Goerner interviews radio expert Joe Gurr, Part II
We continue today with Part II “What Radios Did She Really Have?” our retrospective look at the Amelia Earhart Electra’s radio capabilities via interviews of radio expert Joseph Gurr by Fred Goerner as compiled by researcher Cam Warren.
In answer to Fred’s query as to how Amelia got this “Navy gear.” Gurr replied: “I asked no questions.” Fred showed him several photos of the plane “passed by Navy censors.” They clearly showed the topside antenna mast and the loop, “and some of the gear below.” Gurr confirmed that this showed the configuration after the rebuild.
Fred: “Right after the disappearance, newspaper accounts ’mentioned a Joseph Gurr, Burbank engineer, who installed the sending apparatus.’ Then [the story] quoted you as having said: ’9.3, 15.5 and 21.7 mc.’ What does that mean to you?”
Gurr: “She could receive [those] frequencies on the Bendix gear, but not transmit on [them].”
Fred: “To get a heading from the Bendix Direction Finder? She would receive on those frequencies?”
Gurr agreed, saying: “This was high frequency. It also had the [2-400 kc band]. [I’m afraid I didn’t stress to Earhart] the value and usefulness and that gear. Oh, it was wonderful!”
The Bendix RA-1B, used in Amelia Earhart’s Electra during her final flight without apparent success, was a brand-new product and was reputed to be pushing the state of the art in aircraft receiver design.
Fred asked if Gurr thought Fred and Amelia knew how to operate it property. The reply was only a grunt.
[There following a discussion of the gasoline load, then the subject returns to radio].
Fred: “Why was it do you suppose that Amelia never broadcast on 500 kc? All during the flight on which she disappeared, she never once broadcast on 500 kc. The Itasca had a 500 direction finder. The Navy had sent a 3105 direction finder down from Pearl Harbor and installed it at Howland Island. She kept broadcasting on 3105 and asked the Itasca to take a direction on her on 3105. The Itasca kept asking her to broadcast on 500 and she never did on 500. Why not?”
Gurr: “There might be a number of reasons for that. At 500, I never was able to work anybody on 500 when I was working on the equipment. That was only here locally. 500 kc is a very, very low frequency and you have to have power to get out at all. [She had] her little 50-watt transmitter and a reduced size antenna. On 500 kc you want to have a proper antenna. On sea-going ships, they have these great big antennas between the masts that are separated by quite a distance and they have a lot of wire out there. That is what you have to have. On an airplane where she did not have much of an antenna, her range on 500 kc was very short. If she was, let’s say in sight of a ship, she could talk. As I recall, we talked about that very thing. If she was in an overcast and she raised a ship, she could be sure the ship was not very far away. In reading your book, I think you explained it very well. She did not stay on the air long enough for the Itasca to take a beating on her. In those days we didn’t have the automatic features. We had to do all of this manually. The radio operator on the Itasca would tune the signal in, then he had to rotate his beam to get a null and I don’t think she ever talked long enough for him to do that. They kept asking her to send ’A’s. All they needed was that carrier.”
Fred: “She asked the Itasca to send ’A’s on 7500.”
Gurr: “That means she was using that Bendix machinery. On 7500 she could have heard that if the Itasca had any power at all, even 2[00] or 300 watts. They could transmit a good signal for several hundred miles.”
Fred: “At one point, she said, ’we are receiving your signals but cannot get a minimum.’ What did that mean?“
Gurr: “That means she was turning the loop and could not get a null.”
Fred: “Because of what? The signal was too weak?”
Amelia, with Bendix Corporation rep Cyril Remmlein, and the infamous direction finding loop that replaced Fred Hooven’s “radio compass” or “automatic direction finder.” Hooven was convinced that the change was responsible for Amelia’s failure to find Howland Island, and ultimately, for her tragic death on Saipan. Whether the loop itself failed the doomed fliers during their final flight remains uncertain. See p. 56 Truth at Last for more. (Photo courtesy Albert Bresnik, taken from Laurance Safford’s Earhart’s Flight Into Yesterday.)
Gurr: “There are many reasons she could not get a null. As an example, unless you have a considerable number, a quite strong signal, nulls are not easy to find. If the signal is weak, you can go through a null. You have to have a solid signal. Then too, in those days the equipment wasn’t developed like it is these days. State of the Art is quite different.
“In those days, a little static — maybe she was excited, flying the airplane and trying to tune the set to get the best signal. She might have had the loop turned more or less at the null. She should have had it straight forward, if she was headed toward Howland. Had the loop fore and aft to get the maximum signal. She had a sensing antenna which was that V-antenna and the idea was to first tune in the signal on that antenna and then switch it over to the loop and get a bearing.”
Fred: “This takes time.”
Gurr: “And it takes a certain amount of cool-headedness about that time.”
Fred: “The trailing antenna had been removed at that time?”
Gurr: “It was still on board. She did not use it on 500 kc. That was the object of the antenna on top. We put on all the wire we could, as much wire up there as possible, and to get it off the fuselage so that the fuselage would not have an absorbing or a reflecting effect. We were very successful. Actually she had as much wire as possible on that airplane. This was for transmitting. For receiving, you didn’t have to have that much. She had that V-antenna down there which was fine.”
Fred: “Apparently that was working very well because she checked back in with Lae, New Guinea 800 miles out on 6210 in the daytime.”
Fred: “There were messages that amateur radio operators said they had received after the time of the disappearance of the plane. They were received along the Pacific Coast. I have talked to a number of the operators and I believe they actually did receive messages. Would it have been possible to broadcast if they had been down in the water?”
Gurr: “Yes. The antenna was dear. If that airplane was floating, the antenna was up on top of the fuselage and she could transmit until that antenna was submerged.”
Fred: “Did she have batteries in the cockpit or something that would enable her to power her gear.”
Gurr: “Storage batteries, yeah. There was a storage battery generator. In flight, the generator was charging the batteries. In those days, airplanes carried decent flight batteries. I don’t remember how many she had, but I know she had at least one. Flying along as she was, that battery was probably well charged. Then, supposing she was down in the water, and got on the air to transmit, she had the power. The transmitter itself did not take an awful lot of juice. It was a low powered transmitter. She could probably transmit for 30 minutes if the battery was fully charged. Intermittent, maybe longer than that.”
Fred: “Could 3105 be received on the Pacific Coast and not be received in the general area of where she went down?”
West Coast amateur radio operators Walter McMenamy (left) and Carl Pierson, circa 1937, claimed they heard radio signals sent by Amelia Earhart, including two SOS calls followed by Earhart’s KHAQQ call letters.
Gurr: “Oh yes. Especially at night. 3105 at night. It was daytime between here and Howland Island. It is very unlikely, but at night, yes. These frequencies are subject to a certain amount of skip and the higher frequency you go, the more that skip.”
Fred: “And not be received by a vessel in the general area?”
Gurr: “That’s right.”
Fred: “This Navy direction finder, the 3105 that the Navy Dept. sent down on board Itasca to use in conjunction with the flight evidently was a rather hush-hush model at that time. They were experimenting with high frequencies, through a department and the Navy known as OP-G20, which was Naval Intelligence Communications. You know anything about development of high frequency direction finders at that time?”
Gurr: “Only things that were published. I had no connection with the Navy or any military organization so far as any of the classified developments. We knew in the airline business and especially being interested in radio as I was then, I knew pretty well what developments were upcoming. We knew the limitations of the low frequencies. We knew that we had to have something better. Obviously the experimentation had to go to the high frequencies. At that time there was a feeling that the high frequencies had a tendency to bend, the waves would bend and would get a false radio direction finding. Maybe that was true in certain locations, certain altitudes and so on. This was all subject to experimentation. That was brand new stuff in those days. Now, as you know and we know, the military is always researching, developing and working on projects. Now-a-days, they call it classified, or secret. You never stop.
“Obviously the Navy had classified gear then. And they have it now. The 3105 [kc] radio
direction finder was considered a pretty high frequency to get a reliable direction, at that time. Today, we know its limitations. We know what it is doing. The airlines now have fully automatic units that lock on to the beam and take it right down the line. In those days, we thought 3105 was getting into rather high frequency.”
(End of Part II.)
Goerner’s interviews with radio expert Joe Gurr
Between 1970 and 1987, on at least two occasions and possibly more, Fred Goerner interviewed Joseph Gurr, a flight dispatcher for United Airlines in 1937 and a radio expert who “volunteered” to help Amelia Earhart with her new Electra’s recently installed radio equipment at some unspecified date prior to her first world flight attempt in March 1937.
Earhart researcher and Amelia Earhart Society member Cam Warren compiled the following excerpts of the Goerner-Gurr interviews, and the following article appeared in the February 1999 issue of the Amelia Earhart Society Newsletters. This is the first of three parts.
Joseph Gurr was a flight dispatcher for United Airlines, Burbank, in 1937. Station Manager John Kimball was his boss and, according to Gurr, he was “a distant cousin” of Amelia. Kimball was also a good friend of Paul Mantz.
Earhart had just returned from New York with her new airplane, where Bell Labs had “worked on“ the radio equipment. However, Amelia had not been able to communicate with anyone, nor pick up the radio ranges on the trip. Gurr had radio experience, so volunteered “I had a day off, I think the next day, and I went out there in the morning and found all sorts of little simple things like somebody forgot to connect the antenna lead, and the receiver didn’t work. I connected it and it worked. Then I thought if that is the way it is, maybe I’d better check the whole thing over. It was probably all O.K. except for simple things.”
This was a couple of months before the first attempt — the abortive flight to Honolulu. Gurr met Harry Manning, and got to know him quite well. “He was a ham radio operator — he knew the code. Obviously, he was a navigator of the first order. He was the captain of a very fine ship [and] he was a gentleman of the first order.
In the only photo of Joseph Gurr I have in my files, we see Amelia with Gurr at Burbank, Calif., before her second world flight attempt in June 1937. Interviewed by Fred Goerner in 1984, Gurr said he had constructed a new top-side antenna on Earhart’s Electra that could be used in a forced landing as long as the storage batteries and transmitter remained above water. Other experts disagree.
“He was very thorough — as an example [Earhart’s] safety equipment. I will never forget the day he rolled all of it out on the apron. All the safety gear they were going to use; life-rails and all the various things we had in those days. A kite — we even flew the kite. The fellows in the hangar thought that was pretty silly. . . . This man was steeped in safety as the captain of his ship, and he was testing this gear out. I’ll never forget that — and I helped him. I was taking gear out of the airplane and going through it with a fine-tooth comb.
“For an antenna, [she] had this trailing wire. I’ve had some experience with trailing wires. In those days, a nice long wire was very efficient. . . . [But] there were difficulties. . . . You forgot to roll the thing in, you come in for a landing [and] you wrap it around power wires. Or the weight, the big lead weight there on the bottom, would fall off and kilt Mr. Jones’ cow. We had all sorts of problems. . . The airlines . . . wouldn’t use it. I questioned [that antenna] right away and they told me that is the best thing they have on the airplane. I let it go.”
Paul Mantz, accompanied by Gurr and Manning, made numerous test flights with the Electra, frequently traveling as much as 500 miles out to sea. Gurr was impressed with Manning’s navigation: “There was no question about it — with a man like that on board, you didn’t have to have a radio. In those days, radio wasn’t very reliable.” But Manning was capable with electronics too, experimenting with the trailing wire antenna, running it in and out until he found the length that provided the best performance. “There wasn’t much power [available from the Western Electric transmitter, but] it could still get out 50-100 miles.”
The first attempt by Earhart, the east-west course, saw her ground-loop the plane in Honolulu. The Electra was returned to Lockheed for a rebuild. Gurr stated: “I took all the radio gear out and took it home. All that was involved there was to check it out. I just simply went through everything with a fine-tooth comb. I made quite a splash about their antenna system. The [Lockheed] had an antenna that was about 2 inches off the fuselage. Obviously, you are not going to radiate much power that way. I went to work to put a stub up forward at least 18 inches high. As long as the airplane was in the factory, they didn’t want to do it. In order to do that, they would have to do a lot of engineering work and would have to be beefed up under the skin. [We] had quite a bit of discussion. [If] you get that antenna off the fuselage, and build a V-type antenna, put a lot of wire out there, run a wire to each tail fin, why then we don’t have to rely on that reel. Then, we could tune the transmitter to that antenna.”
This photo of Josephine Blanco Akiyama with Amelia Earhart’s technical advisor Paul Mantz appeared in the June 1, 1960 issue of the San Mateo Times, with the following caption: “CLUES TO Amelia Earhart’s fate were examined in San Mateo yesterday by famed pilot Paul Mantz, Miss Earhart’s technical advisor. In photo at left, Mantz examines documents with Mrs. Josephine Blanco Akiyama, whose exclusive story in The Times broke the case wide open last week.
Goerner then showed Gurr a copy of a letter from J. W. Gross, then president of Lockheed, in regard to the original radio equipment that had been installed on AE’s Electra. Gurr said, “This is rather accurate. I know that receiver and Western Electric transmitter. This Bendix — now that was nothing more than a radio direction finder. This particular receiver had one feature that was rather new; that was it operated on more than one bank of frequencies. The old ranges were on [200] to 400 kc and the airlines had receivers that just tuned that. In this case, it not only had that particular band but it also had other [higher] frequencies, which was a very good thing. Then, and I tried to put that point over, she could tune in a broadcast station at night in Honolulu, [and home in on it]. It was a sensitive receiver. It was a good one.
“The radio compass, as he said, was installed elsewhere. It was not installed at Lockheed. None of this gear was installed at Lockheed as far as I know. Unless it was installed before she went east and came back again. Now that is possible. I know that Bell Labs in New York worked on it. The transmitter? About 50 watts. You could get that.”
Fred: “You said you had some changes made. You had the trailing antenna removed and the V-antenna put in. I showed you the repair orders from Lockheed that have your name on them.”
Gurr: “Yeah. This V-antenna. The purpose of that was so we would have an auxiliary receiving antenna in case she lost the one up above. They felt that, this is so much wire, if something should break, this way we have two [antennas]. So they installed that V-antenna underneath, which was similar to what we were using in the airlines.”
Fred: “You really didn’t need the trailing antenna at that point?”
Gurr: “No. In fact, having had airline experience, I just did away with it.” [Seventeen years later — 1987, Gurr denied removing the trailing wire. When Fred said “. . . there are people who swear up and down that it was removed in Miami.” Gurr replied: “Yeah, that is probably more true.”] (Italics TAL editor’s.)
Fred: “There have been those who said that Amelia had the trailing antenna removed because it was too much trouble for her to reel it in and out. Actually she didn’t need it. You had advised her that she didn’t need it.”
Gurr: “’I didn’t think it was a good idea. For one thing, it was too hard to make work. The other thing is, they were mechanically very unreliable. If you were planning a long flight as Amelia was, I wouldn’t depend on any trailing wire.
Fred Goerner, circa mid-1960s, behind the microphone at KCBS in San Francisco.
Fred then quoted from yet another Lockheed work order: “Install necessary reinforcing for Bendix Radio loop compass. . . ”
Gurr: “Oh yeah, this is beginning to ring a bell. We had radio compasses but this was no radio compass [does he mean, “not only a radio compass”?] This particular Bendix radio receiver [RA-1 or prototype, perhaps]. I seem to feel that the thing was delivered to us, that we installed it. It was something special, delivered from the Navy Dept. It was a very sensitive device, but otherwise it was just a loop antenna. This Bendix to me, at the time, was the slickest piece of gear that she had on board. This was the thing that would take her around the world. All she needed to do was use 400 kc.”
Fred: “She kept asking, during the flight, for signals to be sent on 7500 kc.”
Gurr: “She could receive that on the Bendix. In the daytime, 7500 kc would be good — it would give her several hundred miles, sometimes even more than that. At night, under certain conditions, it is quite terrific.” (End of Part I.)
Bill Prymak responds to Reineck’s “New Scenerio”
Today we present Bill Prymak’s response to Rollin Reineck’s imaginative “New Scenerio — It Could Have Happened This Way” as seen in the June 1999 edition of the Amelia Earhart Society Newsletters. Prymak, the visionary yet down-to-earth founder and of the Amelia Earhart Society, presents a few common-sense, logistical reasons why Reineck’s fanciful “covert mission” scenario was highly unlikely to have occurred, and suggests another way they could have landed at Mili Atoll. For larger view of print images, you can click on them.
On Enajet Island, Mili Atoll in December 1989, Bill Prymak met Joro, a village elder born about 1915. Joro told Prymak about the “American airplane with the lady pilot [that] crash-landed on the inner coral reefs of Barre Island.” (Courtesy of John Prymak.)
Prymak, a giant of Earhart research and a friend whose kindness and generosity will never be forgotten, passed away July 30, 2014 at 86 in a Louisville, Colo., hospice. For much more on Bill Prymak’s work and legacy, please click here.
Bilimon Amaron, whose eyewitness account is widely considered to be the most important of the Marshall Islands witnesses, relaxes in the recreation room of his home in the Marshalls capital of Majuro, circa 1989, with his guest John Prymak. As a Japanese hospital corpsman in 1937 Jaluit, Amaron’s ship-board treatment of an injured white man, surely Fred Noonan, accompanied by an American woman the crewmen called “Meel-ya,” is legendary among the Marshallese. (Courtesy Bill Prymak.)
![This story appeared at the top of page 1 in the July 13, 1937 edition of the Bethlehem (Pennsylvania)-Globe Times. “Vague and unconfirmed rumors that Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan have been rescued by a Japanese fishing boat without a radio,” the report began, “and therefore unable to make any report, found no verification here today, but plunged Tokio [sic] into a fever of excitement.” The story was quickly squelched in Japan, and no follow-up was done. (Courtesy Woody Peard.)](https://earharttruth.files.wordpress.com/2016/01/fishing-boat-story-5.png?w=616&resize=616%2C352#038;h=352 "Fishing boat story 5")
Amelia Earhart: The Truth at Last 
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