had runways built for her and a friggen *navy* escort she still messed it up.
As pilot in command it was entirely her fault - especially so as she didn't even know half the expected things required. It's called being coddled through life and told you are a genius amazing women even though she did nothing men hadn't done before (who actually had the correct skillset).
Things have only gotten worse since then.
Noonan the Navigator was not sitting beside her in the cockpit.
He was actually sitting behind her with a large fuel tank between them...they used a fishing line with pulleys to send notes with navigation numbers and fuel burn rates between each other
Typical backseat driver trying to man-splain a map to her.
Imagine the last note Noonan must've passed to Earhart...
"Empty"
@@ccengineer5902i bet you it's going to be a harsher word if i knew i was going to die
Sometimes he was back there and sometimes he was right beside her. Either way, they had to pass notes.
@@noahway13Please say this is satire
This is legitimately one of your best videos yet. Such a good balance of science and stakes with a story that is so infamous.
I just started watching this channel about a day or two ago and it’s already been off to a good start
The sheer incompetence, although surprising, doesn't actually seem unusual compared to other daring adventures of the time.
It'd be interesting to get a historical overview of risk tolerance across the 20th century. Even now is different from the 80s, which was drastically different from the 50s, and so on.
Everytime i learn about some disaster of the early/mid 20th century, it always like "bruh"
The problem with that is that every generation’s risk awareness is shaped by incidents at that time… like no one really thought about the danger of yard darts until someone took a dart thru the head… all sorts of things seem safe enough until someone dies and then everyone’s view of the risk associated with that activity shifts. Would be cool to see a list of things considered safe from each decade that we wouldn’t dream of doing now - along with your sense of risk tolerance across time.
amount of miscommunication and small errors is mindboggling, but understandable for the times and how difficult it was to properly communicate across distances.
Especially given it was relatively new technology for the time.
I wouldn't call it mind boggling.
Communication wasn't everywhere, and was "primitive" today.
The margin for error was small, and this was a VERY risky trip from start.
Just over confident and adrenaline fueled.
Especially with poor planning and recklessness. She was an accident waiting to happen
@@volvo09golden age of radio
Just goes to show, wimmen shouldn't fly. I say that with love.
I really appreciate you saving the sponsorship for the end. I find it almost polite and classy?😂 as funny as that sounds.
Your research is amazing in this video ❤
I also love how it helps him make his own signature style of ending videos. _"I wanna thank xyz for sponsoring this video, and I wanna thank YOU, for watching"._ It is obviously inspired from Michael Steven's signature _"and as always, thanks for watching"_ and although it's not as iconic, it's nice.
Same with Danny Gonzalez, I love it when people don’t put their sponsorships smack dab in the middle of their video, we already have ads (unless people have bought UA-cam premium) it’s just much better and I’m glad their thinking about the viewers and what is nice
I also appreciate that he doesn’t show his children’s faces, protecting their privacy.
I have much more respect for people who either do their ads at the very beginning or very end. When you throw it in the middle, and it cuts the sentence they were saying, in half, it's frustrating and feels so in-your-face.
A nice reminder why redundancy is the number one rule for NASA.
Not just NASA, but yup.
And number 2. 😁
@@robthaham3408 😂
Thats why they have killed more crews than anu other space agency
@@Semystic wait till we bring out the triple redundancy systems
One word: preparedness. If you want a fantastic example of preparedness, look at how Amundsen organized his South Pole expedition. Leftover fuel cans were found over 50 years later and were completely full. He marked his supply depots with rows of red flags for 1200 m in each direction (E and W as he was travelling S and then N on the way back). He got to the 1200 m by taking the largest possible error on navigation, and then doubling it. They had enough food to miss a depot and still make it to the next one. His entire team were expert skiers and dog-sledders, so everyone could do everyone else's job. All this in 1911 .
I wonder what Manning's private thoughts may have been after the flight went missing? "Whew, glad I didn't go I thought this might have happened." Or, "Had I gone, this never would have happened." I suppose he was interviewed, and someone here may have read something about what he may have said, if any thing.
IMO, it seems like he left the mission because he knew there were flaws in the plan, and perhaps Earhardt wasn't willing to listen to him about it? Either way, after the previous crash which he'd been in, he was probably thinking "I'm not surprised"...
Edit to clarify this is my opinion not something I've read.
She probably got rid of the one antenna that does Morse code against his wishes and he decided it ain’t worth it
@@ExhaustedOwl it is your guess
@@deehaws4334 It's a fairly well educated guess. If I were in a car wreck with someone I would certainly never let them drive me anywhere again. Doubly so for an airplane. Airplane problems may occur less frequently, but when problems do occur it's fairly rare that one simply walks away from the incident unharmed.
Her preparation was clearly lacking and she was taking unnecessary risks with her and her crew's life, he clearly cottoned on to her recklessness and bailed before she got him killed.
Thanks for your post. In the fall of 1964, I was aboard my ship whose homeport was Apra Harbor, Guam. We were assigned to the Trust Territories of the Pacific. We were cruising between Guam and Koror, Palau. One afternoon we received a radio telephone call from a woman who said she was flying a route, attempting to recreate the flight of Emelia Earhart. Needless to say, that got our attention.
@@checkpointcharlie1788 You mean the same route AE and Noonan hoped to fly.
Jerrie Mock or Joan Merriam Smith? They both attempted the flight in 1964 but both completed their journeys before the fall. Jerrie flew a Cessna 180 Skywagon, and Joan flew a Lockheed 10A Electra.
@@theyellowishlimeace4735 the Trust Territories of the Pacific seems to be known as Micronesia now, fall for them goes from April to December, they're near the end of the flight and Jerrie Mock's flight was from March 19, 1964 to April 17, 1964
Therefore it must have been Jerrie Mock, right?
Communication is key to everything. It’s so sad this story ended so tragically when so much could have been prevented and properly for. RIP Earhart and Noonan.
34:15 - 34:33 LOVE IT!!! So true in so many different aspects. Great video!! Learned more in your half-hour video about this story than public education ever thought about teaching me. Thank You!
The best analogy for Earhart I ever heard was that of a person that throws a baseball pretty well but doesn't understand the game. She could fly a plane pretty well but didn't understand flight.
Barely - she was known as poor to decent pilot at the time. Her flight instructor Neta Snook Southern described her as a nice person but a poor pilot. Even her husband and promotor tried to hire Louise Thaden as her ''mechanic''. Thaden was an accomplished pilot who was supposed to handle the take off and landing in secret but was insulted and rejected it. As is in many of these cases, it's not the skilled that are remembered but those with good marketing...
There's enough IMO to speculate that the experienced merchant marine (and pilot) Captain Manning left because he was genuinely afraid for his life considering what a raging ego fraught with dangerous compulsion Earhart was. She was a flying deathwish. I always wondered where Fred Noonan stood on all that. Naive perhaps or just as reckless as Earhart.
@@gullinkambe6726this isn't saying a whole lot considering how new flying was as a whole to humans.
@@justincase4812what gets ne about all this and Noonan, is that despite how smart and accomplished he is, everyone just seems to accept that he had 0 say in any choice that happened during the journey
Hard to argue with a woman so they killed off the radio
All my life I had no clue how radio signals work. Your instruction has explained it in a way I can follow. Bravo to you and thank you.
Taking responsibility is a risk-taking behaviour. I remember when on a summer job at a power supply manufacturer, I found out an issue with the product that had to be corrected - when boxes were already about to be loaded into the shipping truck. So I said wait, we have to fix this. Later that day, my boss said, it's great that you stopped the shipment, it was a responsible decision. But you should have gone straight to my office, because you did not have the right to stop the shipment. And he was right - I had no such right. I just had the responsibility to pretend I did, because the alternative would be a recall.
Some people are primarily mission-oriented: they want to accomplish the end-goal. Others are more process-oriented, they are motivated to follow the procedures. Aviation is an interesting combination of the two, because following procedures is critical to safety. That means it is very risky to start improvising, and there is a strong requirement to avoid doing it.
There were two key elements that were missing in Earhart's flight: understanding of radio propagation on her part, and a strict, mutually-agreed to, detailed communication plan. Given that there was no possibility to divert, disaster was a distinct possibility. And yet, everyone seemed to have thought "we'll make it - somehow."
Of course, hindsight is 20-20.
I remember watching Unsolved Mysteries in the early 1990s with Robert Stack. I vividly remember him say "Howland Island" over and over and over again.
I cant believe I never learned of the specifics of the radio issues. Heartbreaking. Thank you.
I was underwhelmed when I heard neither Noonan nor Earhart was fluent in Morse code.
Depending on voice only, in those conditions, in that era, for two way communication? That was ill prepared.
@Peter-ff1tp don't forget the famous photo of the DNA double helix taken by Rosalind Franklin...that was actually taken by her PhD student Raymond Gosling.
Wow, learned a lot of interesting things from this video. 1. More details about Earheart's disappearance than just "she vanished without a trace." And 2. A whole lot more about old radio communication and equipment. I never understood what that loop antenna was for or the field with the 5 large antennas in it. Didn't know those were primarily for navigation. Very interesting. Thank you.
Failing to fix her position with the USS Ontario was her BINGO fuel moment. The fact that she did not return to her departure point but instead proceeded on is proof enough of Manning's doubt about her airmanship and decision making.
Woman driver.
Right. And no: gender doesn't have anything to do with that.
Doubt of her could have led to that decision, if the people around you expect you to fail then you're going to be determined not to
the mirage of global fame must be so powerful... few of us can really comprehend its impact on one's actions and decisions... history is full of examples of 'silly' decisions by powerful and skillful individuals who got 'blinded' by this mirage. i imagine the feeling to be intoxicating, a form of inebriation capable of twisting realities.
as expected some comments refer to her abilities as a woman but some great worriers led entire armies on futile paths (against the pleads of other experienced worriers) just to 'prove a point' or 'make history'.
She didn't take the right equipment and had the chance to notice.
Thanks
Thank you!
I spent my entire life thinking she was a great pilot and navigator who was lost due to unavoidable disaster.
Now i realize she was lost due to sheer, insane, and unfathomable incompetence by all parties
i feel a bit sad. I did a project on her in primary school, clearly it was all fiction.
Agree, i think she was rather reckless and ill-prepared. She didn’t equip herself with adequate knowledge and preparation, leaving the entire journey by hoping for the best. I would say she was brave but naive.
Primarily her. She was the pilot in command.
The Navy kept telling her, I don’t think they can be blamed
It was the Bermuda Triangle
My grandpa was a radio operator in WWII and a passionate aviation fan, and I took my geeking about those topics from him. I'm sure he would have loved this video as much as I did. Thank you Veritasium.
I flew on USAF cargo planes for 9 years as a loadmaster. We learned basics of radio physics and tips and tricks. I mostly forgot about them until we were flying over the Indian Ocean one night and were making position calls in the blind on HF. When we finally got a response somewhere between Diego Garcia and Thailand, it was from Boston Center who kindly relayed our message to the appropriate controllers in our hemisphere.
I’m confused. Can you explain this in more detail 😅
@@RicardoelsupremoGood try china. 🙄
Loadmasters lead the way!! C130 for 10 years here!
Boston in the US or UK? I’m guessing US
@@MrWTFOMFGROFLdon’t be gullible man when is a military man going to call a plane a cargo plane like a sailor calling a ship a boat lmao stolen valor
That was a very informative video, I was interested the entire way through. Even the radio wave experiment in the field👍🏻 thank you
As a retired broadcast engineer after 40 years in the industry and an Amateur Radio Operator for over 45 years, in a short explanation he did not too bad. One must take into account the year which determines what technology was available. The differences between night and day propagation on the different frequencies. The level of experience of the operators. It is truly complicated.
I mean doing all such calculation needed a genius person beside his domain knowledge.
It's hard to imagine any commercial radio operator in 1937 not understanding Morse code. I'm sure the nuances of radio propagation was beyond them.
41 here, been hearing about this for years. never has it ben explained so clear and concise. Its amazing what the entire story and truth can do. Absolutely awesome video of this story.
Side note, I'm a utility pipe line locator, your examples helped me finish understanding visually what I am doing. I use the pipehorn HL800.
That was a fun afternoon. The receiver is one I built about 8 years ago using a design by Nick Roethe DF1FO. This video only includes audio from one ear - the other ear has a "whoopee" tone that makes it much easier to DF, but Earhart didn't have that
Thanks for your help Clifford!
When the SDR was turned on I was thinking huh, didn't know Derek was a ham! Then you popped up. It was a really good demo!
I've read several books, articles and watched several docs about this. My hat off to you and your team. This was the most comprehensive and logical explanation of what happened. Now.... To find the Electra....
I still have a lot of respect for Earhart and what she accomplished. But it is shocking how sloppy she was about such critical communication issues. Maybe she was just used to either being over land or flying over oceans but knowing that a huge continent would eventually appear even if she was off course. But trying that over the largest expanse of water on Earth was downright crazy.
And a LOT of other things. Yes, she was a bit sporty.
@@MrJdseniorI feel like you have to be to try something like that. People at the frontier are a little nuts. Imagine being the first person to strap themselves to an ICBM and orbit the earth? Imagine being the first person to make it to mars? There’s always the risk of death. There’s a reason the first astronauts were fighter pilots and test pilots
@@berengerchristy6256Of course, you need to have a certain level of risk taking in order to try this, but the smart ones do everything they can to reduce the inherent risk, control for the variables that they can to give the best possible chance of success.
@@berengerchristy6256 there's always risks for any great historical achievement. However, sometimes there's completely UNNECESSARY risks, and completely stupid decision making (even based on the limitations of the time); that Amelia demonstrated on the most dangerous leg of her journey.
Hitting a tiny island in the middle of he biggest ocean in the world would seem to be daunting enough for her to take a few extra precautions. I think she was always going to push the envelope until it pushed back.
This is the same effect that allows for polarized light. It’s just operating at much higher frequencies. The elegant parallels among EM phenomena were a big reason I got hooked into electronics engineering.
Im an EE too. The EM field makes everything tick
YES ! You said "elegant parallels"........ I think it is really spooky that very different forms of stored energy eg Kinetic, Magnetic, Electric all seem to follow the same rules.........
Energy of a moving body is = 1/2MassVel(sqd)
Magnetic Energy around an inductor is = 1/2LI(sqd)
Electric Energy in a capacitor is = 1/2CV(sqd)
It's clearly not physics that doomed her but lack of preparation and communication with the people that were leading her to her destination.
No, it was her hubris
@@mosubekore78 no, it was mistakes of many peopel involved. she even asked wether her suggested frequency was good for transmission, and noone bothered to correct her. she certainly wasnt the only technician/engineer working on the craft, such issues should have been brought up beforehand. if not, then theres another mistake of not involving enough engineers.
@@dankrigby5621It wasn't THEIR adventure. It was hers.
@@dankrigby5621 No, it was her incompetence. Nobody is responsible except herself for her pursuit (and failure) of excitement.
Thompson didn't want to mansplain a strong independent woman. Can't blame him.
Grateful for the awesome video, thanks!
The footage of her constantly struggling to keep the plane straight while taking off was already concerning and made the wreck from her attempted take off make so much more sense
She had zero mechanical knowledge or interest. She “drove” the plane like a shopping cart.
@@jcrosby4804 Like a typical woman lmao
From the description, it sounded like classic ground looping which is a problem most common with tail draggers.
So the type of plane she was flying was difficult to keep straight when taking off? @@dungbeetle.
@@jcrosby4804 during that period of time, flying small planes was a somewhat popular hobby, if u look at the night witches from the soviet union, the all female pilots division who had experience flying as a hobby from before the war
I will be sending this to my friends who are getting into ham radio. This is one of the clearest demonstrations of the basic principles of radio waves and equipment I think I've ever seen. Makes it very accessible. Thank you for this.
This radio direction finding demonstration is a BEAUTIFUL explanation and demonstation of one of the simplest, most basic, and most comon methods of radio direction finding in existance. Most now days are higher tech, but use exactly the same ultimate method. As a licenced ham for 30 years, I've built and used several antennas of this type, though now days I prefer to use doppler based methods.
I’ve been getting into learning about ham radio and I heard that they have field days and contests in order to test their equipment and make sure they know how to communicate effectively, because you can’t just assume everything will work the first time in an emergency if you don’t test yourself often.
@@drivers99 There are two big activities hams do for this reason, one is the anual "Field Day" contest which you mentioned, and the other, relevant to the demonstration in the video, is hidden transmitter hunting, commonly known as "Fox Hunting" in which someone hides a radio transmitter, and others attempt to find it with whatever direction finding equipment they have. The hunt might cover a small city park, or an entire large city, depending on the teams, and the gear to be used. The hidden transmitter could range from someone in their car transmitting with 50 watts, to a tiny microcontroller based transmitter powered by a hearing aid battery and hidden in a camera film can under a log in a city park.
Send them the video of the man who contacted the ISS with his homemade antenna. That's impressive.
look into the USSR space station and communicate with an Australian woman in the 1986 area
Very best Amelia Earhart doc I’ve seen. I’ve seen a lot of Earhart material and this has a TON of new. BRILLIANT
Amazing visualizations. Well done!
Hey thank you guys. I did my first ever Research paper on this exact topic in the late 90's. at the time No one really knew what happend and the military didnt share information. thanks for completing something i been tring to look in to for 30 years
The ring antenna and the association with it and the origin of the radio is mind-blowing, and sooo cool!
The amount of budgeting and resources they were willing to spend to aid her on the trip really shows just how different the world was in terms of aviation.
Imagine asking three US naval ships to just wait for you and help with navigation nowadays.
There was much interest in these accomplishments at that time. For military purposes. This was also a unique training situation for the crew.
Neil DeGrasse Tyson described the difference between JFK's "we will put a man on the moon before the end of the decade" (i.e. USA will land on the moon under MY watch), and Obama's "we will reach Mars in 20 years" (aka a Mars mission under a future, unnamed president and a largely imaginary budget to be decided later)
He then said political will is as necessary as scientific knowledge when it comes to making large scale progress
It's more a reflection of someone with the right connections able to amass more resources then their abilities should otherwise allow. For more modern day examples see Elizabeth Holmes or Richard Stockton.
@@DavidKiviat Billionaire class gonna billionaire. We've seen the submarine crush itself and Bezos reaching into space.
@@DavidKiviat That is very true as well. It’s certainly a component to it here; likely more than was explained in the video.
I’d assume it has to take more than just aviation interest to organise this, but I’m not exactly familiar with who Earhart was socially. I assume she wasn’t a multi millionaire but she was clearly a celebrity of some significant calibre, since it doesn’t exactly immediately appear directly similar to the Oceangate fiasco.
Brief, bright, and relevant.
Excellent presentation.
I’ve listened to a few Explainers for this flight but this is the first time I’m hearing the radio tech explained like this. Great job!
The list of assumptions leading up to the disaster is anxiety inducing.
Simply failing to obtain confirmation the ship received her telegram instructions and would be broadcasting at those intervals.
Any one of those things, if ensured, would have provided what was needed to navigate.
Failing to obtain ANY verification for any of these various technologies was incompetence.
@@Triple_J.1 It is incompetence, but it's still sad. It just sucks it was totally preventable.
These type of stories always humble me and help me realise what amazing communication capabilities we have nowadays. There is so much we take for granted, and besides basic concepts I have no idea how they really work and how small changes or mistakes in interpretation can have a big impact. I will think about this the next time I complain the WiFi on the plane doesn’t work.
Yeah, there are like 4 different technologies today, any of them making this navigational task trivially easy (VOR beacons, GPS, radar, and ADS-B or even it's more primitive transponder predecessors).
Good analysis of the communications aspects of the flight. The cloud pattern that morning was exactly what you didn't want when searching for an island below -- broken patchy clouds -- all looking like islands themselves.
This video goes miles, and I mean it MILES above the quality of any documentary and/or science video. 37 minutes ago I had never heard about Amelia Earhart's story and I was all the time on the edge of my chair watching. As if this were an S-tier rated thriller. 10/10 storytelling, 10/10 animations 10/10 science inputs. And what touched me the most, was 32:10 - although without a shadow of a doubt Derek had practiced his script and knew the story by heart, telling what the most propbable demise of the plane was, made him grieve and I could feel tears in both my and his eyes. This has to be my favourite Veritasium video so far and would be insanely hard to outclass it. Props to everyone involved in it and may A. Earhart rest in peace.
If you made it this far in my comment, have a nice day and like the video, it truly deserves it!
Bro is so invested
😂@@minadimova1932
Omg, 37 again!
The whole world knows about Amelia Earhart so you must've been born after 2004
It's feels good when Derek says more about them at the end of the "show" and not "video"
I thought so too..but then an advert still comes on in another minute
What difference does it make?
@@paulelderson934 self respect, feelings of grandeur and self importance
Except he did say "video".
"This video is sponsored by KiwiCo. More about them at the end of the show".
@@paulelderson934 'video' is something less descriptive while 'show' means something broad and continuous
Dang. The detail in this video is absolutely wild. Having wheel in the Electra 10-E is incredible. I dont think anyone else would put that much detail in.
That's because nobody has the financial budget this channel has.
@@mr.shannon6137 🤣
Cool thought and analysis!! You’re getting better and better!! That’s even cooler! Yesssss
Your videos usually have a good bit of great info. That one was 35 minutes of amazing information. Thank you, I didn't have a clue about all the limitations of navigation at the time of her flight.
There is an old grainy video of her takeoff on that leg of the trip that shows a puff of smoke coming from underneath the plane, apparently corresponding to damage to the receiving antenna. That would explain why she apparently could not receive subsequent voice transmissions.
Yeah, this is the one 'easy' mistake that had me shaking my head. Radio check after take-off given the stakes seems vital. I am surprised no one suggested it.
Doesn't matter.
What matters is their refusal to abort the mission and return to the airfield once they figured out nobody was responding to them.
This was very easy to confirm simply by talking to the departure airport over their chosen frequency before leaving the area.
Failing to obtain a radio fix at 51% fuel remaining was a serious point of no return, where they could easily have turned back and landed safely.
@@x--. It may not have been the norm for the time. It was a totally different world for aviation and radio back then
@@mrfahrenheit677 That was my assumption but I figured anyone really familiar with radios would be familiar with how easy it is for them to not be working properly -- maybe radios were just built way better back then?
Even today, with the most precise and highly calibrated sextants, a position error of two miles is considered extremely good, and 10 miles is more common.
So you are not at an intersection of two lines, unless you drew the lines with sidewalk chalk. Navigators always draw a position circle, called a circle of error. The important question is not "where are we" but rather, "how large is the circle of error?"
Navigators? Is it just not safe to rely on GPS?
GPS truly is a marvel that we all take for granted, myself included. Is it a bad idea to rely on it in at sea?
GPS is more than adequate. Even integrated conditions in the south Indian Ocean the maximum sort of error you might experience would be a range of about 100 m. Typically GPS has you within 1 to 3 m.
OP is talking about navigation without GPS
@@Tyler-z8rGNSS (of which GPS is one such system) uses trilateration to calculate your location - which is not much different to what is discussed in the video but in 3 dimensions instead of 2. Think of it as plotting multiple spheres, your location is most likely within the area they all overlap.
As such, the accuracy and precision (please note, they're not the same thing) is still within a certain radius. Both will likely improve with more satellites visible to the receiver but there is still a "circle of error" as the OP of this comment said.
Well actually, you typically do not (in my experience) navigate on a chart by using a "circle of error." You navigate on a chart using either a "fix" or a running fix or estimated and assumed position. Which are all single points. An estimated/assumed position incorporates your idea of vagueness and uncertainty but is nevertheless represented as a single point. I've never seen or used a navigational chart by advancing a series of circles. If you draw a circle on a chart (which navigators do not usually do) then you cannot thereafter advance your position, you are just advancing ever widening circles which is not common and probably does not work. I'm nitpicking here, but since your circle of error is essentially unknowable while underway, navigators do not go around questioning how large their circle of error is, either. Today's sextants give better positions primarily due to better timekeeping devices and better optics. Large sextant position errors -say over two or three miles- is primarily due to being bounced around by waves, or lousy viewing conditions. I'm sure you'd agree. Not that anyone still uses celestial navigation much these days, although you still master it (somewhat) to earn your Coast Guard licenses.
It also helps if you use 3 stars per fix--as that "circle of error" can be more precisely known by the triangle it forms. Of course for Fred, that morning, he was using only the Sun, which didn't tell him if he was north or south of Howland--unless he had a super-precise compass, and precise magnetic variation charts. Performing a "landfall procedure" at 1,000' made it impossible to see the island unless they got within a few miles of it. Sextant errors on aircraft can usually range as a high as a dozen miles. Celestial navigation from an airplane is much more difficult than from a ship.
Good video, however the ending message is incorrect. The responsibility for learning the radio communication effectively is Amelia’s only. If she had a deficiency, it is her responsibility to get better, not the ship captains. Amelia took risks, knowing the consequences and paid the ultimate price.
Yall are crazy bruh
So, my Father worked at Lockheed, from the 60's until he retired (his first project was the L-1011). The lore around the Company was that she wasn't known as a great pilot. Apparently, she was bringing her Electra's back for repair a lot.
Why the other navigator bailed out on going after she could not take off from Hawaii and crashed
Taking off is fairly easy part of flying
Much of the world loves reinforcing women's beliefs in themselves, no matter how true or delusional
@craigdk586, probably over compensation for generations of men believing women are inferior and projecting that mentality. Guilt perhaps.
Independent woman don't need no communicator.
Casual sexism is still alive I see
I was an Ame working on a DHC 6 Caribou. Flying from Inuvik to Melvin Island the RH engine started to wander betwee max and min RPM 2hoursovertheBeaufortSea. As this was before GPS we were usung Loran VLF which was affected by static build up on the Imron paint. We turned back intentionally heading east of Inuvik with the same strategy. Too far north for reliable magnetic compas and the VLF flitting between dead reckoning and actual heading depending on airframe static charge. We flew VLF dead reckoning,the course corrected when the VLF worked until we hit the coast then turned right until we found Tuktoyuk. A few of the scariest hours of my life.
I've been in that region of the world (Norad work) and also flew single engine monoplanes but never that far north. It is one of the scariest part of the world to start having mechanical problems. People have no idea how desolate and isolated it is.
I've been in that region of the world (Norad work) and also flew single engine monoplanes but never that far north. It is one of the scariest part of the world to start having mechanical problems. People have no idea how desolate and isolated it is.
34:35 For a second I thought you were going to segue into a Skillshare sponsorship 😂
Or brilliant
I enjoyed your description of radio. I used to carry a shortwave radio around with me at Uni, since I usually did the time-consuming analyses at night and there's not much going on between the dorm and the lab. At night, I could pick up signals from Sweden just sitting in my Appalachian lab. Though the BBC would be more clear. Once, I caught a signal from Cuba.
I'm a pilot. I've been flying for 8 years. I've studied sense and loop antennas. I've taught other pilots about sense and loop antennas. And I've never understood them as well as I do now! Your videos are great, thank you for your dedication and effort.
Sounds like you were unqualified for 8 years.
@@clinch4402
No, he didn't say he didn't understand or know how to USE these systems; he simply said that he never understood them BETTER than after watching this. That doesn't make him unqualified to fly, or use them. There is always more to know about the technology we use every day, whether or not the knowledge we gain is theoretical or practical.
This is how we become better at what we do. No one starts out - or uses technology effectively for many years - knowing EVERYTHING about the many forms of technology used in aviation, or any other technical endeavor.
Are you an unqualified driver because you don't understand every intricacy of how and why the hydraulic braking system in the car you drive works?
If you don't (or pick any other critical system you have used/are using), does this make you 'unqualified' to operate it?
If this were so, we would have NO astronauts, drivers, pilots, or any other people to operate any machine or system in the world.
By your metric, how many things are YOU unqualified to operate, that you DO operate?
Honestly did not understand frequencies when we studied them in physics before. This demonstration with the graphics is amazing!
21:58 I may have missed it, but I believe you failed to mention that during the repair process, Lockheed replaced her Western Electric 20B receiver with an early experimental version of the Bendex RA-1, at the time no one had ever used that receiver before and it would be years before the commercial version was available.
Did that have any impact?
@@cadenbiglerMost likely. As part of the new reciever and transmitter, Joseph Gurr had modified the new system to transmit and recieve at 500 KHz. Derek is incorrect at 27:07 in that she was told she still had the capability to send and recieve at 500 KHz even without the trailing wire, but the modifications were made on an already experimental system and had never been fully tested.
Lockheed only merged with Martin in 1994. It was pure Lockheed back then. And Martin Marietta was created in 1961.
@@freeculture Thank you, I updated this.
yes we came across this in our research. We thought about mentioning her limited training with the new loop - I don't even think they had a user's manual. But we left this detail out of the script. Another interesting note - the loop on the Itasca may have been very similar (or in fact identical) to Earhart's.
You've put together a Beautifully Detailed- yet Understandable explanation of the Theory- & Practice of Radio-Assisted Navigation.
"When attempting any challenging endeavor, you need someone with the right knowledge, who will also take responsibility for getting things right." - so true.
Didn't expect a new mentour pilot video on a Wednesday
😂
Lol
okay
I was just thinking that a lot of the errors here sound like exactly the sort of things in Mentor Pilot videos that get pilots killed. Improper and insufficient preparation and "flying by the seat of the pants" until something goes wrong and not enough redundancy to recover.
I would love to hear Peter do his show on this. I suggest we all get these two great commentators together to produce a show.
I disagree with you giving some blame to Commander Thompson, this was her project, she and Noonan were taking the risk, and they should have immersed themselves in the information and knowledge to complete their objective. She prioritized being the first, over learning the how.
I agree 100%. She was illprepared. The blame lies with her.
She was an idiot and was famous for being a woman.
Agreed. Also in his defense: The thing that is implied in this video but never fully stated is how difficult it was in that era to have fully resolved conversations with multiple parties scattered around the globe. Anyone who has ever tried to resolve a complex topic among multiple people by email alone knows this. A five minute group voice chat can solve more than days of emails. And email is still orders of magnitude higher bandwidth than telegrams. But our modern idea of communication was far from possible at the time. Hence these frustratingly unresolved issues in all these telegrams.
Yea maybe not blame but considering he was an expert , a simple suggestion would have went a long way . If I see someone who doesn’t know how to ride a bike & that person is trying to ride it backwards , i’m going to tell them to turn around .
All I have to say is that she had Presidential backing, the complete resources of the nation, an air field made for her, 3 navy/coast guard vessels, all for her to achieve a self serving/pointless title for flying. I mean with all that "help" does it really count as her accomplishment even if she nailed it? Also, on Thompson's end, he was seeing this massive undertaking going all the way up to the president. So what do you think he thought when he got the wrong instructions? I guarantee you he believed all this stuff was worked out by someone else and that Earhart knew what she was doing if she had so much support behind her. I believe she was impulsive and unprepared, but no one stepped in because it was a "feel-good" story that the freaking president was behind.