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How Did Earhart Respond To Howland Island?

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Fred Noonan was suspected for his drinking problems, and many have speculated that this may have affected his navigating skills, although other reports say that Noonan did not drink during the last part of the trip. However, Earhart's comments to her husband about personnel fitness can indeed lead one to wonder whether he was in optimal condition to navigate them to Howland. ( Butler 404) Whether he drank or not, his skills with Morse code were severely lacking, as were Earhart's. This would prove to be a fatal error as they tried to land on Howland Island. Because of Earhart's poor radio system, they would have had to rely on Morse code to communicate with nearby ships to locate the miniscule island. (405) By themselves, there was no way they could even tell where Howland Island was without information from people closer to the ground. In fact, according to Susan Butler, a journalist turned historian, "Compared with Howland, Hawaii was a continent." (405) To make matters even more complicated, Noonan had devised their route based solely on the position of the sun and stars, but the weather was too overcast and cloudy to see anything. Because Howland was a small island surrounded by ocean, Earhart could not simply land somewhere else close. Donald Goldstein, a retired air force officer and author, observes: …show more content…

Amelia had flown safely through many a storm but, as she noted more than once, she had been aiming for a continent. On her solo flight to Europe, she had hoped to land in Paris but had ended up in Ireland. That had not mattered; one landfall was as good as

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