Also, he was far from abandoning hope. Although Amelia was having radio trouble, there was every belief that Fred Noonan could make a fix and yet find Howland. Radio transmissions, therefore, continued around the clock at the same frequencies, of 3,105, 6,210, and 500 kilocycles.
If Amelia were leaning out her fuel at the rate of 50 gallons per hour, at the end of twenty-one hours, at 9:00 A.M. on the morning of July 2, she would have enough fuel left for two more hours of flying time, for she had had 1,150 gallons of gasoline aboard the aircraft. If, on the other hand, AE were using fuel at just under 45 gallons per hour, she could have flown for a total of twenty-six hours—until 12:00 noon, Lae time, but 2:00 P.M. Howland time. In other words, just as her tanks were going dry, her chronometer for elapsed time would have indicated approximately twelve o’clock. The Navy reasoned, presumably from AE’s point of view in the cockpit, that she could stay aloft trying to find some island somewhere until about noon.
If she were slightly north and west of Howland, and realized the fact, she would have tried for the Gilbert Islands; or, if she were even more north and west, she would have attempted the Marshall or Caroline Islands; if extremely north and west, the Mariana Islands. The last possibility was most unlikely.
“If they are down,” George Putnam wired from San Francisco, “they can stay afloat indefinitely. Their empty tanks will give them buoyancy. Besides, they have all the emergency equipment they’ll need—everything.”
That the Navy was unable to find the two fliers defies understanding if all the conclusions and predications were correct.
At 10:15 A.M. the Itasca steamed north, and a Navy seaplane took off from Honolulu bound for Howland, to help in the search.
At twelve o’clock Amelia was reported as definitely not having reached Howland. Her time had just about run out. She was most probably down; somewhere close by, everyone hoped, either riding the wing of the floating Electra, or paddling away from it in the emergency rubber raft. Holding to the first assumption, the Itasca listened for AE’s SOS on 3,105 and 500, because it was believed that the plane’s radio supply was by battery and that the antenna could be used from on top of the wing. The Itasca pressed the search and kept calling the Electra continuously.
Because only portions of Amelia’s transmissions had been received during the night, and those garbled amid static, the Navy concluded that the Electra had been flying through or above thunderstorms.
After her last report to Lae, at 5:20 P.M. on July 2, something had happened to put her off course. After sunset at 5:55 P.M. and during the night until sunrise at 6:12 A.M. the next morning, she had somehow become lost.
The navigation procedures of Fred Noonan tend to confirm this last view. It was his practice, according to those who knew him, to follow course and to correct it by taking infrequent fixes during the night; then, just before dawn, he would correct course for destination by determining a line of position near the end of the estimated run. This procedure would allow a flight of about three hundred miles during the morning without a good fix.