Word: itasca
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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...Colorado" spent most of its time refueling four destroyers, two airplanes, the coast guard cutter "Itasca," and the Navy mine sweeper which was supposed to have refueled the aviators at Howland Island. Captain William Fridell soon tired of this menial task, however, and put for the phoenix Islands, nearly 300 miles south of the equator. The captain figured that winds and current would have driven the lost pair south...
...bearings except an ordinary ship sextant. He remedied that by borrowing a modern bubble octant designed especially for airplane navigation. For estimating wind drift over the sea, he obtained two dozen aluminum powder bombs. For some reason these bombs were left behind in a storehouse. The Coast Guard cutter Itasca, which had been dispatched from San Diego to Howland Island solely as a help to the flyers, would have been able to take directional bearings on the Earhart plane if the latter could have tuned its signals to a 500-kilacycle frequency. The plane's transmitter would have been able...
...startled seabirds fluttered up, menacing the propellers and forcing the flyers to climb. Some days equatorial squalls and vanishing visibility crippled the hunt, but on others the weather was perfect, visibility unlimited. By week's end the Colorado's planes had scanned more than 100,000 square miles. The Itasca, which inaugurated the search last fortnight, continued its futile patrol until fuel ran short. The minesweeper Swan put ashore a searching party at Canton Island, where last month a party of scientists viewed the | solar eclipse (TIME, June 21). Meanwhile the aircraft carrier Lexington, with 62 planes aboard (instead...
...they left Lae, New Guinea for the "worst section"-the 2,550 miles of open ocean to tiny Rowland Island, where no plane had ever been. With typical stunt flyer's negligence, Miss Earhart did not bother to reveal her position along the way. The Coast Guard cutter Itasca at Howland heard from her about once an hour. Her final message said she had only half-an-hour's gas left, could not see land. She still gave no position and the Itasca's direction finder could not get a bearing because she had failed to adjust...
When it became apparent that the plane was down, the Itasca steamed hopelessly to the search without any idea where to look. Experts believed that the plane would float a long time if undamaged in landing and if the weather was good. But a Navy flying boat that set out from Hawaii was turned back by a severe, freakish ice storm. Then came the first faint radio signals, which soon were reported by amateurs in Cincinnati, Wyoming, San Francisco and Seattle, by the British cruiser Achilles in the South Pacific, by Pan American Airways in Hawaii. Though all that could...