[HN Gopher] Amelia Earhart's Reckless Final Flights
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Amelia Earhart's Reckless Final Flights
Author : Thevet
Score : 31 points
Date : 2025-06-04 20:24 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.newyorker.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.newyorker.com)
| WalterBright wrote:
| My 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.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| I agree with the currently flagged sister comment that
| disclaimers shouldn't be necessary and the response to the lack
| of them reflect more on the biases of the reader than the
| writer
|
| The use of them seem solely in the domain of the "progressive"
| when needing to thwart a mob is not progressive at all
| WalterBright wrote:
| It'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 wrote:
| Personally I blame the prevalence of actual sexism, for
| putting people on edge
| WalterBright wrote:
| An 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.
| rpmisms wrote:
| Cochran was simply insane. I credit her success to a
| pathological lack of fear, and an amazing teacher in Chuck
| Yeager.
| WalterBright wrote:
| Was Neil Armstrong insane, too? He later remarked that he
| figured his odds of surviving were 50-50. I think he was
| being optimistic.
| rpmisms wrote:
| Many Great people are batshit. Chuck Yeager certainly was.
| caycep wrote:
| These people basically have no amygdala
| caycep wrote:
| also, I imaging operational and safety planning/operations
| research basically didn't exist back then, or maybe was at a
| fledgeling state?
| zck wrote:
| https://archive.is/5kYUW
| a-r-t wrote:
| There 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
| fossuser wrote:
| Yeah 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.
| cylinder714 wrote:
| A 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/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
| johnyzee wrote:
| WTF is with the "coordinated" umlaut... Seriously the New Yorker
| works hard to earn their monocled caricature.
| enmyj wrote:
| They 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 wrote:
| Is this an april fools joke?
| AStonesThrow wrote:
| It is not, in fact, an umlaut, but a diaeresis, which has the
| same shape but a different linguistic purpose.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diaeresis_(diacritic)
|
| In fact, the lede paragraph of the Wikipedia article notes
| its retention by _The New Yorker_ manual of style, despite
| being considered archaic.
|
| Direct cited source:
| https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/the-curse-
| of-...
| db48x wrote:
| You're supposed to do that for any word where two consecutive
| vowels have a syllable break between them instead of forming a
| dipthong. Of course, most of the time it's redundant because
| there's only one cromulent word anyway and the reader can
| figure it out quickly enough without the umlaut.
| howenterprisey wrote:
| I think "supposed to" is overstating it given that I've only
| ever seen it used by this one publication. To boot, I
| wouldn't pronounce the word they use it for, coordination,
| (in context, "piloting it demanded constant coordination")
| with a syllable break, either.
| i_am_proteus wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diaeresis_(diacritic)
|
| Indicates that the two o's are separate syllables.
| caycep wrote:
| the monocle gives them permission
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