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these signals that he was a long way from the radio station marking the airport, or any other radio station. The directness of his flight indicates that he was flying the airplane on a definite course. This course proved to be approximately 34° east of the course he should have been following. Had he been able to intercept any radio signals, a man of his experience would have known something was wrong with his course and would have lost some time in orienting himself to his correct course. With this particular system, other pilots have found that with battery failure or failure of the wire carrying the current from the generator to the battery, the generator, too, usually fails. Failure of the generator would throw the compass off 30° to 50° which might easily account for the erroneous course followed by the pilot.
It is the opinion of the Accident Board that the lack of evidence makes any definite conclusions as to the probable cause of this accident a matter of conjecture. The most logical assumption appears to be that the battery generator system failed, thus causing an error in the ship's compass and probably affecting other essential navigation instruments.
Eugene L. Vidal,
Director of Air Commerce.
