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Amelia Earhart's Reckless Final Flights
- WalterBright 1y agoMy dad was a B-17 navigator and later a career pilot. He told me that Earhart was a reckless pilot, and had little respect for her. Lest you think he was sexist, he professed admiration for Jacqueline Cochran.
- decremental 1y ago[dead]
- yieldcrv 1y ago[flagged]
- WalterBright 1y agoIt's the world we live in today. P.S. See my other remark on the strength of women pilots. I've posted that before on HN, and was immediately called sexist.
- 01HNNWZ0MV43FF 1y agoPersonally I blame the prevalence of actual sexism, for putting people on edge
- yieldcrv 1y agoah so people should show their virtue in some way, with a signal of some sorts
- II2II 1y ago[flagged]
- WalterBright 1y agoAn unmentioned aspect is airplanes of that era did not have hydraulically boosted controls. They were designed according to the strength of men. This means under emergency conditions, women were simply not strong enough. My dad flew B-17s, and with 3 engines out and just an outboard engine running, it took all of a man's strength to keep it straight. Usually, the pilot and copilot would trade off each 10 minutes. When planes got larger, like the B-29, boost had to be added. To accommodate female pilots, Boeing reduced the flight control forces in the 757.
- Waterluvian 1y agoIs there a ceiling to the amount of force exerted on a plane’s control surfaces or does every human have a limited range of what situations they could wrestle a plane out of? I’ve got to imagine that put into a fast enough dive, nobody’s pulling up?
- WalterBright 1y agoThe "feel forces" exerted by the pilot are taken into account for the maximum ability to control the airplane. A Boeing airliner has a travel limiter on the control surfaces that is automatically adjusted based on the speed. Exceeding that travel puts enough torque on the airplane to literally tear the structure apart. There was an Airbus incident years ago where the pilot stamped on the rudder pedals to violently move the rudder full travel lock to lock, and it tore the rudder vertical stabilizer off. There are also situations where no amount of control input is going to wrest control back from an uncontrolled dive. In other words, designing the "feel forces" and travel has a large number of variables to it, and is not simple at all to get right. For a dive fast enough, you run into an effect called "separation". This is where the air flowing over the wing no longer converges at the trailing edge, but separates. This separation can engulf the elevators such that even at full travel, the elevators are operating in dead air and from then on, you're just along for the ride into a crash. This is a problem for many, many aircraft designs. You always gotta watch your airspeed. This happened to a 727 once, where the autopilot went berserk and sent the airplane in a dive so bad that separation happened. The quick thinking pilot decided to lower the landing gear in a desperate attempt to slow the airplane down. He succeeded, although the slipstream tore the doors off and bent the gear backwards, and saved everyone. It also happened to a 707, where the pilots weren't paying attention and the airplane slipped into a dive. By the pilots realized what had happened, they no longer had pitch control. One of them desperately began cranking the trim wheel by hand, and they managed to pull it up just before it hit the ocean. Yeager's X1 rocket aircraft had this problem, as did the F-86 jet fighter. For another fun anecdote, the F-80 Shooting Star had a problem in that its engine was too powerful. If you oversped the airplane, it would go unstable and pitch up, tearing the wings off. That meant the pilot always had to have one eye on the airspeed (yes, my dad was an F-80 pilot, and flew them in combat). One day, a pilot had a Mig on his tail he couldn't shake. He thought, I'm dead anyway, let's see if I can pitch up and lose the Mig. So he firewalled the throttle, and sure enough the F-80 went through a violent maneuver and miraculously the wings stayed on and he shook the Mig off his tail. When he landed, the wings were bent up and the airplane was scrapped. Dive bombers used "dive brakes" to keep from overspeeding the airplane. My dad's favorite method for attacking an anti-aircraft gun emplacement was to dive straight down on it. AA gunners did not want to fire vertically (think about it). But it required my dad to have one eye on the target, one eye on the airspeed, and his third eye on the altitude.
- rpmisms 1y agoCochran was simply insane. I credit her success to a pathological lack of fear, and an amazing teacher in Chuck Yeager.
- WalterBright 1y agoWas Neil Armstrong insane, too? He later remarked that he figured his odds of surviving were 50-50. I think he was being optimistic.
- rpmisms 1y agoMany Great people are batshit. Chuck Yeager certainly was.
- WalterBright 1y agoYup. I read Yeager's autobiography. A life very well lived.
- caycep 1y agoThese people basically have no amygdala
- WalterBright 1y agoDuring the moon landing, when Neil took over the descent from the failed computer, Aldrin's heart rate went through the roof. Armstrong's remained steady. NASA picked exactly the right man for the job.
- richwater 1y agoIt's not really fair comparison. Being the actor is very different than being an observer.
- WalterBright 1y ago
- caycep 1y agoalso, I imaging operational and safety planning/operations research basically didn't exist back then, or maybe was at a fledgeling state?
- gonzobonzo 1y ago> He told me that Earhart was a reckless pilot I was surprised to learn the same once I started diving into her history. She definitely was a media phenomenon, with her public image largely manufactured by her publicist husband. Her story actually feels very similar to the fake YouTube personalities of today. What's funny is that, for all the complaints about people today being too gullible about modern influencers, the ones from history often succeed in fooling far more people. > Lest you think he was sexist, he professed admiration for Jacqueline Cochran. It's understandable why this needs to be said - unfortunately, these accusations accusations are the default reaction many people have to this criticism (I've seen them before in discussions about Earhart and others). Once someone is given a status of an icon for a particularly identity, people have an unpleasant habit of believing criticism of the icon is criticism of the identity. It would be nice if we were able to judge people as individuals.
- genewitch 1y agoTo your last point, I really enjoy trapped in the closet, both the video and the audio; but mentioning that got me a lot of grief, "don't you have kids? Don't you know about him?" Yeah a large portion of humans have flaws, do bad things (3 felonies a day!), etc. But I think art (as it were) transcends the artist, especially in audiovisual stuff where it's much more likely there are other people involved that actually make the art memorable; however even a self-published asshole can produce something great. I guess I could just suffer the weird al trapped in the drive-through, to placate such people, or can ignore them. R Kelly got no money from me, anyhow, I bought it all secondhand. My conscience is clear enough, I think.
- WalterBright 1y agoWhen JFKjr's crash was in the news, I phoned him up and asked what he thought the cause was. He didn't hesitate: "Spacial disorientation" Aka pilot incompetence. Airplanes don't care if you're a celebrity or not.
- beedeebeedee 1y agoThat's a little too dismissive. Flying in those conditions is deeply disorienting, and you have to have instrument training (and discipline) to safely accomplish it. My dad (also air force pilot, F-104, and later, bush pilot) was flying near Block Island at the same time, and despite his training and experience said it was difficult and disorienting. You need to be rated for instruments and have developed trust in them, despite your senses.
- WalterBright 1y agoJFK jr knowingly flew into haze without proper training. He had incidental instrument flying instruction, but was not rated for it. He was late and suffered from get-there-itis, a common killer of pilots. My dad worked for a while as an instrument flying instructor. He said the big hurdle was to learn to trust the instruments and ignore your body screaming at you that the instruments are lying. Your dad is exactly correct. He flew F-104s? I'm so jealous! As a teen, I lived near Luke AFB. I had a military ID, and would bicycle onto the base and head to the flight line. Luke was training Luftwaffe pilots at the time to fly F-104s. They'd start down the runway, and halfway down would light the afterburners. Boom! Followed by a gigantic flame shooting out the back. They'd take off at a steep angle with the most delightful thunder. I was so sorry to have to turn in my ID when I turned 21. I wanted to be an AF pilot, but the recruiting officer reluctantly said I could never be a pilot because of my glasses. And so I went into writing compiler :-/
- bombcar 1y agoAnyone who's interested can go down to the local small airfield and ask an instructor to show you "unusual attitudes" - he'll have you sit in the seat with your head looking down, do things and then ask you what the plane is doing - then you look up and realize it's doing the exact opposite. At night with no visible horizon - you do it to yourself.
- southernplaces7 1y agoIt's dumb that a man should be automatically assumed as sexist because he happened to elaborate a criticism of something a woman did in some context. I've even seen some women use this implicit assumption as a weapon, labeling as sexist a completely valid complaint.
- ergsef 1y agoYou're making it very black-and-white when there's a lot of nuance to these kinds of discussions. A woman in a leadership role making difficult choices or shutting people down may be abrasive, but a man doing it might be admired for their vision. A woman taking risks might be careless, or a dilettante, while a man taking the same risks is bold and courageous. Even if the outcome is the same, men can fail while women have to be successful (and even then they're still criticized for _how_ they succeeded).
- glowiefedposter 1y ago[flagged]
- fennecfoxy 1y agoI think a lot of women in positions of power try to emulate the intra-male hierarchy system with aggression/dominant behaviour without understanding the nuance behind it. I think women see the figurative (and sometimes literal) chest-beating & posturing as simple actions but not the deeper communication behind it. Don't get me wrong, I strongly dislike said behaviour in men.
- aaronbaugher 1y agoIt's very dumb. It's also the default assumption today in government, media, academia, and most of the corporate world, especially HR. If you like your job, or just like being able to post your thoughts on social media, you ignore it at your peril.
- fennecfoxy 1y agoHappens a lot across a variety of protected classes. For example Israel calls anyone who criticises them "antisemitic". Whereas I like to call the IDF, who indiscriminately kill Gazans, state sponsored terrorists; just as Hamas killing Israeli civilians are also terrorists. Perhaps if someone calls me antisemitic for that, I'll call them homophobic for disagreeing with the opinion of a gay man.
- Yeul 1y agoHistory books are written by reckless people- especially in aviation.
- fennecfoxy 1y agoI do notice that people all across the comments are treating this as a touchy topic, what, because she was a woman? She had as much capacity for skill, responsibility and agency as anybody else and her missteps led to her death in the same way that those of Stockton Rush led to his (and others') death.
- zck 1y agohttps://archive.is/5kYUW https://archive.is/5kYUW
- a-r-t 1y agoThere is a good Veritasium episode on her last flight going deep into technical details of what went wrong: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zTDFhWWPZ4Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zTDFhWWPZ4Q
- homefree 1y agoYeah this was a great video, so many errors. The experienced navigator refusing to fly with her was correct, but I do wonder if he had been there if he would have been smart enough to save them.
- goodcanadian 1y agoProbably . . . from what I have read in the past, a better understanding of radio direction finding probably would have been enough to get them to Howland Island.
- dwheeler 1y agoYes, the Veritasium episode is great. In short: there's plenty of evidence Amelia Earhart was reckless. I'm sad that she paid with her life, but that is sometimes what happens when you're reckless while using dangerous machines.
- sokoloff 1y agoCaptain A. G. Lamplugh, a British pilot from the early days of aviation once famously said “Aviation in itself is not inherently dangerous. But to an even greater degree than the sea, it is terribly unforgiving of any carelessness, incapacity or neglect.”
- spankibalt 1y ago> Aviation in itself is not inherently dangerous. Yes, it is. Otherwise, "any carelessness, incapacity or neglect" wouldn't be so "terribly unforgiving".
- cylinder714 1y agoA 1993 article from the U.S. Naval Institute's Proceedings on how her lack of radio savvy was a major factor in the tragedy: https://www.usni.org/magazines/naval-history-magazine/1993/december/amelia-didnt-know-radio https://www.usni.org/magazines/naval-history-magazine/1993/d... An example: she or somebody had a retractable antenna optimized for long-range high-frequency/shortwave radio removed prior to the flight—crazy! HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39239964 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39239964
- anonymousiam 1y agoThey probably ditched the transceiver because it weighed 40-60lbs, which is a lot of extra weight for something that you don't need, based upon "success oriented" planning. (The linked article says Earhart didn't know enough about radio, either to convert from wavelength to frequency, or to match an antenna to the transmitter. Such knowledge was probably rare in 1937.)
- bigbuppo 1y agoSounds like she would have been friends with Stockton Rush if she were alive today.
- eterm 1y agoAnd indeed if he were alive.
- jahewson 1y agoRadio had been around for the best part of 40 years by that point.
- laverya 1y agoCompare that to computers, which had been around for the best part of 40 years... in 1980.
- lucas_membrane 1y ago
- johnyzee 1y agoWTF is with the "coördinated" umlaut... Seriously the New Yorker works hard to earn their monocled caricature.
- enmyj 1y agoThey have used an umlaut on the second repeated vowel in a word for as long as I've been reading. I can't find a link but I believe that's part of their style guide
- mathgradthrow 1y agoIs this an april fools joke?
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- slater 1y agoIt's not. They've always done it.
- thaumasiotes 1y agoWell, no, they've always used diaereses, but they've never had a policy of marking them on "the second repeated vowel in a word". You don't see them writing about boöks.
- nkurz 1y agoBased on your other comments, you probably already understand this correctly, but for others who might be confused, the actual policy is not that it goes on repeated vowels, but that it goes on the second vowel in a pair to make clear that it starts another syllable. Under this policy, coöperate and naïve get diaereses, but books never would (unless you were somehow trying to indicate a special case where it was pronounced with two syllables). Here's more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diaeresis_(diacritic) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diaeresis_(diacritic)
- Kon-Peki 1y ago[flagged]
- whythre 1y agoIt was reckless. The flight was widely popularized by her huckster husband who was motivated to have his wife win him fame and fortune. She wasn’t ready, and in that sense, the attempt was reckless. If a person takes a big risk and makes it, that’s a success. If a person risks it and dies in the Atlantic, being called reckless seems kinder alternative to being called a failure.
- bmelton 1y agoI mean it's also probably because his solo transatlantic flight planning was famously very meticulous, and it was notable because he had started his career more recklessly, but earned a reputation that added 'cautious' to his preexisting reputation of 'capable.'
- gonzobonzo 1y agoThe opposite really. People don't get called a bigot for saying the Lindbergh was a Nazi sympathizer or that Columbus had a bad plan and was only saved by dumb luck. Which is why those facts are much more well known than the facts about Earhart. A lot of people in history have a reputation that's not at odds with the reality. It's good to question it. If we refuse to, I don't see how we can complain about others being lead astray by false narratives. Unfortunately, questioning some people results in attacks and accusations that are meant to shut the conversation down, hide the truth, and protect the myth.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- wombatpm 1y agoThere are bold pilots. There are old pilots. There are no bold old pilots.
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- bauble 1y ago"Earhart planned to have human navigators on board with her, but she’d be the first female pilot to accomplish the feat." - What an odd statement. Could "male" have been replaced by "human"?
- AStonesThrow 1y agoThe strangest TIL for me this year is that Fred Noonan was indeed on board for the doomed flight, and he was just as lost/dead as Earhart was. I've surely conflated Earhart with Lindbergh, who was known for his solo marathon flights, and somehow absorbed decades' worth of pop-culture "Amelia Earhart" legends that left Captain Noonan as a remarkably obscure footnote in history. And even more interesting still were the accounts that a disastrous landing in Hawaii carried a crew of four, and her penultimate attempt had a crew of three, with an aborted takeoff that severely damaged her Electra, and the third man had refused/declined to continue as the odds were increasingly not in their favor.
- 0xbadcafebee 1y agoI like stories like this. They remind me of two things: 1) you have to be a little crazy to make history (and become an inspiration), 2) there's no need to whitewash, ignore, or silence the tellings of imperfections of "heroes"; their [often inaccurate] legend will live on anyway.
- beedeebeedee 1y agoAlmost all flight during this stage of development was reckless. It took a long time for us to collectively learn the lessons as pilots, mechanics, engineers, logistics, etc, to make it safe. A great source of reckless piloting stories are from the Alaska bush in the 1920's. People like Eielson and Wilkins managed to land on drift ice and fly from Alaska across the Arctic Ocean to Europe in 1928. A great book to read about this is The Flying North by Jean Potter (1946), which chronicles the Alaska bush pilots from the 1900s to 1940s, when she was stationed in Alaska during WWII.
- bombcar 1y agoThere's reckless and there's reckless. One is doing something that nobody knows if it's going to work, and probably won't - Lindberg, perhaps. Another is doing something you should KNOW isn't going to work, but you don't bother or care.
- cameldrv 1y agoThe publicity machine is pretty amazing. There are hundreds of books about Amelia Erhart and probably hundreds of thousands of girls and women named Amelia, but who even knows the name of the first woman to fly around the world?
- sevg 1y agoYour question was rhetorical, but for anyone that doesn’t know: it was Jerrie Mock https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerrie_Mock https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerrie_Mock
- cameldrv 1y agoIt was actually Richarda Morrow-Tait, according to the Amelia Erhart criteria, i.e. a male navigator is allowed. Similarly no one had ever heard of Albert Cushing Read, Walter Hinton, or Elmer Fowler Stone, the first men to fly the Atlantic, or John Alcock and Arthur Brown, the first men to fly the Atlantic nonstop, but everyone has heard of Charles Lindbergh, the first man to fly the Atlantic nonstop solo.
- 6031769 1y agoIn the UK at least Alcock and Brown are quite well known. I would estimate public knowledge of them here is on a par with Lindbergh.
- Yeul 1y agoI think every country has their own aviation heroes. The Netherlands has Fokker for example.
- AStonesThrow 1y agoThe Wikipedia account of Morrow-Tait's “circumnavigation” is passing strange, particularly the way it was interrupted for 5 months but “resumed” with a completely different aircraft and navigator? I think some janky editor messed with it last year and nobody has noticed or checked the sources. And concerns/mockery of “the flying housewife” alone in close quarters with a handsome navigator, gave way to an affair while en route, a love-child, and divorce? And there is a post on the Talk page from someone claiming to be that child... bonkers! And Wikipedia says [unsourced] they “reached Japan [having flown northeast from Calcutta and Vietnam] but were denied permission to cross Russia [known in the 1940s as the Soviet Union]” — so what parts of “Russia” were east of Japan in 1948?