Finding Amelia Earhart’s Plane Seemed Impossible – Then Came a Startling Clue
I don&#x27;t have a ready reference, but my recollection is:<p>1. she wasn&#x27;t a master of the airplane, having crashed it on takeoff before due to overloading<p>2. she had a history of overruling her navigator and being wrong<p>3. she tried to find a tiny island at the limit of the airplane&#x27;s range in a time when navigation wasn&#x27;t that accurate<p>4. did not have proper training on the radio and direction finder equipment<p>5. flew into a headwind and kept going<p>6. proper technique at the time was to fly towards the centerline between Howland and another island, doubling the likelihood of one being in visual range. She did not do this.<p>This was at a time when such an attempt would be very, very unforgiving of mistakes. I don&#x27;t think there&#x27;s much of a mystery. (WW2 saw a lot of airplanes disappear over the Pacific with no trace.)<p>Lindbergh would have had a very hard time missing Europe. His biggest problems were fatigue, icing, and headwinds. I think Lingbergh took a much more calculated risk. His predecessors disappeared without a trace.