Ric Gillespie
Autore di Finding Amelia: The True Story of the Earhart Disappearance
Opere di Ric Gillespie
Etichette
Informazioni generali
- Sesso
- male
Utenti
Recensioni
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Autori correlati
Statistiche
- Opere
- 1
- Utenti
- 59
- Popolarità
- #280,813
- Voto
- 3.3
- Recensioni
- 2
- ISBN
- 5
Earhart did not finalize communication procedures for her arrival at Howland Island before she set out on her journey. Attempts to contact Earhart en route to iron out details were hampered by the length of time it took to route messages to Earhart, the differences in time zones, and Earhart's constant travel. Sometimes messages reached a location after Earhart had departed on the next leg of her trip.
There were multiple communication breakdowns during Earhart's last flight and the subsequent search for the downed plane. The Coast Guard vessel positioned at Howland Island for Earhart's arrival had incomplete information about the plane's communication system and were not aware that neither Earhart nor navigator Fred Noonan were skilled in Morse code. When it became clear that Earhart was missing, the ship's captain formed a theory of the plane's probable location based on a number of erroneous assumptions. When subsequent evidence seemed to contradict his theory, he forced the evidence to fit his original theory rather than adjusting his theory to the new evidence. Although several agencies were cooperating in the search, for the first few days there was no command and control center. Different agencies formed different theories about what had happened and where the plane might be and acted accordingly.
Gillespie spends a lot of time analyzing radio communications during and after the flight, with lots of technical detail about frequencies and equipment. It appears that Earhart did survive for at least a few days and was able to transmit messages that were picked up by receivers at various locations in the Pacific and even in the continental U.S. Based on the evidence presented in the book, it seems likely to me that Earhart and Noonan might have been rescued if the search had been better coordinated and had the parties involved not been selective about the information they shared with the others.
I had a hard time putting the book down once I started it. The narrative flows well even with all of the technical details about navigation and radio electronics. Even though I knew the search would fail, I kept hoping until the end that the searchers would find Earhart and Noonan.… (altro)