The flight continued through the night, crossing the International Date Line into yesterday morning. Noonan slept intermittently throughout the last third of the trip, before being awakened by Amelia.
She was whistling into the radio mic. It was a constant, chirping sound rather than any specific tone. It continued for some time. There was something strangely eerie about the whistle, despite its cheerful tone — a foreboding tease of dire times to come.
Noonan sat up, blinking, feeling his heart start to quicken.
“We’ve got a problem,” Amelia said, her voice curt, but not harried. “You had better come up here.”
Noonan checked his timepiece. It was nearly 6:20 a.m. in the local time zone. He’d overslept. Without preamble, he made his way to the cockpit. His eyes darted toward the dense cloud cover below and Amelia’s carefree face. “I see you haven’t managed to shake the cloud cover.”
“No,” she replied, meeting his gaze directly, her teeth lightly biting her bottom lip. “But that’s not our only problem.”
Noonan sat down in the copilot’s seat. “What have we got?”
“I’ve been picking up a transmission from Itasca on 7500 kHz, but our radio detection frequency equipment was unable to determine a minimum frequency.”
“Thus, you’re not able to get a bearing on the Itasca.”
“Exactly.” She sighed. “I’ve been trying to get someone on Howland to take a navigational bearing on our transmission on 3105 kilocycles so they can give us a bearing.”
“And?”
Amelia’s face scrunched up slightly. “I’m having one hell of a time trying to establish two-way radio communications with the US Coast Guard Cutter, Itasca.”
He glanced at the radio through an arched eyebrow. “How long have you been trying?”
“Nearly an hour.”
“They might have switched early to the daytime frequency of 6210 kilocycles.”
“They haven’t. I’ve already tried to reach them on it.”
Noonan relaxed into his seat, his hands folded neatly across his lap. Any problem worth solving required time, focus, and calm patience. Science could overcome any problem they were facing. “Have you heard from the Itasca at all in the last hour?”
Amelia nodded. “Yeah, multiple times, but they’re clearly not receiving my messages.”
Noonan thought about that for a moment. His eyes widened and he gasped, “Good God…”
Amelia finished it for him, “The two frequencies have started to bleed into each other!”
He knew exactly what was happening and just hoped they still had time to make a correction. Their radio worked on two frequencies, known as harmonic frequencies — 6210 and 3105. At certain hours of the day the two frequencies bled into one another.
It was a significant failing in his planning as navigator. It meant that they would be arriving at Howland Island at 8 a.m. during a time when the night time frequency of 3105 KCs was fading and 6210 would be bleeding in to take its place. Right now, they were in limbo — 3105 hadn’t faded and 6210 wasn’t on line — thus the USCGC Itasca and the Electra were only capable of intermittently receiving each other’s messages.
Fred made a couple quick calculations with his pencil on the navigation chart Amelia had been using to keep track of their progress based on dead reckoning. She had made two more entries since he’d fallen asleep a couple hours earlier. One indicated increasing speed to 180 knots from 150 with a tail wind. He took it into account.
Fred unclipped his harness. “We’re approximately a hundred and five miles out from Howland. Keep on this bearing. I’d better go take a reading. With goniometry out, we’re on our own.”
Amelia made a slight shrug of her shoulders. “We’ve made it this far on our own, no reason to think we can’t reach Howland Island.”
Noonan headed back, without mentioning that Howland Island was a flat sliver of land 6,500 feet long, 1,600 feet wide, and no more than 20 feet above the ocean waves. The island would be hard to distinguish from the similar looking cloud shapes.
By 7:30 a.m. local time, he had established just one bearing — the sun — which produced their longitude only. The cloud cover prohibited him from determining a ground bearing. Without a line of position, it was impossible to measure latitude. It required two bearings to establish a fix, and he only had one.
Noonan placed the folded navigation chart in front of Amelia. “We’re somewhere here, along the sun line of 157/337.”
Amelia ran her pale gray eyes across the penciled line. Her eyebrows arched. It clearly bisected Howland Island. She shook her head. “We’re right on it. The question is do we fly northeast or southwest to reach it?”
Noonan didn’t hesitate. “Southwest.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Why?”
“It’s a fifty-fifty chance either way.”
“You don’t have a hunch whether we drifted north or south of your original plotted course?”
Noonan spread his hands out. “No. I was right on track.”
Her lips formed a hard line. “What makes you so certain we should fly southwest?”
“Because if I’m wrong and we fly northeast there’s more than a thousand miles of open ocean, but if I’m wrong and we fly southeast, we’re bound to hit the Phoenix Islands.”
She tilted the wheel until the Electra banked to the right. “Southwest it is.”
They both knew the Phoenix Islands were a group of eight unoccupied atolls and two submerged coral reefs some four hundred miles to the southeast of Howland Island. It would be a stretch, but he was reasonably confident they had the fuel to reach it.
Amelia descended below the cloud cover and depressed the mic. “USCGC Itasca. We must be on you but cannot see you. But gas is running low. Been unable to reach you by radio. We are flying at altitude 1,000 feet.''
There was nothing but silence on the radio.
At 8:43 a.m. Amelia made her final attempt to achieve two-way radio communication with the Itasca. “We are on the line 157–337. Will repeat message. We will repeat this on 6210 kilocycles… We are running north and south on line, listening 6210.”
There was nothing but silence.
Noonan sighed heavily. “I guess that’s it then. We’re on our own.”
“Looks like it.” Amelia tilted her head slightly and met his gaze directly. “Do you think we made the wrong choice?”
He cocked an eyebrow. “Are you asking whether or not I think we should have turned northeast instead of southeast?”
She nodded. “Yeah.”
“No. Right or wrong we made the only choice available to us at the time. It’s still the only choice available to us. We’re committed now. No chance to set a reciprocal course and retrace our flight. If we’re north of Howland we’ll hit it on our way along this sunline. If we were southeast of Howland, then we definitely have enough fuel to reach the Phoenix Islands — either way, we’re going to reach land.”
Amelia laughed at his confidence. “I knew there was a reason I brought you along. Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.” He opened his mouth to speak, closed it again, and then said, “For what it’s worth, I also believe in your flying ability to put us down safely on some beach somewhere once we reach land.”
She expelled a deep breath of air. “It’s a deal.”
The Electra continued to fly on across the vastness of the ocean.
There was nothing visible but the sea. No land, no ships, no birds. No sign of the Itasca’s smoke stack, whose boilers had been fed oil to produce a thick cloud of black smoke extending more than 200 feet into the air. Nothing heard on the radio. Only the drone of the engines, monotonously beating the propellers against the air at 1,000 feet.