Amelia Earhart by Marie K. Long

Author:Marie K. Long
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Non-Fiction
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Published: 2000-06-26T16:00:00+00:00

THE U.S. Navy seaplane tender Swan arrived at its assigned Earhart guard station halfway between Honolulu and Howland Island on Thursday afternoon, June 24, at 1500 hours. The U.S. Navy tug Ontario had reached its station halfway between Lae and Howland the evening before. The three Earhart guard ships (the Itasca was at Howland Island) were now all in position and waiting for her flight.

AT that point Earhart, Howland Island, and the three ships were operating with their individual clocks set in five different time zones and their calendars on two different days and dates. Two were set in zones where the whole hour came at the same time as the Greenwich whole hour; two had their clocks set a half hour different from Greenwich time; the fifth, Earhart’s, was variable and changed with her movements. With the international date line in the middle of the assembled ships and stations, the system was all but incomprehensible. Any requirement that an action be timed to occur on the hour as opposed to on the half hour, at a quarter before the hour as opposed to a quarter after the hour, or at any specific number of minutes before or after the hour, was wide open to misinterpretation. Regardless, this was the system that Earhart and the ships were to use when communicating with each other. (As a direct result of Earhart’s flight such procedures were changed, and the Greenwich time and date were adapted for all distress communications.)

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