It means that all during the night of July 2, beginning after sundown at 5:55 P.M., Fred Noonan was not able to get a fix from the stars to determine his position. And if, after fourteen hours out from Lae, he looked down and saw a chain of islands, he would have determined that he was on course and over the Gilbert Islands; but if AE had turned north while he was napping, and he had still awakened in time to see islands, they would have been, not the Gilberts as he might have thought, but the Caroline Islands—exactly the same distance away but in the wrong direction.
By somehow departing from her course, and making the tremendous error of steering north and west instead of east—as she had done once before on the world flight, when she had turned north to St. Louis instead of south to Dakar, overriding Fred’s directions, after the flight across the South Atlantic—AE would have found herself after twenty hours of flying time somewhere along the chain of islands that marks the Marianas.
Her last report, at 8:45 A.M., gave her line of position as 157-337. The Navy’s search satisfied judgments that the line was not a radio line, for the areas northwest and southeast from Howland were thoroughly investigated. One hundred fifty-seven-337, therefore, was undoubtedly a sun line.
Near Howland, at position 01° 00’ North Latitude and 177° 20’ West Longitude, on July 3, 1937, the bearing of the sun was 66° from the north point at 7:00 A.M., Howland time. The sun line, therefore, would have been 156-336.
Near Saipan, at position 13° 00’ North Latitude and 153° 00’ East Longitude, at 5:00 A.M., Saipan time, the sun was 64° from the north point. A sun line there would have been 154-334.
If Noonan had thought he was close to Howland when he shot his last sun line, his geographical point of reference—used for computing and plotting his observation—would obviously have been close to Howland. If he had actually been close to Saipan, however, the relative position of the sun would still have been almost the same: 64° from the north point near Saipan, as opposed to 66° from the north point near Howland. But his observation, when computed and plotted on his chart, would have shown him to be the same number of miles from his geographical point of reference.
An experienced navigator with trust in his abilities such as Noonan would have tended to believe that either his observations or his computations were somehow wrong. He would not have thought, at least immediately, that he was some 2,600 miles off course. If AE had been pressing him for a position to radio to the Itasca, he might have, in agonies of doubt, merely given her the line of position, which he could be sure of, but not the geographical point of reference, because he could now no longer determine that point with certainty. This possibility would explain the irregularity of Amelia having transmitted the line of position without the necessary point of reference.
On the basis of these determinations, therefore, there is strong support for believing in Josephine Blanco’s story.
The Navy gave Amelia until about noon before she would go down. It was at noontime that Josephine saw the two-motored plane ditch in Tanapag Harbor.
The Navy’s final conclusion was that Amelia had ended her flight somewhere north and west. Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan were seen by two eyewitnesses north and west of Howland on Saipan. At that time of the year the American woman and her tall male companion could have been none other than AE and Fred Noonan.