Date: Tue, 1 Feb 2000 18:37:57 EST From: Doug Brutlag Subject: "Lost Star" by Randall Brink As long as wre bringing up stuff from previous books, whatever happened to Randall Brink's assertion that AE was on an alledged spy mission over the Marshalls, landed, taken prisoner, witnessed by locals, and the airplane stored away in an underground hangar on an atoll? Doug B. ************************************************************************** From Ric Don't get me started. "Amelia Earhart Lives!" by Klaas and Gervais was a better book. At least their nonsense was entertaining. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 1 Feb 2000 19:00:55 EST From: Ric Gillespie Subject: Berths available on Nai'a In case anyone is interested, this just in from our friends at Nai'a Cruises (Nai'a is the ship we used for our expeditions to Niku in 1997 and 1999). "Explore & Discover Phoenix Rising : Kiribati 2000 Just three places remain on our 22-day exploratory diving and scientific research expedition throughout the Phoenix Islands in Kiribati, more than 1000 miles north of Fiji. This exclusive and ambitious project is a collaboration between NAI'A divers and New England Aquarium (NEAq) scientists. The eight uninhabited and mysterious Phoenix atolls lie in one of the last places in the world where coral reefs and coastal fish populations exist unaffected by human settlement and development. It is ideal from a conservation biology perspective as a point of global comparison. For divers seeking new frontiers, Phoenix Rising is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity! Our dives among mantas, sharks, fish schools and turtles off Nikumaroro during the Amelia Earhart quests (97 & 99) so stunned and amazed us that we vowed to investigate the entire region. Limited to 8 passengers, the project funds a 4-strong research team led by Greg Stone and Austen Yoshinaga of NEAq, to survey whale and dolphin populations, assess coral and algae health, find new fish species and film deep water and benthic creatures - sperm whales once gathered here in thousands! Please inquire directly for full details of this exciting expedition: June 24 - July 15, 2000: $15,000pp NAI'A Premier Pacific Diving Expeditions US Tel: 1-800-903-0272 Fiji Tel: + 679-450-382 Fax: + 679-450-566 E-mail: naia@is.com.fj PO Box 332 Pacific Harbour Fiji Islands ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 2 Feb 2000 09:39:06 EST From: Ron Dawson Subject: Fred's Salary Got to wondering if we could access Fred's tax returns from 1930-36 (that is, if he filed), with an FOIA request. broached the subject to IRS. This is the response I got. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Thank you for your question. The IRS would not have records dating that far back. You may order actual copies of tax returns going back to 1992. Basic account information and W2 data is available on microfiche going back into the 1980's. Prior to that, there are no records kept. The additional problem you face is a disclosure problem. Even through the FOIA, another persons tax return or tax return information is not available unless you have a valid, signed power of attorney form authorizing you access to the return information. Good luck. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ bet if they thought I owed money from way back, they could dig up the records. Smooth Sailing, Ron Dawson 2126 ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 2 Feb 2000 10:11:58 EST From: Patrick Robinson Subject: Post-loss messages Without buying the CD, is there a posting of the post crash radio messages that TIGHAR believes could be real ? Do these include those messages that were 'fixed' in the Gilberts or are there other messages TIGHAR believes are real ? LTM Patrick (2239) *************************************************************************** From Ric The full analysis of the post-loss radio transmissins will be dealt with in the 8th Edition of the project book, due out in March. But in brief: No messages were "fixed" in the Gilberts. DF bearings on four of six transmissions seemed to cross in the vicinity of Gardner Island but Bob Brandenburg's propagation analysis indicates that it is unlikely that these signals actually originated from the Earhart aircraft on Gardner. Likewise, the famous "281" message now looks like a hoax. On the other hand, the transmissions heard on 6210 by Nauru on the evening of July 2nd look very good. Also, apparent responses heard on July 5th by Navy Radio, Tutuilla to a request for "dashes" sent by KGMB radio in Honolulu, could have theoretically originated at Gardner. LTM, Ric ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 2 Feb 2000 10:13:49 EST From: Vern Klein Subject: Re: Noonan & PAA >"Fred Noonan said, 'We've lived on promises for a year. I'm through.' > He resigned immediately." I think it's interesting to note that Grooch's book Jerry cites was published in 1939. That's not long after the fact and memories would have still been fresh. It's the last of several books Grooch wrote about PAA and flying the Pacific routes. It appears that Grooch died that same year -- 1939. The idea that Fred intended to start his own navigation school, presumably in California, also seems pretty plausible. Fred seems to have been well acquainted with Weems who ran a navigation school in Annapolis. Perhaps he could make a go of the same sort of thing on the west coast. According to Grooch, Fred was fresh out of a job. He needed to find something to make a living. He may actually have said to Amelia Earhart, as some of the books claim, "I need this flight." It would sure have been good PR for him and his fledgling navigation school. Fred Noonan, 'Round the World Navigator! He even found that fly-speck of an island in the Pacific Ocean called Howland..... ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 2 Feb 2000 10:23:36 EST From: Dennis McGee Subject: Nai'a cruises The Nai'a Cruises do not go ashore at Niku, do they? Talk about an opportunity to REALLY screw things up, that's just what we (Tighar) need -- a bunch of tourists camping out on Niku. My colon twitches at the mere thought of it. LTM, who cruised in her youth Dennis O. McGee #0149CE *************************************************************************** From Ric Calm thy colon. Nai'a will spend maybe one day at Niku and divers want to be in the water, not on the island. If they do go ashore they'll poke around in the village debris near the landing (like every other casual visaitor to the island). Niku's secrets are well hidden, even from us most of the time. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 2 Feb 2000 11:38:04 EST From: Clyde Miller Subject: Re: Nai'a cruises Any opportunity here for Nai'a personnel to do casual checks on the Shipwreck side to answer the debris question. Seems to me that might be a quick visual for the broad overview? Clyde Miller (who loves to squeeze pennies) ************************************************************************* From Ric We can certainly make the suggestion that somebody take a look at the suspect area on the relatively shallow (40 to 50 feet) shelf northward from the stern of Norwich City. I'll personally be surprised if there's anything there ( I suspect that everything went "downstream"), but I'd be happy to be surprised. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 3 Feb 2000 09:34:43 EST From: Suzanne Subject: Lost Star "Lost Star" is an incredible waste of time -- not only does it contain unsubstantiated flights of fancy about Amelia Earhart, it is one of the worst written books I have ever read. I read it over 5 years ago and my disgust with it remains as clear as if I read it yesterday. Suzanne ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 3 Feb 2000 09:41:27 EST From: Ron Dawson Subject: Fred and Musick This item may have been discussed on the forum, but I don't recall. From an article in New York Times (4-18-35, p. 3) in which Edwin Musick describes the first Hawaii flight and writes a paragraph about each crew member. Here is what he wrote about Fred. "Our navigation officer, Fred J. Noonan, did not take his scheduled rest during the entire 18 hours, 40 minutes we were aloft. Swathed in a heavy flying suit, face mask and goggles, he made more than a dozen trips down the long aisle to the aft observation hatch to take his periodic sights of the stars. In addition to his navigation duties, he also recorded a complete analysis of wind and weather conditions on the entire area we covered". --------------------------------------- sounds like a work ethic to me. Ron Dawson 2126 ************************************************************************* From Ric Just watch. Somebody will say he had a bottle stashed back in the tail. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 3 Feb 2000 10:05:17 EST From: Ron Bright Subject: Radio Nauru / Times of transmission In response to Patrick Baldwin's inquiry regarding the validity of post crash messages you believe that the transmission heard by Radio Nauru on 6210 "on the evening (sic) of Jul 2" looks good to support AE's survival after her last message to Itasca at 0844. I certainly agree but another source says the three voice messages intercepted by Radio Nauru came in the morning at 0901,0913 and 0924- not in the evening. This time discrepancy certainly makes a difference on the time she may have crashed,etc. Radio Nauru said they couldn't decipher the voice but it sounded similiar to AEs and that operator had heard her voice through the night. Do these times reconcile with your records? ************************************************************************* From Ric The source you're referring to is Safford. His miscalculation of the time was due to his mistaken belief that Greenwich Civil Time (GCT) was different from Greenwhich Mean Time (GMT). We had an exhaustive discussion about this last year on the Forum. There's really no doubt about it. The primary sources (14th Naval District Radio Transcripts and a telegram received by the U.S. State Department) agree that the Nauru messages were heard at 18:31, 18:43, and 18:54 Sydney Australia Time on July 3rd (in Australia, July 2nd at Niku). ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 3 Feb 2000 10:07:00 EST From: Vern Klein Subject: Re: Noonan & PAA Since Jerry had brought Grooch's books to our attention, I thought I would have a look at the others. I picked up the first one, "Skyway to Asia" just tonight. It was published in 1936. I've not seen much of it yet. I looked for an index at the back but there is none. However, there was the last page right in front of me. Grooch is at Alameda... "The China Clipper cruised at ten thousand feet, toward Alameda, a mile above the clouds, under a clear sky. Our radio operator heard her exchanging greetings with several ships at sea. Noonan got a fix every hour from the stars. Not once did she swerve from the great circle course." A paragraph later, I see that Musick was flying the plane. The Foreword is sort of interesting: This is a story of the first North Haven Expedition, dispatched to build commercial air bases across the Pacific Ocean -- the stepping stones for the flying clipper ships on their airway to the Orient. It is a story of personal experiences, my own -- not an official record of the Expedition. Nor is it a story of the Clippers themselves, of their design and building and their sky voyages, nor the moves that led to the conception of this singular American enterprise. This book will come as a great surprise to my associates who were not consulted in its preparation. The last thing they and the Company would expect from me would be a book! This book salutes them all in my name. Alemeda Airport June 1936 ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 3 Feb 2000 13:30:15 EST From: Dave Bush Subject: Noonan >From Ric > >Just watch. Somebody will say he had a bottle stashed back in the tail. Have you ever seen a heavy drinker manage to stay on his feet for 18+ hours? That dog don't hunt - as the saying goes (pardon the poor English). LTM Blue Skies, Dave Bush ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 3 Feb 2000 13:59:25 EST From: Herman De Wulf Subject: Aeroplane Monthly In its March 2000 issue Aeroplane Monthly, a London-based British publication covering aviation history and classic aircraft, publishes an "exclusive" article on "New search for Amelia Earhart under way". It reminds that it "helped instigate deep water survey to find Lockheed 10". It might be interesting to read what Aeroplane says. For the benefit of those on the Forum who are unable to find the publication in their local bookstore I'm sending the complete text as published in the March issue. "News has just been released of an underwater search for the Lockheed 10E flown by American aviatrix Amelia Earhart, which was lost on almost the last stage of her attempt to fly around the world on an equatorial track in 1937. Aeroplane investigated her disappearance, one of aviation's great mysteries, in 1989- and our conclusion helped spark off the hunt. The deep water sonar search was privately funded and took place last November and December. It was organized by Holland Landing Ltd., William sons & Associates Inc. and Guy Zacone Productions, in cooperation with International Bridge Corporation and its vessel June T. Leaving the Marshall Islands in the South Pacific, the ship was on site near the tiny Holland Island for more than 30 days and surveyed some 600 square miles of ocean bottom, digitally mapping a hitherto unknown area. Using Williamson & Associates SM. 30 sidescan sonar tethered to more than five miles of cable the search reached depths down to 18,000 ft. Amelia and her navigator, Red Noonan, took off from Lae in New Guinea (then a mandated Australian territory) at precisely 0000 hr. GMT on July 2, 1937, to fly east to Holland Island, where the Americans had built an airstrip. Her ETA was 1800 hr. GMT. Two American vessels were in position to aid the navigation but the main method en route was astro observations. There were some voice-to-voice transmissions from Amelia which gave clues as to what happened. One o the reasons for the search was the two-part article "What did happen to Amelia Earhart ?" specially written for Aeroplane by Roy Nest and published in our January and February 1989 issues. Knowing that Amelia took off from territory which was part of the British Empire, Roy began by digging out crucial information at the Public Records Office. He obtained performance details of the aircraft from Lockheed, found details of the fuel on board from Australian newspapers in the British Newspaper Library, obtained weather reports from the Meteorological Archives at Bracknell, and used his own wartime experience of astro-navigation in combination with Greenwich Observatory. His conclusion was that the Lockheed could have ditched about 30 nautical miles north-west of Holland. Unknown to him, this corresponded roughly with a calculation made by the US Navy soon after Ameba's disappearance. As a result of recent ocean survey, a number of potential targets have been logged by specialists at Wilson's offices in Seattle. These are currently being computer enhanced. It is expected that phase two of the search will take place this year, using remotely operated vehicles (Roves ) capable of video and still imaging. if need bee, the area of search will be increased. This seems to be the maritime equivalancy of looking for a needle in a haystack - but, having been partly responsible for sparking off the search Aeroplane will be watching developments with special interest". *************************************************************************** From Ric They are, of course, talkng about the Timmer search and failing to even mention Elgen Long and the competing (although apparently still unfunded) Nauticos search. The editor at Aeroplane Monthly, Mik Oakey, and I are old friends. We exchange publications but I haven't seen the March issue yet. Roy Nesbit (not "Nest") has done some good aviation historical investigative work ( I enjoyed his article about the Glenn Miller mystery) but his Earhart piece was written before the Chater report came to light and he based his speculation upon fuel figures that he would probably now revise. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 3 Feb 2000 18:38:43 EST From: Randy Jacobson Subject: Re: Fred and Musick Someone already has stated that FJN took bottles back to the aft observatory of the first flight to Hawaii/Wake/Manilla. It seems that first plane had no observation capability behind the pilot's cabin, except in the rear toilet, of all things. People claim FJN took a briefcase back with him every time. A good story is there about the toilet being open to the world when flushing, but perhaps another time. *************************************************************************** From Ric There are lots of good stories about toilets on airplanes. Some of them are even true. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 3 Feb 2000 18:46:39 EST From: Randy Jacobson Subject: Re: Aeroplane Monthly Perhaps Holland Island is one of those islands that appear and then disappear, much like Winslow Reef. Probably claimed by the Netherlands. Or it could be a part of the Marshall Islands. Does anyone have a good Atlas to tell us where this island might be? LTM, with tongue firmly in cheek, and almost biting it off. ************************************************************************** From Dan Postellon Is Ameba Earhart too small to wear mosquito boots? ************************************************************************** From Ric You see Herman? This is what you get for trying to be a nice guy and transcribe an entire article for this gang. We should make them put up their next postings in Flemish. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 4 Feb 2000 09:35:20 EST From: Alan Caldwell Subject: Re: Aeroplane Monthly << His (Roy Nesbit) conclusion was that the Lockheed could have ditched about 30 nautical miles north-west of Holland. >> Nesbit is absolutely correct - the Lockheed COULD have ditched 30 miles NW of Howland (not Holland unless Fred really screwed up the last fix). It could have ditched any where. I am baffled as to how anyone could make such a determination based on the known facts. If I'm allowed to use whatever fuel flows, winds aloft, OAT, headings, and course I want I can ditch the plane where ever anyone would like. Please pick shallow water and close to shore. Makes the search easier. Alan #2329 *************************************************************************** From Herman Next time these guys can go out and buy their copies themselves. LTM from Herman (who is sorry he typed "Ameba" and "Holland" and whose computer does not have automatic spelling control in English). ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 4 Feb 2000 09:39:48 EST From: Ross Devitt Subject: Re: Fred and Musick All those "trips down the long aisle to the aft observation hatch" - I bet he had a bottle stashed down there. ************************************************************************* From Ric Very funny. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 4 Feb 2000 09:50:23 EST From: Vern Klein Subject: "Amelia Earhart Lives" What happened with the lawsuit against Klaas, Gervais, and whomever else? ************************************************************************** From Ric The Bolams brought suit against the publisher, McGraw Hill (go where the money is), who settled out of court for an undisclosed sum rumored to be high in six figures. That episode will be a chapter in my forthcoming book "The Search for Amelia Earhart - A Litigation History." ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 4 Feb 2000 10:35:22 EST From: Deb Subject: Re: Fred's salary The IRS doesn't have tax returns going back to the 1930s. If you went through the IRS to get anything and you weren't the taxpayer(s) in question, you would have to get a POA for disclosure purposes. You might try the Social Security Administration, or the employer(s) records for wages. I don't know how useful the National Records Center would be. There's one for each region. Deb ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 4 Feb 2000 11:01:39 EST From: Dennis McGee Subject: Re: Aeroplane Monthly "LTM from Herman (who is sorry he typed "Ameba" and "Holland" and whose computer does not have automatic spelling control in English)." Herman: Judging from the typos on the forum, most of the subscribers' computers don't either. I think they were just having a bit of fun. Don't get discouraged, and keep coming back!! LTM, who also is spelling-challenged Dennis O. McGee #0149CE ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 4 Feb 2000 11:52:24 EST From: Vern Klein Subject: The Mystery of the Bottle Some thoughts out of a bottle... I started my room-temperature evaporation experiment on February 1, 2000. The Benedictine bottle used is stated to contain 750 ml (3/4 liter). In the position it likes to assume when not standing upright, and unstoppered, it holds 530 ml of water (just over 1/2 liter). It might be said that this is going to be as exciting as watching water evaporate! I find it difficult to believe that we will find that a Benedictine bottle on Niku, even in the shade of a Ren tree, could possibly have still contained some drinking water after months or even years. How long might it have been? If we assume the bottle was with the individual who perished under the Ren tree, then it has to have been long enough for that individual to have become only a partial skeleton. I suspect that is a longer time than water would remain in an unstoppered bottle. We seem to assume an unstoppered bottle. Is there any good reason to believe that was the case? The relationship of the bottle to the skull -- and other bones and artifacts -- seems to me a little unclear. Gallagher's first telegram (Tarawa File) says, "... a certain bottle alleged to have been found near skull discovered on Gardner Island." In the second telegram he says, "Thorough search has now produced more bones (including lower jaw) part of a shoe a bottle and a sextant box." When the heck was the Benedictine bottle found? It seems communication between the Gilbertese and the British was not the greatest. The "when" of the finding of the Benedictine bottle could be very uncertain. The idea of it's being near where the skull was found (and buried) doesn't necessarily mean they were found at the same time. Maybe the bottle was found much earlier. Trying very hard to move the bottle back in time far enough that it might still contain drinking water.... Harry Maude and 19 Gilbertese were on Gardner Island for about three days in mid-October of 1937. Koata was one of them and he's the guy who had the Benedictine bottle in 1940. How long had he had it? Did he remember that it was found in about the same place where the skull was found a couple of years later? Or, was the skull actually found and buried as early as 1937? LTM (Who never touches the shtuff... *hic*) *************************************************************************** From Ric <> Only because no stopper is mentioned. We also don't know that the bottle contained water when found or that it was on its side. Kilts says it contained fresh water for drinking and was found "beside the body." Gallagher says (on October 6, 1940) "Benedictine" bottle but no indication of contents." The bottle is a strange element in an already strange story. Why does Koata have it with him when he goes to Tarawa? At Gallagher's instruction, and if so, to what end? Or does Gallagher only discover that Koata has gone off with it after the ship has left, thus prompting his telegram to Wernham asking him to intercept Koata and the bottle. Either way, Wernham does end up with the bottle but it apparently never gets sent on to Fiji and is, in fact, never mentioned to the authorities in Fiji. Why? I'm not very comfortable changing Gallagher's story so much that the skull is found in 1937 instead of 1940. Rather than move the discovery time back, perhaps it makes more sense to move the castaway's time of death forward. Let's say, just for the sake of argument, that it takes three months for a nominal amount of water to evaporate from a nominal Benedictine bottle. Let's also say that it takes that same three months for a dead body on Niku to be reduced to a state at which it is no longer of interest to dogs (and we're assuming, for the moment, that dogs are responsible for the scattering of the big bones). Now let's assume that the bottle (with water) was found at the same time as the skull, which according to Gallagher, occurred around April of 1940. That would indicate that the castaway died in January 1940. Is that credible? That would mean that somebody was alive on that island when Maude and Bevington were there in October 1937, when the New Zealand survey party arrived December 1, 1938 and the first 10 man Gilbertese work party arrived on December 20th of that year, when the first settlers arrived in April and June of 1939, and when the Bushnell survey was done in November 1939. Could a weak and possibly round-the-bend castaway be languishing in the bush on the southeast end of the island unbeknownst to all those people? Well, of all those people, who do we know actually went down there? Bevington walked all the way around the atoll with a few Gilbertese in October 1937, but by the time he got down there they were not doing any exploring. They were just trudging up the beach trying to get back to camp. The New Zealand survey concentrated on the west end and the deeper parts of the lagoon. The Bushnell survey was only there for a week. One of their towers was maybe a half mile from the 1996 Site and one of the data points along the shore was perhaps within a hundred meters or so of the site. All of the clearing and planting work done by the colonists was way up at the west end except for some possible kanawa wood harvesting (which is what we suspect eventually led to the discovery of the bones). It's an admittedly bizarre hypothesis. A person alive on Gardner but deliberately avoiding contact with people who are there. What evidence is there to support it? - the (alleged) water in the bottle that should have evaporated away. - the scattered skeleton that should not have been of interest to the dogs who (perhaps) scattered it. - Gallagher's description of "birds killed" and "dead birds" at the site, rather than bird bones. Dead people don't eat birds. If the people bones are so ancient why aren't the birds reduced to bones? - And there is, much as I hesitate to mention it, an anecdotal account of a person on Nikumaroro in the early days of the settlement seeing a tall, fair-skinned woman with long hair back in the bush. The apparition was taken to be the island's guardian spirit Nei Manganibuka. Maybe it was. Maybe it was someone else. Music up. Fade out. Roll credits. LTM, Ric ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 4 Feb 2000 14:03:13 EST From: Troy Carmichael Subject: Re: The Mystery of the Bottle "And there is, much as I hesitate to mention it, an anecdotal account of a person on Nikumaroro in the early days of the settlement seeing a tall, fair-skinned woman with long hair back in the bush. The apparition was taken to be the island's guardian spirit Nei Manganibuka. Maybe it was. Maybe it was someone else." Maybe no one ever saw the tracks of the fair-skinned woman since she was wearing mosquito boots (which don't leave tracks). Mosquito feet are pretty darn small....... on a more serious note, if the weather is humid and it ever rains, water could remain indefinately in the bottle. Whether or not it would be considered "drinking water", I don't know, but my experience with old bottles in the woods and old out buildings of our ante-bellum plantation has shown me numerous bottles which, though abandonned for decades, always seem to have some water in them. As a mater of recollection, I cannot think of any instance having ever found any bottle that did not have liquid in it. Of cou rse, that's in Alabama where it is humid, rains, and mosquitoes don't wear boots (they can't afford them). and on the less serious, as to the stories of the bathroom in AE's plane, my grandmother (Mary Alice Beatty) installed the first bathroom ever in an airplane (if you really want to see it, go to the Alabama avaiation hall of fame in Birmingham). While most people were christened by Neptune crossing the equator, a lesser known fact is that she is the first woman to christen the equator (from the air). Wonder if AE or FN ever thought of that...... ;-) LTM troy ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 4 Feb 2000 14:03:16 EST From: Dave Bush Subject: Re: The Mystery of the Bottle >It's an admittedly bizarre hypothesis. A person alive on Gardner but >deliberately avoiding contact with people who are there. What evidence is >there to support it? Not so bizarre. You are stranded on an island with one other person, who dies a short time later. You are waiting for help that never, ever arrives. You slowly go MAD, CRAZY, NUTS, LOONEY TUNES. You think the people you see are figments of your imagination - or worse - THEY DON'T SEE YOU!!! Therefore you don't exist!!!! You have found a stash of food - where are the people who left it? Did you not see them? Can't they see you? You have lost your airplane, your career, worry gnaws at you like a dog with an old bone. Easy to follow such an hypothesis, actually. A poor diet could cause mental instability as well as the conditions of the island (including de-hydration, etc.). Poor Amelia (or was it Fred dressed like Amelia?). Without a haircut he would have long hair, wouldn't he? LTM Blue Skies, Dave Bush ************************************************************************** From Ric Oh good. Fred Noonan, Drag Queen. There has GOT to be a body of literature about people going crackers in isolation. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 4 Feb 2000 14:38:41 EST From: Ron Bright Subject: Leo Bellarts Jr./Interview of On 2 Feb 00, I interviewed Leo Jr about the life and times of his famous father Leo Sr ,Chief Radioman aboard the Itasca. Leo Sr died c. l974 and Leo Jr inherited his father's documents, logs,scrapbooks,letters and so forth and in l975 he donated the bulk of this material to the National Archives.(He didn't mention he gave you guys a copy of the two hour tape and transcript of Elgen Long's interview with Leo Sr conducted by Long in l973. Leo Jr reecalled his father had a photo of the Itasca "smoking" dated l937 and that may very well be the origin of Long's apparently incorrectly dated photo of 2 Jul 37. Leo Jr didn't think that the Itasca made atrip to Howland in l936; he didn't hear about Lt Frank Stewart. A few bits and pieces: According to Leo Jr., Capt Thompson told Leo Sr. shortly after the disappearance to secure the original log in his quarters aboard ship as documents and reports were "disappearing". Leo Sr kept the original radio log in his possession secretly until Leo Jr inherited it. A copy of the log was given to Capt Thompson for his use in the official report. Leo Jr. speculated that the three radiomen, Thompson, Bellarts and Galten,sequentially typed AE's traffic on a single original log (a Coast Guard form) in one typewriter as each took over on radio watch. A carbon copy was given to Capt Thompson. Leo Jr didn't know which radioman kept a separate log (maybeO'hare) that was typed simultaneously with the original as the messages went in and out.(I've never seen the second log reproduced with the notorious 1/2 hour message ) Leo Jr was aware of the word "circle" typed over a word that appears to havve started with the letter "d". Leo Jr said his father was a "two finger typist" which may account for hitting the letter d instead of c just above it. He pointed out lots of typing errors. And Leo gave me a copy of his father's log that does contain some annotations and underlining that may have been added as the years went by; those annotations differ from the logs I've seen reproduced. Leo Jr had given transcripts of his dads interview to local media over the years and most recently to some researchers in SAn Franciso who are preparing a documentary for National Public Radio. Leo Jr said his dad corresponded extetnsively with Balfour after the war and that he still may have some of those letters in his private box. For example Leo recalled that Balfour wrote that AE was disposing of all kinds of stuff from the Elecrtra including her "pistol". Leo Jr was pretty adamant, based on his conversations with Dad, that Amelias last transmissions were frantic and "hysterical" (his word) but wanted to refer to his Dad's interview for an exact quote. Of note, Leo Jr said his father often told him that Amelias signal was coming in so loud,clear and strong that he,Leo Sr., went out the bridge expecting the Electra overhead! In sum Leo Sr had a lot of AE material most of which is in the public hands. These are some ancedotal recollections of a father and son. He was forthright in his answers but very reluctant to give up any other original docs to an amatuer researcher (me) at this point. He seldom talks now with authors or researchers although he said he has known Elgen Long for years; he continufes to get "crackpot" calls from other researchers. If circumstances permit I will recontact him to see if I could review what material that has not been published. LTM, Ron Bright ************************************************************************** From Ric We do not have a copy of the tape, just the transcript. This is what Bellarts told Long in 1973 about the way Earhart sounded: "Ah, actually her voice...we could here her voice just as easy as I'm hearing yours right now and I'm deaf in one ear now. But I'll tell you, you could hear her voice all over the shack and even outside the shack. you know, real loud and clear. I mean it. She was a woman. We heard her quite a few times, you know, but that last one, I'm telling you, it sounded as if she would have broken out in a scream, it would have sounded normal. She was just about ready to break into tears and go into hysterics. That's exactly the way I'd describe her voice now. I'll never forget it." According to the interview it was O'Hare who kept the separate log. Bellarts was quite derisive about O'Hare and the "1/2 hour gas left" notation in his log. The "d" under the word "circling" is more than a "d". It is the complete (but partially erased) word "drifting." The word "circling" is typed over the erasure in a slightly different platen setting. There is no doubt that the word was changed. LTM, Ric ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 4 Feb 2000 18:29:05 EST From: Andrew McKenna Subject: Noonan's salary <> Ha!! After my grandfather died, the IRS asked us for all the copies of his gift tax returns dating back to 1936!! Like we had 'em in the file here somewhere. We told the IRS that if they didn't have them, we didn't have them and let it go at that. I'd think the IRS route is a dead end. LTM (who hates filing her taxes) Andrew McKenna 1045 *************************************************************************** From Ric Sounds like an IQ test. Like when the air traffic controller says "Unidentified aircraft that just violated restricted airspace, please say your N number." ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 4 Feb 2000 18:32:06 EST From: Alan Subject: Re: Fred's salary << You might try the Social Security Administration >> Ric, I worked for the SSA in Baltimore before I went into the USAF and they had microfilm of records going back to cave man days. How far back they have records now would be the question. Alan #2329 ************************************************************************** From Ric Granted that Roosevelt's first term was decidedly Neolithic, I wonder if they were up to speed by 1936/37. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 4 Feb 2000 18:38:27 EST From: Alan Caldwell Subject: Re: Aeroplane Monthly << Next time these guys can go out and buy their copies themselves. >> Herman this was all in fun. I can do that because I am the world's worst speller. Personally I appreciated greatly your post. With a cynical sense of humor I could not lay off "Holland" however. If you could see what I write you would have a field day. The real point I was trying to make was not about your post but how foolish for Nesbit or Long or anyone to brashly predict a ditching location for the Electra. They could only do that if they knew precisely where the plane was at any given moment (which they don't) geographically and what altitude, and exactly how much fuel was available and exactly what the fuel flow rate was. No one knows that either. I can run them out of gas anywhere I want practically. Alan #2329 *************************************************************************** From Ric You wanna talk foolish? Nesbit and Long only wrote about it. Timmer and company went out and shoveled better than a million gold grickles into the Pacific Ocean based on it, and NOVA is apparently still looking for sponsors who want to shovel more. Talk about an IQ test....... ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 4 Feb 2000 18:40:03 EST From: Randy Jacobson Subject: Re: Aeroplane Monthly Please accept my humble apologies for making fun of your typos. I thought they were from the article itself. I often suffer from Foot in Mouth Disease, as Ric can easily testify to. ************************************************************************* From Ric I'm just lovin' this. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 4 Feb 2000 18:42:36 EST From: Randy Jacobson Subject: Re: Leo Bellarts Jr./Interview of To Ron Bright: If and when you talk to Leo Bellarts Jr, please thank him profusely for the wisdom to submit his father's material to the National Archives. Much of what you described is in his scrapbook, and contains information found nowhere else. Bless you both Leo Bellarts! ************************************************************************* From Ric Amen. If it wasn't for Bellarts' original log we'd still be struggling with Thompson's version of events. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 4 Feb 2000 18:52:12 EST From: Randy Jacobson Subject: Re: The Mystery of the Bottle I don't believe for a moment that AE or FJN survived until Jan 1940 at the far end of the island. Why? Both Bushnell and NZ airplanes flew over Gardner taking aerial photos, and surely someone would have heard them. Further, the colonists likely had fires going at some time or another for cooking at night, and the light from a fire might be visible across the lagoon. You're right: it is a bizarre scenario, and I just don't buy it. Meekly and humbly yours, Randy Jacobson. ************************************************************************** From Ric Like I said, it only works if Fred's dead and AE is totally round the bend and hiding from discovery. Maybe the various factors which make it appear that the castaway had not been dead all that long before the site was found are illusory. Maybe not. I'm just trying to come up with a scenario that fits what may be facts. it's certainly not worth being taken very seriously - yet. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 4 Feb 2000 18:54:54 EST From: Val Subject: water in the bottle From Val how about simple condensation......forming over a long period of time....it is possible that the liquid just simply built up...... Val ************************************************************************* From Ric I'm not sure that works. If it did, then any bottle left abandoned for a long enough time would have water in it. In my experience that is not the case. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 4 Feb 2000 19:12:08 EST From: William Webster-Garman Subject: Re: The Mystery of the Bottle Without more information, I don't think that speculating on the presence of water in the bottle would be very productive. Fresh water could have remained in a stoppered bottle for years, and natural forces (like rain) could have been responsible for putting a little fresh water into an open bottle. However, as Ric points out, > - Gallagher's description of "birds killed" and "dead birds" at the site, > rather than bird bones. Dead people don't eat birds. If the people bones > are so ancient why aren't the birds reduced to bones? is interesting. I've always been under the impression that Gallagher was referring to bird bones. How did I get that idea? On the other hand, it seems to me that a bird would skeletize even faster than the remains of a human. What about the idea that dogs, arriving with the settlers, scattered the human bones before they were discovered? It's possible, but simply not confirmable. Finally, we have the story from magistrate Teng Koata's wife (quoted from the Tighar site, which cites Paul Laxton"): "The wife of Teng Koata, the first island leader, had been walking one afternoon and saw a great and perfect maneaba, and sitting under its high thatched roof, Nei Manganibuka, a tall fair woman with long dark hair falling to the ground about her, with two children: she conversed with three ancients, talking of her island of Nikumaroro, and its happy future when it would surely grow to support thousands of inhabitants." This story has always seemed to me to be more parts Gilbertese economic boosterism, so to speak, than reality. Stories of quasi-religious visions have a long history as tools of economic and social development that could be of benefit to the storytellers, and the reporter, after all, was the wife of the local magistrate. In the story, there is not only a "tall fair woman with long dark hair" (I would be surprised if Ms Earhart's hair could be described as "dark" by a Gilbertese, and the term "fair" is a relative one), but also two kids, three "ancients", a very well constructed (according to Gilbertese culture and otherwise) meeting house, and clairvoyance into the future (the details of which, to date at least, are wildly incorrect). Yes, it's possible that Teng's wife stumbled onto a female castaway and then projected onto the experience mystical and cultural elements that helped her make sense of a rather startling encounter. It's even possible that the castaway had gone more than a little mad during her isolation, making the meeting even more bizarre. In my humble opinion it's probably an artifact of Gilbertese culture, mostly unrelated to castaways, a motivational tale, an island fable, for a small group of Gilbertese workers enlisted by imperial (British) envoys to develop a small, isolated island. The details of the story tend to disconnect the reported apparition from any basis in fact related to Earhart. Perhaps the story was influenced a little by reports of mysterious bones of European origin having been found in the area. Considering the apparition again, however, is entertaining. william 2243 *************************************************************************** From Ric I can't say that I disagree with you. You make a very rational assessment of the possibilities. But let me throw another couple eyes of newt into the caldron. The place where Mrs. Koata allegedly had her encounter with Nei Manganibuka is Kanawa Point (based on Laxton's description of the geography). The lagoon shore at and near Kanawa Point is the only place on the island where we have found giant clam shells that were opened by human action. Some of them had been there for so long that they had become imbedded in the coral and Tom King originally considered them to be relics of the atoll's prehistoric period of habitation. We have since, however, learned that such imbedding can occur over decades rather than centuries. I asked Emily Sikuli about eating clams. She said that her father (who was an Ellice Islander) occasionally harvested clam meat but the Gilbertese people never ate the stuff. So who was eating clams a long time ago down by Kanawa Point where Mrs. Koata saw whoever she saw? Like you say. It's entertaining. LTM, Ric ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 5 Feb 2000 08:53:19 EST From: Randy Jacobson Subject: Re: The Mystery of the Bottle Re: Eating clams at Kanawa Point. Couldn't it have been the Arundel workers from 1890's? Re: Bird bones...don't you think it strange that dogs would scatter human bones but not the bird bones? If the bird bones are pretty much in a pile, so would human bones, I would think. but then again, I'm not a dog, despite what some people claim. Well, at least THAT kind of a dog! ************************************************************************** From Ric The Arundel workers could be the clam eaters, if they ever went to Kanawa Point. We don't really know how extensive their plantings were, but the only groves that survived were far from Kanawa Point. Ever see a dog eat a bird carcass? I've seen them with deer and woodchucks but I don't recall birds - but then I'm not a dog person. Rocket (my cat), on the other hand, is a bird's worst nightmare. Then again, he'd eat a castaway too. Doubtless we have numerous canine authorities (or rather, authorities on canines) on the forum who can enlighten us on this subject. LTM, Ric ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 5 Feb 2000 09:05:13 EST From: Dan Subject: LOP 157/337 Although there is no evidence, does it seem reasonable that AE/FN attempted to navigate to a point on LOP 157/337 approximately 20-30 miles on the north side of Howland. Then when they turned right on LOP 157/337, it would be likely that not only would they hit land, but the land would be Howland, and not some land that had no people on it, like Nikumaroro. ************************************************************************** From Ric This is, of course, one of the great debates among Earhart researchers. My take on it is: 1. Yes, the technique was known to Noonan. 2. He did not always use it. 3. There is no need to use it if DF is available for the final fine-tuning of the navigation. 4. This flight anticipated the use of DF. 5. There is (as you say) no evidence that he used that method in this case. 6. At least one of Earhart's radio transmissions can be interpreted as evidence that he did NOT use it in this case. At 19:12 GMT she says "We must be on you but cannot see you..." which implies an attempt to navigate to a specific point. My opinion is that Noonan did not employ offset navigation in his attempt to find Howland. LTM, Ric ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 5 Feb 2000 09:07:27 EST From: Ron Dawson Subject: Re: Fred's salary << << You might try the Social Security Administration >> Ric, I worked for the SSA in Baltimore before I went into the USAF and they had microfilm of records going back to cave man days. How far back they have records now would be the question. >> Here is a blurb from the SSA site. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Q1: When did Social Security start? A: The Social Security Act was signed by FDR on 8/14/35. Taxes were collected for the first time in January 1937 and the first one-time, lump-sum payments were made that same month. Regular ongoing monthly benefits started in January 1940. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Since Fred was gone from Pan Am by that time, I doubt he signed up for it. Smooth Sailing, Ron Dawson 2126 ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 5 Feb 2000 09:26:02 EST From: Vern Klein Subject: Re: Water in the bottle >>From Ric >> >>I'm not sure that works. If it did, then any bottle left abandoned for a >>long enough time would have water in it. In my experience that is not the >>case. I suspect there may be some inclination to think an island in the central Pacific with all that water around would be humid -- conducive to condensation, slow evaporation, etc. I think I'm correct in believimg such a local is typically very dry -- low humidity, rapid evaporation, etc. I think I once knew why that is true but it escapes me now. LTM (Who used to know all that stuff) *************************************************************************** From Ric Perhaps the best indicator of how dry it is on Niku is the fact that aluminum on land and known to be at least 50 years old exhibits almost no corrosion. ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 5 Feb 2000 10:25:43 EST From: Dave Bush Subject: Amelia "Crusoe" Earhart As much as this "lived-on-until-1940" hypothesis has us all excited, I'm not yet convinced regarding several aspects of it. On Fri, 4 Feb 2000, Richard E. Gillespie wrote: > < believe that was the case?>> > > Only because no stopper is mentioned. That doesn't say much to me. If I found a pen on the floor, I probably wouldn't bother recording whether or not it had a cap on it at the time - if I was going to note the event at all. Just because I might have written that I'd found a pen (but not described it in any more detail than that), doesn't mean I would be telling you that it had not had a cap at the time. > We also don't know that the bottle contained water when found or that it > was on its side. Kilts says it contained fresh water for drinking and > was found "beside the body." Gallagher says (on October 6, 1940) > "Benedictine" bottle but no indication of contents. Once again, just because there was "...no indication of contents" doesn't rule anything in or out, it just means we don't know either way. Given the excellent point (that another forum person already made) about the many variables associated with gain/loss of water from a bottle sitting out in the open for long periods, I don't think we should read very much into the state of the liquid that may or may not have been in it when found (even if we could establish what that condition was). > ...the castaway died in January 1940. Is that credible? Supposing that Amelia did survive for two-and-a-half years by herself on that island, it would tend to indicate a certain level of mastery with regards to fresh water collection, utilization of local flora and fauna for food, etc. Given all that, the big question in my mind is WHY, after all that successful time by herself, would she have presumably expired just shortly after the other folks arrived? Sure, it could have been a heart attack, or any number of other natural causes, but the timing seems peculiar to me. Also, if she was taken ill for a brief period before her death, wouldn't she have laid down well back in the shade, especially if she was loopy and didn't want to be found, instead of so close to the beach? (Unless I've been forming the wrong mental picture, I think you've described the castaway's bones as being between the water and the edge of the jungle.) > Could a weak and possibly round-the-bend castaway be languishing in the > bush on the southeast end of the island unbeknownst to all those people? If airplane wreckage near the Norwich City didn't catch their attention, and the castaway didn't want to be found, then it doesn't seem impossible to think that she could have concealed herself. The things that might have given her away would have been the remnants of clam shells, bird bones, and whatever fish she'd been able to catch. Maybe some coconut crabs even graced her "dinner table". > - the scattered skeleton that should not have been of interest to the dogs > who (perhaps) scattered it. Okay, so if we're going to presume that the recently arrived settlers' dogs were interested enough in Amelia's fresh remains to drag away some of her large bones, why wouldn't the dogs have completely eaten/removed the birds' remains, either first or around the same time. (Do dogs eat birds at all? I'm a cat owner, so let me know!) Also, what about the well-documented carnivorous tendencies of "Crabzilla" and his cohorts? Even if the crabs didn't touch the castaway's remains, wouldn't the birds have made a nice, light snack? Perhaps the crabs aren't in that area of the island, but to me, the idea of so much activity happening to the castaway' body, with so little interest in the adjacent birds, doesn't quite jive somehow. > - Gallagher's description of "birds killed" and "dead birds" at the site, > rather than bird bones. Dead people don't eat birds. If the people bones > are so ancient why aren't the birds reduced to bones? Let's be careful not to read too much into what was or was not said. Just because he described the birds as dead, doesn't automatically mean they were any more than skeletons at the time. Whether or not he chose to specifically mention the state of the deceased creatures is likely a similar case to my pen example above - the reader just can't tell either way from what was written. A few final points about these birds, assuming that Amelia caught them: What type of bird would they likely have been? Would there have been much good eating on them? How would she likely have gone about catching them? How elaborate would her equipment/technique have had to be for success? There is a lot of potential public fascination with the idea that she lived on for so long, (reporters would love to get their paws on this one!) but proving it would be a challenge indeed! LTM, (Who may be going batty, but is not reclusive!) David :-) ************************************************************************** From Ric Your points are well-taken. I'm not going to agressively defend the hypothesis because, as you say, it depends too much upon interpretations and possibilities rather than established facts. I'm just too much of a romantic to resist considering the idea. What kind of birds can you catch on Niku? The easiest to catch are the Red-tailed Tropic Birds who nest on the ground in the shade of the low-lying vegetation along the shore. You can literally walk right up to them and grab them by the neck ( I have done the former but not, of course, the latter). I did pick up a young Booby once and got roundly disciplined for it by his mom. Juvenile Frigates will sometimes hover within inches of your head as you walk along the beach and even bop you with their beak. Fairy Terns (known locally as "KiaKia" after the sound they make) will often flutter in front of your face as if asking to see your passport. In some respects it's a magical place and there is certainly no expertise or equipment required to catch birds there. I've never eaten any of the avian inhabitants but I can't imagine that they'd be very tasty unless you're really into fishy fowl. Could somebody hide out on Niku? Absolutely. Why might they die after having survived for more than two years? Any of a dozen reasons, infection and disease being the most probable. I wonder what kind of evidence we might find that would establish a time of death within, say, one year. Of course we can fantasize about a journal, but other than that, could we carbon date a tooth to that tolerance? Or a bird bone? We know there are bird bones at the 1996 Site right now. Suppose we were able to carbon date one of those bones and learned that the bird had died after 1937 but before 1939. Wouldn't THAT be interesting? What kind of tolerances are obtainable from carbon dating these days? ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 5 Feb 2000 10:27:01 EST From: Alan Caldwell Subject: Re: Fred's salary << Granted that Roosevelt's first term was decidedely Neolithic, I wonder if they were up to speed by 1936/37.>> I think so, Ric. My dad went to work for SSA in 1938. We moved from Ohio to Baltimore that yeqr so my dad could take the job with an unheard of fabulous salary of $1900 a year. We were in hog heaven. Alan ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 5 Feb 2000 10:31:05 EST From: John Dipi Subject: Re: Fred and Musick There is a monument on Canton Island dedicated to EDWIN MUSICK ************************************************************************* From Ric Yup. Captain Ed was killed in the explosion of a Sikorsky S-42B off Samoa while pioneering the South Pacific route for PAA. ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 5 Feb 2000 10:32:39 EST From: John Dipi Subject: Re: clams In my 5 months on CANTON we went out on the reef and got some large clams pried open with our bayonet thinking that we would find a pearl but it never happened. We did find an assortment of beautiful shells. ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 5 Feb 2000 17:39:21 EST From: Roger Kelley Subject: Hair Rick wrote: "an anecdotal account of a person on Nikumaroro in the early days of the settlement seeing a tall, fair-skinned woman with long hair back in the bush." Does anyone know the approximate time span between the anecdotal sighting of Nei and the date of AE's final flight? How long was Nei's hair? How long would it take for AE's hair to grow to the same length as Nei's? What gives wings to my imagination is the question, "How long could two people (or one person) survive on the contents of the supply cache left near the Norwich City?" LTM, Roger Kelley, #2112 ************************************************************************** From Ric Well, let's see. The anecdotal sighting could not have happened before April 1939 when the first families of the workers arrived on the island, and could not have happened before roughly April of 1940 when the work party allegedly first found the skull. AE had pretty short hair when last seen in July 1937. How much will a person's hair grow in (ballpark) two years? ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 5 Feb 2000 17:44:10 EST From: Ken Feder Subject: Carbon dating Radiocarbon dating would not be of any help here for two primary reasons: 1. the error factor is far too great; even with the most precise method available, accelerator mass spectrometry, we're still talking decades and 2. Even if the error factor wasn't an issue, the Niku materials are just way too recent for carbon dating. The half life of radiocarbon (carbon-14) is 5,730 years. 1939 is only 61 years ago (just a little more than 1% of the halflife). Since radioactive decay is a statistical phenomenon, that's simply not enough time; so little of the c-14 has decayed, an accurate estimate of age based on how much has decayed would be impossible. The major radiocarbon labs tell you that anything less than a couple of hundred years old is simply too young (and anything much over 40,000 or 50,000 years is too old, though dates up to 70,000 are theoretically possible). Ken Feder ************************************************************************** From Ric Thanks Ken. Oh well. Hey, anybody ever wonder what really happened to Helen of Troy? *************************************************************************** From Randy Jacobson Carbon dating is not precise down to a year or two, and the technique is not particularly well regarded for times less than 100 years of age. There are other dating techniques, however, that can be used, but are not typically based upon organic content. ************************************************************************ From Ric Like what? ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 5 Feb 2000 17:49:02 EST From: William Webster-Garman Subject: Re: The Mystery of the Bottle The apparition story might also have been deliberately developed and circulated by Teng Koata and/or his wife as a means to present the discovery of the castaway bones in a positive way, to counteract mystical fears among the work group after the skeletized remains were found. william 2243 ************************************************************************* From Ric Possibly, but in the two versions of the apparition story we've heard there is no connection to the bone story and in the many versions we've heard of the bone story there is no mention of an apparition. ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 5 Feb 2000 17:53:59 EST From: Dave Bush Subject: IQ tests >From Ric > >Sounds like an IQ test. Like when the air traffic controller says >"Unidentified aircraft that just violated restricted airspace, please say >your N number." Or like when you're going thru the baggage check at your local friendly airport and the security personnel ask you if anyone has put anything in your baggage without your knowledge! Like you would KNOW if anything was put in your baggage WITHOUT your KNOWLEDGE? DUH! LTM Blue Skies Dave Bush ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 5 Feb 2000 17:57:01 EST From: Dave Bush Subject: Re: The Mystery of the Bottle >From Ric > >Like I said, it only works if Fred's dead and AE is totally round the bend >and hiding from discovery. Maybe the various factors which make it appear >that the castaway had not been dead all that long before the site was found >are illusory. Maybe not. I'm just trying to come up with a scenario that >fits what may be facts. it's certainly not worth being taken very seriously- >yet. FRED - DEAD? I was thinking about that. Remember that the island chief's wife said that she saw the spirit (which I can't spell) with two children? Could it be that they were more than an apparition and Fred and AE had children? If so, were those infant graves you found really native children? Were they tested to see if they were polynesian or european? Also, it is very easy to miss other people in a sparsely populated area by feet and not see or him them due to the noise from the waves, birds, wind, etc. Campfires - depends on where they were built and how big. Were they bonfires or small cooking fires. Certainly weren't used for warmth in the tropics, so did they even cook or have fires at night? As I have mentioned in a previous post, when searchers are looking for lost children in the woods, they often walk right past them without seeing them - and they are there specifically to find someone they know is missing. Someone not looking for someone might be even more prone to totally miss even signs they do see - dismissing them as belonging to something else. I don't know if AE/FN survived any length of time, but I do know that it is possible, but unlikely. But how many people have managed to live and thrive in unlikely circumstances. As you have stated, it was reported that there were dead birds and fish next to one of the skeletons. If the skeleton is there, why aren't the birds and fish skeletonized? Maybe someone else, still alive, but somewhat looney, still sits down to eat next to their one and only ally on that deserted island! So the dead birds and fish didn't belong to the skeleton, but to the deceased friend who is still alive! LTM, Blue Skies, Dave Bush #2200 (?) *************************************************************************** From Ric I had to go and shoot off my big mouth. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 7 Feb 2000 08:29:20 EST From: Margot Still Subject: Cats n' dogs Aaarrgghhhh a CAT person! (Actually I like cats.) Whatdya want to know about dogs eating birds? ************************************************************************** From Ric Being owned by a cat is not necessarilly the same thing as being a cat person. My dog questions are: Do dogs eat bird carrion? If given a choice between mammal carrion and bird carrion, do they have a preference? ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 7 Feb 2000 08:31:52 EST From: Alan Caldwell Subject: Re: LOP 157/337 << My opinion is that Noonan did not employ offset navigation in his attempt to find Howland. >> Ric, I suspect you are correct but I think it may have had more to do with his navigation than DF. The only comment I've seen on their DF attempts was that it either didn't work or there were problems with it. Coasting into Africa I recall (accurately I hope) there was a problem with it and then on the test hop out of Lae it didn't work and I think AE thought it was because she was too close in. In any case I believe FN had what he believed to be highly reliable fixes and if so he would have headed straight fot Howland. If they didn't see it he would have turned on the LOP and flown a few minutes (probably SE), long enough to shoot a quick sun line and had AE do a standard rate turn left or right to parallel course to the NE. The smart thing to have done is just that, to cover his target area and STILL be able to plot what they were doing so as to not get lost. CIRCLING would have been a navigation disaster. It's easy to compute what his turning radius would be at a given air speed to see how wide those tracks could have been. Even at 130K they would only be a mile or two apart depending on whether they used a 3 minute turn or a 1 1/2 minute turn. Somebody check that as it's off the top of my head. If, for example, they flew to the erroneous Howland position, turned right, flew for a few minutes and then turned LEFT to head NE you can see roughly how far east of Howland they might have been. Noonan might have then again turned to the east to 157=BA before working their way back to the west in the same manner. They should have erred to the east first so they would be between the sun and Howland working back to the west. On each leg FN could recheck his position if weather permitted. Sure sounds logical sitting here comfy in my home in the year 2000. Alan #2329 ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 7 Feb 2000 08:42:42 EST From: Randy Jacobson Subject: Re: Carbon dating One can date relatively early historical material with thermoluminescence, if the material has been out of the sunlight; with certain radioactive materials based upon lead and Uranium; Carbon 14 to Carbon 12 ratios with known calibration curves for the past 100 years, etc., etc., etc. Most of these have real problems with calibrations and assumptions. That is why historians and archeologists abound! ************************************************************************** From Ric Sounds like we'll just have to keep abounding. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 7 Feb 2000 08:59:52 EST From: Frank Westlake Subject: Lambrecht Photo of Gardner Is. Has the Lambrect photo been analyzed yet? In the copy I'm looking at there appears to be one of Lambrect's aircraft about 500 feet above the northwest corner of Gardner. This isn't the right position for either wreck and it actually appears to be airborne. I just finished reading nearly everything available on the web site and saw no reference to this object. If this is an aircraft it may answer the two questions "when was the photo taken" and "at what altitude did they fly?" Frank Westlake *************************************************************************** From Ric That's a flaw or a speck of dust, not an aircraft. It's way too big. The size of things on that island is very deceiving. An O3U-3 flying along the stretch of beach closest to the camera plane would be very hard to see. A person standing on that beach would be invisible. (the Lambrecht photo is at: http://www.tighar.org/Projects/Documents/Lambrecht_Photo.html) ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 7 Feb 2000 09:01:25 EST From: William Webster-Garman Subject: Re: The Mystery of the Bottle >...but in the two versions of the apparition story we've heard there > is no connection to the bone story and in the many versions we've heard of > the bone story there is no mention of an apparition. Which, of course, tends to reinforce the idea that the apparition story has at best a tenuous connection with the castaways (and reality). william 2243 ************************************************************************** From Ric Agreed. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 7 Feb 2000 09:39:03 EST From: William Webster-Garman Subject: Re: Hair > How much will a person's hair grow in (ballpark) two years? Depending on health, age, genetics, and other factors, on average, between 1/4 and 1/2 inch per month, which could yield 6-12 inches of hair in two years. On a woman who started with cropped hair like hers, this would make the hair approximately shoulder length-- not what I would readily interpret as being long hair on a woman, as described by another woman. william 2243 *************************************************************************** From Ric Mrs. Koata (via Laxton) describes her as "a tall fair woman with long dark hair falling to the ground about her." Tall and fair is good and if AE's hair was long it would probably look fairly dark, but this sounds more like Cousin It. Photos of Gilbertese women on Niku in 1944 show that most kept their hair pulled back tightly. One woman's hair is almost shoulder length. Clearly, Mrs. Koata's story as rendered by Laxton is very fanciful. The attendants and the prophecy make it sound very much like a vision of The Virgin Mary (Our Lady of the Scaevola?). The version told to Dirk Ballendorf by Erenite Kiron in the Solomons in 1995 (which we have on videotape) is much more matter-of-fact and simply says that there is a place on the island called "MooRAHB" (which may be the place sacred to Nei Manginibuka we've heard about called Niurabo) where a woman (not named) saw a female ghost (no mention of Nei Manganibuka) wearing a grass skirt and with a face that was very blank. Although ghosts ("anti" pronounced "ahns") were a big concern among the Gilbertese, this is the only ghost story we've heard about Nikumaroro. LTM, Ric ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 7 Feb 2000 09:43:01 EST From: William Webster-Garman Subject: Re: IQ tests Dave Bush wrote >Like you would KNOW if anything was put in >your baggage WITHOUT your KNOWLEDGE? Actually, they ask if you (the airline passenger) packed your own bags, if the bags have been in your control since you packed them, and if anyone asked you to carry anything on the plane for them-- all things that someone should be able to answer without telepathic ability . william 2243 ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 7 Feb 2000 09:44:13 EST From: Suzanne Subject: SSA Thanks to the Social Security Web Page www.ssa.gov I have the following information: FDR signs the Social Security Bill into Law August 14, 1935 Baltimore office for Record Keeping Opens November 9, 1936 First applications for benefits filed January, 1937 LTM, Suzanne ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 7 Feb 2000 09:49:46 EST From: Suzanne Subject: Re: Hair According to my handy Microsoft Encarta Encyclopedia in humans short hair grows at an average of 3/4 of an inch per month until it reaches a foot long. At that time the rate of growth is reduced by 1/2. In two years, assuming Amelia's was about 3 inches to start, she would have hair approximately 16.5 inches long. Below I am, as Sr. Alma Mary used to say. "showing my work". First year: .75 multiplied by 12 months = 9 inches. 9 + 3 = 12 inches at the end of the first year. Second year growing at half the rate 9 divided by 2 = 4.5 inches. 12 + 4.5 = 16.5 inches approximate total length of hair at the end of the second year. LTM who may or may not have had long hair, Suzanne *************************************************************************** From Ric I wonder how much age, climate and nutrition effect rate of hair growth? Probably not enough to make a huge difference. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 7 Feb 2000 09:55:10 EST From: David Subject: Re: Hair On Sat, 5 Feb 2000, Richard E. Gillespie wrote: > AE had pretty short hair when last seen in July 1937. How much will a > person's hair grow in (ballpark) two years? If I'm not mistaken, I thought I'd read somewhere that a person's hair grows about six inches per year, (admittedly, I can't quote the source off hand) which would mean that her hair might have been almost a foot longer than in the last known photos. Wouldn't that put it down to between the bottom of her shoulder blades or so? Next question is: If the chief's wife claimed that the stranger had "long hair", then does this potential length jive with the pacific islanders' definition of long hair, or is that still more on the medium end of things? Then again, even if she was alive, would her hair always grow normally the whole time, or would a potentially nutrient-depleted diet have caused it to ever slow down or stop growing altogether? Are there any medical types out there who can answer this one? Also, what about the colour of her hair (was it somewhat dark blonde, as I've always imagined?) and would the native woman have remembered the colour as unique from anything else she would likely have seen before? (I ask because it's always hard to tell from only black and white photos!) Of course, after two years without soap, her hair might have become somewhat darker and matted from grime. Then again, after lots of bright sunlight, it may have become bleached and even lighter than it had ever been before. What do people think of these possibilities? Finally, this somewhat outlandish idea of the infants' graves being somehow connected to AE has got me wondering: Shouldn't there be some paper record of for whom and when they were dug? Surely we could rule out a certain amount of ambiguity without having to apply for permission to exhume and forensically examine them? Just in case a likely sample of something (European children's bones, teeth from the 1996 site, etc.) should ever turn up in future, do we have any way of obtaining a known sample of AE's DNA for comparison? (Lock of hair, baby teeth in a jar, etc.) LTM, (Who keeps her hair trimmed, but doesn't keep the trimmings!) David :-) *************************************************************************** From Ric The rate-of-hair-growth question has been answered quite precisely by Suzanne. We know of no paper records of deaths and burials on Niku. Wish we did. A sample of Earhart's mitochondrial DNA should (in theory) be easily obtainable from living female relatives. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 7 Feb 2000 09:57:08 EST From: Frank Westlake Subject: Itasca's Smoke Screen I remember reading something many years ago about the use of smoke screens and smoke screen tactics during WWII. It's been so long that I may be confusing the memory with something else, but I recall that smoke screens were created with a device that was placed on the fantail of a ship. I don't recall that this device was very large or complex, I think it was shorter than knee-high and used oil to create a smoky mist. Does anyone else have recollections of such a device? Did it exist prior to WWII? Do the Itasca's logs show that their smoke originated from their boilers, or could it have originated from such a device? Frank Westlake ************************************************************************** From Ric You're talking about a Smoke Generator. There is no indication that Itasca had one. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 7 Feb 2000 10:11:03 EST From: Jim W. Subject: Search Radar NASA is testing a synthetic aperture radar for searches. Their "engineers use a Douglas DC-8 with synthetic aperture radar (large panels on side of aircraft) that will search large areas through cloud cover, at night, and through vegetation." "NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center is working on a "beaconless" search-and-rescue aircraft equipped with synthetic aperture radar. The system could be used to find aircraft that crash on land. The advantage to radar is that it can be used through cloud cover, at night, and through vegetation. The technology successfully located a crash site in a remote region of Montana last year after rescuers had called off search efforts. To test the new method, simulated airplane wreckage sites have been created in North Carolina, Maine, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Alaska, and Oregon. Wreckage from a long-lost aircraft in Montana was found during testing." The technology was not ready for deployment as of early last fall. When this radar is ready for use it may have practical application for radar mapping Niku. Although it is not described as ground penetrating radar, test results indicate it works well in vegetation. Maybe it would save quite a lot of time, as well as expense, by better detailing and locating potential sites for ground archaeological search. Of course it would be expensive to use initially but the cost savings through a more specific and efficient ground search may be the result. Sure would be nice if the radar system tests out well and is reasonably cost effective. Jim W. ************************************************************************** From Ric We struggled with this for a long time and it always comes down to a question of resolution. The big impetus to develop technology that will find downed aircraft is, of course, centered around SAR operations - saving lives. This naturally assumes that most of the aircraft will be present - even if in kit format. In archaeological applications we're usually looking for relatively small objects. The most promising (but still not avaialble to us) technology now being developed is airborne synthetic aperture radar designed to help map minefields. LTM, Ric ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 7 Feb 2000 10:20:12 EST From: Ross Devitt Subject: Climate Over the period of the 5 months, what was the average weather like? Dry? Humid? Variable? Might be interesting to know... RossD ************************************************************************** From Ric I'm not sure which 5 months you mean. 1938 saw one of the worst droughts the Phoenix Group ever experienced. When Maude and Bevington visited Niku in October of 1937 the place was quite lush. When Maude returned with the first colonists in December of 1938 he was appalled at how withered and dry the island had become. Anyone trying to survive on the island during that period would have a tough time. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 7 Feb 2000 10:27:47 EST From: Frank Westlake Subject: Various Variation Randy Jacobson wrote: "Noonan knows that they can only afford to run up the line (337) for a little way and he probably has AE fly that course (348 magnetic) while she tries to use the loop. By the time AE makes the final transmission heard by Itasca at 2013GMT, Noonan has had her reverse course to 168 magnetic." I believe the magnetic courses would be 332/132. I found a section of a digitized navigation chart covering Howland and the compass rose indicates that the variation was 10°30'E in 1986 and that the annual decrease is 5'. I calculate (1986-1937)*5'+10°30'E as 14°35'E. So the magnetic courses would be 157°T-14°35'=142°25'M and 337°T-14°35'=332°25'M. Frank Westlake *************************************************************************** From Ric Well, I disagree with both of ya. The charts prepared for Earhart's first world flight attempt by Clarence Williams show that he used a variation of 9 degrees East which would make it 346 and 166. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 7 Feb 2000 10:29:12 EST From: Dave Bush Subject: Re: Hair Well, how accurate was the report on the length of the hair? I remember when I went on my first deer hunt and I got the deer in my sights. I would have sworn that it had a big rack, but it was a first year buck - tiny pinpoint horns, not a big rack. How long was the hair of the person or the appartion - we will never know for sure, even if an original drawing done from the person's memory is found. LTM, Blue Skies, Dave Bush ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 7 Feb 2000 10:31:15 EST From: Dave Bush Subject: Re: Carbon dating >From Ric > >Thanks Ken. Oh well. Hey, anybody ever wonder what really happened to >Helen of Troy? Yeah, she moved to Montana and that's where we got Helen o' Montana. LTM - Love to Montana (the state, not the mini-van) Blue Skies Dave Bush ************************************************************************* From Ric Ask a stupid question....... ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 7 Feb 2000 10:44:51 EST From: Kenton Spading Subject: Two Shoe Sizes The following appeared recently on the Forum: >We do know that Earhart's feet were quite narrow. But what of the >discrepancy between Gallagher's "probably size 10" and Kilts' "size nine >narrow"?... > >...Kilts' information about the shoe came from his informant. The > >fact that his informant's version of the shoe size is different from >Gallagher's is interesting and seems to indicate that there was some >disagreement even among the people on the island as to the shoes probable >size, but not its gender. I think there are two apparent sources for reported the shoe sizes 1) Gallagher's field estimate [obviously] and 2) the results of a detailed analysis that was most likely done in Fiji. Lets look at this a little closer. Gallagher examines the shoe artifact(s) on Gardner Island in the later part of 1940 and makes a field estimate of the size..... quoting Gallagher in part ".......probably size 10" [British Size 10]. The obvious reference tool for his estimate would have been his own shoes. He probably compared the shoes he was wearing to the remains of the shoe artifact(s) and made his best guess. It would have been easy for him to have been off by a half size or so even if the shoe(s) was in very good condition (which it seems it wasn't). In May 1941, Gallagher returns to the headquarters office in Fiji (WPHC) where the artifacts now reside. We know from the Fiji WPHC documents that various people (including Gallagher) undoubtedly examined the artifacts in some detail in Fiji. It is likely that the officials in Fiji made an attempt to nail down the size of the shoe from which Gallagher made his field estimate. The study of the artifacts in Fiji is most likely the time at which the "Size 9 Narrow, American Kind" determination was made. Gallagher and Dr. Macpherson then return to Gardner in September of 1941 and deliver the results of the analysis of the bones and artifacts (including the shoes) to the very curious natives. They tell the natives the shoe appeared to be an American kind, size 9 narrow. That information is subsequently passed from the informant to Kilts. I don't think there was any disagreement amongst the people on the island as to the shoe size. They are simply relating what Gallagher and/or Macpherson have told them. The size estimate evolves over time as the analysis moves from a field estimate to a more rigorous examination in Fiji and the subsequent return of the infomation to Gardner in Sept. of 1941. LTM Kenton Spading ************************************************************************** From Ric Sounds like a reasonable hypothesis. What puzzles (or perhaps disappoints) me is how Gallagher caves in and follows the party line once he is back in Fiji. On July 3, 1941 (two days after Dr. Steenson records his comments about the shoe parts and corks with brass chains) Gallagher writes a note to the file: "The Secretary, I have read the contents of this file with great interest. It does look as if the skeleton was that of some unfortunate native castaway and the sextant box and other curious articles found nearby the remains are quite possibly a few of his precious possessions which he managed to save. 2. There was no evidence of any attempt to dig a well and the wretched man presumably died of thirst. Less than two miles away there is a a small grove of coconut trees which would have been sufficient to keep him alive if he had only found it. He was separated from those trees, however, by an inpenetrable (sic)belt of bush. GBG" Aw c'mom Irish! An unfortunate native castaway collecting precious corks with brass chains and bits of shoe soles? LTM, Ric ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 7 Feb 2000 10:47:10 EST From: Dan Postellon Subject: Re: Aeroplane Monthly << Next time these guys can go out and buy their copies themselves. >> Herman, I also apologize. I just couldn't resist Ameba Earhart. Dan Postellon 32263 ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 7 Feb 2000 10:50:07 EST From: Phil Tanner Subject: Official Website of the Republic of the Howland and Baker Islands Try this link for an elaborate fantasy based on an "alternate history" for Howland and Baker. Apparently the genre is "a way of exploring what might have happened if some aspect of the past had turned out differently". The "fictional timeline" is predicated on a successful Earhart flight prompting a fictional Texas billionaire to buy and colonize the island post-war, the author told New Zealand radio. Harmless fun, I suppose. http://www.metro2000.net/~stabbott/Visithowlandbaker.htm <> ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 7 Feb 2000 11:22:20 EST From: Dennis McGee Subject: Hair growth Ric said: AE had pretty short hair when last seen in July 1937. How much will a person's hair grow in (ballpark) two years? Personal experience: I don't know how much it would grow in a ballpark (syntactical problem here?) but during normal indoor and outdoor activity my near-G.I. hair cut grew out to about 1-2 inches below my shoulders between Aug. 1972 and Dec. 1974, when I had to get it trimmed for a (UGH!) job interview. Since then it has gotten even shorter and at times disappeared all together. LTM, who has good hair genes Dennis O. McGee #0149CE ************************************************************************* From Ric Yeah, there was a real epidemic of hair growth in those years. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 7 Feb 2000 11:35:35 EST From: Chris Kennedy Subject: Re: Two Shoe Sizes Ric, was Gallagher's "note to the file" that you mention a note that he basically stuck in the file to close the matter intending for no one in particular to read except if they read the file, or was it actually a note meant to be sent to someone ("To the Secretary....")? ************************************************************************* From Ric The way the system worked was that when a matter worthy of a file (for example, the discovery of human remains on Gardner Island) came up, a file was started. In the front of the file was a chronological diary of handwritten, and sometimes typed, notations by various people who looked at the file and wished to comment on something. Telegrams and letters that came in, or copies of correspondence that was sent out referring to the subject of the file were put in the file and "logged in" on the diary. Gallagher's note of July 3rd, 1941 was a hand-printed entry in the diary. Anyone subsequently reviewing the file would be able to read his note, although it was specifically addressed to The Secretary (Vaskess). It was his way of officially stating his opinion. Of course, very few people had acces to this file. LTM, Ric ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 7 Feb 2000 11:38:01 EST From: Margot Still Subject: Re: Cats n' dogs Yes, dogs will eat carrion, but only very hungry dogs. Most dogs will roll in it for the scent. Having trained Labrador retrievers I can tell you that well fed dogs will not eat the birds they retrieve, but they will chomp or "mouth" the bird, if they have not been properly trained, destroying it for purposes of mounting it or saving it for your own table. Dogs that are desperate for something to eat will eat a bird, but will shake it fiercely in an attempt to rid it of feathers. They will eat it almost in its entirety, including bones, but will not eat feathers if they can avoid it. I cannot answer the question on preference at this time. I'll have to poll my dogs and get back to you. LTM (who also owns a Lab) MStill 2332 ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 7 Feb 2000 18:18:16 EST From: Margot Still Subject: Rate of hair growth Actually, you would be suprised. If you eat a diet high in protein, your hair grows faster, is much thicker, and is much healthier. This is also true of your fingernails. ************************************************************************** From Ric How about a diet of Benedictine, seabirds, turtles and clams? ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 7 Feb 2000 18:23:20 EST From: Frank Westlake Subject: Re: Lambrecht Photo of Gardner Is. Thank you. I'm not convinced because the dot doesn't appear to be in the foreground as do other visible defects, but I guess I'll have to accept your statement. Frank Westlake ************************************************************************** From Ric I'm sure that if you could see an actual print of the photo you'd feel better. The dot is quite clearly on the surface of the neg. The internet is a wonderful means of mass communication, but it does have its limitations. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 7 Feb 2000 18:29:18 EST From: Jon Watson Subject: Re: Lambrecht Photo of Gardner Is. If the spot is actually above the beach, then I agree, it's way to far away to be another plane. It wouldn't be a speck of dust, though, because that would show up as a white spot, not dark. It could be another aircraft a lot closer to the camera, though, and at a higher altitude. We have no way of telling how far away the object really is; if it really is an object... Still could be a flaw. ltm jon 2266 ************************************************************************** From Ric You'll have to trust me on one this one guys. It's just a big ol' round black dot. I would LOVE for it to be something else, but it ain't. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 7 Feb 2000 18:37:47 EST From: Jon Watson Subject: Re: Itasca's Smoke Screen I'm still researching this, but USCG museum advises me that the Lake Class cutters, of which Itasca was one, were not equipped with smoke generators when they were built. They advise it could have had one added later, but I have not pursued this yet through the archives. ltm, jon 2266 *************************************************************************** From Ric I can't imagine why they would have smoke generators. Smoke screens are a naval defensive tool. At that time the Coast Guard was part of the Treasury Department and was most often involved in anti-smuggling operations. In the Pacific, Itasca was supporting Dept. of Interior "colonizing" activities which were aimed at enhancing American commercial interests. Only much later during WWII did the Navy come under the War Department and engage in naval-type operations. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 7 Feb 2000 18:48:30 EST From: Frank Westlake Subject: Re: Various Variation that would show if the variation varied significantly between Lae and Howland? >From Ric > >Well, I disagree with both of ya. The charts prepared for Earhart's >first world flight attempt by Clarence Williams show that he used a >variation of 9 degrees East which would make it 346 and 166. Going from True to Magnetic you subtract East, so a variation of 9°E makes the courses 328/148. Why did he use a variation of 9°E when a 1986 chart of the area indicates that it would have been 14°35'E? Which is correct? You say "The charts ... show that he used a variation of 9 degrees East...." Was that a hand written notation or was that the variation indicated for the chart? Does anyone have a chart or charts that would show if the variation varied significantly between Lae and Howland? I spend several hours on the Internet looking for charts, new or old, of that area of the Pacific with no success. Frank Westlake *************************************************************************** From Ric <> Ooops. You're right. <> Because he didn't see the 1986 chart? Any chance that was 5" of change, not 5'? <> Clarence Williams' charts were hand-drawn sketch maps specifically for AE's use. <> Williams' chart for the Howland/Lae leg shows 9 degrees Variation near Howland, 7.5 degrees near the midpoint, and 6 degrees near Lae. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 7 Feb 2000 19:56:27 EST From: Ron Bright Subject: AE's voice I hate to dwell on a subject but your answers to the sound of Amelia's voice during her last transmission are contradictory.I think it is an important clue on what was going on inside the cabin and the decisions made by AE and FN. In my characterizaton of Amelia's voice during the 0843 transmission (in a posting on 28 Jan )I said in essence she was yelling frantically,almost incoherently into the mike. You replied that she was not "yelling frantically and incoherently..." But in the very next sentence you quote Capt Thompson describing her voice as "hurried,frantic...not complete...and that toward the end Earhart talked so rapidly as to be almost incoherent." You believe that Capt Thompson was biased but others in the radio room heard the same message-one of which was Leo Bellarts. And for some reason you stated that Chief Bellarts "mentioned nothing about the way Earhart"s voice sounded in Elgen Longs interview in l973. Not so. After my interview of Leo Bellarts Jr., indicating his recollection of his dad's description was near "hysterical" but he defered to his father 's description in l973 and you quoted Long interview: "...but I'll tell you,you could hear her voice all over the shack and even outside the shack (pretty loud)...real lound and clear. I mean it...we heard her quite a few times... but that last one, I'm telling you, it sounded as if she would have broken out in a scream...she was about ready to break into tears and go into hysterics...thats exactly the way I'd describe her voice now. I'll never forget it." That is powerful first hand testimony you must respect. Now I submit that that kind of tenor and emotion to AE's voice certainly suggested an emergency and deductively indicative of her perilous situation at 0844- lost, looking for Howland ,gas running low,and now forced into the decision of continuing to look for lHowland or begin a contingency plan. Whether she then calmly regained her composure and headed for a contingency landing area southeast in the Phoenix Is on that LOP and crashing on or near NIKU is,of course, the mystery TIGHAR is trying to unravel. For you airplance crash investigators, voice analysis and content,etc, must be quite valuable in determining aspects of a pilots situation and behavior. Thompson and Bellart, the two reporters, and others in that radio room are the next best think to a cockpit recorder. (By the way were any of her transmissions recorded?) Are any of the reporters (AP and UP) releases available ? LTM Ron Bright *************************************************************************** From Ric I was obviously mistaken when I originally said that Bellarts mentioned nothing about the way Earhart"s voice sounded in Elgen Long's interview in l973. It's a very long interview and the subjects covered skip around quite a bit. I simply missed the reference the first time I looked for one. Okay, so the issue at hand is: What primary source, contemporaneous evidence is there which describes how Earhart's voice sounded during the last transmission heard by Itasca? First question - What primary, contemporaneous sources are there which describe what happened that morning? Well, the most contemporaneous, virtually real-time sources are the two radio logs kept aboard the Itasca and the log kept by Ciprianni on Howland. None of them mention anything about the quality of her voice except that the later transmissions were heard at Strength 5. The next closest sources are the transmissions sent out by Itasca informing headquarters about what happened. None of those mention anything about how her voice sounded. The first reference I could find was by the United Press reporter aboard Itasca who filed his report at 15:45 Hawaii Standard Time on July 2nd after the search was well underway. He said that in her last message "her voice sounded very tired, anxious, almost breaking." The other two reporters who filed stories earlier made no mention of how her voice sounded. Bottom line: The first mention of Earhart's voice is by a newspaper reporter in a story filed many hours later. Clearly, Earhart's perceived emotional state was not deemed worthy of mention by official sources at the time of the disappearance. As for Bellarts' 1973 story being "powerful first hand testimony", it's anecdote - nothing more, nothing less - and no more worthy of respect than any other reminiscence. It's an old memory, colored by many years of telling and retelling. Maybe it's accurate, maybe it's not. LTM, Ric ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 8 Feb 2000 08:41:20 EST From: Frank Westlake Subject: Re: Lambrecht Photo of Gardner Is. >From Ric >I'm sure that if you could see an actual print of the photo you'd feel >better. Maybe so. I resampled the image and sharpened it quite a bit and the dot turned into a blur with this in the middle of it (without the breaks in construction): | ----|---- ----|---- | (fixed pitch font required) It looks like a bi-wing aircraft to me, but I suppose it could be just a product of the enhancement. I have no experience it this area. Frank Westlake ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 8 Feb 2000 08:48:23 EST From: Alan Caldwell Subject: Re: Various Variation Ric, for what it is worth I will repost the note I received from the Canadian government site regarding variation at Howland in 1937. I recognize that what it actually was or even what it now computes to have been does not necessarily equate to what was used by FN. ************************ Alan, The magnetic declination at your coordinates in 1937 was 9° 29' E. For comparison, the current declination is 10° 02' E, so there hasn't been much of a change. Regards Larry Newitt ****************************** Alan #2329 ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 8 Feb 2000 08:49:47 EST From: Randy Jacobson Subject: Re: Various Variation that would show if the variation varied Magnetic variations are variable! Hahaha! They are actually due to fluctuations in the Earth's fluid core, and slowly change. Every decade (at the xxx0 year), a new map is created, and changes/year are provided to describe the past decade, and hopefully into the future. One should never go past ten years for magnetic variation projections. I have access to a true 1937 map, not based upon the 1930 measurements, and Williams' values were correct. Map provided in a book published by the Carnegie Institute of Terrestial Magnetism. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 8 Feb 2000 08:51:29 EST From: William Webster-Garman Subject: Re: Rate of hair growth It is true that diet and environment (including stress), as well as age and physical health, have a big impact on hair growth. I don't think one can get terribly precise in a hair growth estimate for a castaway on Gardner in the late 30s (too many variables), other than to say that in two years the longest the hair would have grown, for someone starting with hair the length of AE's, would have been around shoulder length. william 2243 ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 8 Feb 2000 09:02:41 EST From: Randy Jacobson Subject: Irish Was Gerald Gallagher ever referred to as "Irish" other than by members of TIGHAR or this forum? Inquiring minds wish to know... Randy Jacobson ************************************************************************** From Ric Nicknames were apparently very much the thing in the Western Pacific High Commission. Gerald Gallagher was known among his fellow Colonial Service officers as "Irish." (He even signed informal notes that way.) Dr. Duncan MacPherson was "Jock." Eric Bevington was "Erb" (his initials). Patrick MacDonald was "Paddy." Ian Thomson was "Mungo." etc. etc. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 8 Feb 2000 09:06:40 EST From: Frank Westlake Subject: Re: Variation From Ric: >Because he didn't see the 1986 chart? Did I word it poorly? (From Ric: No. I was just being a smartass. Sorry) From Ric: >Any chance that was 5" of change, not 5'? From Frank: There's a slim chance. I don't have access to a paper chart so I'm using a digitized portion available at the University of Texas . The rose on the chart of Howland reads ANNUAL DECREASE 5 but the chart of Baker reads ANNUAL DECREASE 5'. Since it's a digitized copy it could have easily been altered. Can anyone here with a paper chart confirm 5'? If Noonan used a variation of 9'E when it was actually, let's say 14°35'E as I calculate it, then his actual course would've been 5° south of what he thought he was flying. Somebody please check that, I've been staring at numbers too long today. It's interesting that the axis of Howland is oriented very nearly on the line 337/157. I'm working out a formula to determine what the visible profile would be at various distances and altitudes on that line. A rough guess is that it would appear as long as it is wide. Frank Westlake ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 8 Feb 2000 09:07:54 EST From: Ty Sundstrom Subject: Re: Various Variation Aviation memorabilia collector/dealer Jon Aldrich of Groveland, California, I believe may have the vintage charts you are looking for. I saw prewar charts of the Pacific in his collection when I was looking for a few vintage items of Pacific Rim origin for a client from Hong Kong some time back. I also know that the variation changes with time as can be witnessed by charts California for the last sixty years that I have. Ty N. Sundstrom ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 8 Feb 2000 09:14:26 EST From: Andrew McKenna Subject: Rug Rats of Niku <> TIGHAR meets the Blue Lagoon. amck ************************************************************************* From Ric Sounds like a sequel to Jane Mendelsohn's immortal work "I Was Amelia Earhart." Maybe call it. "Nutiran, Aukeraime, and South Park." ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 8 Feb 2000 10:37:19 EST From: Hugh Grahama Subject: Was Amelia tearful? ------Let me see, we are discussing how long AE's hair would be after two years' hiding on Niku, because two natives have recounted seeing an apparition of a fair, long-haired lady, yet we are questioning what two trained observers(Bellarts & UP reporter) heard on the Itasca's radio which is a predictably apprehensive AE. What is wrong with this story? LTM(who thinks a military radio operator's anecdote is more reliable than natives' ghost stories), HAG 2201. ************************************************************************** From Ric You raise a point that is fundamental to the investigative process. We start from the premise that all anecdote is suspect because the human memory is fallible. A military radio operator's anecdote is NOT automatically more reliable than natives' ghost stories. We examine all recollections to see if there is hard evidence to corroborate them, recognizing that culture predjudices inevitably color a person's observations and impressions. A Gilbertese colonist on Gardner Island is going to relate an unusual event to preconceived notions about how the world works (i.e. ghosts are a fact of life). We inquire about how fast hair grows in order to try to assess a possible alternative explanation. A Coast Guardsman aboard Itasca in 1937 is, likewise, going to relate an unusual event to preconceived notions he has about how the world works (i.e. women get panicky). We look at the available sources and assess Earhart's known actions in order to try to assess a possible alternative explanation. In the first case, we find that the known rate of human hair growth makes it virtually impossible for Earhart's hair to have reached the length described in Laxton's version of the ghost story. Either his version of the story is embellished or it was not Amelia. In the second case, the fact that Earhart's radio transmission was made at her scheduled time and the reported content of the message seems entirely rational, plus the fact that allegatons about her emotional state apparently did not become part of the story until later, tend to make that part of the tale no more beleivable than Mrs. Koata actually seeing Nei Manganibuka. LTM, Ric ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 8 Feb 2000 10:39:09 EST From: Ross Devitt Subject: Re: LOP 157/337 I haven't been in a position to do my little Island spotting check (crystal clear skies first thing in the morning) yet, but I did have an interesting flight a week ago. We had to fly 20 miles out to an island, 30 miles to another then 50 miles back over water. There is an island on the way back about the size of Howland, but much higher. Cloud cover was about 2/8 and when we left the ground the sky looked beautifully clear. Once in the air though, the light haze and the low angle of the sun ahead of us meant that at sea the Island didn't come into view until we were almost on it. At 1500 feet a 3 mile wide (from our approach angle) island was invisible (partly below the horizon)until we got to around 20 miles. This intrigues me, so as soon as I can justify the time I'll steal one of the planes and have a look on a clear morning. It's pretty much irrelevant, but I for one would like to know just how far you can pick an island the size of Howland in really clear conditions. That said, the Itasca report was that 30% of the sky was covered by cloud. I just went out and looked at 30% cloud cover - it's a heck of a lot of white bits! RossD ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 8 Feb 2000 10:40:20 EST From: Suzanne Subject: Re: fastest rate of hair growth In the same Encarta Encyclopedia article on hair it stated that the fastest rate of hair growth occurs in women 16-24 years old. It didn't explain why. LTM Suzanne ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 8 Feb 2000 10:41:07 EST From: Ross Devitt Subject: Re: Climate Sorry, the question was to John Dipi in reply to his post about being 5 months on Canton. RossD ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 8 Feb 2000 10:44:20 EST From: Ross Devitt Subject: Re: Various Variation The variation (including the annual change) on the chart is relevant to that specific chart. The variation will always be about 9deg E (or whatever) on a giver chart for the area. The only time the annual change is used is if you are using a chart from 1937 to navigate in 1986 or 2000. In that case you'll need to calculate the difference over the years. If you are using a recent chart, then you'll still be working off the declared variation because the grid on the chart will be aligned for the variation each time the chart is updated. RossD *************************************************************************** From Ric I think we all understand that part. The question is why the back-calculated variation Frank Westlake did from a 1986 chart differs so much from what seems to have been the case in 1937. The answer, apparently, is that variation varies. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 8 Feb 2000 11:04:12 EST From: William Webster-Garman Subject: Amelia's voice Ric mentioned, > The first reference I could find was by the United Press > reporter aboard Itasca who filed his report at 15:45 Hawaii Standard Time on > July 2nd after the search was well underway. He said that in her last > message "her voice sounded very tired, anxious, almost breaking." Subjective descriptions by 19th and 20th century journalists are notoriously unreliable. Newspaper and wire service accounts from the time of an historical event are usually somewhat accurate about the broadest facts ("City Hotel ravaged by fire"), but frequently distorted or simply wrong in the details ("12 injured as terrified guests gather in street to watch conflagration, faulty wiring in linen closet sparked blaze"). To gain an appreciation for this, go to your local public library's newspaper microfiche section, pick a random date before, say, 1960, and read the entire first section of a large metropolitan daily. The experience will probably surprise you, and you'll learn scads of interesting cultural history from the most unobjective elements of the newspaper-- the ads. william 2243 ************************************************************************* From Ric The stories filed by the reporters aboard Itasca contain numerous factual errors. It's really very instructive to plow through the progression of messages sent from the Itasca and then read the official reports prepared after the search failed. You can watch the mood change from hope, to despair, to "Hey, man. It ain't our fault." ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 8 Feb 2000 11:21:34 EST From: Ross Devitt Subject: Re: Hair growth Does this mean all forum members who are not current financial members of TIGHAR will be required to participate in a 2 year hair growth experiment starting on 2nd July 2000 ?? RossD ************************************************************************* From Ric No. We'll ask Tom King to conduct that experiment. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 8 Feb 2000 11:30:31 EST From: Tom King Subject: Re: The Mystery of the Bottle Before we all go too far around the bend with the bottle and the living castaway hypothesis, just a couple of thoughts: 1. I suspect that Koata took the bottle because he wanted a bottle for something and it was a nice bottle. 2. The fact that Gallagher mentions "birds," not "bird bones," doesn't mean the birds weren't reduced to bones; it may just reflect the exigencies of telegraphic communication. 3. The story by Kilts' informant that the bottle was full of water could easily reflect an assumption on the part of the informant about why the bottle was with the skeleton. We really have no way of knowing whether the bottle had anything in it or not. 4. We still don't know what besides dogs and pigs might have scattered the bones, but crabs remain prime suspects. I think we could go very, very far afield speculating about nutsoid castaways on Niku. LTM Tom King ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 8 Feb 2000 11:33:07 EST From: Don Neumann Subject: No recording of messages Don't believe I've ever read that any of AE's radio messages was 'recorded' or if they even had any recording equipment available on the Itaska. Have read some conflicting versions of whether or not AE's messages were broadcast over a loudspeaker so others, than the radio operator, could hear her. Don Neumann *************************************************************************** From Ric Nothing was "recorded." Earhart's early transmissions were heard only on earphones by the operator on duty. At some point later on her voice was put over the speakers. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 8 Feb 2000 11:34:08 EST From: Tom King Subject: Re: The Mystery of the Bottle Ric says of the surviving castaways hypothesis: >it's certainly not worth being taken very seriously That's Manganibuka's truth. LTM Tom King ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 8 Feb 2000 11:35:24 EST From: Don Neumann Subject: Sunset at Lae Could anyone on the Forum inform me where I could determine the time of sunset at Lae on the date AE/FN took off for Howland? Thanks for your help, Don Neumann ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 8 Feb 2000 11:43:56 EST From: Tom King Subject: Re: The Mystery of the Bottle I think William's interpretation of the Nei Manganibuka story is right on the money -- though personally I wouldn't discount the notion that Nei Anna actually DID see the ancestress herself. But that's another matter entirely. Just one small correction on an obscure point: "Teng" is simply a respectful term signifying that the person referred to is a male -- like "Mister" in English. So "Teng" (or "Tem," or "Ten") Koata is Koata, not Teng. LTM Tom King ************************************************************************** From Ric Just so I'm clear on this.... You feel that the possibility of a surviving but whacko castaway is not worth serious consideration but you wouldn't discount the notion that Koata's wife actually saw Nei Manganibuka. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 8 Feb 2000 11:57:25 EST From: Tom King Subject: Re: Hair Incidentally, just as "Teng" is the equivalent of "Mr.," "Nei" is the equivalent of "Ms." LTMs TK ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 8 Feb 2000 12:44:33 EST From: Tom King Subject: Re: Hair Ric, Ballendorf's written account of Erenite Kiron differs from your rendition. On page 11B of Ballendorf's report, he has Teng Erenite, when asked about the bones, saying: "I have heard the others talk about the bones that were found on the island, but I don't know anything about them. I never saw them. But I did see a ghost once on the beach near the lagoon. The ghost was that of a woman without a face. She came right up to me and I saw her. I told my mother about it, and other people. I saw this ghost only once." Teng Erenite was something over 60 years old when Ballendorf interviewed him in February '96. LTM Tom King *************************************************************************** From Ric Unfortunately, much of Ballendorf's written account differs from the videotape his associate made of the interviews he describes. Erenite Kiron is a Nei, not a Teng. She was interviewed in December 1995. She did not say that she had heard others talk about the bones. In spite of numerous leading questions from Ballendorf she insisted that she had no knowledge of the bone story. She did not say that she saw the ghost on the beach near the lagoon. In fact, when asked specifically if she had ever seen the ghost herself she replied, "No. A woman who saw the ghost told me about it." She said nothing about telling her mother anything. Her attempt to describe the ghost's face was apparently difficult to translate. She passed her hand over her face and Ballendorf asked if the ghost had no face. She said, "No, but up close the face was blank." There was no mention of long hair but the ghost was said to be female with light skin, but not necessarily a white person. No mention of Nei Manganibuka or children or a maneaba. She did say that the ghost was wearing a red shirt and a grass skirt. She said that this sighting occurred at a place the translator called "mooRAHB" but when she says it it sunds to me more like "nooRAHB." Risasi Finikaso, whom we interviewed on Funafuti in 1997, was born and raised on Nikumaroro in the 1950s. She told us that there is a place on Nikumaroro (she didn't know where) that was said to be sacred to Nei Manganibuka and was called Niurabo. LTM Ric ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 8 Feb 2000 12:46:53 EST From: Tom King Subject: Re: Two Shoe Sizes The only problem I have with Kenton's scenario is the notion of the colonists being deeply interested in shoe size, and Gallagher and Macpherson, in the midst of the latter's unsuccessful operation on the former and the former's death, going into this kind of detail with them. It just doesn't seem plausible. As for Gallagher's "caving in" -- GBG was nothing if not a devoted and patriotic civil servant, he was tremendously devoted to the PISS, the situation with the U.S. in the months and years preceding his death was very complicated, and he was getting heavily involved in preparations for war. I can't imagine him NOT going along with the "party line" on a matter as peripheral to his concerns as the identity of the dead person on Niku. LTM TKing ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 8 Feb 2000 12:56:58 EST From: Alan Caldwell Subject: Re: Earhart's voice Ric, obviously no one actually knows how Amelia sounded during her last known transmission but the content of the transmission does not indicate hysteria. Her last few messages were matter of fact. There was no call of mayday, no warning of an imminent danger. She may well have been tired, upset, frustrated and anxious but the recorded words of her transmissions do not indicate a hysterical nearly crying woman to me. Alan #2329 ************************************************************************* From Ric Right on. For example, she did not say, "Why doesn't someone answer?" She did say, "Have been unable to reach you by radio." She did not say, "We're going down!" She did say, "We are on the line 157 337..." ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 8 Feb 2000 12:59:15 EST From: Margot Still Subject: Re: fastest rate of hair growth << 16 to 24>> The reason for peak hair growth rate at this time is because of peak estrogen production at this time. MStill 2332 ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 8 Feb 2000 13:01:34 EST From: Tom King Subject: Re: The Mystery of the Bottle Ric asks: >Just so I'm clear on this.... >You feel that the possibility of a surviving but whacko castaway is not worth >serious consideration but you wouldn't discount the notion that Koata's wife >actually saw Nei Manganibuka. That's right. The whacko castaway "hypothesis" exists in our Euroamerican frame of reference, our world view, and has to be judged in terms of our versions of truth, proof, etc. It ought to be efficiently testable. The actual meeting with Nei Manganibuka exists in a traditional I Kiribati frame of reference, and is subject to its own set of rules; it's inappropriate to impose our own on it. LTM Tom King ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 8 Feb 2000 13:03:02 EST From: Tom King Subject: "preventer" Recalling that Noonan said he carried a nautical sextant in addition to a bubble octant as a "preventer," in starting a memorial re-read of the works of the late and much lamented Patrick O'Brian, author of the world's greatest set of sea stories, I noted with interest the following on page 98 of his first such novel, "Master and Commander" -- (Speaking of the foremast on a brig): "It is supported by shrouds on either side -- three pair of a side -- and it is stayed for'ard by the forestay running down to the bowsprit; and the other rope running parallel with the forestay is the preventer-stay, in case it breaks." So it appears that in nautical lingo -- of which O'Brian was a past (unfortunately) master (and commander), a preventer is a backup in case something one relies upon goes bad. LTM Tom King ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 8 Feb 2000 17:43:28 EST From: Chris Kennedy Subject: Re: "preventer" Recall, also, Tom, that Noonan was in the merchant marine so could have been familiar with the term "preventer" as a term of art. --Chris ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 8 Feb 2000 18:16:38 EST From: Tom King Subject: Enerite Ric wrote: <> Ah, well, another good example of the importance of primary vs. secondary sources, even when the secondary source is the guy who collected the information. TK ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 8 Feb 2000 18:18:17 EST From: Frank Westlake Subject: Visible Length of Howland From Altitude On the 1986 chart I measure Howland at 1.4NM x 0.55NM. On the line 337/157 the apparent length will be roughly as indicated in the following chart: DISTANCE ALTITUDE 30NM 40NM 80NM 1000' 6.7' OTH OTH 8000' 276' 191' 34' 10000' 352' 249' 63' 12000' 429' 307' 93' Visible length in feet OTH=Over the horizon So at 1000' and 30NM Howland would appear to be 6.7' x 3342'. I imagine it would blend in very easily with the horizon. I don't see how this data is of anymore use than as a curiosity but the math follows for anyone interested. R=3443.92NM (Earth equatorial radius) A=Altitude in NM (NM=FT/6076.12) D=Distance along earth's surface from near end of flat island in NM L=Length of island along axis of perspective in NM N=sqrt(R^2+(R+A)^2-2*R*(R+A)*cos(D/R)) (distance to near end) F=sqrt(R^2+(R+A)^2-2*R*(R+A)*cos((D+L)/R)) (distance to far end) P=sqrt(N*(L^2-N^2+2N*F-F^2)/F) (length of visible profile in NM) Frank Westlake ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 8 Feb 2000 18:25:36 EST From: Frank Westlake Subject: Lae Radio Logs Somewhere along the line I read a comment, which I think was made by Ric, that the position information in the Lae radio log was probably erroneous. I had already read the log (Chater report) and remembered that is seemed odd so I went back and examined it more closely. Here is the relevant information from the Chater report: 2.18 pm: "HEIGHT 7000 FEET SPEED 140 KNOTS" and some remark concerning "LAE" then "EVERYTHING OKAY". The plane was called and asked to repeat position but we still could not get it. 3.19 pm: "HEIGHT 10000 FEET POSITION 150.7 east 7.3 south CUMULUS CLOUDS EVERYTHING OKAY". 5.18 pm: "POSITION 4.33 SOUTH 159.7 EAST HEIGHT 8000 FEET OVER CUMULUS CLOUDS WIND 23 KNOTS". What struck me as odd is the order in which the information was logged, which indicates that it is the order in which it was transmitted. It is very likely that Noonan recorded position in the standard format: latitude, longitude, altitude. I don't know if this format was standard in 1937 but it is today and I suspect that it was then. It is also very likely that Earhart read the position information directly from Noonan's notes as she transmitted it. It is also likely that through her own experience with poor communications she realized the importance of formatted reports. In reviewing the Lae radio logs I see this: 2.18 pm: (failed to recv position) HEIGHT 7000 FEET SPEED 140 KNOTS (???/status) 3.19 pm: HEIGHT 10000 FEET POSITION 150.7 east 7.3 south (wx/status) 5.18 pm: POSITION 4.33 SOUTH 159.7 EAST HEIGHT 8000 FEET (wx/???) WIND 23 KNOTS Her report format appears to be: LAT, LONG, ALT, SPEED, WX, STATUS/REMARKS I think it is likely that the operator recorded the numbers correctly and in the proper order (6.10) -- 150.7 -- 7.3 then later, when logging, filled in the rest of the information incorrectly. You have already seen from the Itasca's log how operators typically fix the log to read what they THINK was said, this was necessary and expected because of the state of radio communications at the time. I think the Lae operator saw the 6.10 (or whatever it really was) and assumed it was recorded wrong (it didn't look like an altitude), or perhaps he only heard some of the numbers (10) and assumed it was altitude. The actual report was probably more like this: 3.19 pm: POSITION 6.10 south 150.7 east HEIGHT 7.3 thousand FEET I only threw in the latitude of 6.10 as a guess. The other reports show that Noonan recorded latitude to the nearest hundredth of a degree and longitude to the nearest tenth. Working backwards (I'm aware of the hazards), to get 10000 feet there would probably have been a 10 in the latitude somewhere. An altitude of 7,300ft is much more realistic and is about midway between the preceding and following reports. I'm currently reading past forum messages and I've found something interesting in Fred Noonan's memo on the navigation of the Clipper flight to Hawaii in 1935. With reference to the Lae radio logs you may remember that I said Noonan would likely record position information in a standard format and that Earhart would likely read it in that same format. "Although such errors are made under all conditions,,(sic) it is believed a reduction of paper work during flight would tend to reduce such errors. Such reduction of paper work could be obtained by shortening the position reports to a statement of latitude, longitude, track desired, and ground speed, and leaving the compilation of the log data (excepting cloud formations) to be completed on the ground after each flight." Frank Westlake ************************************************************************** From Ric At the very least this would seem to lend credence to the notion that when Earhart said "speed 140 knots" it was a groundspeed reported by Noonan and indicated a slight tailwind component at that time. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 8 Feb 2000 18:50:00 EST From: Ron Bright Subject: Amelia's voice/ Last message Ric and Alan, I must continue to disagree with your assessment of that last trasnmission. Of course she did not say she was "going down",Mayday etc.,That is not the arguement. What I'm saying is that two reputable primary,contemporaneous sources,Capt Thompson and Leo Bellarts,variously reported that she sounded nearly hysterical,frantic, and "almost incoherent." The content may have been perfectly logical and coherent as many people are in a crisis situation; what was remarkable was the subjective impressions of the tenor of that transmissions. Subjective but based on several hours of listening to her voice and common sense. I say subjective which would be difficult for anyone to explain in words. I disagree with your comment that these were not primary contemporaneous descriptitons: within l7 days after the event after reviewing the logs and discussing the words and the voice description with the other four radio operators (Thompson,Galten, O'hare and Bellarts, if you can agree to Lovell's description on how the Itasca report was prepared, Capt Thompson wrote in an offical Coast Guard report that AE's last transmission was "hurried,frantic and apparently not complete", and in a footnote added that she talked so rapidly as to be almost incoherent.He sent that report as the Commanding Officer. You simply don't believe Capt Thompson, and in an imaginary Earhart Inquest when addressing the voice issue, you could attack the weight of his evidence and his credibility in cross examination. For example: TIGHAR: Capt Thompson you agreed that the radio operators typed out Amelias messages as they came in trying to get the messages as best they could but that the only mention of voice quality was noted as signal 5 but not one operator noted any distress,etc,isn't that true? CAPT THOMPSON: Yes Mr Tighar that is true but the purpose of the log was to record as fast as posible positons, radio frequencies, navigation assistance,(etc) and my radio operators did not attempt to record the subjective quality of their impressions during the compilation of those logs. TIGHAR: When your messaged Coast Guard headquaters about AE's disapperance. you didn't include any mention of Amelia's alleged near hysterical tone,did you? CAPT THOMPSON: That's right, I only sent information that could help in the search,all the factual information I could dig up to assist in the recovery of Amelia.Her voice characterization didn't seem relevant at that time. TIGHAR: Isn't true that Amelia's emotional voice state at the time of the loss was not deemed worthy of mention by you at that time, and only the UP reporter filed the story on 2 Jul that "her voice sounded very tired,anxious ,almost breaking." CAPT THOMPSON: Well to tell you the truth I didn't mention her voice because I was only interested in the intense search I initiated to the nw and my mind was occupied on coordinating the rescue mission,since her transmission did contain clues to her possible location. Only after a few days as I was preparing the official report did I include what I heard, what Leo heard,what the reporters heard in that radio shack,loud and clear, that she sounded panicky because the entired context of her last several transmissions now seem relevant to what may have happened. Noone in that shack has ever privately or publicaly corrected me. So I stand by what I wrote. TIGHAR: Capt Thompson, isn't true that your most reliable,highly decorated Chief Radioman,who was considered one of the best, who was listening to that same last transmission, didn't make any comments about her "almost incoherent" voice until he was interviewed by Elgen Long in l973, some 36 years later? CAPT THOMPSON: Well I can't comment on poor Leo's recollection to Long but I remember he told me.... TIGHAR: OBJECTION-hearsay THE COURT: Sustained, and Capt Thompson you may step down. Same cross-examination for Leo Bellarts. Well you and the jury may not beleive Capt Thompson even though his credentials,integrity and reputation in the Coast Guard as "truthful" have been established. But I see your point, As a criminal defense investigator, I spend all my time conducting investigations to destroy the credibility of witnesses. I always attempt to show they are partial,biased,prejudiced, or have an interest because of personal or professional gain,etc. And if we have conflicting testimony, as we may have here, we can explain it away as deficient recollection or articulation. So maybe I have have pretty well discredited Capt Thompson and Bellarts for the reasons set forth above: not immediately reported (how often we use that in rape cases), not included in the logs or annotated in the logs, and simplya misunderstood analysis by men,after all she was a young "women". I guess I wrecked my own case as set forth in my opening statement. But seriously if a true and correct version of her last transmission surfaced or could be established it could be of help in determing the next few hours. Court (Inquest) adjourned. VTF (volumes to follow) Ron Bright Note: This is sent in the tradition of a dialectic exercise!!! ************************************************************************** From Ric Actually "The Court Martial of Warner K. Thompson" would make one heck of a book. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 8 Feb 2000 18:51:02 EST From: Jerry Hamilton Subject: Re: "preventer" Tom - By jove, I think you've got it 'ole man! As we know, FN started on sailing ships as an able bodied seaman. He would clearly have known the lingo. Excellent connection. I, myself, am up to "The Truelove". And I hate to think I'm coming to the end of the series. blue skies, -jerry ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 8 Feb 2000 18:54:05 EST From: Randy Jacobson Subject: Haze Ross raises a good point regarding visibility in haze or what in my scientific circles we call aerosols. Observers on ships and islands primarily look upward, and see generally clear skys, but for observers up in the haze, their forward visibility is remarkably decreased. Haze right at the surface is not as bad as a few hundred or kilofeet up. The same thing happens in Los Angeles on smog days, but much much worse. Visibility aloft in this area would be a good thing to observe if and when TIGHAR ever gets an ultralight back to Niku. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 8 Feb 2000 18:55:42 EST From: Doug Brutlag Subject: Sunset Times at Lae In answer to Don Neumann's enquiry I calculate thus: July 1, 1937-Lae NG All times GMT Local apparent Noon: 02:16:42Z Sunrise: 20:24:18Z Sunset 08:09:05Z AM Twilight 20:01:45Z PM Twilight 08:31:38Z July 2, 1937 Local Apparent Noon 02:16:53Z Sunrise 20:24:28Z Sunset 08:09:18Z Am Twilight 20:01:55Z PM Twilight 08:31:51Z How do these numbers jive with the rest of the celestial choir? Doug B. #2335 ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 9 Feb 2000 09:53:53 EST From: Phil Tanner Subject: Was hair, now shirts Do we know what colour clothes Earhart and Noonan were wearing when they boarded at Lae? The whole era is shrouded in monochrome to me. LTM, Phil 2276 *************************************************************************** From Ric I was wondering how long it would take for somebody to pick up on that. AE seems to have had mostly plaid shirts with her on the trip but she did have a least one solid color shirt that appears quite dark in the b/w photos. It has light colored (white?) piping around the collar and down each side of the buttons in front. It also happens to be the shirt she was wearing on the Lae/Howland flight. You can see it in the film on the TIGHAR website. What color is it? Awfully hard to say. Could be black, green, blue, brown (AE's favorite color), or it could be red. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 9 Feb 2000 10:40:22 EST From: Alan Caldwell Subject: Re: Sunset at Lae << Could anyone on the Forum inform me where I could determine the time of sunset at Lae on the date AE/FN took off for Howland?>> The naval observatory web page can give you that info. Alan #2329 ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 9 Feb 2000 10:41:25 EST From: Alan Caldwell Subject: Re: Lae Radio Logs << 3.19 pm: "HEIGHT 10000 FEET POSITION 150.7 east 7.3 south CUMULUS CLOUDS EVERYTHING OKAY". >> Frank it is my unsupported belief that the 150.7 figure is the errror. I suspect it is really 157. It might have been spoken as one fifty...seven east, seven three south. Alan #2329 ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 9 Feb 2000 10:42:46 EST From: Alan Caldwell Subject: Re: Various Variation << If you are using a recent chart, then you'll still be working off the declared variation because the grid on the chart will be aligned for the variation each time the chart is updated. >> Maybe I'm not understanding what you mean by grid but if you mean the lat long lines they are true not magnetic and thus never vary. Alan #2329 ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 9 Feb 2000 10:46:38 EST From: Ron Bright Subject: The Court Martial of Warner K. Thompson Ric, Can we get Clint Eastwood for Capt Thompson re the court martial movie or can we retitle to Wrong Way Thompson! ************************************************************************** From Ric I was thinking more John Lithgow. Another title might be "Panic in the Pacific." ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 9 Feb 2000 10:49:17 EST From: Vern Klein Subject: That ebay item Re: Those two guys who know where Amelia Earhart was buried and will show you the place for $500,000 (auction starting price -- no bids to date.(2-8-00) Although it's not his kind of scam, I wondered about Ed Dames. He knows (by Remote Viewing) where the airplane is, but maybe he had to team up with someone to zero in on where Amelia had been buried. I didn't know where Psi-Tech was located. Maybe Las Vegas? Somehow it seemed the right sort of place. I checked the web site again to look for an address. The place to send your money is a P.O. Box in Hawaii. Remember how he told us there was a team in training in Hawaii preparatory to going after the airplane parts? That's homebase! They were in training right in their own front yard! The Psi-Tech Earhart Project has not been updated since October 1, 1998. ************************************************************************** From Ric The Las Vegas deal is not Dames, nor is it Gervais. I'll have a complete report for everyone soon. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 9 Feb 2000 10:54:14 EST From: Vern Klein Subject: "Preventer" The meaning of the term "preventer," as used by Noonan, has finally soaked in? One could just check the dictionary. I must confess that mine is of pre-war vintage so I may have taken unfair advantage back when the word first turned up. *********************************************************************** From Ric There was actually quite a bit of discussion about it on the forum a year or so ago but everyone seemed so thrilled at the recent re-discovery that I didn't want to spoil the fun. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 9 Feb 2000 10:57:51 EST From: Frank Westlake Subject: Re: Visible Length of Howland From Altitude I was trying to go to sleep when I got an idea that pulled me out of bed and had me crawling around on the living room floor. It's a very simple experiment that indicates how difficult it may have been to spot Howland from 1000 ft. Cut out a piece of paper (preferably dark paper) to the dimensions 8.4 X 3.3 inches. Snip off the corners so that it really looks like an island. You don't have to draw palm trees or anything like that though. Set Howland Island at one end of a large room and step back 6 inches for every 1 nautical mile. Lay your eyeball on the floor and raise it up 1 inch for every thousand feet. For 1000' and 30NM your eye will be 15' away and 1" up. Now imagine the Earth's curvature tilting Howland down and away from you. Next week we'll do paper airplanes. Frank Westlake *************************************************************************** From Ric ..and for our next exercise you'll need a full bottle of Benedictine and a grass skirt. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 9 Feb 2000 10:59:16 EST From: Ross Devitt Subject: Re: Amelia's voice On the subject of "Journalists" My Windoze Wallpaper for this week is the front page of the BALTMORE EVENING SUN - July 3 1937. The caption above the picture of Amelia reads - "So Big," And She Missed It... Obviously a journo who had never seen Howland! RossD ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 9 Feb 2000 11:00:35 EST From: Ross Devitt Subject: Re: "preventer" Someone walked into the flight office yesterday with a 1942 Royal Australian Navy Issue Sextant (stamped, serial numbered etc. and apparently black enamelled) in its original box. In the ensuing discussion it was learned that it was not uncommon for two of these sextants to be carried in ships for exectly the same reasons. One as a backup. RossD ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 9 Feb 2000 11:03:12 EST From: Ross Devitt Subject: Re: Lae Radio Logs >The other reports show that Noonan recorded latitude to the nearest >hundredth of a degree and longitude to the nearest tenth. Actually Lattitude & Longitude to the nearest 60th of a degree. >HEIGHT 7.3 thousand FEET Heights are not reported (even back then) as decimals. It is too confusing. 7.3 would be reported as "seven thousand three hundred". RossD ************************************************************************* From Ric I disagree on the first point and agree on the second point. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 9 Feb 2000 11:21:47 EST From: Ric Gillespie Subject: The Goerner letters In preparation for an upcoming visit to the Nimitz Museum in Fredericksburg, Texas by TIGHAR researchers, I've pulled out and transcribed some excerpts of correspondence from the late Fred Goerner (whose papers are at the museum). I thought the forum might enjoy seeing them. ****************** Letter from Goerner to TIGHAR member Rob Gerth dated April 13, 1989 (Gerth was a local TV producer who was thinking of covering our first expedition and initiated a correspondence with Goerner to get "balance" on the story. He sent me copies.) "I truly believed the north of course theory was the most probable at the time I wrote THE SEARCH FOR AE in 1966, and I chose Mili as the most logical landing place. Through the assistance of Dr. Dirk Ballendorf, who was Deputy Director for our U.S. Peace Corps activities in the Pacific, I was able to disabuse myself of that conjecture in 1969. Dr. Ballendorf assigned a fine young American named Eric Sussman to assist me with the people of Mili Atoll. Mr. Sussman spent nearly two years in Mili as a Peace Corps volunteer, and he interviewed every Marshallese there who was old enough to remember anything about the pre-WWII years, especially 1937. A story existed about a woman pilot being picked up somewhwere in or about the Marshalls in 1937, but Mr. Sussman satsfied himself and consequently satisfied me that Mili HAD NOT BEEN (emphasis in the original) the landing place of the Earhart plane." Goerner still clung to the idea that Earhart had eventually, somehow, ended up on Saipan but thought she had probably landed on Winslow Reef and been picked up by the Japanese and taken to Saipan from there. Here's what Goerner knew about the bone story, as related in a letter to me dated March 1, 1990. "With repsect to the Floyd Kilts business: One of our KCBS investigative reporters, Bill Dorais, who was deeply interested in the Earhart story, dug into Kilts' claims. Dorais concluded that it was third-hand information at best and totally suspect. Bill became convinced that Kilts had seen FLIGHT FOR FREEDOM in which the female pilot character was supposed to land at "Gull Island" and because Hull Island was a part of the Phoenix Islands, speculation was rife that the Earhart plane came down on one of the Phoenix Islands. Bill wrote to the Central Archives in Fiji and The Western Pacific High Commission for information, and the archivist, named Tuiniceva, replied that "No skeleton has ever been reported found on Gardner Island." Bill finally decided (as did I) that Kilts' story was the result of a corruption of varied events, difficulty in translation, vivid imagination and the traditional exaggeration of the story over the years. I learned more in November, 1968, at the time I took a film crew to Tarawa in the Gilberts to do a documentary on the 25th anniversary of the Wolrd War II U.S. invasion of Tarawa. I was accompanied by General David Shoup, USMC, Ret., who was awarded the Medal of Honor for his valor at Tarawa, and five U.S. combat correspondents, who had been part of the Tarawa invasion. The film, TARAWA D+25 was aired in 1969. I tried out the Kilts story on roberts, and he gathered together several of the older Gilbertese who had been part of the colonizing activities at Gardner shortly after the Earhart disappearance. After much conversation and deep-thinking, it was decided that there was a legend about the remains of a Polynesian man being found on Gardner, what year or specific circumstance unknown. they were firm, however, that the skeleton of a woman had NEVER (emphasis in the original) been found. There was, too, a strange story of a woman's "high-heel shoes" turning up at some point on Gardner. This was a matter of some hilarity. Roberts said he was absolutely certain that the remains of a woman had never been found because it would have been a matter of considerable import to everyone. He added that the Polynesian man story was plausible because Polynesians from Niue has occupied Gardner Island sometime around the turn-of-the-century." I dearly wish that Fred had lived long enough to see the files we found in Tarawa and England. And finally, here's what Goerner said about the "land in sight ahead" message in a letter to Rob Gerth dated April 18, 1989. "On Page 37 (of an early edition of TIGHAR's Project Book), there is a reference to a message supposedly received at Nauru at 10:30 A.M. the morning of the disapearance from the Earhart plane stipulating "Land in sight ahead." Ross Game and I found that message in the CLASSIFIED U.S. Navy file which we were shown in 1965. We were not permitted to make photocopies of any material in the file, but we were permitted to make notes which were later cleared by the Navy. When the Freedom of Information Act took effect, the file we had been shown in 1965 was released to the public, but the message "Land in sight ahead" was no longer part of the file. In other files we found that Nauru had received a message "Ship in sight ahead" at 10:30 P.M. the evening before the disappearance. Captain Lawrence Frye Safford, USN, (Ret.), who did considerable Earhart research in the late '60s (and was writing a book on the matter at the time of his death) , told me he believed the message Game and I saw was pulled by the Navy before the file was released in the belief that it had been corrupted from the "ship in sight ahead" and/or because I had made a point of the morning message in THE SEARCH FOR AMELIA EARHART. At this writing i am unsure whether the morning message was bonafide or not. I am sure the message existed because both Ross Game and i have exactly the same wording in our notes." A couple of years ago we tracked down Ross Game. He had no specific recollection of the incident and had not saved his notes. Had there ever been a "morning message" it should have shown up in the official government message traffic as did all the other reported in-flight and post-loss transmissions. Convenient as it would be for us if there had been such a message, I really can't buy it. LTM, Ric ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 9 Feb 2000 11:47:41 EST From: Don Neumann Subject: Re: sunset at Lae Thanks to Doug Brutlag for providing the GMT data for sundown at Lae on the date of the AE/FN takeoff from Lae. Though I'm not very coversant with converting GMT time to LOCAL STANDARD TIME, I'm 'guessing' that it would have been dark at Lae between 6-6:30 PM LST? Thanks again for the help (the Forum is a better source of info than "Ask Jeeves"). Don Neumann ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 9 Feb 2000 11:51:34 EST From: William Webster-Garman Subject: Re: Was hair, now shirts Phil Tanner wrote >did say that the ghost was wearing a red shirt and a grass skirt. then Ric wrote, >AE seems to have had mostly plaid shirts with her on the trip Whatever colour her solid shirt was, many classic plaids are predominantly red (I don't believe I'm adding to this thread ). william 2243 ************************************************************************** From Ric Yeah, except the plaid shirts she's wearing in the photos don't really look like faithful renditions of Highland tartans but more like casual plaid-like designs. Maybe they were hair shirts? ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 9 Feb 2000 11:53:38 EST From: Dave Porter Subject: bottles and apparitions How's this for interpreting a 60 year old south pacific event through current American cultural bias: Mrs. Koata sees strange apparition...Mr Koata "finds" empty benedictine bottle...hmm, now I know why they call it the LUSH tropics. Apologies in advance for any perceived insult to the Koata family LTM (love to Manganibuka) Dave Porter, 2288 ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 9 Feb 2000 11:55:59 EST From: Dennis McGee Subject: Re: The Court Martial of Warner K. Thompson Remember the last time you started a thread like this, Ric? Within two days we had sent you to Hollywood, you bought a mansion in BelAir, got your new 560SL ragtop, and were "close and personal" friends with Sly Stalone, Sharon Stone, and Stone Phillips. I thought you'd have learned by now. LTM, who is no glamor queen Dennis O. McGee #0149CE *************************************************************************** From Ric Yeah, I never learn. It's gonna get bad. I can feel it coming. It's like, you know, precognition. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 9 Feb 2000 11:57:53 EST From: Clyde Miller Subject: Re: Was hair, now shirts So, are we talking about a hair shirt or are we following a red herring? Clyde Miller ************************************************************************** From Ric At least I beat you to the hair shirt joke. It was close though. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 9 Feb 2000 18:01:44 EST From: Mark Prange Subject: Sunset at Lae >Though I'm not very conversant with converting GMT time to LOCAL STANDARD >TIME, I'm 'guessing' that it would have been dark at Lae between 6-6:30 >PM LST? >Don Neumann 08:09 GMT = 18:09 (or 6:09 PM) Zone Time at Lae. Mark ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 10 Feb 2000 10:02:14 EST From: Jeff Glickman Subject: Re: Lambrecht Photo of Gardner Is. The following information about photographic enhancement may be of interest to your forum readers. There is much misunderstanding about what it means to "enhance a photograph." There are many mathematical operations which can be applied to a distorted or unclear image, which are commonly referred to as image enhancement. One entire class of such operations, consisting of diverse algorithms, are known as sharpening algorithms. Common place sharpening algorithms such as those found in popular computer software such as PhotoShop and PhotoDeluxe employ edge detection algorithms. These sharpening algorithms locate edges and brighten them in the original image. A side-effect of this is the introduction of a darker area adjacent to the edge. This is particularly apparent when two edges are close together resulting in the overlap of the darker adjacent areas. These algorithms are of limited use in examining photographic evidence as their application has side-effects which distort the photograph that often leads its user to inappropriate conclusions. Further, many forms of resampling a photograph have serious implications, as many resampling algorithms leave a computational fingerprint on an image which sharpening algorithms can detect and amplify. Alternatively, a photograph can be "reconstructed" instead of "enhanced." These operations are designed to not distort a photograph while reconstructing the photograph's original content. These algorithms are computationally intensive and often require hours of computation to reconstruct a very small area of a photograph. Unfortunately, these algorithms are not available in popular computer software. In conclusion, "resampl[ing] the image" and "sharpen[ing] it quite a bit" using popular computer software, in this instance, resulted in computational artifacts rather than animage useful for image interpretation. Jeff Glickman Board Certified Forensic Examiner Fellow, American College of Forensic Examiners PHOTEK 209 Oak Avenue, Suite 202 Hood River, Oregon 97031 ************************************************************************** From Ric Thanks Jeff. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 10 Feb 2000 10:08:59 EST From: Ron Bright Subject: Court Martial of Capt Thompson In the in absentia court martial of Capt Thompson, who will play Ric Gillespie famous researcher and author of "I Found Amelia" ? ************************************************************************** From Ric As Dennis McGee so sagely comments, we've been here before. The consensus, as I recall, was that any on-screen portrayal of your humble servant would best be done by Wally Cox (whether or not he's still alive). *************************************************************************** From Dave Bush >>From Ric > >Yeah, I never learn. It's gonna get bad. I can feel it coming. It's like, you know, precognition. > Or is it remote viewing? Which, by the way, I do with one of the best and most up-to-date remotes that RCA makes. LTM, Blue Skies Dave Bush ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 10 Feb 2000 10:09:59 EST From: Ross Devitt Subject: Re: Various Variation And they always point to the "Geographic" north pole, not the "Magnetic" north pole, which is why they are said to point to "True North". Yes, I know - I shouldn't reply to posts when I'm tired... *Sheepish grin...* I'll learn one day. Thanks Alan.. RossD ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 10 Feb 2000 10:11:50 EST From: Ross Devitt Subject: Re: Visible Length of Howland From Altitude I think I'll wait to see the photos from the re-enactment flight - and still do my flight here. I'll take someone to take a few photos as well. Just have to wait till the dry season sets in - about mid year. Unless there are some other aviation types out there that have some water, a nice clear sky, and an island the size of Howland who'd like to do the same experiment first?? RossD ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 10 Feb 2000 10:14:06 EST From: Vern Klein Subject: Re: Lae Radio Logs >>From Ross Devitt >>The other reports show that Noonan recorded latitude to the nearest >>hundredth of a degree and longitude to the >nearest tenth. >Actually Lattitude & Longitude to the nearest 60th of a degree. >>HEIGHT 7.3 thousand FEET >Heights are not reported (even back then) as decimals. It is too confusing. > 7.3 would be reported as "seven thousand three hundred". >************************************************************************* >>From Ric >I disagree on the first point and agree on the second point. Vern asks... Can this be sorted out? I would expect Lat and Lon to be reported in degrees, minutes and seconds. I've seen some angles posted here with a decimal point when it appeared it was actually degrees and minutes rather than degrees and tenths of a degree. Very confusing. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 10 Feb 2000 12:33:55 EST From: Ron Bright Subject: LONG'S PHOTO/ 1936 OR 1937? A bit of a controversy has developed over the date of Elgin Long's photo showing the Itasca "smoking" off of Howland on 2 Jul 37 . The questioned photo appears in his book "Amelia Earhart",The Mystery Solved on page 7 of the photo insert and Long furnished the photo for publication and attributed the photo to Lt. Frank Stewart,USCG, reportedly a member of the Itasca crew that day. It is not clear whether Lt. Stewart took the photo but at least he gave it to Long. The purpose of the photo is to illustrate the Itasca's effort to make smoke to aid Earhart to the island. No exact time is given only that it depicts a shore party arriving at Howland prior to Earhart's expected arrival. Long reports that the smoke was dissipating behind the the ship. Forum member Russ Matthews posted on l0 Jan 00 his interview with Lt Frank Stewart c. 1992 in San Diego; Stewart was in his 90's. According to Matthews, Stewart said he served aboard the Itasca sailing between the Hawaii and the Line Islands. He was a gifted photographer and sold photos to shipmates and kept the originals in his scrapbook. A review of the scrapbook by Matthews showed what appeared to be an identical photograph which Lt Stewart said he took during the Itasca's visit to Howland in 1936, not 1937. Lt Stewart looked and couldn't find any photos that were taken during the Earhart search . Matthews believes the confusion stems from the photo collection donated to the National Archives by Leo Bellart Jr.One of the photos was the "smoking" photo with the date 2 July 37 on the back. Matthews believes Bellarts got his copy of the photo from Stewart, can't really account for the 2 Jul 37 date on the back but believes that the date, apparently on the reverse of the original, is more conclusive. Maybe, but here's what Leo Jr wrote me on 6 Feb 00 and authorized me to pass on to the forum. First my comments. Of all the interesting historical events that Itasca was involved in the AE event was the most memorable, yet Lt Stewart,a semi-pro gifted photographer who took photos to sell to shipmates, didn't take any photos, he said, of the Earhart search. Interesting. Did Stewart recall selling/giving a photo to the Chief Radioman? I wonder if Lt Stewart developed more than one photo of this particular scene or did he just take one, make one copy, then sell or give it to Leo Bellarts? Was a specific date written down on the back of Stewart's orginal (so we could verify if the Itasca was a Howland on whatever date? Leo Jr, who contends the photo date of 2 Jul 37 is correct,makes the point that the Itasca was making a signal that is by deliberately causing the boiler to make smoke,which under routine conditions would not be done. Leo Bellart,Sr., in an inteview with Long in l973,does mention that the Itasca was making smoke. And Leo Jr. adds there simply would be no reason for the ship to make smoke in l936. He recalled the smoke photo that he donated to the Archives with the "Jul 2,1937 and Itasca making smoke" notation of the back. Leo Jr opined that why in the world would Leo Sr buy a picture taken in l936 as it "would mean nothing". Maybe a souvenir? Leo Jr was not sure Lt Stewart was aboard Jul 1937. (a fact that should be quickly resolved by crew lists) Leo Jr. is pretty sure that the Itasca didn't visit Howland in 1936 but beleived it was the cutter Shosone,which ship "Itasca replaced for AE's second attempt." It should be easy to confirm if Itasca was at Howland in 1936 and the date of visit. I'm not all that sure why that smoke photo is so important other than to refute the 40 mile visible smoke plume theory (reportedly easily visible from certain directions) or to impeach Long's claim it was taken on 2 Jul 37. Maybe Russ Matthews can shed additional light and maybe somone knows if Stewart and the Itasca were at Howland on 2 Jul 37 or sometime in l936. I am finding it intersting in the Amelia research to see how many photos,letters, witnesses,evidence,go sideways after more careful research. LTM Ron Bright *************************************************************************** From Ric I've reviewed the videotaped interview Russ did with Stewart. Stewart was not an officer. He was a Quartermaster First Class. He says that immediately prior to his retirement from the Coast Guard in 1950 he was made a Lieutenant (thanks to his "connections in Washington") so that he would get a better pension. I suppose stranger things have happened, but I can't think of any at the moment. Stewart seems to have served aboard Itasca from about 1935 to sometime after 1937. He made several (probably at least three) cruises to service the Dept. of Interior "colonists" occupying Howland, Baker and Jarvis Islands. He claims to have been along on the cruise which supported the Earhart flight and I have no reason to doubt him, but it's clear than any memory he has of that experience has been so clouded by folklore over the years that he is worthless as an "eyewitness." He insists, for example, that Earhart's last transmission was "I'll be arriving in ten minutes. I want three things - a cup of coffee, a bath, and a bed." He says that he listened to her transmissions when he was on the flying bridge with the Chief Radioman (whose name he could not remember) who had "cadged" a loop antenna from Pan Am before they left Hawaii. He also says that Itasca searched where it did on orders from Hawaii and does not remember searching anywhere but in the Gilberts. He did have an album of photographs. During the interview, he went through the entire book with Russ looking over his shoulder. At no time did he say anything like "Here's a picture of Itasca making smoke for Earhart." or make any other reference to that particular cruise. He did point out a couple of photos which, he said, showed how supplies were landed at Howland. After the interview he apparently gave Russ one of those photos but it didn't happen on camera. (Is that right Russ?) We still have the photo. It was - very obviously - taken a minute or two after the photo appearing in Elgen Long's book. Long's photo shows black smoke streaming from Itasca's funnel and two whaleboats approaching the beach where four men are waiting. In our photo, the same plume of smoke is visible streaming downwind a little distance from the ship, but smoke has almost entirely stopped coming out of the funnel. In our photo the first launch has reached the beach and the same men who are waiting in Long's photo are gathered around it. On the back of our photo, written in pencil, is "Servicing Howland." These photos appear to show Itasca "blowing tubes" while standing off Howland. The year is unknown. "Blowing tubes" is a standard maintenance procedure that has to be performed every few days. It generates a dense cloud of black smoke for a few minutes. I see no reason to think that either of these photos shows Itasca making smoke for Earhart on July 2, 1937. LTM, Ric ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 10 Feb 2000 12:42:21 EST From: Ron Bright Subject: LONG's photo/1936 or 1937? Ric and Forum, Re:my posting of 2-9-00 Same Subj I forgot Leo Jr fact of his father's service date aboard the Itasca. According to Leo Bellart's service record,Leo Sr was on the Itasca from 2-15-37 to 4-12-38. LeoJr coments that if the Itasca visited Howland in l936, the alleged date of the photo, Leo Sr would not have been aboard and it would be unlikely he would have bought a year old photo of Howland. To put this at rest, ship's records must be available re dates of visit and crew aboard. LTM, Ron Bright PS: In terms of acting for the Court Martial tv series, your performance in a 1998 History channel broadcast showing artifacts etc, was pretty convincing,almost worth the annual Tighar academy award. ************************************************************************** From Ric Randy Jacobson has, I believe, reviewed cruise reports for Itasca's visits to Howland in 1936 and 1935(?). Support of the "colonization" of "the American Equatorial Islands" was a key duty for Itasca in those years. Given the immense popularity of the Earhart legend it is hardly surprising that a photo of Itasca making smoke off Holwand would be automatically incorporated into the "evidence", just as everyone who "was there" (Bellarts, Stewart, Balfour, Collopy, etc.) had his own tale to tell eager researchers about how it all really happened. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 10 Feb 2000 12:45:19 EST From: Frank Westlake Subject: Re: Lambrecht Photo of Gardner Is. >From Jeff Glickman > >There is much misunderstanding about what it means to "enhance a >photograph." If that was intended for me it wasn't necessary. I had done the enhancement prior to asking if the photograph had been analyzed. I did not mention the enhancement because I only used it to see if a professional job may turn up something interesting. After Ric insisted the object was only a dot I offered my reason for suspecting that it may be something more along with a disclaimer that my reason may be worthless. I understand that your comment may have been intended for someone who may not have recognized that thought process in my messages. Frank Westlake ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 10 Feb 2000 19:14:32 EST From: Bob Brandenburg Subject: blowing tubes A small quibble in the interest of accuracy: The standard practice in the Navy was to blow tubes once per watch (as far as I know, the Navy no longer has any oil-fired boilers in service), and I expect that was the Coast Guard practice as well. There were exceptions to the Navy routine, such as in combat conditions when tube-blowing usually was confined to the hours of darkness, but a Coast Guard ship on routine independent duty in peacetime almost certainly would have adhered to the once-per-watch practice. LTM, Bob ************************************************************************** From Ric Thanks for the correction. That makes it much less of a coincidence that Stewart happened to snap a photo when itasca was blowing tubes. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 10 Feb 2000 19:20:57 EST From: Chris Kennedy Subject: Frank Stewart Something which is also interesting about this account is that here we have another purported earwitness to what Earhart said as she approached Howland, yet what this gentleman says Earhart says is hardly consistent with someone who is hysterical. --Chris Kennedy *************************************************************************** From Ric Stewart's account of specific events is often at odds with contemporaneous primary sources, as is very often the case with anecdotal recollections, but his attitude toward Earhart is entirely consistent with the prevailing Coast Guard impression at the time that Earhart was pushy, arrogant and demanding but ultimately incompetent. It's as if the men on the Itasca saw themselves as victims. *************************************************************************** From Randy Jacobson Frank Stewart was on the Itasca when AE disappeared. The Itasca serviced Howland in April, June, Sept of 1935, and Jan, March, June, August, and October of 1936. The Howland Island colony village was called "Itascatown". ************************************************************************* From Ric Isn't is amazing how the context in which the Earhart disappearance occurred has been skewed over the years? ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 10 Feb 2000 19:22:41 EST From: Skeet Gifford Subject: Lat/Lon The answer to Vern's latitude and longitude dilemma lies in its application to navigation. One degree of latitude equals 60 nautical miles. Therefore one minute of latitude equals one nautical mile (conversion: one nautical mile equals 1.1507765 statute miles--Real Pilots use 1.15). To use one sixtieth of a nautical mile for navigation would be--tedious. Because of this, convention changes gears and uses one tenth of a nautical mile as the next smaller unit of measurement. The latitude and longitude of Nikumaroro is displayed by cartographers as: 4 degrees, 40 minutes 18.85 seconds South 174 degrees, 32 minutes, 27.17 seconds West. ...and navigators as: S0440.3W17432.5 Skeet ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 10 Feb 2000 19:23:42 EST From: Randy Jacobson Subject: Re: Lae Radio Logs Noonan, himself, did not record either latitude or longitude on the three maps I have examined. Points of lat/long were marked, of course, but exactly how this information was transferred to the radio operator and/or corrupted by the radio operator is anyone's guess. The charts can be read for either decimal degrees or degrees/minutes, but seconds is way too precise for accuracy. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 11 Feb 2000 08:07:32 EST From: Vern Klein Subject: PAA According to Grooch From Grooch's book, "Skyway to Asia," 1936. I propose to post some selected excerpts from this story of the establishment of the PAA routes across the Pacific Ocean to Manila in the Philippines. The story takes place only a year before publication of the book and includes the late part of Fred Noonan's career with PAA. With the forum's approval, this will be the first of several postings from the book -- while I have it in my possession. First, I have to do a little scene-setting before, hopefully, getting into more interesting stuff with a few references to Fred Noonan. William Grooch had learned to fly in the Navy during WWI. He had resigned from the Navy and went to work for The New York, Rio and Buenos Aires Line. After the market crash of 1929, the line was taken over lock, stock and barrel by Pan American Airways. Grooch went to work for PAA and continued to fly the South American routes and became an Operations Manager by the time the story begins. The PanAmerican Clipper was flying out of Miami, Pan American's main seaplane base. The China, Hawaiian and Philippine Clippers were under construction at The Martin plant at Baltimore. The PAA base at Miami included a school for pilots. ************************************ "The school was organized to train senior pilots for transoceanic work. Later it was expanded to include a complete course of training for young pilots entering the company's srevice. The course for senior pilots embraced celestial navigation and advanced seamanship. It is comparable to the requirements for papers as master of an ocean liner. Those who completed the course with the highest marks, are chosen to command the transoceanic planes. Young pilots who secure employment with Pan American must be graduates of a good technical school. They must have a transport pilot's license and a certain number of hours in the air. These youngsters are classed as apprentice pilots. They are required to spend sufficient time in all departments to become proficient in each. They must qualify for a mechanic's license and a radio operator's license. Later, when they are assigned to duty as junior officers on a clipper plane, they must be qualified to take their turn at flying, as radio operator or as engineer. Interesting experiments to develop a long range radio direction-finder for us on the transpacific run were in progress at Miami." ************************************* In early 1935, Grooch was made Operations Manager of the "North Haven Expedition." The "North Haven" was an oil burning steamer of some five thousand tons that was chartered for the expedition. The purpose was to establish bases for the "Clipper" seaplanes to stop and refuel. The route decided on led from California through Honolulu, Midway Islands, Wake Island and Guam to Manila. Eventually, it would be extended to Macao, China. Perhaps it's appropriate to point out that this is NOT Howland and Phoenix Island territory. Manila, the most southern point, is almost 15 degrees north of the equator. Next time, North Haven gets underway and construction begins. ************************************************************************ From Ric Interesting stuff. Am I correct that the Clippers operated out of Miami were Sikorsky S-42s? The Clippers under construction in Baltimore were, of course, the new M130s. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 11 Feb 2000 11:08:31 EST From: Jon Watson Subject: Re: blowing tubes I just called my step-son, who was a member of the black gang on the USS Hoel, a guided missle destroyer. He told me that on the Hoel they did not have to blow the tubes that frequently, because they were using JP-5, but he believes that the Itasca was probably burning "number 6" fuel oil, which would likely require the process each watch, because the heavier fuel would build up soot more quickly. He describes the process of blowing the tubes as increasing air flow through the boiler, and injecting live steam into the tubes. Because of the increased air and steam, he doesn't think the process would look much like smoke coming out the stack (it's been about 20 years ago for him). He further said that in order to generate increased smoke through the stack, all they would have to do is cut back on the air to the boiler and it would generate a lot of smoke - particularly with #6. He didn't see any potential danger to the boilers if this process was kept up for several hours. I'm not sure this helps anything. Could this be the source of the phrase "blowing smoke"? Have a good weekend. ltm jon 2266 *************************************************************************** From Ric I'll defer to Bob Brandenburg on boiler management issues. I don't think he served on a black gang but he did captain a Destroyer Escort. I remember that the ship we used for our 1991 expedition - R/V Acania - periodically did something that caused black smoke to pour out her funnel for a few minutes. As I recall she had one (or maybe two) diesels. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 11 Feb 2000 12:05:50 EST From: Ric Gillespie Subject: The ebay offer Here's the story on the offer on ebay to disclose the burial place of Earhart and Noonan to the first lucky person to come up with $500,000. I've reviewed a packet of photocopied information sent out by two gentlemen named Don Kothera and Ken Matonis. A few excerpts: "Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan died at the hands of the Japanese on the Island of Saipan, Mariana Islands, South Pacific." "Answers are still being sought because Amelia achieved so much, especially as a woman, in the field of aviation and needs to have her last accomplishment - flying 2/3 around the world - lauded. More important, the mystery of it - how does an experienced pilot and an accomplished, proven, experienced navigator, reportedly 700 miles on course, 30 percent of the distance from Lae to Howland, unknowingly make a 90 percent (I think he means degree) turn and land on Saipan." It gets better. Apparently Kothera read Goerner's book in 1966 and told his friend Katonis that he remembered seeing an airplane that looked like Earhart's in a ravine on Saipan when he was there while in the Navy in 1946/47 . The two of them went to Saipan in 1967 but couldn't find the plane. They did find a woman who, as a seven year old in 1937, had seen Amelia and Fred executed by the Japanese and thrown into a hole. Don and Ken returned in 1968 and the woman showed them where the hole had been. They dug and found a fragmented skull and 19 bone chips and some gold dental bridgework. The bonees were given to the Ohio Historical Society in Columbus, OH in the custody of Dr. Raymond Baby, anthrolopogist, for examination. The packet of papers includes a report by Dr. Baby and Martha Potter, M.A. dated 12 November 1968. Their conclusion was: "It is our opinion that the cremated remains are those of a female, probably white individual between the anatomical ages of 40-42 years. Since the age changes are slight, an age of 40 years is probably correct. A single unburnt bone is not a part of or associated with cremated remains, but the remains of a second individual, a male." Dr. Baby has since died. The bone fragments and bridgework are now missing. For only $500,00 Don and Ken will tell you where to dig for more bones. LTM, Ric ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 11 Feb 2000 14:55:58 EST From: Chris Kennedy Subject: Re: The ebay offer As did Dr. Hoodless, perhaps Drs. Baby/Potter left records or measurements or photos of the various recovered items. It might be worth a shot at trying. Any volunteers? --Chris Kennedy ************************************************************************** From Ric There are some measurements and photocopies of photos in their report. Compared to what Hoodless had to work with, Baby and Potter had almost nothing. No complete bones at all, just fragments. I'm rather surprised that they drew such specific conclusions. ************************************************************************* From Ken Feder Hey Ric: The current staff archaeologist at the Ohio Historical Society, Brad Lepper, is a terrific guy and a friend I have worked with on a number of projects. I have written him, asking if has can provide any info on this claim from his end. I'll share any info Brad can find. Ken Feder ************************************************************************** From Ric Thanks Ken. *************************************************************************** From Joe Ric: Now the $500,000 question: Will Don Kothera and Ken Matonis stand behind their story with a guaranteed DNA match? LTM (Who wants to look for some Buckeye bones.) Joe ************************************************************************** From Jim Razzi Rick, Are you discounting the report of Dr. Baby out of hand? It seems to me it is just as valid as any of the other "evidence," ( eyewitness coupled with anecdotal reports, missing bones etc.) that has been accumulated so far. Regards, Jim Razzi *************************************************************************** From Ric I am not discounting Dr. Baby's report although, based upon what little I have learned about forensic anthropology from Dr. Kar Burns, I am quite surprised at the tone of certainty in his report given the scant material he had to work with. What I do discount out of hand is the idea that there is virtually any chance that the bone fragments dug up by Kothera and Matonis could belong to Amelia Earhart. If you think that those bones are just as likely to be Earhart's as the bones found on Gardner in 1940 then it's time to exhume Irene Bolam. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 11 Feb 2000 14:57:42 EST From: Tom King Subject: Inside the Extinguisher Thanks to Vern Klein, who kindly loaned me the high-tech equipment needed for the job (a tiny light bulb on a wire), I've now looked inside Artifact 2-2-V-100, and can be pretty sure that it really is a fire extinguisher. No numbers, no little bitty Amelia or Fred, just a heavy pipe-tube assembly that closely resembles what's shown in a cutaway view sent me by Pyrene showing (probably) the kind of extinguisher aboard the Electra. This is not for a moment to suggest that this means that 2-2-V-100 has anything to do with the Electra; there are lots of other ways in which the Pyrene specs are different from our artifact, but it does suggest that the object in hand is a fire extinguisher. Interestingly, the assembly I can see inside 2-2-V-100 closely resembles Artifact 2-2-V-64, a head-scratcher hitherto identified as "Machine Part, Strange." A heavy assembly of tubes and a sort of bracket, apparently originally soldered to the inside of the cylinder. It looks like perhaps the colonists were taking extinguishers apart, probably to make nice cylindrical containers, and tossing the guts (as it were). LTM (who's not going to say the obvious) Tom King ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 11 Feb 2000 14:58:29 EST From: Jim Tierney Subject: Re: PAA According to Grooch Ric/Forum- Yes-you are correct...The S-42s-deliveries starting in May 34 were in the Miami/Latin American Division- then some were transferred to Pacific Div. The Martin M-130s-deliveries starting in Mar 36-all went to the Pacific Division. The S-42 made the first Pacific Survey flts. Jim Tierney ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 11 Feb 2000 15:07:37 EST From: Roger Kelley Subject: Re: The ebay offer Any info on Martha Potter, M.A? Who is she? What part in this does she play? Is she still alive today? Inquiring minds want to know. Roger Kelley, #2112 *************************************************************************** From Ric Yes, she is known to us and inquiries are underway. Film at 11. ************************************************************************** From Alan Caldwell Not much info for $500,000. I would have expected a more detailed report. How unfortunate the materials are missing now thus preventing any DNA confirmation. Just an unlucky happening I suppose. I don't know how to get the plane to Saipan but I suppose AE and FN COULD have been picked up at Gardner by a Japanese fishing boat and taken there. Seems terribly irrational of all concerned, however. A seaplane tender would possibly have had the capability to carry the plane but it would normally already have a seaplane in the way and how would they get the plane from the island out to the ship? And then WHY would they want a wrecked civilian passenger plane. A quick check would have shown there was nothing of value on or about the plane. I think all this is a real stretch. I'll spend my "$500,000" ( I wish) on something more valuable -- like maybe science fiction videos for life or something. Alan #2329 *************************************************************************** From Ric I agree, and - fair warning - this is the last posting we're going to have about the feasibility of Earhart ending up on Saipan. I am far too closed-minded and irrationally wedded to the Niku theory to contemplate the terrible truth about how our government has deceived us for all these years. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 11 Feb 2000 15:08:41 EST From: Jim Tierney Subject: Re: PAA According to Grooch Ric--Second msg on this.... In my first msg- I qouted a date incorrectly---and you know how I am on that stuff... The M-130s were delivered starting in October of 1935 not Mar 36.. I didnt read the whole page...... Jim Tierney ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 11 Feb 2000 15:11:09 EST From: Dave Bush Subject: 10E Ric: Just received my latest copy of CAP News - in it there is a photo of a 10E under construction. The article says that the aircraft has been restored and is to be flown around the world by an aviatrix to commemorate Earhart's flight! LTM - love to see this mo.... Blue Skies Dave Bush ************************************************************************** From Ric Just what we need. Lemme guess. Gracie McGuire, right? ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 12 Feb 2000 09:39:13 EST From: Doug Brutlag Subject: Another AE trip in a 10E-Oh Geesh! In reference to Dave Bush's report of another 10E being restored for the next sequalled AE flight-sounds like going to the movies tonight to see "Rocky XXIII-his grandson says his first word:ADRIAN! I sold a sextant to Linda Finch for her flight in 1997(and never used) and went to Oshkosh and played Fred Noonan for the public for a week. It was nothing but a silly publicity stunt that accomplished the same thing-nothing! Ann Pelegrino I believed was the first to reenact and only proved what we have known for years-that they could have made it. I'd rather see the airplane restored and flown on the airshow circuit for all to admire and enjoy than risk being flown around the world by another party who doesn't poccess enough knowledge & background about this and aviation in general to be a wart on a real pilot's butt. AAAHHHHH! I feel better. Doug Brutlag #2335 ************************************************************************** From Ric So far no woman has flown a Lockheed 10 around the world, not to to say that there aren't plenty of women who could. Neither Pellegrino nor Finch was really qualified in the airplane and both had men with them to do the difficult flying. A sad legacy for Amelia indeed. ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 12 Feb 2000 09:39:58 EST From: Tom King Subject: Re: The ebay offer I know Dr. Martha Potter Otto of the Ohio Historical Society, doubtless the Potter who was involved in this thing, and I've asked her what she can tell me about it. I've also asked the historic preservation authorities on Saipan what they know. Stay tuned. TK ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 12 Feb 2000 09:43:27 EST From: Bob Brandenburg Subject: Re: blowing tubes JP-5 is a jet engine fuel, essentially a thermally stable form of kerosene. Some destroyers, such as the one I commanded, operated the radio-controlled drone anti-submarine helicopter (DASH) and carried JP-5 for fueling the DASH. Standard maintenance policy required that soot buildup be removed from oil-fired boiler tubes at intervals not exceeding 600 operating hours. It was a terrible job, performed while the ship was in port and the boiler was out of service. The job required "black gang" sailors to climb into the boiler fire box and use wire brushes to manually remove the soot buildup from the boiler tubes and the fire brick lining of the boiler, a process known as "cleaning firesides". I never knew or heard of a "black ganger" who eagerly anticipated cleaning firesides. When destroyers began carrying JP-5, tests were conducted to determine whether its hotter and cleaner combustion properties could be used to burn off accumulated soot, thus extending the interval between manual fireside cleanings. The results exceeded expectations, and boiler maintenance policy was revised to extend the fireside cleaning interval to 1200 hours for ships that alternated burning standard fuel oil and JP-5 in accordance with a specified ratio. But those ships still followed the once-per-watch practice of blowing tubes. Later, a few ships (perhaps Hoel was one of them) were authorized to burn JP-5 exclusively, as an experiment to determine whether there were any long-term deleterious effects. Those ships had (as I recall) even longer intervals between fireside cleanings, and did not need to blow tubes as often as the oil-burning ships. Having observed thousands of tube blowings from the bridges of the ships in which I have served, I can state unequivocally that the initial surge of soot coming out of the stack looks exactly like black smoke. Within moments, however, the density of the follow-on exhaust rapidly diminishes, leaving the initial blob to drift downwind. Making black smoke for an extended period is a sure recipe for disaster. It is true that black smoke is produced by reducing the amount of air fed into the boiler, which reduces the efficiency of the combustion and increases the soot content of the the exhaust gases - - - hence the blackness of the smoke. But there also is a rapid buildup of soot on the boiler tubes, exponentially increasing the likelihood of abnormal spot heating of the tube surfaces, leading to tube ruptures and resultant boiler failure. Thirty minutes of heavy black smoke generation, followed by 15 minutes or so of tube blowing, is about the maximum safe duty cycle for an oil-fired boiler. The expression "blowing smoke" originates from the use of smoke screens in naval combat. It refers to someone who is practicing deception and attempting to cover it up. LTM, Bob ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 12 Feb 2000 10:00:29 EST From: Tom King Subject: For the Forum from Scott The CNMI Historic Preservation Office on Saipan says they know nothing about the plan to chase down the supposed bones, and doubt if the site could be relocated anyhow, given the amount of development that's taken place on the island in the last thirty years (to a little of which I can personally attest). The Deputy HPO's comment was that it sounded like an easy way to make half a million bucks. No word yet from Martha Potter Otto. LTM TK ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 12 Feb 2000 10:08:22 EST From: Ken Feder Subject: Re: The ebay offer Any available details on the Ohio Historical Society's role in this will have to wait until next week. Brad Lepper (the OHS staff archaeologist) had never heard the story. However, he asked Martha Potter (who still is at OHS) about the bones. She remembers that "the bones (they were only a few very small fragments, as she recalls) were returned to the individuals." The description of the bones quoted by Kothera and Matonis is from Dr. Baby's letter, according to her. She is going to look for the letter in OHS files. I'll share whatever I find out at OHS. Ken Feder *************************************************************************** From Ric We'll go ahead and transcribe the copy of the report provided by the two perpetrators and put it up as a forum posting. If nothing else it may occasion some educational discussion about forensic anthropology. ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 12 Feb 2000 10:11:19 EST From: Dan Subject: LOP 157/337 By the time AE/FN got to LOP 157/337, their DF did not work. Does it seem reasonable that they then turned left for say 20-30 miles, and then made a 180 degree turn and ended up on Nikumaroro. ************************************************************************* From Ric Yes. ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 12 Feb 2000 10:12:53 EST From: Warren Lambing Subject: AE Voice Wow I finally get to read my email. As to Amelia voice sounding frantic on her last radio message. I don't believe she was in a panic, as already mention, the message was professional and accurate. However after the fact it could be interpreted that way. Please consider the amount of sleep Amelia had by that time (or the amount of flight hours). Please also consider that she could not hear the Itasca's radio reply to her. Is it not a natural tendency to speak louder in a mic. when you are not being heard? (human nature, just try speaking on a poor phone line and see if you don't talk louder). Was it a panic on her part? Probably not. Was she screaming into the mic, or at last projecting a strong voice into the mic.? Most likely she was. Regards. Warren Lambing ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 12 Feb 2000 10:50:38 EST From: Dave Bush Subject: Re: 10E >From Ric > >Just what we need. Lemme guess. Gracie McGuire, right? Yep! I see how this could be somewhat of a problem, but, then, too, maybe there is some glimmer of hope in it. A real 10-E, fuel usage comes to mind, given that many variables could be duplicated as close as possible. Then there is the upside of more attention to the subject. The question is, can Ms. McGuire be inticed to see TIGHAR's point of view and work hand in hand with us? But I see that I am coming into the middle of the book and you already know quite a bit about Ms. McGuire. In reading the article, it seemed to indicate that the lady acquired the aircraft quite awhile back and I wasn't sure if you had that info. Also, is this REALLY a 10-E or just another 10-A or B that has been "modified"? LTM Dave Bush #2200 ************************************************************************** From Ric Let's see....how do I describe Grace McGuire without laying myself open to a lawsuit? I'll just stick to the facts as best I recall them and preface all of this with a BIG DISCLAIMER that I'm going from memory and that I have never met Ms. McGuire face to face but have spoken to her on the telephone and corresponded with her. Grace's airplane is, in fact, the only known surviving Electra that was built as a 10E. It is constructor's number 1042 (the 42nd Model 10 built) and was delivered to Pan American as NC14972 on Dec. 6, 1935. It later went to Brazil and worked for VARIG (just like Finch's airplane) and then came back and, in the 1960s, was operated by Provincetown-Boston Airlines as N35PB. By 1978 it was N3558 and hauling skydivers for Zephyrhills Parachute Center in Zephyrhills, Florida. Shortly after that (and I never had the details on this) the airplane was involved in a hangar fire (possibly the big Wings and Wheels Museum fire) after which McGuire acquired whatever was left. Grace maintains that the damage was minimal but others have told me that the main beam sustained significant heat damage (which would be a real obstacle to re-certification). Grace was born in Scotland but has lived in the U.S. for many years. I believe she now resides in Rumson, NJ. She acquired the Electra specifically to rebuild it as a replica of NR16020 and recreate Earhart's flight. she sought funding from United Technologies in the early or mid '80s and they were all set to sponsor her when somebody brought up the main beam problem and the fact that Grace did not happen to have a multi-engine rating. UT bailed out and shortly thereafter Grace came down with a severe case of Lyme disease. The airplane languished in a hangar at the Lakehurst Naval Air Station, NJ until a couple of years ago when it was moved to Old Bridge Airport in Old Bridge, NJ where (as far as I know ) it is still kept in a locked hangar. I have asked Grace several times to allow me or a representative of TIGHAR to come look at the airplane merely to confirm particulars about structure and rivet patterns, but she has steadfastly denied us access. She did once take some rough cowling measurements for me and she let NBC News Productions use the cockpit as a setting for short sequence in their 1992 documentary "Untold Stories- The Search for Amelia Earhart." The last time I talked to her (about two years ago) she said she had a sponsor to complete the rebuild and they were almost finished but that the identity of the sponsor was a big secret. The few pictures I'ver seen of the airplane over the years all look about the same. Grace believes Earhart ran out of gas and went down at sea because she had the wrong coordinates for Howland Island. Based upon what I know about her airplane and about Grace I do not think that a cooperative venture of any kind is a realistic possibility. LTM, Ric ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 12 Feb 2000 10:56:06 EST From: William Webster-Garman Subject: Re: The ebay offer Ric wrote, >If you think that those bones are just as likely to be Earhart's as >the bones found on Gardner in 1940 then it's time to exhume Irene Bolam. Or put another way, there is a difference between an open mind and sloppy thinking. william 2243 ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 12 Feb 2000 11:32:35 EST From: Randy Jacobson Subject: Navigation and Radios I just realized something, that seems somewhat unusual. When AE crossed from Oakland to Honolulu, she often gave position reports during her radio broadcasts. She also did the same when leaving Lae. Yet, she did not give any position reports to the Itasca when approaching Howland. Did she suddenly change her modus operandi? Of course, we can never tell. Alas, giving out-of-date position reports, as she apparently did, was a very poor procedure to follow. If something happened to her, and the plane went down, the position report should be the most accurate and timely that could be provided. The fact that she NEVER provided the time that the position report was valid makes potential search and rescue even more difficult. Surely she must have thought about this at some time or another during her illustrious career.... LTM, who is bewildered by these thoughts... Randy Jacobson *************************************************************************** From Ric Let's think a little bit about context. If you have radio capability the assumption is that if you have a problem you'll say so and if you think you may need somebody to come look for you you'll let people know where you are. Traditionally, the primary purpose of position reports has been traffic separation. Today nobody sends position reports unless they're in an area where there's no radar coverage (for example, out over the middle of the ocean). The exception to this is the old Followed VFR system which was similar to the VFR system in use in Britain in 1980 (maybe still), where you told the authorities where you intended to go and how you intended to get there, and then you checked in at specific points along the way just to let them know that your flight was going as planned. As far as I know, there was nothing like that in the 1930s - especially on a 'round the world flight where most legs were flown over trackless wastes where rescue in the event of a forced landing would be out of the question. (Who would help AE and FN if they went down over the South Atlantic or between, say, Ft. Lamy and Khartoum?) My impression is that, for Earhart, radio position reports were essentially press releases intended to provide copy for stories to (she hoped) a breathless public waiting for news of her progress. To judge her, or her reports, in a 21st century context is misleading and unfair. LTM, Ric ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 12 Feb 2000 11:40:22 EST From: Ric Gillespie Subject: Anthroplogists' report Here is the anthropologists' report that is part of the packet sent out by Kothera and Matonis. ***************************************************************** THE OHIO HISTORICAL SOCIETY, COLUMBUS OHIO 43210 12 November 1968 Mr. Donald Kothera 11315 Brunswick Road Garfield Hts. Ohio 44125 Dear Mr. Kothera: I am herewith enclosing a detailed report on the "Saipan Bones" which you submitted to me several months ago for analysis. You will note that Martha A. Potter, our Associate Curator of Archaeology, did assist me in the study, and is, therefore, included in the report. Several minor changes in our observations have been made since you were in Columbus. These do not alter our final conclusions. Sincerely yours, Raymond S. Baby Curator of Archaeology Associate Professor of Anthropology RSB: ems MATERIAL: 188 cremated human bone fragments 1 "normal" human bone fragment 1 gold dental bridge 1 Amalgam dental filling CREMATED REMAINS The cremated human skeletal material submitted for analysis consists of 188 small fragments ranging in length from 2.0mm to the largest piece, 50.0mm. The remains have been greatly reduced by burning and then disinterment. Ninety-eight percent of the fragments, ranging in color from light grey to blue-gray, are completely burnt with the exception of two small portions of skull and a portion of ulna that are "smoked" (Baby, 1954). Deep checking, diagonal and transverse fracturing, and warping are characteristic of burning in the flesh (sic) or "green" bone (Baby, 1954). The fragments were sorted into anatomical groups and carefully examined. Sixty-five percent of the total number of parts were identified, representing approximately 1% of the axial and appendicular skeleton. Pieces making contact with each other made possible the restoration of a few bony segments. SKULL The vault is represented by two fragments. One is a portion of the anterior inferior parietal bone; the second is probably a segment of frontal bone. Both are "smoked" or incompletely incinerated. The former is thin and female-like. Bits of charred periosteum are adhering to its outer surface. A small segment of the lateral margin of the right (?) bony orbit is moderately sharp and female-like. The left condyle of the mandible and a portion of the ascending ramus are present and completely incinerated. The condyle is small and most certainly associated with a female individual. Slight bony "ripping" along the interior articular surface is indicative of the beginning of the aging period --- 40 to 45 years. The completely incinerated tip of a third (?) molar tooth is small and female-like. The closed root end is evidence of an adult individual. A gold bridge between the first permanent pre-molar (Pm1) and the first permanent molar (M1) to replace an extracted permanent second pre-molar (Pm2), is 30.0mm in length. Incineration is manifest by ashen black stain and cracking of the anterior lingual surface. The small size of the caps or crowns (Pm1 length, 8.0mm., width, 5.0mm.; M1 length, 11.0mm., width, 9.5mm.) are within the range of a female individual. Wear on the labial surfaces of the bridge, the spacing, and the slight curvature are associated with the teeth of the lower left jaw. Professor William H. Sassaman (personal communication, October 13, 1968) "guessed" upper right. A small, irregular metallic mass appears to be an amalgam filling(s?). The irregularity is the result of incineration. RIBS AND VERTEBRAE: Four rib fragments are small, delicate, and female-like. Bodies of vertebrae are represented by three fragments. One segment of a cervicle [sic] vertebra shows slight ripping along the edge confirming age change between the ages of 40-45. Three vertebral articular processes also exhibit slight ripping and bony exostosis. All fragments appear small and female-like. EXTREMITIES: Bones of the upper and lower extremities are represented by some 19 fragments. Perhaps the most significant fragment of the group is that of an upper shaft of the left ulna, 50mm in length. Muscular markings are weak and the lateral edge is sharp indicating a female. The metric dimensions (anterio-posterior and transverse diameters) correspond to those of a typical white female. A midsection of the right fibula exhibits the morphic characters of a female individual. Sections of the femora appear small and female-like. In spite of incineration, the bone texture is that of an adult individual. Bones of the hands and feet are present in the total series. Two complete terminal phalanges clearly indicate age change ("aging") by slight bony deposits on the articular margins. This is consistent with the other bones mentioned above. "NORMAL" BONE A "normal" or unburnt bone fragment is present in the collection. It measures 26.0mm by 45.5mm. One surface is smooth and the reverse side exhibits irregular bony cells. This fragment is associated with the frontal bone which forms the upper margin of the bony orbit and frontal sinus. The thickness and ruggedness suggests a male individual, and certainly not a part of the cremated remains. It is our opinion that the cremated remains are those of a female, probably white individual between the anatomical ages of 40--42 years. Since the age changes are slight, an age of 40 years is probably more correct. A single unburnt bone is not a part of or associated with cremated remains, but the remains of a second individual, a male. Raymond S. Baby, D.Sc. Curator of Archaeology Associate Professor of Anthropology The Ohio Historical Society --- The Ohio State University and Martha A. Potter, M.A. Associate Curator of Archaeology The Ohio Historical Society ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 12 Feb 2000 11:41:47 EST From: Mike Meunich Subject: Re: blowing tubes For Bob Brandenburg Has nothing to do with Earhart, but I am curious since you have first hand and CO experience. Did the bunker oil fired vessels of WWII have the same operating perameters for cleaning firesides? How did Third and Fifth Fleets maintain such long periods of operations at sea without this type of cleaning? One month's operations would exceed the 600 hour schedule. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 14 Feb 2000 08:44:48 EST From: Ron Bright Subject: E-bay and Amelia on Saipan Some of the forum may be unaware that in l960,ONI conducted an exhaustive investigation on Saipan talking with natives ect and looking for alleged grave sites.All negative. Let me know if you want a copy.Lots of photos and arrows! Ron Bright ************************************************************************** From Ric Incidentally, the offer on ebay has been withdrawn. No takers. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 14 Feb 2000 08:49:21 EST From: Randy Jacobson Subject: Re: blowing tubes At Scripps Institution of Oceanography, we used Bunker Fuel, a form of diesel fuel for our diesel engines. Once a day, "smoke was blown", usually at noon. Anyone who has a diesel car can cause the same thing by mashing the accelerator pedal, which forces more fuel into the engine than it can handle, and the excess fuel/exhaust comes out quite thick and black. I believe this is what the Itasca tried to do. *********************************************************************** From Ric Itasca was not a diesel. I don't know whether a diesel "blowing smoke" serves the same purpose as an oil fired steam engine "blowing tubes." ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 14 Feb 2000 08:59:45 EST From: Randy Jacobson Subject: Re: Navigation and Radios To Ric: your answer regarding the method of AE's position reports are fair enough, but I still wonder why everytime else she gave position reports except when approaching Howland... ************************************************************************* From Ric Good question. I can think of a couple of possible explanations. 1. She didn't know that there were reporters aboard itasca who could send out a story via the ship's radio and therefore saw no point in sending "press releases" or, more likely 2. She saw the approach to Howland as far too serious a matter to waste time sending "press releases." I suspect that if you could call back Amelia's ghost and ask her why she didn't send postion reports to the Itasca she would say, "But I did! I told them when I was 200 miles out, and when I was 100 miles out, and I told them when I must have been on them but couldn't see them. And when I couldn't find them I told them what I was doing about it." LTM, Ric ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 14 Feb 2000 09:01:12 EST From: Alan Caldwell Subject: Re: Anthroplogists' report I suppose there is no way at this late date to determine if AE had a gold bridge in the lower left or upper right? Alan #2329 ************************************************************************** From Ric We know of no existing dental records. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 14 Feb 2000 09:07:03 EST From: Vern Klein Subject: PAA According to Grooch Grooch did have a bit to say about the Clippers themselves. These comments take us back sometime before the "North Haven Expedition." Grooch wrote: *************************************** "The Chief Engineer sent me to Bridgeport, Connecticut, where the first Sikorsky Clipper, the S42, was now ready for preliminary flight tests. I spent a week studying several of the S42's in various stages of construction. The S42 is a sturdy flying boat, built of metal throughout. It has clean lines and is very fast. Colonel Lindbergh and Captain Edwin Musick, ranking Pan American pilot, were in charge of the S42 flights, and I joined their test group. It was immediately apparent that this plane had a better performance than any flying boat ever built. So Lindbergh and Musick arranged for official observers and proceeded to break most of the world's seaplane records. They flew the ship for eight hours over a measured course and averaged one hundred and fifty-seven miles per hour, using only twenty percent of the power available. When fitted with standard equipment, the plane, which had been designed for the South American trade, had a range of eighteen hundred miles. This was not enough for the twenty-four hundred mile flight from California to Honolulu. But when fitted with extra gas tanks it could easily make that distance. After several weeks at the Sikorsky factory, I visited the Martin plant at Baltimore. There the China, Hawaiian and Philippine Clippers were under construction. These sister ships were designed for transoceanic work and were ten thousand pounds heavier than the Sikorsky S42. Their wing-spread was one hundred and thirty feet and from nose to tail they measured ninety-two feet. Fully loaded each would weigh fifty-one thousand pounds. The specifications called for an extreme range of almost four thousand miles. The first plane, The China Clipper, would not be ready for a flight test for many months, but the important features of the design, and the methods used by the Martin engineers to save weight without sacrificing strength could easily be seen. The China Clipper would carry a load greater than its own weight. Other manufacturers had been frankly skeptical that such performance could be secured. When Pan American first submitted the requirements for their transoceanic planes, the leading aircraft designers of the country shook their heads and said it couldn't be done. Only Sikorsky and Martin had been willing to attempt such a design. Sikorsky's first plane had already exceeded its required performance. After several days spent at the Martin plant, I felt certain that the China Clipper would be fully as successful as the Sikorsky S42. I went back to Biidgeport. The Sikorsky S42 passed it's acceptance tests and was named Pan American Clipper. Captain Musick and I flew it from Bridgeport down the eastern coast to Miami, Florida, where it was to undergo further service tests." ***************************************** Grooch had been slated to go to China to get some airlines going there. He was about to depart for China when he received a wire from the New York office instructing him to cancel his passage and stand by for orders. ***************************************** "I knew this meant the transpacific show was about to open. I had no regrets about China. I'd been away from the States for five years, and it was grand to be home for a while where you didn't have to boil every drop of water, and where it wasn't suicide to eat fresh vegetables. In a few days orders arrived by mail. They directed me to make my headquarters in San Francisco and begin a survey of the bay area with regard to weather, flying conditions and airport sites. I went to work and sent many long reports to New York but they apparently were too busy to answer. I was begining to think they had completely forgotten the Transpacific line. Then one morning at 6 A.M. they telephoned me to take over Alameda Airport in the name of Pan American Airways. Alameda Airport is directly across the bay from San Francisco. It borders the bay, and has a yacht harbor on the outboard side. The yacht harbor would provide quiet water deep enough to permit handling and beaching the clipper ships. The airport had an administration building, a large hanger at each end of the field, and a row of small hangers. The buildings had been neglected. I hired a few men and we started to clean house. Shortly thereafter company executives, personnel and equipment began to arrive, and Alameda Airport soon hummed like a twin-row Wasp engine. The Pan American Clipper was due before long and we had to be ready to receive her. The only hanger at all suitable for our equipment was too low to take the clippers and had to be raised twelve feet. Our contractor put house jacks under the roof trusses, unbolted the feet of the columns and jacked the entire hanger twelve feet into the air; then he riveted extensions to the feet of the columns, bolted the extensions to the foundations and the hanger was ready for use. This was a strange-looking operation but it was entirely successful. The Chief Engineer directed me by letter to let bids for the construction of two large sea-going motor launches and three large lighters, and to supervise their construction. ["Lighter = large boat used for loading and unloading vessels not lying at wharves] The launches were to be used as tow boats for rescue work at the mid-Pacific island stations. The lighters were to be cargo carriers at the same points. This was all hard work and good fun but it was still difficult to realize that it had any direct bearing on the Transpacific airline. The flurry of activity at the airport increased from day to day. Then orders for the "North Haven Expedition" arrived." ************************************************************************** From Ric Those must have been exciting times. Does Grooch really misspell "hangar" all the the way through his book? ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 14 Feb 2000 09:09:28 EST From: Vern Klein Subject: Artifact 2-2-V-64 Tom thinks he sees something much like Artifact 2-2-V-64, Machine Part, Strange, inside the Niku Fire Extinguisher. Now we're curious about that artifact. I don't think we've seen it but there's probably a photo. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 14 Feb 2000 09:10:33 EST From: Vern Klein Subject: Niku Fire Extinguisher For Tom King I think you indicated that the pump shaft is movable. Can it be pulled out to some extent? What is the shaft made of? Most of the thing is brass but I would expect the shaft might be steel. Will a magnet stick to it? If it does seem to be steel, how badly rusted is it? ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 14 Feb 2000 09:30:17 EST From: Vern Klein Subject: Re: 10E >>Just what we need. Lemme guess. Gracie McGuire, right? I wonder why all these female flyers of Earhart-like airplanes are so difficult to deal with? Are they just antagonistic to the TIGHAR hypothesis? They don't want to know what happened? Maybe they'd just like it to remain a mystery about as close as you can come to making Amelia immortal. It's working so far! ************************************************************************** From Ric I've never heard any allegation that Ann Pellegrino is difficult to deal with. Finch and McGuire, on the other hand, have formidable reputations. In any case, the TIGHAR hypothesis has nothing to do with it. Last I heard, Pellegrino was a follower of the Japanee-man-take-ladyflier-Saipan school; McGuire is sure AE crashed at sea: and Finch won't discuss the disappearance at all. The compulsive desire to fly a Lockheed 10 around the world seems to be a well-defined clinical condition that strikes certain women. Explaining this strange syndrome is beyond my pay-grade. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 14 Feb 2000 09:35:34 EST From: anonymous Subject: another AE trip in a 10E Just out of curiosity, why would you call Linda unqualified to fly her airplane? *************************************************************************** From Ric Numerous first-hand accounts from several people who flew with her. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 14 Feb 2000 09:42:51 EST From: unknown Subject: Alternative Benedictine Bottle Source VIRGINIA/METRO RICHMOND That's some enchanted wine bottle / Tossed into Virginia river, it winds up on island in the South Pacific Monday, February 7, 2000 BY STEVE CLARK Times-Dispatch Staff Writer If only that wandering wine bottle could talk. What a fantastic sea story it might tell us about its journey from Virginia to a faraway island in the South Pacific. How did a bottle manage to travel from a river in Virginia to an island located about 1,200 miles off the eastern coast of Australia? No one knows for certain. Here is what we do know. A little over two years ago, about two weeks before Christmas Day in 1997, King William County resident W. Guy Townsend put one of his business cards in each of four empty wine bottles, recorked the bottles "real good," and dropped them into two rivers near his home. Two bottles went into the Mattaponi. Two went into the Pamunkey. Throwing bottles into rivers is out of character for Townsend, who is opposed to littering. This was not a litterbug act, however. It was a scientific experiment. "I wanted to see how far those bottles would go," said Townsend, who operates Prestley Farm Tree Nursery on the land that was his family's dairy farm when he was growing up in King William. On the back of each business card, Townsend wrote a message offering a $5 reward to whoever found the bottle and responded by letter. Two years passed. No letters came. Then, last Monday, an envelope with a picture of an angelfish and a colorful foreign stamp showed up in the mailbox at Townsend's home on U.S. 360 near Manquin. The return address was Vanuatu in the South Pacific. Townsend had never heard of Vanuatu; he had no idea what the letter was about. "It was addressed to my business, so I figured somebody in the South Pacific was ordering some trees," he said, laughing. The letter was from a male named Mikel. He does not give his age in the letter, but he apparently is a schoolboy or a young man. The handwritten letter was in Bislama, the native language of Vanuatu, an island nation made up of 83 islands in the South Pacific. Vanuatu (VAHN-wah-too) formerly was governed jointly by France and Great Britain and was known as the New Hebrides Islands, a name given to the islands by British Capt. James Cook in 1774. In 1980, the islands achieved independence and became the Republic of Vanuatu. Fortunately for Guy Townsend, a woman named Sarah Ruby had written an English translation in the space under Mikel's letter. She described herself as a teacher in a primary school and a friend of Mikel. "Hello," the letter began. "My name is Mikel. I have found one bottle belongs to you at the beach close to my house. When I saw it at first I thought that one man was lying to me, so I asked the full village of mine. They don't know anything. The name of my village is Sarenda. It is on a big island which is named Espirito Santo. "Everyone on Santo can talk small English so I thought it was a bottle of England because England used to be the government of us here in Vanuatu. One friend looked at your bottle and told me it is a bottle from America. Is it true? I am a little scared to believe because America is a much long way from Vanuatu. "I hope you will post me one letter when you get this one. Thank you very much. Goodbye, Mikel." Townsend and his wife, Emilie, were quite excited when they realized the letter was about one of the bottles he had dropped into a river two years ago. "We couldn't believe someone found one so far away," he said. How did the bottle get there? That's anybody's guess. Could it have floated all the way? Yes, said Dr. Ron Johnson, professor of oceanography at Old Dominion University in Norfolk and an expert in ocean currents. "It would be a real fluke for a glass bottle to float that far without banging into a rock or something else that would shatter it," he said. "But, if everything went right, if it found all the proper currents, it could do it in two years. It's a long shot, but within the realm of possibilities. "This is either a great hoax or a great story of one bottle's voyage. Bottles show up in all kinds of places, but this one is the longest journey I've ever heard about." If it did float all the way, what route did it probably take? According to Johnson, the bottle would have entered the Chesapeake Bay, moved into the Atlantic and into the Gulf Stream off Cape Hatteras, N.C. It then would have entered the Canary current, carrying it across the Atlantic toward Africa. Next, it would have entered the Guinea current, causing the bottle to hook south and moved down the west coast of Africa toward the Equator. "Crossing the Equator would have been the biggest hurdle," Johnson said. "But with the right currents it would have crossed the Equator, entered the South Atlantic and moved westward across the South Atlantic toward South America." Off the South American coast, it would have entered the Brazil current, which would have carried it all the way down the coast of South America. Another current would have taken it around Cape Horn and into the Pacific Ocean. Once in the Pacific, the bottle would have hit a number of currents that would have carried it west toward Australia. That's a long voyage. Probably 30,000 miles or more. Could a floating bottle travel that far in two years? Yes, said Johnson. "The rule of thumb is a floating object averages three to four miles an hour in the ocean," he said. "So it is possible that a bottle could float that far in two years." For Guy Townsend, the letter from Mikel has been an educational experience. He found a Web site on the Internet with lots of information about Vanuatu. "It looks to be a beautiful place to visit," he said. A couple of days ago, Townsend wrote a letter to Mikel in Vanuatu. He enclosed the reward as promised on the business card in the bottle. I put a five-dollar bill in with the letter," he said. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 14 Feb 2000 09:50:25 EST From: Ross Devitt Subject: Re: AE Voice Amelia had also been told to "pitch her voice higher" in an attempt to overcome a malfunction in a radio. I guess that could make her sound as if she was panicing also... RossD ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 14 Feb 2000 09:49:31 EST From: Ross Devitt Subject: Re: blowing tubes Is it at all possible that since they knew Earhart was searching for a very small target, the powers that were supplied Itasca with a "smoke generator" for the purpose - rather than risk damage to boiler tubes? RossD ************************************************************************** From Ric Additional equipment and personnel brought on board is specified in the ship's deck log. For example, the HF/DF and the radioman (Ciprianni) borrowed from USCG Taney to operate it. There is no mention of a smoke generator. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 14 Feb 2000 09:56:26 EST From: Pat #2239 Subject: Post Loss Signals Were all of the credible post loss signals on 6210 or did AE (at any time) go back to 3105 ??? LTM Pat (2239) ************************************************************************** From Ric It's all a question of what you consider to be credible. The signals heard by Nauru the evening of the disappearance were all on 6210. These seem to be the most credible of all the post loss signals. Most of the other alleged post-loss signals were heard on 3105. Of those, the ones which seem most credible are the dashes heard in response to KGMB's request on the night of July 4th/5th. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 14 Feb 2000 10:15:36 EST From: Dave Bush Subject: AE's voice Remember, too, that she was advised to "Pitch her voice higher" to be heard better on the radio - this may have come across as "Hysteria". LTM #2200 Dave Bush ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 14 Feb 2000 10:20:47 EST From: Dave Bush Subject: Re: ebay offer >From Ric > >Here is the anthropologists' report that is part of the packet sent out by >Kothera and Matonis. So, what does this all mean? A white female was on the island during the war years. How many nurses and other civilian females were missing during the war in this region? What is the likelihood of it being one of them? I was watching the "Rape of Nanking" last night on the History Channel, and it seems consistent that the Japanese would have first raped, then murdered someone and then cremated the remains to completely erase the event - both from the standpoint of leaving no evidence and also "cleansing" themselves from any complicity in wrongdoing. No evidence, no crime, no guilt. How convenient. LTM, Dave Bush #2200 ************************************************************************** From Ric No need to get that fancy. These guys dug a hole in a cemetery and found cremated bone fragments which may have been from a female. Duh. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 14 Feb 2000 10:25:11 EST From: Chris Kennedy Subject: Re: Post Loss Signals I know absolutely nothing about radios, but was wondering whether the fact that possible post loss signals were heard (almost exclusively, it seems) on 6210 is, in itself, significant? Remember, at the time of the signals, I would presume that only a few people knew that Earhart said she was shifting to 6210. Was 6210 a "special" or in any way a "reserved" frequency for Earhart? Why would you transmit at 6210? Again, I apologize if this sounds like a stupid question, but to people who don't know anything about radios, like me, the thought is that if the post loss messages were false then you would expect to hear them at many different frequencies. --Chris Kennedy ************************************************************************* From Ric Earhart's two frequencies - 3105 and 6210 - were standard aviation frequencies in the U.S. but not in the Central Pacific. (After all, there was no air traffic in the Central Pacific.) ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 14 Feb 2000 18:47:13 EST From: Ken Feder Subject: Re: ebay offer >From Ric > > No need to get that fancy. These guys dug a hole in a cemetery and found > cremated bone fragments which may have been from a female. Duh. Thanks for sharing a copy of the Saipan bone report. When I read it, I was quite suspicious of the conclusions--they seemed far too specific and certain for such badly fragments bones--and passed it along to a colleague who teaches a course in forensic anthropology, has worked on human skeletal remains with the state archaeologist and Medical Examiner here in Connecticut, and has written textbooks on physical anthropology. His conclusion: "In the spirit of good scientific skepticism, especially without seeing the originals, I'd put it this way: The data and descriptions do not justify or support the analyses and conclusions." Ken Feder ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 14 Feb 2000 18:50:06 EST From: Ron Bright Subject: Earhart's voice/ Last transmission I passed on to Leo Bellarts Jr the general consensus that Amelia' voice did not indicate any genuine panic,incoherency,etc., based on static,raised voice pitch to transmit,her coherent statements (?), and misunderstanding by Leo Sr and the others. Leo Jr. went nuts.He said: "Considering the extensive and correct details he did remember, and the significance of this event,...hard to believe that he ...would not have AE's tone of voice,as described and recorded,(I guess in the later log)firmly etched in his mind...he...emphaized on a number of occasions that he would never forget the tone and emotion in her voice". There you have it. I personally believe Leo Srs account (and I know many of you don't) and consider it a potential clue to an exigent,imminent circumstance,whether she was ditching or flying to an alternative landing; after all noone aboard the Itasca heard her again on 6110 or 3105. I asked Leo Jr if his father kept any other contemporaneous documentation,letters, memoranda,notes,letters or related material to confirm Leo Srs description. Answer was no.Leo Jr said the first interview his father gave was to Goerner in 1966 or 67; the only notes were some annotations in Goerner's book concerning some errors (not described). Thus, as Ric would put it, with out more firm timely documentation, we in the forum are left to form our own opinions on controversial evidence. By the way Leo Jr hopes that Longs expedition will succeed so that Tighar can "eat a lot of crow" !! By the way some of the early l930s recordings of AE's voice, what with the sound reproduction ,sound pretty high pitched for what it's worth. Ron Bright ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 14 Feb 2000 19:05:36 EST From: Jerry Hamilton Subject: Aviation History The April issue of "Flight Journal" has a short article on a 1914 Italian Caproni Ca 20 monoplane. They call it the first fighter and it is the only example of the model ever built. It is being displayed at Seattle's Museum of Flight in "as found" condition (which based on the photo is excellent). The museum acquired it last year from the Caproni family. It had been in storage in an Italian monastery for the last 51 years. They plan to exhibit it in "as is" condition for two years before restoring it. Also an article on the Lockheed 12A, Electra Junior. Includes review by a current owner of one still flying (Kent Blankenburg) and a history of the type. blue skies, -jerry *************************************************************************** From Ric If the Caproni is really that good it needs to be carefully conserved while it is awaiting restoration (and perhaps that is being done). Most importantly, the restoration should be a restoration in the true historic preservation sense - "returning the object to a known previous appearance through the minimal introduction of new material" - in other words, some cleaning and touching up. If they try to make it look new they'll destroy its value as an historic property. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 15 Feb 2000 09:59:27 EST From: Bob Brandenburg Subject: Re: blowing tubes For Mike Meunich: Yes, the bunker fuel used by oil-fired ships during and after WWII did have the same operating parameters with respect to cleaning firesides. As for how the 3rd and 5th fleets (and also the 7th fleet, which was the amphibious force) maintained long periods of operations without keeping to boiler maintenance schedules, the short answer is that they didn't. The number of boilers in a ship was a function of the number of propellers on the ship. Each propeller was driven by a steam turbine which delivered power to the propeller shaft through a system of reduction gears, and there were two boilers available for each shaft. An aircraft carrier (CV), for example, had four propellers and eight boilers, and a destroyer (DD) had two propellers and four boilers. A DD could make a top speed of about 35 knots with four boilers on line, about 27 knots with two boilers, and about 20 knots with one boiler. Since top speed was rarely needed, it was possible to take a boiler off line and clean firesides at sea if necessary. The boiler would be allowed to cool down for 24 hours, following which the boiler crew would work around the clock in shifts to clean fire sides. The entire process could be completed in 48 hours from boiler shutdown. Such a practice entailed risks that were justified in war, but would never be countenanced in peace time. But even if circumstances prevented at-sea fireside cleaning and a ship sustained a resultant boiler casualty, the ship could still operate until it could get to one of the forward area Pacific Island bases and go alongside a destroyer tender or a repair ship for boiler repairs. Cost was not a consideration, and repair parts were readily available since the war effort had first priority on the nation's production. However, things are different in peacetime. The operating budget is strictly controlled, and repair parts are scarce. These factors demand the utmost prudence in operating a warship in peacetime. The same considerations applied to the ITASCA in 1937. LTM, Bob Brandenburg, #2286 ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 15 Feb 2000 10:22:10 EST From: William Webster-Garman Subject: Re: Earhart's voice/ Last transmission Ron Bright mentioned, >"By the way Leo Jr hopes that Longs expedition will succeed so that >Tighar can "eat a lot of crow" !!" Scientific rigor and objectivity at its very best. Re AE's voice in her last verified transmissions to the Itasca, it is my experience that intelligent and reasonable people routinely project all sorts of subjective things onto the behavior of others while witnessing stressful situations. If she'd been coached to pitch her voice high when on mic, adding in some aircraft engine vibrations and noise, given the circumstances, I think it's understandable that someone who heard her voice that day on a navy squawk box might have come away utterly and honestly convinced that he was hearing pronounced fear and anxiety in her voice. Is there any documented evidence of Earhart ever sounding noticeably afraid or hysterical during an inflight transmission before that? Of all the interesting things I've heard about AE, I've never read anything indicating that panic in a tight inflight situation was part of her character. It is very unlikely that anyone will ever be led to a proof of how she and Noonan ended their flight by analyzing the tone of her voice. As I sometimes say in response to this sort of discussion, there are too many variables. william 2243 ************************************************************************** From Ric I don't blame Leo Jr. for being upset that some of us don't take his father's account as gospel. He is certainly not alone in placing great faith in "eyewitness testimony." Aside from the Oakland/Hawaii flight, the only flight I know of where AE carried a radio at all was her 1935 Honolulu to Oakland flight. On that occasion she made brief transmissions that were very much in the character of progress reports for the media rather than official position reports. During her 1932 transatlantic flight there were several inflight emergencies. She had no radio so there was no occasion for her to make a panicky radio call, but she did survive the experience so she must not have lost it altogether. In short, I agree. The available evidence does suggest that AE was not prone to panic. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 15 Feb 2000 10:29:52 EST From: Vern Klein Subject: PAA According to Grooch >Those must have been exciting times. >Does Grooch really misspell "hangar" all the the way through his book? Those were indeed exciting times. What I'm posting here is only a small fraction of it. The things they did in the islands, in a very short period of time, are amazing. I'm trying to stay with things at least slightly on-topic for the forum. It's a shame Grooch's books are so difficult to come by. I'm trying to find the 2nd one called, "Winged Highway," published in 1938. The book I have ends with December 1935. The next one must span the time of the Earhart and Noonan disappearance. It would be interesting to see what Grooch may have had to say about that. The misspelling of "hangar" is my own doing! Grooch spelled it correctly. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 15 Feb 2000 10:33:28 EST From: Marty Joy Subject: Caproni I have seen the Caproni Tipo 20, it is in remarkably good condition. All it really needs is to keep it in a controlled atmosphere, and don't screw with it. Marty ************************************************************************** From Ric This is completely off topic, but interesting. Is there, by any chance, a picture of it on the Museum of Flight website? ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 15 Feb 2000 10:44:30 EST From: Russ Matthews Subject: Re: LONG'S PHOTO/ 1936 OR 1937? I just downloaded and read through the ever-growing volume of Forum correspondence from the last few days. On 2/10 Ron Bright reported Leo Bellarts, Jr's impressions of the photo that shows Itasca "making smoke" off of Howland Island and raised questions about whether it was taken in 1936 or 1937. Ron incorporated observations I made last month about my 1992 interview with Frank Stewart, the man who took the picture in question. It was an interesting experience, seeing my writings of last month analyzed like a part of the historical record -- now I know how Fred, Amelia, Cmdr Thompson, and all the others must feel (if they could, that is). Ron wondered why during the memorable events of July, 1937 "Stewart...didn't take any photos, he said, of the Earhart search." Stewart never said that. Quite the opposite, in fact. He and his family were convinced that he had taken photos while the Earhart search was underway. However, their impressions were contradicted by the date given in the scrapbook. Individual dates were not recorded for each picture, rather the front page described the contents of the book as photos from a particular voyage in 1936. When I pointed out the discrepancy, they tried long and hard to find pictures from the Earhart trip, but to no avail. The only thing that turned up was a stylized hand-drawn map of Itasca's course over the entire voyage. There may indeed be pictures from the search somewhere, but they couldn't find them. As part of my research for the show, I had been in Washington, DC only a few months prior to interviewing Frank Stewart. There I had a chance to visit the National Archives and saw the Leo Bellarts file. The pages of the Itasca radio log were fascinating and I was very excited to find the picture as well. Later, when I saw the photo in Frank Stewart's album, I recognized it (and the implications) immediately. The two photos are identical in composition and framing. I have no doubt that they were made from the same negative. Frank Stewart was unquestionably the photographer and he recorded the date as 1936. Exactly how Leo Bellarts obtained a copy and why he labeled it with "July 2, 1937" is unknown to me (Stewart did not specifically recall giving or selling him one -- just that he did it a lot for members of the crew over the years). Ron says "Leo Jr opined that why in the world would Leo Sr buy a picture taken in l936 as it "would mean nothing". Maybe a souvenir?" That's my best guess as well. It doesn't seem that strange to me for the guy to want a picture showing his ship and what they were doing. (I wonder if this was Bellarts' first trip with Itasca..Randy?) The Forum, in it's infinite wisdom and resourcefulness, has already answered most of the other questions raised -- and corrected many of Leo, Jr's assumptions about the verifiable facts of the story. (Stewart was on board for the Earhart search, Itasca did visit Howland in 1936, it is not unusual for oil-fueled ships to "make smoke," etc). We will likely never resolve the more subjective question of whether or not Amelia sounded scared or panicked. Bellarts, understandably, believes his dad -- and nothing we say here is likely to change that. As evidence, however, Leo, Jr's recollections of Leo, Sr's recollections amount to secondhand anecdote. Human memory (yours, mine, Stewart's, the Bellarts') is notoriously fickle and unreliable. This whole exercise, if nothing else, has been a fine example of why TIGHAR favors primary, contemporaneous, (written or photographic) documentation wherever possible Even so, we have to study our sources with a critical eye -- which brings us right back to where we started. In his book, Elgen Long used the Stewart photo to prove that the smoke plume made by the Itasca on the morning of July 2, 1937 dissipated rapidly (making it harder for Earhart to spot the island). Careful study of the photo's origins shows that it was actually taken some time a year earlier -- thereby rendering the picture moot as evidence of anything. LTM, Russ *************************************************************************** From Ric What a fascinating example of how what seems to be primary source photographic proof of something can turn out to be baloney. Who would ever question Long's use of the photo as evidence? It's a photo of the Itasca that was put in the National Archives by the ship's Chief Radioman and it's dated July 2, 1937. Makes you wonder how many other documents are the result of someone's assumptions and flawed recollections. LTM, Ric ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 15 Feb 2000 10:46:07 EST From: Bob Brown Subject: Blowing tubes I served as Chief Engineer on both a diesel electric ship and a steam turbine ship. Blowing tubes is definitely related to routine operating procedures on a steam boiler. You send steam up past the water tubes in the boiler to blow the soot from them and up the stack. The soot if allowed to build up creates a very real fire hazard. A stack fire is no fun and difficult to put out. Smoke on a diesel ship is usually the result of dirty or stuck fuel injectors which then have to be removed, cleaned, and replaced. We had spares that we used. On a large diesel engine they are easily removed and replaced while it is running. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 15 Feb 2000 10:47:32 EST From: Chris Kennedy Subject: Re: Earhart's voice/ Last transmission I think this issue is one of those that has been done to death, and we can't know one way or the other for sure. Let's drop it. ************************************************************************ From Ric And so we shall. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 15 Feb 2000 13:55:07 EST From: Ty Sundstrom Subject: Re: Caproni A quick call to the Museum of Flight confimed my web-site check, that they do not currently have the Caproni on the web as of yet, but they still have a great picture of "my" Ryan M-1 on their website! Ty N. Sundstrom ************************************************************************* From Ric I imagine they'll have a photo of the Caproni up pretty soon. That M-1 is your work? Very nice. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 15 Feb 2000 14:40:38 EST From: Hugh Graham Subject: Re: Earhart's voice/ Last transmission For Ron Bright: > he...(Leo Bellart) emphasized on a number of occasions that > he would never forget the tone and emotion in her voice". > There you have it. I personally believe Leo Srs account (and I know many of > you don't). Hey, I believe Leo Sr. too. But then I tend to believe trained, competent, technicians, even without "contemporaneous doc", which isn't archaeologically-correct I know, especially when it doesn't support a Tighar hypothesis or a national icon. Regards, HAGraham 2201. ************************************************************************* From Ric I really don't think that it's a supportable criticism to imply that we try to preserve Amelia's position as a "national icon" (I, for one, have been pretty rough on that image) or that we change our rules of evidence based upon what we want to believe. Quite the opposite. We try to decide what to believe based solely upon what the evidence shows. We use those rules because they work better than trying to make subjective judgements about whose memory is better than whose. If we say that we believe Leo Sr.'s recollections because he was a trained, competent technician, then what do we do about Lae Wireless Operator Harry Balfour (another trained, competent radio technician) who later claimed that Earhart had invited him to come along on the flight? Or what about Walt McMennamy (another trained, competent radio technician) who received widespread press attention in 1937 when he reported receiving SOS calls from Earhart and, in later years, made truly bizarre claims about being forced to participate in a government cover up? What you're really saying is that you're going to believe what you want to believe, which is pretty much what you're accusing us of doing. LTM, Ric ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 15 Feb 2000 14:45:43 EST From: Ron Bright Subject: USS SWAN AND THE WRECK PHOTO While researching some Amelia stuff with the Naval Historical Center, Washington DC, I came across the summary of the USS Swan's movements in l942. The USS SWAN was a AP7 a tender for Patrol Squadron 2 homeported at Pearl Harbor. (She was in Pearl on 7 Dec 41) The Swan left Pearl Harbor on 8 Jan 42 for American Samoa and arrived on l8 Jan 42. In mid March l942 and apparently in May and Jun l942 visited Wallis Is and Danger Is (?) then left for Honolulu on 25 Jul 42 and arrived 4 Aug 42 for an overhaul. The curator couldn't find in this summary of Swan's cruise any reference to Howland Is but he emphazised that it was a summary and only the ship's deck log at the National Archives would have any scheduled or unscheduled mini-visits records. Maybe Ron Dawson has found those records to verify the Swan's visit to Howland or some other south pacific island where the wreck photo (see p.l4 Tighar tracks Vol l4) may have been taken. Wallis Island is sort of in the vicinity of the Phoenix Is,maybe 500 miles due south. LTM, Ron Bright *************************************************************************** From Ric We did quite a bit of research on this and we have the deck logs and other doumentation. As I recall, Swan visited Gardner twice in 1942 but we found no reason to suspect that anyone from that ship took the Wreck Photo. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 15 Feb 2000 14:47:18 EST From: Mike Meunich Subject: Re: blowing tubes Thank Mr. Brandenburg for me. I am somewhat of a student of WWII, especially the Pacific Theater and I appreciate the time he took for a detailed response. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 15 Feb 2000 14:48:55 EST From: Jim Tierney Subject: Re: PAA According to Grooch To Vern---A quick review of my copy of Groochs-Winged Highway- reveals NO mention of FJN...This book tells the tsory of his early life in the Navy and then joining Pan AM. The bulk of the book covers his five years in China for PanAm/CNAC. The last chapter covers very briefly his reassignment to the North Haven and the building of the island bases. It ends with his assignment to the Operations Dept in Alameda and his mention of the arrival of the first M-130 and the first airmail flight to Manila in Nov. 1935.... So he wrote the books out of sequence...The last one-From Crate to Clipper- is particularly hard to find and Jerry Hamilton will be bidding up its price when a copy is found.... Hope this helps... Jim Tierney ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 15 Feb 2000 18:32:43 EST From: Randy Jacobson Subject: Re: LONG'S PHOTO/ 1936 OR 1937? I have no idea if Bellarts was on previous trips, as I didn't copy Itasca deck logs other than for AE's loss cruise. ************************************************************************** From Ric I don't see that it really matters. We've reliably established that Stewart took the photo on 1936. Both he and Bellarts were aboard for the 1937 cruise. The opportunity clearly existed for Stewart to give or sell a photo to his shipmate. Bellarts' transfer of his documents to the National Archives did not happen until many, many years later by which time the events of July 2, 1937 were firmly entrenched in legend. It seems most probable that the reverse of Bellarts' print of the photo was inscribed at that time. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 15 Feb 2000 18:45:05 EST From: William Webster-Garman Subject: National Icon Of course, Earhart's name and accomplishments have been invoked, abused, distorted, romanticized, and exploited continuously for 70 years. That is typical for any American who is bestowed with the dubious honor of lasting celebrity. Recognizable names and faces have always tended to translate into profits and results for publishers and promoters of all stripes. Truth is frequently a minor consideration. Anecdotal evidence regarding someone like Earhart is especially unreliable because people's memories (and motivations) can be significantly skewed by the essentially endless stream of often incorrect information about the subject, which is ultimately corrupted by its own popularity. A good place to get a brief reminder of this is the "Earhart Myths" page on TIGHAR's site, at http://www.tighar.org/Projects/AEmyths.html . The text on the page begins with the sentence, "Not since George Washington chopped down the cherry tree has a historical figure been the subject of more myth and legend than has Amelia Earhart." william 2243 ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 16 Feb 2000 08:02:24 EST From: Ty Sundstrom Subject: Re: Caproni The Ryan M-1 was one of my restorations. More M-1 pictures and history can be found on my web-site, www.webams/dawnpatrol/ . The whole site is being updated over the next few weeks, but it still quite a lot of neat photos. Ty N. Sundstrom ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 16 Feb 2000 08:11:51 EST From: Alan Caldwell Subject: Re: Earhart's voice/ Last transmission AE making radio transmissions in 1937 is like turning your turn signal on when making a right turn at a Farm to Market intersection. Who would know. Who would care. Alan #2329 ************************************************************************* From Ric In "Last Flight" she talks about crossing the South Atlantic: "About midway we passed an Air France mail plane. Unfortunately I could not 'talk' to it. The mail plane's radio equipment, I believe, is telegraphic code, while mine, at the moment, was exclusively voice telephone. As always, I broadcast my position by voice each half hour. Whether it was heard at all, or understood if heard, perhaps I shall never know. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 16 Feb 2000 08:15:02 EST From: Vern Klein Subject: Phoenix Islands maps, maybe? I thought the forum might find this a bit interesting. Maybe some good maps of the Phoenix Islands, Howland Island, etc., will be forthcoming. The maps I've seen to date are quite impressive -- and still better are to come. This was received from NASA JSC tonight. >STS-99 Report # 09 >Tuesday, February 15, 2000 - 6:30 a.m. CST > > Endeavour astronauts had completed mapping well over half the targeted >Earth land surface by early Tuesday, and scientists continued to express >delight at the quality of information they were seeing. > >More than 20 percent of the targeted land had been mapped twice and the >Shuttle Radar Topography Mission had covered more than 6 percent of it three >times. The area surveyed at least once was equal to that of Africa, North >AmeRica and Australia combined. > >Those totals were growing rapidly. Endeavour was gathering mapping data on >40,000 square miles of land each minute. Scientists say the mission already >has tripled the world's pool of digital terrain data with this much detail. > >Endeavour is gathering data four times faster than its advanced data >communications system can send it to Earth. "Quick look" data sent down, >with less detail than will be available from the high-density tapes being >filled aboard the orbiter, already has revealed features not shown on even >the best maps available today. ************************************************************************** From Ric Actually, the current charts are perfectly adequate. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 16 Feb 2000 08:16:16 EST From: Vern Klein Subject: Grooch's "Winged Highway" To Jim Tierney I appreciate the information on "Winged Highway" although it's a disappointment. None the less, I'll be interested to have a look at it. I see that a number of libraries have it and will make interlibrary loans. It will probably turn up in a few weeks. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 16 Feb 2000 08:51:58 EST From: Jockroy Subject: AUTHENTICATION While we are on the subject of nefarious documentation, it would be interesting to view the documentation authenticating the single aerial photograph of Gardner island purported to be taken on JULY 9 1937 from the Colorado scout planes. It seems rather strange that a US photograph would appear in the NZ archives when no US archive photographs have been found . It seems more likely to have been taken by the Walrus from the Achilles which was secretly surveying these islands at the time of the AE flight, unknown to Friedell and his boys. This survey was been conducted in conjunction with the New Zealand Pacific Island Survey , which was examining suitable aerodrome sites, the Achilles carrying several personnel from the Aerodrome Services Branch. It is to be expected that all military documentation of this secret and classified nature would still require declassification , and this usually consists of authorized stamps and signatures from the respective departments appearing on the reverse side of such declassified material. Randy has stated that such documentation exists, but we haven't sighted this yet; it should provide some interesting information as to by whom it was declassified and by what department, and when it arrived in the NZ files. If we don't sight this evidence authenticating its source, should we also then consider it baloney ? *************************************************************************** From Ric It is not the least bit strange for U.S. Navy photos of Gardner Island that are not in the National Archives to turn up in the New Zealand Archives. For example, on June 20, 1941 nine PBYs of VP22 made a reconnaissance of the islands of the Phoenix Group. At least four aircraft visited Gardner and took a series of oblique photos of different parts of the island. Some of the photos can be found in the Still Photos branch of the National Archives in College Park, MD. Other photos in the same series seem to now exist only in the New Zealand Archive. The original report on the mission, dated June 28, 1941, was classified "Confidential" but was declassified several years ago and is now in the U.S. National Archive. I'm not sure why New Zealand has kept better track of such photos than has the U.S. but I suspect it's because they are just more interested in that area. The New Zealand copy of the photo of Gardner taken on July 9, 1937 is clearly labeled on the reverse as to source and date. There's no indication that it was ever classified and there's nothing at all mysterious about it, except perhaps the identity of the doofus who put a hand drawn north arrow on the photo that points due west. And speaking of baloney, where did you get the idea that HMS Achilles was secretly surveying the Phoenix Group at the time of the Earhart disappearance? The aerodrome survey was done a year and a half later. Aerial photos of Gardner were taken by a Walrus launched from HMS Leander on December 1, 1938. We have two of those photos. LTM, Ric ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 16 Feb 2000 09:09:55 EST From: Don Neumann Subject: Last transmission about last transmission Perhaps it should be considered how difficult it may have been for AE to hear herself talk, while sitting in that somewhat cramped cockpit, with those large & _very_ loud, twin P & W radial engines droning-on right out side her cockpit windows. My own experience, in those situations when I'm talking on a telephone in a very noisy environment, is to continually raise the pitch of my voice, especially if I believe the person on the other end may be having difficulty in hearing me over the din. I'd imagine, even if she had earphones, the noise level in that cockpit was deafening & especially when it appeared she was receiving no response to her calls it would be quite normal to raise one's voice, while talking into a hand-held mic, especially having not slept all night & understandably irritated by the fact that they'd failed to see Howland when, according to FN's calculations, they should be sitting right on top of the island! Don Neumann ************************************************************************ From Ric I think we've established that: 1. The content and context of Earhart's final message received by Itasca gives no indication of panic or hysteria. 2. No mention of the emotional quality of AE's voice was made by anyone until more than a day after the disappearance, and then only by a newspaper reporter who said she sounded tired and anxious. 3. Allegations that Earhart's emotional state had anything to do with the disappearance seem to emerge entirely within the context of later Coast Guard explanations of how and why the loss occurred. 4. The only two anecdotal recollections we have from individuals who were present and heard her voice (Bellarts and Stewart) disagree about the character of her transmission. Bellarts said she was distraught. Stewart said she was bossy. I don't see any evidence to justify a conclusion that Earhart's emotional state was a factor in the disappearance. Let's move on. LTM, Ric ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 16 Feb 2000 09:34:05 EST From: Tom King Subject: Re: Phoenix Islands maps, maybe? Now, Ric -- the existing maps are perfectly adequate for what we've used them for, though there's a lot of detail that we see on the island and they don't show. I'm looking forward to the new radar maps, though according to the news accounts I've seen, they're not going to have resolution sufficient to permit picking out things like plane wrecks. Of course, what may be more interesting than the maps themselves are the actual images, assuming they can be gotten. LTM Tom King *************************************************************************** From Ric Pretty pictures of the island are nice but I think that if we've learned anything in five trips to the place it's that whatever traces may survive of an ephemeral event that occurred over 60 years ago are now very hard to find. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 16 Feb 2000 11:10:37 EST From: Tom King Subject: Re: Phoenix Islands maps, maybe? I'd be happy with maps/images that give us a better idea of Scaevola density, or coral head distribution in the lagoon. I'm not expecting airplanes, just better data for fieldwork planning purposes. TK ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 16 Feb 2000 11:13:27 EST From: Tom King Subject: Re: Last transmission about last transmission Without objecting to moving on, I think it's interesting to hear from experienced pilots and others about the various reasons that an impression that someone was talking with panic in her voice might actually reflect a number of other things. I can imagine being asked about something like this, and it's useful to have something to say that's a bit better than my own uninformed guesswork. LTM Tom King *************************************************************************** From Ric Don't get me wrong. I think it was entirely worth discussing if only to lay to rest yet another Earhart myth. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 16 Feb 2000 11:58:44 EST From: Bob Brandenburg Subject: InsightMag.com - Aviation Legend Found this information today at Insight Magazine. I thought you might want to check it out yourself. Just click on http://www.insightmag.com/archive/200002054.shtml ************************************************************************** From Ric Well, AE continues to make the news. The article contains too many errors to even catalog, but we're used to that. I don't remember talking to this guy or saying the things I'm quoted as saying, but I talk to media types all the time and I say all sorts of things. Nothing I'm quoted as saying in the article sounds like anything I would absolutely not say. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 16 Feb 2000 13:33:42 EST From: Frank Westlake Subject: Last transmission verdict Between 1992 and 1996 I operated a Navy unit that took small boats to sea several times daily at a high rate of speed and a high engine RPM. The noise level in the boat at these speeds was such that the occupants would have to yell into each others ears to be heard and understood. The boat drivers would report their status to me regularly with a handheld voice radio, and if the boat was proceeding at high speed they would always yell into the radio. At my end, listening to their yelled reports, I always sensed an urgency in their voices that would add to my own stress level. On some occasions they would begin the report yelling, but when they could not hear my reply they would stop the boat and make the report again in a calm, quiet voice. The difference between these two reports and my reaction to them was amazing; the yelled report would make me feel that things were getting out of control, and the calm, quiet report would reassure me that everything was OK. ****************************************************************************** From Dennis McGee This recent talk regarding AE's comments/tone of her last transmission got me to thinking (I know, don't try to do a job you're not trained to do). My experience in intercepting communications back in the dark ages (the 60s) was that operators ALWAYS typed on their intercepted copy ANY information they had that they thought would help us analyze the traffic. In fact, it was part of their job. These notes ranged from comments on the sender's mannerism i.e., "has trouble sending Y's and B's," the quality of the transmitting equipment, the quality of the signal, when the sending station changed operators, the cadence/rhythm of the transmission, and a host of other peculiarities. Of course my guys were copying Morse code, not voice, and for different reasons -- spying -- than would a radioman on the Itasca. But considering the importance and visibility of the Itasca's mission it seems to me that the radiomen would provide similar comments on their copy (logs), if only to protect their butts in the event of ANY problem. LTM, who hasn't chased a ditty in years Dennis O. McGee #0149 ************************************************************************** From Ric Frank Westlake also had some very interesting off-forum comments about the nature and content of ships' radio logs. Perhaps he'd care to share them with the forum. ************************************************************************* From Ron Bright The only reason I brought up the character of Amelia's voice for discussion and examination is that I have listened to hundreds of 911 calls in courtrooms played either by the prosecutor or the defense .Each often asks the jury to listen to the voice not just for content ,but for fear,panic,etc.,etc. Sometimes juries put a lot of thought into that type of evidence. In Amelia's case, the forum has brought up all of the variables and other explanations of her alleged "almost hysterical voice" in sort of a cross examination mode.So without a recording (best evidence) we probably have a hung jury on what her last transmission meant. Or put it an other way: If the voice doesn't fit (your perception) you must acquit!!! LTM, Ron Bright ****************************************************************************** From Ric The defendant will please rise. Ms. Earhart, of the charge of panic and hysteria in the transmission of a radiotelephone message, this court finds you not guilty. (Bang!) Next case. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 16 Feb 2000 13:36:54 EST From: Ken Feder Subject: Ebay Bones It may be beating a dead horse but: Brad Lepper, staff archaeologist at the Ohio Historical Society where the bones found on Saipan and alleged to be those of Amelia Earhart were analyzed, has found a copy of a letter written by Ray Baby to a colleague. It is clear from the letter that he was not simply handed the bones and asked to analyze them; obviously it was suggested to him that they were the remains of Amelia Earhart (so his was not a blind appraisal): taken from a letter from Ray Baby to a colleague in Cleveland (dated 4 October 1968): "I assume you have been contacted and appraised of the fact that I have several small fragments of cremated human bone believed to be the remains of Amelia Erhart. My initial impression was that the remains were those of a white person. The small size of the few complete terminal phalanges indicate a female. Slight lipping of the joint ends suggest an age between 40-42 years. In the short period (approx. 1-1/2 hrs) that I had the gold bridge, I felt that it was associated with a female, probably lower left." Clearly he was told the bones were (or at least might have been) Amelia's. Clearly he was not given a substantial amount to time to analyze them. Assessing sex on the basis of the samll size of some of the bones presupposes that the race of the individual is known (eg., small Asian males may have bones smaller than larger European females) and though Baby states that the remains are those of a white person, he provides no evidence at all to support this conclusion. I have now been told by two people who are familiar with forensic analysis that "lipping of joint ends" cannot be used to accurately assess age. Ken Feder *************************************************************************** From Ric In other words ...... they were the bones of a dead horse. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 16 Feb 2000 14:36:02 EST From: Dave Bush Subject: Re: InsightMag.com - Aviation Legend Williamson and Associates is noted for locating the SS Central America in the 1980s, a ship that sank in 1857 to a depth of 2,500 meters (8,250 feet) in the Caribbean carrying $400 million worth of gold bullion and coins. I didn't realize that the Caribbean was that deep! LTM - who doesn't dive that deep! Blue Skies Dave Bush #2200 ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 17 Feb 2000 09:05:29 EST From: Clyde Miller Subject: Re: Last transmission verdict Perhaps it's time to set up a radio transmission re-enactment to measure sound levels, check decibels, attenuation, voice etc. Someone with a voice pitched similar to Amelia's could make calls on the channel from vintage equipment with either actual engine noise at level of recorded engine noise at level. (All of this of course then becomes a .wav or mp3 file that is posted on the website as a re-enactment of Earharts last "known" transmission. Couple that with actual .wav Earhart recordings and the website moves into the 21st century..(don't forget to include these audios on any CD sales too). Clyde Miller (with no panic in his voice) *************************************************************************** From Ric Or, just to be different, we could focus on issues that will actually help us solve the mystery. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 17 Feb 2000 09:07:51 EST From: Jon Watson Subject: Re: InsightMag.com - Aviation Legend The ship is off the Carolina coast, in deep water. The whole story is available at http://www.sscentralamerica.com/ ltm, jon 2266 *************************************************************************** From Ric There are so many factual errors in that article that it would be easier to list the things the author got right. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 17 Feb 2000 09:10:00 EST From: Frank Westlake Subject: Re: Last transmission verdict Ric wrote: <> My comments were very similar to Dennis McGee's comments and he appears to have had more direct experience than I had. I will add that even if the operator was certain of what he heard, this certainty had to be weighed against signal strength, experience, and many other factors to determine, if possible, what was probably said. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 17 Feb 2000 09:13:17 EST From: Randy Jacobson Subject: Re: Phoenix Islands maps, maybe? The Endeavor mapping project is for the Dept. of Defense, and is likely to be kept classified for a long time. It will be used for planning cruise missile trajectories (cruise missiles navigate by comparing missle sensor outputs to maps). It is unlikely that it will be released to the public. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 17 Feb 2000 09:24:16 EST From: Schellie Saddoris Subject: Re: Last transmission verdict Coming from the Speech-Language Pahologist on board, I have to add that no matter how confident or qualified a person is (was), everyone is entitled to an aphonic episode in which there is a loss or partial loss in control of the voice. Also, she was requested to speak at a pitch, not her own. She could easily have gotten vocal fatigue. Too many factors to figure in here, but please don't judge that someone could or could not have sounded any certain way based on our perception of their persona. Had to throw in my two cents too. Schellie Saddoris ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 17 Feb 2000 09:26:59 EST From: Vern Klein Subject: PAA according to Grooch The North Haven Expedition gets underway. Pan American Airways had developed planes that could fly across the Pacific Ocean if arrangements could be made for them to stop and refuel at regular intervals. All that was necessary was to build airbases in the middle of the Pacific ocean. From California to Honolulu, Midway, Wake, Guam, Manila and on to Macao, China. **************************************** Grooch wrote in Sykway to Asia, published 1936... "The only way to get to those places was in a ship. It had to be our own ship as most of those islands are far off the steamer lanes. So our company had chartered a ship, the S.S. North Haven, which so far sounds simple. All we had to do was pile our materials on the ship, send the ship to the islands, unload the cargo and hire a local contractor to construct the stations. It wasn't a bit like that. In the first place two of these islands are pin points on the chart and it takes a good navigator even to find them. They are entirely surrounded by coral reefs and the ship must unload her cargo in the open sea. There are no lacal contractors, no workmen, not even fresh water. The ship would have to furnish every single item necessary to construct the stations, and stand by outside the reef until the stations were in condition to maintain themselves." ******************************************* Materials began arriving at Pier 22 at San Francisco by sea and by rail and from many different states faster than they could organize and stacked. One irritated shipper called and asked, "where the hell do I send this carload of windmills?" All manner of stuff was arriving, Solar Heaters, power-house equipment, ten-ton tractors, five-ton generators, radio gear, refueling equipment, dock timbers, fifty-foot radio poles, complete cold-storage plants, and mountains of furniture, stoves and household equipment. On March 22, 1935 the North Haven arrived at San Francisco. ********************************************* "Our first taste of sea-going life came when we tested out the big new motor launches that the Kneass Boat Company had built for us. We gave them a speed run in the bay and then took them out to sea to note how they handled in rough water. They were not fast, only twelve knots, but they were good sea boats and fine for towing. As rescue boats they might have to go five hundred miles to sea, so they had a range of a thousand miles. They were very sturdily built." ********************************************* On March 26, 1935, at about midnight, the North Haven backed away from the dock, moved out into the bay, and anchored for the night. Newspapers reported the departure of "The mystery ship that went out through the night." Most people had little understanding of what it was that was happening at Pier 22 and what the ship was all about. ********************************************** "After leaving the pier we anchored for the night in San Francisco Bay, as a radio compass, which had just been installed on the ship had to be tested and calibrated before we left port. This operation had to be performed away from docks and obstructions. The next morning at 7 A.M. the R.C.A. electricians came aboard and completed this job with dispatch. We weighed anchor at 10:10 in the morning. We stood out through the Golden Gate, dropped the pilot at 11:40 and shaped a course for Honolulu." Next time, training navigators at sea on the way to Honolulu... and more. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 17 Feb 2000 10:32:08 EST From: Dennis McGee Subject: On topic? Who gives a rat's patoot about the Central America? How does it connect to AE 's flight? Oh, I get it now . . . she was a pilot and ships also have pilots. Let's beat this one to death, too. LTM, who is VERY scratchy today Dennis O. McGee #0149CE ************************************************************************* From Ric Back in your cage McGee. The point was that the Insight Magazine article about "the race to find Amelia" was full of errors. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 17 Feb 2000 10:38:34 EST From: Clyde Miller Subject: Re: Phoenix Islands maps, maybe? Does this mean the navy might be trying to find an obscure island (read niku here) for target practice since they can't use Puerto Rico anymore? Clyde Miller (who loves to cruise in a convertible) ************************************************************************** From Ric Oh sure. The USN just loves to lob cruise missiles into the sovereign lands of friendly nations. Let's remember that there was never any indication that the Endeavor mission had any intention of mapping Niku. You guys are getting antsy. I need to find something substantive for you to chew on. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 17 Feb 2000 18:07:24 EST From: Tom King Subject: Re: Last transmission verdict Thanks, Schellie; it's great to have a professional opinion on this kind of thing. LTM (who had trouble with her voice from time to time) Tom King ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 18 Feb 2000 13:28:19 EST From: Ric Gillespie Subject: Course/Expedition announcement Registrations are now being accepted for a combined TIGHAR Aviation Archaeology Course and Expedition to be held July 7-14, 2000 in Idaho. The focus of the expedition will be a previously unsurveyed and as yet unidentified aircraft wreck deep in the Payette National Forest. Graduates will receive both their C and E ratings. There are two "ratings" available to supplement your membership in TIGHAR. These are signified by letter suffixes - C and E - appended to your member number. A "C" stands for Course Qualified and indicates that you have completed TIGHAR's Introductory Course in Aviation Archaeology and Historic Preservation. This two-day seminar is offered from time to time at various locations around the U.S., often at or near a major air museum. An "E" stands for Expedition Qualified and indicates that you have participated in a TIGHAR aviation archaeological expedition. TIGHAR members who wish to be considered for a slot on an Earhart Project expedition team must have the C and E ratings or be willing to make a significant financial contribution as a Sponsor Team Member. (Regular team members contribute only their time. Not all Eahart Project expeditions include Sponsor Team Members.) Finding time to offer the course and provide oppportunities for members to become expedition qualified has been difficult in recent years given the intensity of Earhart Project research. (We have run an expedition to the Pacific every year since 1996 and in 1999 we ran two.) This year we're taking advantage of this unique opportunity to offer both the course and participation in a TIGHAR expedition in a single package. THE LADY OF THE LAKE She rests among the tall spruce on the shore of a small lake deep in the Payette National Forest. Perhaps the lake was a little too small for a pilot trying to make a forced landing on the winter ice. Perhaps everyone got out safely after she slid to a battered stop. Perhaps not. At this point, we know almost nothing about this wreck. We have a few photos taken last summer by hikers. They show the wreckage of a large multiengine aircraft of stressed aluminum construction locally rumored to have been a WWII B-17. The fuselage appears to be largely intact from the cockpit area aft to the large single vertical tail. The nose section is severely damaged and the wreck site has obviously been looted by souvenir hunters. Registrants for the course and expedition will participate in preliminary research via email and conventional correspondence to gather information about the wreck before we all assemble in Boise, Idaho for two days of classroom work covering the basics of aviation archaeological investigation and historic preservation. We'll then hike in to the site and spend four days surveying the wreck as a service to the National Forest Service which, as a federal agency, has a responsibility to assess any property within their jurisdiction which may be eligible for inclusion on the National Register of Historic Places. Instructors for the course and expedition will be me and Dr. Tom King. Here's the itinerary: ************************************ Friday, July 7th - Registrants arrive in Boise, Idaho and check in to the Double Tree Club Hotel. Saturday, July 8th and Sunday, July 9th - Aviation Archaeology and Historic Preservation Course at the hotel. Monday, July 10th - Three hour van ride to trailhead, then five mile hike in to site. Tents, meals and general campsite services will be provided by professional guides. Students will need to bring only their own personal gear and sleeping bag. Tuesday, July 11th and Wednesday, July 12th - Archaeological survey of the wreck. Thursday, July 13th - Break camp, hike out, and transport back to hotel. Friday, July 14th - Debriefing in the morning, free time in the afternoon and Farewell Dinner that evening. ************************************* Tuition is $1,400 for TIGHAR members and $1,445 for non-members (includes one year membership) and covers: - Hotel on July 7, 8, 9 and 13, 14. - Transportation to and from trailhead. - Catered lunch on classroom days, July 8 & 9 - Lunch and Dinner on July 10 - All meals in the field July 11 & 12 - Breakfast and Lunch on July 13 - Farewell Dinner on July 14 Registration fee is $400 for TIGHAR members, $445 for non-members. Tuition balance will be payable July 1st. Class size will be limited to no more than 20, first come, first served. TIGHAR accepts Visa and Mastercard by phone (302-994-4410) or fax (302-994-7945). Checks should be payable to TIGHAR and mailed to: TIGHAR Course/Expedition 2812 Fawkes Drive Wilmington, DE 19808 LTM, Ric ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 19 Feb 2000 10:25:32 EST From: Don Jordan Subject: Re: Course/Expedition announcement I believe the site you are going to is a B-23. I have the crash report in case you are interested. Craig Fuller from A.A.I.R. just got back from the site. The pictures and story are on his web site at http://www.sonic.net.azfuller I'm pretty sure this is the one you are talking about. It is definitely worth seeing!!! Don J. ************************************************************************** From Ric The correct URL is http://www.sonic.net/azfuller/b23.htm Thanks Don. Yes, that's the one. I didn't know that Craig had been there. Local legend described the wreck as a B-17 but the few photos we had seen made it clear that is was a smaller, twin-engined aircraft with a similar tail profile. We strongly suspected a B-23. Craig's photos have confirmed our feeling that this is an outstanding site for this summer's course/expedition. ************************************************************************* From Ron Chambless Do you mean this plane wreck here? It is a B-23 Dragon, SN 39-052, on the shoreline of loon lake in the payette forest. It sounds exactly like what you are referring to. It has a mostly intact fuselage except for the nose section it is on Craig Fullers web site http://www.sonic.net/azfuller/b23.htm *************************************************************************** From Ric Yup. That's the one. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 21 Feb 2000 08:17:03 EST From: Greg Subject: Piece of window Ric, has anyone thought about how the piece of the window that is in the collection came out of its frame? IE if it were smashed out by coral there might be bits of that embedded into the surface. On the other hand if it were manually removed from wreckage on land there might be pry (tool) marks of some sort around the edge. Greg *************************************************************************** From Ric There are no gouges in its surface which would suggest impact with coral nor are there any discernible pry marks on the one short length of finished edge, but remember that we only have a very small piece of the entire window (if that's what it is). ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 21 Feb 2000 18:35:22 EST From: Ron Bright Subject: No Subject I need some clarification. In your Tighar Tracks, V0L l4 #2, you indicate that Tighar's research tended to support that the wreck fit the Lockheed Model 10 series and added that the details of the environment,type of damage, corresponded well with "anecdotal accounts of the aircraft wreckage seen on Niku and possibly corroborated with the forensic imaging of aerial photos; and finally suggested this "could be" a picture of NR16020 on NIKU. Now I detect a change in this evaluation. In a posting on 11 Jan 00 re "Wreckage from the Air " you discussed the difficulties of observing the Electra on NIKU from the air if it were up against shoreline trees but again reiterated that you believe that the Electra landed on the outside reef and by the time of the flyover by Lt Lambrecht five or six days later the plane pretty much went off the reef and couldn't be seen. Some debris may have been left but not visible in the heavy surf. You further explain that there is ,in fact, "no anecdotal evidence to suggest that there was ever an airplane wreck on the shore at Niku ...(never) a body of wreckage."The wreck...seems to have been out near the reef edge where the waves break." And it seems that the coupe de grace for AE's Electra to be the one in the wreck photo is your statement that "Had it been onshore it seems inconceivable that the New Zealanders would not have found it in 1938/39." My point exactly. If that photo allegedly taken in1946-47, which I'll comment later on, supposedly represents the Electra or for that matter any airplane on Niku,why wouldn't the other visitors to Niku,including the New Zealanders,from 1938 to 1946 (Navy personnel) have seen it? It was a huge pile of debris and clearly a twin engine airplane, easily spotted by the two wandering sailors in l946 from the beach. Of course the sailor who took the photo had no idea what Island he was on in the South Pacific !! Maybe the photo and other Tighar research makes this point already OBD (overcome by events). What gives. Or does that photo show an Electa,maybe AE's, but on another Island. LTM and RES IPSA LOQUITUR Ron Bright *************************************************************************** From Ric My opinion about the Wreck Photo, like my opinon about so many other aspects of the investigation (and life in general) has evolved over time as new information has become available. When the photo first came to our attention way back in 1989 we looked into it and concluded that while it diod appear to be a Model 10, it was probably not an "E" and therfore could not be Earhart's. End of story. In 1997 anecdotes that told of aircraft "parts" found in the beachfront vegetation made us think that another look at the Wreck Photo might be warranted. Better forensic imaging technology than had been availalble in 1989 indicated that the aircraft in the photo might indeed be a 10E and strengthened the notion that the photo might show what the anecdotes described. It was puzzling that the New Zealanders had not seen the wreck but it's never a good idea to dismiss a hypothesis based upon a perception of what "must have" or "couldn't have" happened. My present opinion that the Wreck Photo does not show NR16020 on Nikumaroro is based upon what I consider to be a stronger and mutually exclusive hypothesis - the the aircraft was landed on the outer portion of the reef and was destroyed there by surf action. Let me correct one misconception you seem to have. I do not believe (at this time anyway) that the aircraft "pretty much went off the reef" before the Navy search of Gardner on July 9, 1937. I think it could have been sitting right there but totally obscured from view by white water on the reef edge. LTM, Ric ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 22 Feb 2000 09:30:45 EST From: Ron Bright Subject: Wreck Photo/Location Thanks for the quick reply as that jungle location was driving me nuts. And I agree that the flyover pilots may not have seen the Electra for many reasons,one the heavy surf on the reef and perhaps equally plausible the Electra was knocked off by surf or surge action; no matter Lt. Lambrecht et al., didn't see it. Its the classic tree in the northwoods - if the tree falls and noone hears it did it make noise or in this case if the Electa was there but noone saw it, was it there? A little known supporter of Tighar's theory, or maybe I haven't read about it before, came up unexpectedly while reading a section of Devine's book, "Amelia Earhart,Eyewitness".Forget the merits of his book but tucked in there is a story of a ardent AE researcher that "pinpointed" the Electra's crash site in a lagoon in the Phoenix Islands. The researcher, Donald Wade, of Marietta,Ga., published his story in the Atlantic Journal newspaper in 1983, five years before Tighar got on to the refreshment of the old Navy theory re course line. Wade claimed his location (perhaps Gardner Is), which he didn't identify, was deduced from declassified government documents circa 1983. His basic logic was that the south east winds pushed AE's plane much further south then expected and henceforth ended up crashing on or near the lagoon in the Phoenix Is. (and we all know what line she reported she was running. He was attempting to raise $20,000 to raise the plane from the lagoon. I'm curious about the government documents he referred to and whether or not his calulations took AE to NIKU. Maybe youv'e heard the story, resolved it or if not he might be worth looking up. I couldn't find a Wade in Marietta in a quick search. LTM, Ron Bright PS I am going to advance a strong possibility that the Wreck Photo itself is a hoax, although Capt Carrington was not a part of it. ********************************************************************** From Ric Harlan MacDonald (aka Don) Wade was, in fact, directly connected to TIGHAR's initial involvement in the search for Earhart - although we only learned about the connection years later. As I understand it, the declassified documents he referred to were the the reports of Pan Am DF bearings on post-loss radio signals. Wade deduced that the signals had originated from the Phoenix Group, although I seem to recall that he focused on Hull rather than Gardner. After one of his fund-raising talks, a former Navy aerial navigator named Tom Willi offered to lend his expertise to Wade's effort. Willi soon realized, and began talking about, the navigational connection between the 157/337 line and the Phoenix Group. Before long he was getting more press than Wade and the two had a falling out. Willi recruited a friend, Tom Gannon, who had been an Air Force navigator and together they worked up a navigational analysis of the Earhart flight which showed McKean and Gardner to be the most likely places for the airplane to have ended up. Willi applied for a grant from Rolex to fund an expedition, but they turned him down. Gannon had recently joined a nonprofit aviation archaeological group called TIGHAR and in the spring of 1988 he wrote to us saying that he and his friend wanted to come and tell us about their Amelia Earhart theory. We sort of rolled our eyes and agreed to meet with Willi and Gannon more as a member-relations thing than any serious interest in Earhart. We were surprised at the logic of their argument about the navigation. They never mentioned Wade or the post-loss signals, but they did insist that we sign a confidentiality agreement and agree that we would bring them along on any expedition that we conducted. Our follow-up research showed that Willi and Gannon had many misconceptions about the Phoenix islands, but their navigational logic continued to look valid. We learned about the post-loss radio signals on our own, and that seemed to provide further validation of the theory. We decided to mount an expedition but it became apparent that the island environment was far too harsh for either of these retired gentlemen, so they agreed to help man a radio base station in Fiji while we sailed off to check out McKean and Gardner. Only much later did we learn about Wade's role in getting Tom Willi interested in the Earhart affair. We once received a letter from Wade accusing us of "stealing his research" but I haven't heard anything from him or about him for several years now. LTM, Ric ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 22 Feb 2000 09:40:46 EST From: Ron Dawson Subject: USS Colorado I'm sending you a newspaper published by the crew of the Colorado for July 22, 1937 (from ebay). Maybe it's just me, but in the article regarding the Earhart search, the sense I get is less one of concern for "Mrs. Putnam" and more one of annoyance that they were put behind schedule. Smooth Sailing, Ron Dawson 2126 ************************************************************************** From Ric Thanks Ron. We have one other original copy of the ship's newspaper from that cruise. Fascinating primary source, and yes, there is little doubt about the attitude conveyed by the publication. The headline is "Plane Search Halts Cruise." Not "Colorado Searches for Famous Flier" or "A Frustrated Mission of Mercy." In the view of the Colorado's crew, the ship's "cruise" (the annual ROTC training cruise) had been "halted" by the need to conduct a search for the Earhart plane. Far more column space and virtually all of the photos are devoted to coverage of the crossing-the-equator hazing party that was going on aboard ship at the very time that the planes were searching Gardner Island. LTM, Ric ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 22 Feb 2000 09:50:42 EST From: Frank Westlake Subject: The Ninty-Nines I don't know if this will be of interest to anyone but I just learned that my neighbor was a member of the 99's back when Earhart was in it. I spent an hour with her yesterday but I was only able to squeeze in two related questions -- she loves to talk and somehow manages to continue from one story to another without pausing. She didn't know Earhart but says her friend met her several times. I didn't take notes but I think the friends name began with "Jan" (Janice, Janet, ...). My neighbor's name is Margot Garland. I asked her what her maiden name was and after thinking for several seconds she said "Summers." Margot learned to fly in a Ford Trimotor in New York, but when speaking of some of her 99's activities she mentions San Francisco. She was with the Flying Tigers during the war, not as a pilot -- she "answered phones." She was apparently a major player among the airlines during later years because she has many stories of people all over the country calling her to find things. One story is of two Top Secret packages that the Air Force lost and asked her to find, which she did. Another story is of an iron lung that someone desperately needed located and shipped. Mrs. Margot (Summers) Garland, born in 1917 (Feb?), now lives in Port Orchard, WA. Frank Westlake ************************************************************************** From Ric Doesn't sound like there's any insight into the Earhart mystery there but your experience does point up some classic problems in collecting oral history. I don't think anybody ever learned to fly in a Ford Trimotor and the Flying Tigers (American Volunteer Group) were essentially a mercenary group in China. They may have had some phones there but I'd be very suprised if they had American women answering them. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 22 Feb 2000 12:31:10 EST From: Frank Westlake Subject: Re: Wreck Photo/Location I seem to have misplaced or deleted the previous messages discussing the wreck photo so I haven't been able to refresh my memory on the topic. Isn't it plausible that the wreck photo could be valid and that the Electra was not on Gardner when Lambrecht flew over? I haven't been following this forum for very long but I think I have read everything relevant on the web site, and I can recall no discussion about the possibility of Earhart making multiple landings. It seems to me that the wreckage on the reef and the wreckage in the trees could both be from the Electra -- and we don't have to imagine how a wave could pick up thousands of pounds of aircraft parts and plant them relatively intact into a clump of trees without bending a prop -- if Earhart first landed safely somewhere then, after a week without any indication of rescue, took off again to attempt their own rescue. A crash into the trees that threw parts onto the reef could have occurred after Lambrecht flew over Gardner. I realize such a consideration isn't in accordance with Occam's razor, but sometimes shaving can be unhealthy. Frank Westlake *************************************************************************** From Ric We've played around with multiple landing scenarios. It's a convenient way to explain apparently conflicting evidence but, so far, I haven't seen any conflicting evidence strong enough to justify such a reach. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 22 Feb 2000 12:35:43 EST From: Frank Westlake Subject: Re: The Ninty-Nines > Doesn't sound like there's any insight into the Earhart mystery there but > your experience does point up some classic problems in collecting oral > history. I don't think anybody ever learned to fly in a Ford Trimotor and > the Flying Tigers (American Volunteer Group) were essentially a mercenary > group in China. They may have had some phones there but I'd be very suprised > if they had American women answering them. I volunteered the information in case someone was doing background work on the 99's and needed a new source. The errors are probably mine. She said her first introduction to flying was in a Ford Trimotor, a family friend took her up and let her try it. That was in response to my question "when did you learn to fly?" I inaccurately assumed that she learned in the Trimotor. The organization she worked for during the war may not have been the Flying Tigers, it may have been a similar sounding name that reminded me of the Flying Tigers. As I said, I didn't take notes and I'm not familiar with the history of flying. She has mentioned several times that she carried some very high security clearances, including DOE, but this was mostly during discussions of later years. Frank Westlake ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 22 Feb 2000 12:43:33 EST From: Ron Bright Subject: Re: Wreck Photo/Location That was a most interesting story of the genesis of Tighar's eventual Earhart involvement! I guess he (Wade) never told Gannon or Willi his "pinpointed" lagoon in the Phoenix. LTM Ron Bright ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 22 Feb 2000 12:47:31 EST From: Robert Klaus Subject: Re: Tiger Women You're shooting from the lip again. There were a number of American women associated with the AVG. Nurses, secretaries, admin and technical types were taken over. In addition there were wives and daughters of the American expat community (business people, missionaries, diplomats) who worked for the AVG and CAMCO. Margot Summers was indeed one of them. Also, the term 'mercenary' should be used with some discretion. The AVG were sheep dipped military personel. A mercenary fights for an entity other than his own government. CAMCO (Central Aircraft Manufacturing Company) which signed the 'civilian' contracts with the Tigers was a proprietary set up and owned by the US State Department. LTM (Who will dissavow any knowliedge of these actions.) Robert G. Klaus ************************************************************************** From Ric Sheep dipped military personnel? I love it. My apologies to Ms. Summers. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 22 Feb 2000 17:53:01 EST From: George Myers Subject: Zonta www.nyjournalnews.com The Journal News Tuesday, February 22, 2000 7B Calendar New Rochelle Earhart Program: Ivana M. Milanovic, a mechanical engineer in thermal/fluid sciences, will speak at an Amelia Earhart celebration sponsored by the Zonta Club of New Rochelle at 7 p.m. tomorrow at the New Rochelle Public Library, Lawton Street at Library Plaza. The speech will be preceded by a short film on Earhart, a Zonta member from 1928-37. Zonta is a worldwide service organization of executive women in business and the professions, working to improve the legal, political, economic and professional status of women. Call: 654-0553 ************************************************************************ From Ric I've addressed several Zonta gatherings. Nice people. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 22 Feb 2000 18:01:16 EST From: William Webster-Garman Subject: Flying Tigers Former members of the Flying Tigers formed a very successful airfreight company after the war. ************************************************************************** From Ric This is getting pretty far off-topic but there are Flying Tigers and there are Flying Tigers. In addition to the small original American Volunteer Group there were subsequently AAF units in China that flew shark-mouthed P-40s and called themselves "Flying Tigers." I'm not sure who later started the airline. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 22 Feb 2000 18:04:14 EST From: Jim Tierney Subject: Re: Tiger Women In addition to-sheep dipped military personnel- I particularly enjoyed Mr Klaus comment on shooting from the lip--- Jim Tierney *************************************************************************** From Ric Yeah. I had that one coming - but it hurt. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 22 Feb 2000 18:12:11 EST From: Bob Sherman Subject: the real Don Wade > From Ric [answering Ron Bright > Harlan MacDonald (aka Don) Wade was, in fact, directly ... *** F.W.I.W. His business card reads: Hardon McDonald Wade Jr. 560 Campbell Hill Street Marietta, GA 30060-1316 [among other things]. Believe 'Don' comes from his first name. I last heard from him a couple years ago when he advised that he contemplated holding a seminar in SFO on AE if enough people were interested. I was, but not to the tune of [ price forgotten] ... Apparently the response did not meet his expectations. Never heard any more. RC *************************************************************************** From Ric I seem to be putting out all kinds of bad information lately. If you had that as a first name you'd probably want to be called "Don" too. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 23 Feb 2000 08:53:05 EST From: William Subject: Re: Flying Tigers I'm certain that the airfreight business was started by members of the AF unit. I often visited the Tiger International building in Century City (Los Angeles) in the mid 1980s. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 23 Feb 2000 12:19:35 EST From: Ric Gillespie Subject: New Bulletin There is a new Research Bulletin on the TIGHAR website that I think you'll find interesting. It appears that we may have photographic evidence of a human presence on Nikumaroro prior to the arrival of the first colonists in 1938 at the site where we now most strongly suspect the bones of a castaway were found in 1940. Knowing where the castaway lived and died is, of course, an important step in finding further evidence which may enable us to conclusively determine the castaway's identity. The new bulletin is entitled "Signs of Recent Habitation?" and can be found at http://www.tighar.org/Projects/Earhart/Research/Bulletins/ArchivedBulletins.html LTM, Ric ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 23 Feb 2000 14:27:24 EST From: Ron Bright Subject: TIGHAR'S HYPOTHESIS/ Hobson's choice? Perhaps the Carrington wreck photo puts the silver stake in the Tighar hypothesis. Tighar's hypothesis, simply put, is that AE ,missing Howland, continued flying south until a few hours later she crashed or landed on the outer reef of Howland,made it to shore where sometime later she and FN died. Strong support developed for this hypothesis from the last known LOP, artifacts,particularily the Hoodless bone measurements and the probable ladies' Catspaw heel and sole found on the Island in 1991. None were conclusive,though. Then came the Carrington wreck photo given to Lockheed Aircraft and eventually to Tighar circa 1987-89 to determine if the aircraft depicted in the photo was AE's Electra 10E. Carrington's story re the origin of the photo,supposedly a photo taken by a British sailor in 1946 or 1947 on a south pacific island (unknown) ,didn't pan out based on Tighar's investigation. Too many discrepancies and Carrington wouldn't cooperate with Tighar; the origin of the photo remains a mystery. From recent postings Tighar agrees that the aircraft wreckage shown in the Carrington photo with the palm trees in the background was not taken on NIKU. Tighar's opinion is that AE's Electra landed on the outer portion of Howland's reef and subsequently was destroyed there by surf action; Lt Lambrecht's flyover search did not see any signs of the Electrra or survivors. Those facts are facts beyound dispute. These conclusions were largely based on the fact none of the visitors or colonists saw this rather visible large aircraft wreck lying just off the beach between 1937 and 1946,and that the Electra landed on the outside reef. The alleged date of the Carrington photo was late 1946 or early 47. However, Tighar, who first thought that the aircraft was a Electra 10 but not an 10E back in 1989, shifted in 1998 to the very strong posssibility (my words) that the aircraft was a 10E and "could be" NR16020 . Tighar conducted a meticulous,exhaustive research of the photo,eliminating the Tachikawa Ki-54, and concluded that the "Lockheed Model 10 equipped with the Pratt and Whitney R1340 engine is now left as the only known type (of aircraft) which features all of the structural elements visible on the wreck." That's a pretty strong statement with the inference that with so few Electra 10's in the south pacific it may be AE's. If that is indeed a photo of AE's Electra ,she landed on another island with a tropical environment,not NIKU. The dilemma here is that if Tighar develops even more conclusive,positive identification of this aircraft as AE' s Electra or a Model 10E based on additonal research of the components and photo interpretation, Tighar is faced with no choice except to abandon the NIKU hypothesis. Hobson''s Choice. Since this is not NIKU, she landed elsewhere. The alternative rationale,in my opinion, is that the Carrington photo is not that of the model 10E Electra (reportedly the only 10E in the south pacific) but of another Electra photographed elsewhere in a tropical environment;or secondly the photo is a hoax to an unwitting Capt George C. Carrington. Tighar's original analysis in 1989 might prevail. In summary, if the photo is AE's Electra for sure, and it isn't on NIKU, Tighar's expedition in 2001 may have to change directions. Or it's risky business. LTM, Ron Bright *************************************************************************** From Ric For the record, vampires (and, I suppose, theories) are done in by wooden stakes and silver bullets - not silver stakes. Also, the name of the island where we think she probably landed is Gardner (now Nikumaroro), not Howland - but I'm sure you know that and just misspoke yourself. I do not agree that the Wreck Photo presents any kind of quandary to our investigation. Because it lacks any sort of credible provenience it's nothing more than a free-floating allegation - sort of a photographic anecdote. If it's not an outright hoax, it is probably a big-engined Electra (Model C or E) wrecked in a tropical environment. As we've pointed out previously, several unaccounted-for "C"s and "E"s were in service in Central America. If there was something about the airplane that conclusively identified it as Earhart's or if we could conclusively determine that it was taken in the Pacific within Earhart's radius of flight and where no other big-engined Electra is known to have been used - then we'd have something of a quandry. As it is, it's just one more possibility that didn't prove out. We've had dozens of those. LTM, Ric ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 23 Feb 2000 14:42:52 EST From: Roger Kelley Subject: Re: New evidence... Quick question. Where on Nikumaroro are these trails and the "7" located? On Aukaraime near the site where TIGHAR found the shoes and campfire? On Kanawa Point? Or Some where on Nutiran, Taraia or Aukaraime (north)? Thanks, Roger Kelley, #2112 ************************************************************************** From Ric The site is on Aukeraime (north) near the southeastern tip of the island. In other words, from the shipwreck go north around the point and then go down the long unbroken shoreline almost to the southeast tip. Just before you get there you'll see a place where the land area of the atoll becomes quite narrow between ocean and lagoon. That's the neighborhood. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 24 Feb 2000 09:49:38 EST From: Frank Westlake Subject: Re: TIGHAR'S HYPOTHESIS/ Hobson's choice? >From Ron Bright >The dilemma here is that if Tighar develops even more conclusive,positive >identification of this aircraft as AE' s Electra or a Model 10E based on >additonal research of the components and photo interpretation, Tighar is >faced with no choice except to abandon the NIKU hypothesis. Hobson''s >Choice. Since this is not NIKU, she landed elsewhere. Or she could have landed safely on Gardner, leaving a trail of artifacts, then crashed elsewhere. Ric, are you able to determine the dimensions of the figure 7 in the latest bulletin? If so, are those dimensions consistent with a trail that would be made by people walking around the fuselage and port wing of an Electra? Frank Westlake ************************************************************************** From Ric The "Figure 7" is still there and has probaly been there for hundreds of years. There's apparently just something about the coral rubble that doesn't support vegetation. The "top" of the 7 is roughly 25 meters in length and the "shaft" of the 7 is about 100 meters long. In other words, it's far, far bigger than an Electra. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 24 Feb 2000 09:59:28 EST From: Ron Bright Subject: Re: TIGHAR'S HYPOTHESIS/ Hobson's choice? I am sure now that Fred Noonan went to the Bright School of Navigation and Screen Door Co.; no wonder he missed Gardner and got to Howland by mistake!! The way I understand your answer is at this point the Carrington Wreck photo was not taken at Niku; theorectically,the aircraft could turn out to be 10E but crashed elsewhere is some tropical environment.Maybe on an Island within her potential flight radius. I think this dovetails with Tighar's present hypothesis. Press on. LTM, Ron Bright PS: Does Tighar have any plans for a symposium on Earhart on the West Coast in 2000. I know there must be quorum out here (I'm near Seattle,Wa) to make it worthwhile. I'm sure you could fill up 2 days with papers,films, experts etc. *************************************************************************** From Ric Let me put it this way. At present I see no reason to think that the Carrington Wreck Photo is part of the Earhart puzzle. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 24 Feb 2000 10:02:23 EST From: Ross Devitt Subject: Re: TIGHAR'S HYPOTHESIS/ Hobson's choice? And I still believe that no matter how you look at it, the wreck is NOT an Electra. And I'm sure given the observations I made earlier in the forum (with the sketches & photos) that Photek could prove that once they understood my reasoning. It is just not possible for the baseline of the cockpit window "bottom edge" to lose that many degrees of angle even allowing for the position of the view. The front of the aircraft would have to be practically "concave" along the base of the windscreens - and it is not. The Electra was an unusual aircraft for its day in that the front cockpit windows were swept back at a very sharp angle apparently to aid in streamlining. Look at the angles of most other types and find even one that has similar swept back cockpit windows. I can't find any - even in later aircraft around the same vintage. This said, I think the money to prove or disprove my discovery could be better spent on other things (like tracks in the coral). Ross Devitt. ************************************************************************* From Ric As you say, it's not worth debating. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 24 Feb 2000 10:07:46 EST From: Margot Still Subject: Trail photo Love the photo of the head TIGHAR at the head of the trail. The caption should read, "You may now approach the throne." LTM (who doesn't have to bow as she approaches the throne) MStill 2332 ************************************************************************* From Ric Silence wench! If that's a throne it's a hot seat. Temperatures out on that coral rubble and sheltered from the ocean beeze routinely run around 120 degrees. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 24 Feb 2000 10:24:19 EST From: Warren Lambing Subject: Re: New Bulletin The evidence of a foot trail is interesting. Is it possible to find any details from the photo taken during Lambrecht search. Is there a foot trail in it? If there is no evidence (providing it shows the same area of the Island) then the trail had to appear later. I can't help but ask could it be from the survivors of the Norwhich wreck? Also the photo from Lambrecht search, I wonder if it could give any clues of what he meant by recent signs of habitation?. Regards. Warren Lambing ************************************************************************** From Ric You raise some interesting points. The Lambrecht photo shows the island from a very similar perspective although it was taken from a higher altitude and farther away. The quality of the Lambrecht photo is also considerably poorer than the 1938 photo. You can pick out the "7" but there just isn't enough resolution to tell if trails are present. Survivors from the Norwich City wreck? Not likely. We know that the 24 men who made it to shore never went anywhere near that end of the island and there is no reason to think that there were other survivors that went unnoticed and unrescued. Could the trails be what Lambrecht was referring to when he wrote of "signs of recent habitation" and is that why the Lambrecht photo shows that end of the island? Possible, but if the photo was taken to show the "signs of recent habitiation" why not get closer and really show them? No, the photo looks to me like its merely an attempt to get an angle that shows the whole island. I suspect that the 1938 photo was taken from a similar angle for the same reason. LTM, Ric ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 24 Feb 2000 11:24:03 EST From: Tom King Subject: Re: New Bulletin Nice. Just for the sake of an alternative, though, the windward beach is where the turtles come ashore to lay their eggs; if parties of turtle hunters came to the island periodically, they'd very likely come ashore somewhere on the lee side, bring their canoes in through Baureke or Tatiman Passage, paddle down the lagoon to the shore where the "old trail" begins, and then walk across to Turtle City. LTM Tom King ************************************************************************** From Ric True, that could happen. It's certainly true that Polynesian peoples had the capability to make long open-ocean canoe voyages and it may be that they continued to do so despite the 1930 British prohibition on such travel. Such activity would, by definition, be undocumented. Let's play this thread out. So we have trails on Niku before there are officially any people there to make them. Ergo, whoever made the trails is there unofficially (duh). How do you get to Niku unofficially? You can get marooned there or you can visit there on the sly. Do we have any evidence that anyone was ever marooned there? Yup. We have to assume that the poor devil who died under the ren tree did not have the option of leaving. Do we have any evidence that anyone ever visited there on the sly (to hunt turtles for example)? No, but we've already said that such visits would be almost impossible to discover. Do we have any evidence that the island was NOT visited on the sly in the years immediately preceding the 1938 photo? Yes, the presence of the castaway would seem to be a pretty good indicator that no one had come calling for quite some time. If visitors are at the southeast end of the island long enough to make trails that are visible from the air it's hard to imagine that Mr. or Ms. Crusoe doesn't make their acquaintance. A question we need to address is, how long do such trails remain visible? Obviously, until the sun darkens the disturbed coral. How long does that take? I dunno. The 1975 photo was taken 12 years after the island was abandoned but that trail looks awfully fresh. It could have been made by the biologists who were there at that time to asess the island's flora and fauna. The "old trail" marked on the 1939 Navy map can be seen on the 1939 aerial mosaic but the much smaller trails around the "7", which we see in the December 1,1938 photo, seem to be gone by April 30, 1939 when the mosaic photos were taken. That's four months. If it is the case that a small footpath across coral rubble will, if unused, disappear in four months it means that the trails we see in the Dec. 1938 photo had been unused for not more than four months. LTM, Ric ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 24 Feb 2000 13:33:39 EST From: Margot Still Subject: Re: Trail Photo Would the most wise head TIGHAR care enlighten us on this new species he has discovered on Niku known as the "ocean beeze"? LTM (who prefers botany) MStill #2332 ************************************************************************ From Ric Ocean Beeze live in hives deep in the scaevola. Their sting is deadly but they only seem to attack smartass team members. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 24 Feb 2000 13:46:50 EST From: David Osgood Subject: Wreckage I'm new to this forum, so please forgive me if you discussed this topic at a prior time. In regards to the theory that the plane and subsequent wreckage were located near the S.S. Norwich City, Emily Sikuli described the remnants as "very rusty" and "very red" in color. Steel typically corrodes with the color mentioned, however aluminum corrosion has a very different color - a light silver/white/grey. Did the Lockheed 10E have a steel frame, or was there enough steel in the airplane to explain the amount of rust red wreckage that Emily saw near the S.S. Norwich City? In addition, the "dot" and "dash" shown in the various images currently undergoing forensic evaluation, appear solid and dark in color. Once again, an aluminum airplane, with or without corrosion, would be much lighter in color than the anomalies in the photos. And, the plane would probably be similar enough in color to sand and coral that it wouldn't be seen in any photograph at that distance and resolution. Any thoughts? Dave Osgood ************************************************************************** From Ric Good questions. The wreckage Emily describes seeing, if in fact it was from a Lockheed 10, would almost have to be components such as the main gear legs and the long gear and flap actuating rods, all of which are of steel construction. Why these would be present and not the massive aluminum centersection "main beam" is not clear. The wreckage Emily describes seems to have been quite a bit smaller than the rather large structure(s) seen in the 1937 Bevington photo, but then Emily saw whatever she saw roughly three years after the Bevington photo was taken. As to whether aluminum wreckage on the reef would look light or dark given the sun position in the Bevington photo is a question we haven't formally addressed. The port side of the Norwich City sems to be in shadow which, I would think, means that the camera side of the object is also backlit and might appear dark regardless of its color. LTM, Ric ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 24 Feb 2000 19:39:31 EST From: Ric Gillespie Subject: Deletion request Not infrequently I get requests from forum subscribers who, for one reason or another, want to be taken off the list and have lost the instructions on how to do it themselves. Normally the notes are simple and polite. Somtimes they're stupid and rude. But this one I just had to share: <> ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 25 Feb 2000 07:58:17 EST From: Ross Devitt Subject: Re: Trail Photo It's possible the Ocean Beeze were watching from the cover of the scaevola while the coconut crabs made those tracks rolling skulls, bones and bottles along the coral rubble. Of course I could be wrong... I was once before :-) Ross Devitt. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 25 Feb 2000 08:01:27 EST From: Margot Still Subject: Ocean Beeze The head TIGHAR must have many, many stings. LTM (who knows how to treat stings) MStill #2332 ************************************************************************** From Jon Watson Ric, You forgot to note that they swarm and attack with virtually no provocation and little warning... ltm, jon 2266 ************************************************************************* From Ric Yeah, I noticed that. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 25 Feb 2000 08:07:59 EST From: Jon Watson Subject: Re: Wreckage I would suppose that if the top of the airframe were demolished due to wave action, then flipped over so that the steel gear legs were sticking out of the water, the main beam might not be noticible. Also, is there a chance that some type of marine growth could have caused aluminum parts to appear rusty, crusty and red? ltm, jon 2266 ************************************************************************* From Ric What Emily described was a long skinny thing with a circular thing on the end (a gear leg with a wheel ?). Yes, corroded aluminum can take on all sorts of colors depending on the specific environment but aluminum oxide is basically white. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 25 Feb 2000 08:13:14 EST From: Tom King Subject: Re: TIGHAR'S HYPOTHESIS/ Hobson's choice? Re. Ron Bright's question: PS: Does Tighar have any plans for a symposium on Earhart on the West Coast in 2000. I know there must be quorum out here (I'm near Seattle,Wa) to make it worthwhile. I'm sure you could fill up 2 days with papers,films, experts etc. I know that symposia have never made TIGHAR any money (lost it, in fact), so aren't things that can easily be supported, but it occurs to me that we're just now scheduling my teaching for next year and Seattle has been suggested as a point on the itinerary, so I could be there to do something; maybe we could cobble something together that would be of interest to Seattle area members and potential members. Tom King ************************************************************************** From Ric Yes, sorry, I didn't mean to ignore Ron's question. Seminars and symposia are fun and often productive, but expensive. For example, for a two day weekend event on the Left Coast we need to generate about $2,500 to make it worthwhile. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 25 Feb 2000 08:41:06 EST From: Ron Bright Subject: Trail Location I,like Roger Kelly, can't seem to be sure I've found the location of the trails in the 1 Dec 38 photo(p.2) in relationship to the enhanced photo (p.3) that have the arrows pointing at two trails and one arrow to the figure "7". You described that location as located on Aukeraime (North) and directed Kelly to go North from the shipwreck ,around the point, and down almost to the southeast tip,where the land becomes quite narrow. This neighborhood is where the castaways campsite and remains were found in 1940. Your direction puts me just a bit north of the Loran station on the very tip of Niku,southeast corner. In the Earhart Project map of Nikumararo you indicate a site on Aukeraime (South) where Tighar found the shoe heel and campfire and just further west on Kanawa Pt where other artifacts and remains were found. Pardon the geographical confusion (verbal directions are sometimes confusing) can you point out the location of the "7" area using the Nikumararo Map and the Loran station as a reference point? Also the location of the "7" area on the unenhanced Dec 38 photo. Thanks, LTM, Ron Bright *************************************************************************** From Ric I guess we should have put a map with the bulletin. Your interpretation of my description is essentially correct. The site is just north of the Loran station along the northern coastline. If you look at the map of Nku on the website at http://www.tighar.org/Projects/Nikumap.html you'll see a line we've drawn to mark the arbitrary northern border of "Ameriki". Continue up the coastline from there to where the land starts to get wider. That's the place. On the unenhanced 1938 photo it's easiest to spot the subject area by looking for the white "T" shaped feature seen in the enhanced version. In the unenhanced photo it appears as a white dot where the island's coast line bulges out to the right. Hope that helps. LTM, Ric ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 25 Feb 2000 08:42:23 EST From: Alan Caldwell Subject: Re: Deletion request << Please no more info on Amelia Earhart because i got a A on it. Please no more info o.k bye ' Thanks You Angelo >> I'm certain we're all happy for Angelo but it really is the Forum that should get the A. I hope everyone keeps up the good work. Alan #2329 ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 25 Feb 2000 08:48:51 EST From: Ron Bright Subject: Re: Deletion request The reason Angelo got an "A" is that he probably figured out what happened,found proof, and no longer needs the Tighar forum! ************************************************************************** From Ric Yes, he told me but I'm not at liberty to discuss it. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 25 Feb 2000 09:49:56 EST From: Tom King Subject: Re: New Bulletin I wouldn't be so sure that itinerant turtle hunters and the mysterious castaway would necessarily have crossed paths. As we've commented in other contexts, it's a biggish island, and if the castaway (who was mobile, after all, prior to her/his death, wherever it turns out that occurs) was up on Nutiran and the turtle hunters slid in through Baureke Passage and made for the southeast end, it's very unlikely they'd run into one another. LTM (who's not trying to throw cold turtle soup on your excellent analysis, just not wanting to get carried away). Tom King ************************************************************************** From Ric Seems to me that there is a basic investigative principle under discussion here. In trying to explain any observed phenomenon we usually have a few known suspects and an almost infinite number of unknown but theoretically possible suspects. In this case we have what appears to be (to borrow a phrase) "clear signs of recent habitation" on Niku before the first colonists arrived. So who are the known suspects? In February 1937 HMS Leith paid a call on Niku to put up a flagpole at the west end of the island. The ship's log shows they were ashore for all of 20 minutes. In October 1937 Maude, Bevington, and the Gilbertese delegates spenf 3 days on the island but, thanks to the abundant information available about what was and was not done during that visit, we can safely say that Maude and company did not make the trails we see in the 1938 photo. And we know, of course, that there was someone marooned on the island in the years preceding it's official settlement. So we are left with one known suspect - the castaway. Then there are the unknown suspects - people who could have visited the island and made trails in the years preceding settlement. - Itinerant Polynesian turtle hunters. - Yachties who neglected to seek permission from the WPHC. - A Japanese Imperial Navy recon team. All of these, and probably others, are theoretically possible but, until some evidence shows up, they have to be regarded as fictional characters in a hypothetical scenario. We have exactly the same situation with the anecdotal accounts of prewar airplane wreckage on the reef and with the apparent non-military airplane artifacts we've found on the island. We have one known suspect and an infinite number of theoretical unknowns. They must be acknowledged as possibilities but we have to act on the probabilities. I don't think of that as being carried away. We're just following the - um - trail. Then again, maybe Nicole Simpson was murdered by some drug dealers who left no evidence. LTM, Ric ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 25 Feb 2000 10:28:48 EST From: R. Johnson Subject: Foot trails Let me first say I am a very open minded person. Over the course of the last two years, since becoming a forum subscriber, I have read everything I could get my hands on about AE. I find it very interesting. I believe TIGHARS hypothesis represents the most plausible ending, given the evidence to date. Other ideas don't seem to hold water (pardon the pun) when subjected to scrutiny. But I'm troubled by this foot trail thing. Frankly, I think it's a bit of a stretch. I don't believe it's necessary for TIGHAR to tout this "foot trail" thing as credible. It could be anything. R. Johnson ************************************************************************** From Ric Let me be clear that I am not touting the foot trail thing as anything more than another reason to focus energy and assets on a thorough search of that area when we return to the island next year. Where to spend our time and money is always the toughest question we face. We can't look everywhere and if we look in the wrong place we won't find anything (been there, done that). So we're always acting on hunches and we're always trying to make sure that the hunches we act on are supported by the best evidence we can find. Every idea we've come up with has been a stretch at first. Some have proven to be true (bones WERE found on Gardner) and most have proven to be bunk (the Aukeraime grave was NOT Earhart's). The "it could be anything" dismissal has been applied to airplane parts and shoe parts and sextant boxes etc., etc. It's just another way of saying, "I don't know what it is and I don't think you do either." Fair enough - but the features visible on the ground in the photo can not be "anything." They can not (reasonably) be giant albino snakes or roils of toilet paper that washed ashore from the wreck of the Charmin Maru. They are anomalous and they most resemble other features that we know to be man-made trails. I suspect that, in a different context, you might have no trouble at all accepting this interpretation of the photo but the possibility that we're looking at footpaths made by Amelia Earhart while marooned on a desert island just seems - well - too Hollywood. But whatever happened, happened, and we'll go wherever the evidence leads us. LTM, Ric ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 25 Feb 2000 14:38:37 EST From: Ron Bright Subject: Earhart's Electra/ Discovery of ? According to a teaser, NBC (channel 5 locally) in the Pacific Northwest area will report on the "possible" discovery of Amelia's plane; at 7:00PM Pacific DAylight Time on 25 Feb 00. Tune in. I suspect the information is coming from a Seattle based firm employed to locate Amelia's plane on the bottom of the Pacific-can't recall the name. For those Forum members who are not in the area, I'll furnish the "latest" on the Electra. LTM Ron Bright ************************************************************************** From Ric We'll stand by. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 25 Feb 2000 14:46:09 EST From: Ron Bright Subject: Seminar/ Left Coast in 2000 After reading that Tom King will be out here sometime, I gave a bit more thought to the seminar idea out here. You probably know where the area is of the highest concentration of Forum members but Seattle is pretty convienent. What with that SEattle based research group, I'd bet you could easily get 50-70 people interested in a 2 day event. At a 125.00 registration fee X 50=$6250 for Tighar's expenses, Hotel meeting room, refreshments, etc. By the SEA-TAC airport. Naturally those events take a huge amount of effort for the set-up,etc. And it may well depend on what new evidence develops; maybe not this year but the next. If there are any Pacific Northwest Forum members interested in kicking this around they can call me at 360.479 3640 (not collect !) LTM Ron Bright *************************************************************************** From Ric If we could, in fact, get the numbers you suggest at the price you suggest it would be well worth doing. In our experience in conducting seminars in the Philadelphia and in the San Francisco areas, however, we have never been able to get anything like many people for that kind of money. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 25 Feb 2000 18:10:37 EST From: Dave Bush Subject: Turtle hunters So, is it possible that the scattering of the bones was done by itinerant turtle hunters who killed and dismembered AE? Just a thought. As to who killed Nicole Simpson. My belief is that it was done by an ice cream vendor. Evidence: melted ice cream on side walk, leather glove, knife. Ice cream vendor had a bad day, not many sales. He approached Ms. Simpson and her date as they walked toward the house. They had ice cream they had purchased elsewhere. He went into a rage and killed them. Ice cream is kept in very, very cold compartments - thus requiring gloves even in the summer. Frozen items require a heavy prying object (such as a knife) to pull them apart. Voila - they were killed by the Good Humor Man! Elementary, my dear Watson. LTM, Dave Bush #2200 ************************************************************************** From Ric Now that you mention it, shoes are central to both investigations. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 25 Feb 2000 18:15:57 EST From: Randy Jacobson Subject: Re: Deletion request Well, that means that Ric, Tom, I, and a whole bunch of others have gotten D's or F's, since we're still at it! ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 25 Feb 2000 18:27:24 EST From: Randy Jacobson Subject: Re: New Bulletin There are other possibilities, well within reason, for the trails. Arundel workers were there in the late 1890's, and "prehistoric" people left artifacts as well. I very much disagree with your 3-4 month trail life. So long as new vegetation does not grow over the area, those trails can last many decades, if not centuries. If run over once or twice a year, the trails can be kept up for quite a while, especially in drought conditions. ************************************************************************** From Ric Now who's shooting from the lip? So why are the trails not visible in the 1939 photo taken five months later? Why are trails we've made gone when we've returned to the island just a couple of years later? That has been true of trails through the bush which grow back in very quickly, but also trails across open coral rubble. Trails across coral rubble are only going to remain visible as long as it takes the sun to darken the disturbed coral. What we need to do is find out more about that process. ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 26 Feb 2000 09:13:40 EST From: Val Simone Subject: Re: Earhart's Electra/ Discovery of ? I'm originally from Seattle, but live in Denver now....Do you know if King 5 TV has an online broadcast of their program that I can "watch" on the web?....If so, could you please pass the URL on to me.... Thanks, Val Simone ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 26 Feb 2000 09:39:17 EST From: Randy Jacobson Subject: Re: New Bulletin I shoot from the lip with the best of them! I agree that more research is needed. The open areas will remain open if trampled often enough and in drought. I wasn't even thinking about the discoloration. How long has the vehicle tracks been there? Granted, they are much deeper/wider than human paths. Vestiges of the Oregon Trail are easily discernable from aerial photos and on the ground. Perhaps the trails are not discernable at all times due to look angles, moisture on the ground, etc. Lots of possibilities, so more research! How about sending me to Niku with a one-way ticket? LTM, who loves to read old adventure stories on "Fridays". ************************************************************************* From Ric I was originally surprised to see the vehicle tracks in the 1975 photo. Had to be thirty years old at that time. Note the bushes growing in the middle of the "road". We saw no sign of such a feature in 1989 or later but maybe it's only apparent from the air. *************************************************************************** From Greg Trails here in the US and in other parts of the world can still be visible centuries after they were made. I believe that the compaction of soils is a part of the story. IR photos have been taken from tethered balloons at altitudes of 100 feet or so to reveal temperature variations which can show paths in vegetation because of the ways that compacted soils affect the living plants. Perhaps even moderate compaction causes plant germination or survival problems in this island ecosystem. Greg ************************************************************************** From Ric You can't reason from specific to general. Some trails remain visible for many years. That does not mean that all trails remain visible for years. On Niku we have direct experience that footpaths do not remain visible for years. ************************************************************************** From William Webster-Garman Just a comment from someone who has been following the trail thread [sic] from a distance: It does appear to me that a) the trails may not last more than a few months in some cases and b) obviously it would be useful to know more about the process: The apparent trails in the 1938 photo are interesting, and having some means to reasonably estimate their probable age could lead to more direct evidence of "recent habitation" or activity on the island. william 2243 ************************************************************************** From Ross Devitt Guess who just happens to have lots of coral rubble a few miles away :-) (well. about 80 miles actually. Pity the yacht is out of the water...) RossD ************************************************************************** From Ric Pity. The experiment would be simple enough. Walk back and forth on the coral rubble enough to make a trail (carefully noting how much traffic it took) then go back and fly over it once a month or so to see if and how fast it faded. ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 26 Feb 2000 09:48:23 EST From: Phil Tanner Subject: Re: New Bulletin >- Yachties who neglected to seek permission from the WPHC. Just out of curiosity, was there even such a thing as recreational yachting in the mid-Pacific in that era? ltm, Phil Tanner 2276 ************************************************************************** From Ric Yes, although it seems to have been fairly rare. The American yacht Yankee cruised the Gilbert Islands in 1940 ostensibly searching for Amelia Earhart but the WPHC, from whom they asked permission, suspected it was a scam to help fund the trip. Incidentally, the Yankee did find people on the island of Tabituea in the Gilberts who said they had heard an airplane pass high overhead the night before Earhart disappeared. If AE and FN had been on course for Howland they would have passed over Tabituea in the very early hours of July 2nd. ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 26 Feb 2000 10:09:03 EST From: Vern Klein Subject: Re: Trail Location Ric, I presume this location is beyond the area bulldozed for the Loran station. It's interesting to note that this trail location matches, in a general way, Gallagher's "South East corner of island." It doesn't fit with much of anything else he said such as the planting and, "a certain amount of digging in the vicinity." We have no hard evidence that planting, or clearing for whatever purpose, took place in this location. However, we'll never know what they may have planned to do and whether or not they did it. I have the impression that this is the side of the island most battered by storms. Would one not plant there? The location seems rather distant from the village but that might not be so bad if one expected to paddle down the lagoon in a boat. *************************************************************************** From Ric Actually, the site fits Gallagher's various descriptions better than Aukeraime or Kanawa Point. For the new TIGHAR Tracks (which is now at the printer and should be ready for mailing in about a week) we did a rather detailed analysis of how the three sites stack up against Gallagher's clues. The "7" site wins hands down. The only clue it does not fit is Gallagher's statement that there is a stand of cocos less than two miles away. the nearest stand is a little more than two miles from the "7" site. The article also includes a photo taken in 1941 which shows that some clearing quite obviously WAS done at this site, although there is no indication that any planting took place. Some of the material we found there in 1996 suggests that further work was planned but abandoned (for example: an unused roll of tar paper). This side of the island is the "windward' side. The surf is routinely rougher here because of the easterly trades that blow 15 to 20 knots almost every day. But this is not where the big storms hit. The significant weather events are "westerlies" that assault the west end of the island. Someone might actually retreat to this end of the island to escape the really terrifying seas that can hit the area around the main lagoon passage (voice of experience). LTM, Ric ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 26 Feb 2000 16:51:35 EST From: Kathy Gire Subject: Re: Deletion request << Please no more info on Amelia Earhart because i got a A on it. Please no more info o.k bye ' Thanks You Angelo >> Way to go, Angelo! And good luck next year in seventh grade! ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 26 Feb 2000 18:08:58 EST From: Mike Everette Subject: Earhart's Electra/ Discovery of ? OK, someone raised the issue-- "The plane may have been found..." So what happened? I watched the local NBC station's late news last night, but no mention. Nothing in the paper this morning. So is it a hoax, or it it all over but the cryin'? Inquiring minds want to KNOW. Mike E. ************************************************************************** From Ron Bright Seattle's ch.5 "Evening Magazine" nightly tv show interviewed Guy Zanoc from Spokane,WA and Tim McGinnis,Seattle., concerning thier underwater exploration for Amelia's Electra in a 600 square mile section somewhere (not clear) off of Howland.They didn't mention whose research or theory got them there,but probably Longs. The host held up a floppy disc with the "answer" then played the black and white images of an undersea area some 18,000 feet down which McGinnis commented illustrated some kind of major object hit and then a long slide down a slope,suggesting it was an unnatural phenomena. The implication is that that is the Electa hitting the ocean floor then sliding down the sloped floor. Actually it looked like a "trail"!! [ maybe whoever made the trails on Niku just kept on going] The segment was about 4 minutues mostly with old A&E clips of the Electra and Amelia flying around-gave it an air of authenticity. And Zanoc looked quite professorial. Anyway still no Electra but they are headed out this May for another look. Keep on looking. LTM Ron Bright For Val of Denver, Sorry got your message late,but no online broadcast of that program re Amelia's plane on the bottom of the sea. See my posting re the program content Ron Bright *************************************************************************** From Ric I'll put our trail up against their trail any day. I was thinking that they would at least have a sonar return from an object instead of a trail left by a putative object. Talk about a stretch... they should be able to do better than that. There should be plenty of airplane wreckage on the bottom northwest of Howland. On December 30, 1943 PBY-5A Bu. No. 33963 disappeared and was presumed lost at sea on a flight between Howland and Makin Island. Earlier, three Japanese Kawanishi H-8-K "Emily" (no relation) flying boats were shot down in the vicinity of Howland by F6F Hellcats from the light carrier USS Princeton (CV22). Other known losses in the general area but for which the exact location is not known include: - October 5, 1943 PBY-5A Bu. No. 33967 forced landing at sea while enroute to Canton. Sank while under tow. - October 20, 1943 PB4Y-1 (Liberator) Bu. No. 32102 missing and presumed lost at sea enroute from Canton to Funafuti. - September 5, 1944 PBM-3D Bu. No. 45236 forced landing at sea, flooded and sank. (A big thank you to TIGHAR members Tom Thevenin and Craig Fuller for compiling these and other losses in the Central Pacific region) Let's be clear about what is going on here. Dana Timmer, a former-friend and financial backer of Elgen Long's, and his associates have searched a 600 square mile area northwest of Howland. A 600 square mile square is a little less than 25 miles on each side. You can't put a dot that small on most maps of the Pacific with a sharp pencil. The search area was selected based upon the assumption that NR16020 ran out of fuel at a precise moment and that it is possible to know almost exactly where the airplane was at that moment. The logic and the assumptions used by Long in his recent book to restrict the search area to 2,000 square miles are demonstrably unsound. There is no reason to think that Timmer, Zanoc and company's are any better. However, having spent the money to do the search and having found a target, they have little choice but to spend another pile of money to check it out. Meanwhile, still no word from Nauticos and Long about whether NOVA has been able to raise the promised funding for their deep water search which was also to happen this spring. I wish all of them the best of luck. LTM, Ric ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 26 Feb 2000 18:39:20 EST From: Ron Bright Subject: "Happy Trails" by Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan? I've stared at the enhanced photo (p.3),looked at it with a magnifying glass,and for the life of me I don't see what Tighar sees. Am I the only one that doesn't see "footpaths",maybe. And this could be the Trail of Turin photo or one of those photos you can see what you want-man in the moon stuff; in this case I think I see the image of Jimmy Hoffa! Seriously, you best described those photo images as "anomalous" but conclude they most resemble ...man made trails. I see different textures and color contrasts in that area but I don't see anything that suggest a footpath through the jungle. Your original enhanced photo from Photek is probably 100% better quality than my downloaded photo so maybe a better quality enhancement would confirm your interpretation. I've covered the annotations and asked others what they saw without the introduction of possible trails and none can identify any particular physical phenomena. It seems that it is not worth any debate of what you can or can not see as the next expedition will concentrate in that area and perhaps locate some more positive, empirical evidence in and around those "trails". Two last observations; Your definition of "neighborhood"referring to the relationship between the artifacts and the trails is pretty broad as the trails are some 1 1/2 nautical miles southeast down the Island and up a bit from the loran station just past the line of demarcation for Ameriki from the area on Aukaraime (south) where Tighar discovered the shoe heel,campfire and remains. Noone has addressed how long it would take a weakened castaway (Amelia) to make two pretty visible trails in that terrain starting on 2 July 37 for however long she lived. I guess the maxium would be about 16 months,to Dec 1938. I didn't think anyone thought she would have lived more than a month or so on the Island.You and your expedition have covered some of those areas, it is plausible one person walking to that shore maybe twice a day (?) or 20 times a day could leave that kind of trail visible from the air. LTM, Ron Bright (who may need better glasses!) *************************************************************************** From Ric While it is certainly true that the original enhancement is better than the image as it appears on the website, I have no trouble seeing the trails in the website version. The long squiggly trail up through the bush to the white T-shaped area is quite easy to see. The trails that cross the open coral at the top of the "7" are harder to see, but they're there. Whether or not the anomalous features in the photo are trails is open to debate. That the features are present in the photo is not. I don't think I ever said, and I certainly never meant to imply, that the trails were in the same "neighborhood" as the artifacts found across the lagoon on Aukeraime. The trails are within a few meters of the village-related artifacts we found in 1996 which we now suspect were brought there, at least in part, to support the "organized search" of the castaway's campsite ordered by the Westwern Pacific High Commission. As for how long it takes to make a trail on Niku, we have plenty of experience. My impression is that if the trails seen in the 1938 photo were made by one or two people, they indicate a period of inhabitation of that area of several weeks, if not months. I'm not sure where you got the impression that no one thought she could have lived more than a month or so on the island. Many people (Harry Maude for example) who are familiar with the island could not understand why she would have any trouble surviving indefinitely. We used to think that she might not have lasted very long given the drought conditions that prevailed in 1938, but that was before we learned that the Norwich City survivor's had left a cache of supplies behind. LTM, Ric ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 26 Feb 2000 18:58:57 EST From: Andrew McKenna Subject: The "7" What is the reef flat like just offshore from the location of the "7"? Suitable for landing an Electra? I suspect not, but what would it look like from the air? Seems an odd place to set up camp after landing next to the Norwich, I'd want to stay near the wreck which is the most likely place to catch anyone's attention, unless there was a very compelling reason to hike several miles away and camp in the bush. What is it about the 7 site that really sets it apart from any other? Is it possible that Emily's childhood recollections are based upon her misinterpretation or bad info from the adults around her, causing her to mistake the wreckage of the Norwich for the wrecked airplane that was talked about, but located somewhere else on the island. Think about it, the adults repeat this story about an aiplane wreck from before they arrived "there was an airplane here", but most if not all of them do not really know where it was seen, and they in turn assume that the only wreckage they know of, out by the Norwich City, must include the airplane. this is what they tell their kids. In reality the story may have gotten started due to airplane wreckage located down by the "7" where hardly anyone goes, only that info got lost in the retelling of the story. A McKenna #1045 ************************************************************************** From Ric It's clear from the interviews that there is really no question that Emily might be confusing the shipwreck with the airplane wreck. In fact, all of the stories about airplane wreckage seen on Niku are associated with the west end of the island and describe a very logical pattern of disbursal over the years. The possible reasons for leaving the Norwich City area are many, but all are speculative. - to explore the island for resources - to find a place where it was possible to watch both the ocean and the lagoon for rescuers - to find a place where birds and turtles were both readily available. All we can say for sure is that the castaway, whoever he or she was, died far from the west end. The reef flat opposite the "7" is probably landable and in 1991, in the process of (unsuccessfully) searching for the rumored "water collection device" we vigorously tested the hypothesis that the aircraft was landed along that part of the reef by means of an exhaustive metal detector search of the beach. Nothing was found that was at all airplane-related. LTM, Ric ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 28 Feb 2000 09:33:20 EST From: Ron Bright Subject: "Happy Trails" Your answer seems to contradict itself. You say you can easily see the "trails" in the website photo version-here and there. Then conclude with"whether or not the anomalous features are trails is open to debate. That the features are present in the photo is not." Exactly my point. I can clearly see squiggly features or lines of different texture in the photo but I can't classify them as "trails".Are we saying the same thing?. Or are you saying the anomalous,irregular features in the photo are different from the so-called "trails" ? In your first posting re "New Bulletin" you indicated that photographic evidence,i.e.the trails, may show human presence on NIKU prior to the arrival of the l938 colonists at the "site where we now most strongly suspect the bones of the castaway were found in 1940 (by Gallagher)". I guess what your saying now is that the area around the figure "7" seems the more likely spot where the remains were found, not where they are pointed out to be on your Niku map,the Kanawa Pt and Aukaaraime South areas.Or do I have that confused too. I think I read somewhere that because of the drought conditions AE may have lasted only a few months. But I agree with Harry Maude .He stuffed himself with plentiful crabs,fish and birds for 3 days ; you could last forever. Rainfall was normally about 100 in. a year .Plus coconuts. Maybe your new Tracks has a revised map or you could send out a new Niku map with the areas where the various artifacts were found. Tighar's discoveries would remain identical but the Gallagher discovery may have moved. LTM, Ron Bright *************************************************************************** From Ric Let me see if I can make this clearer for you: 1. There are features visible at and near the "7" site on the 1938 map that are anomalous - that is - we dont see them anywhere but there. 2. On other, later, aerial photos we see very similar features which we know are manmade trails. 3. We know of no other explanation for such features and do not see such features in other photos except where we know there were manmade trials. Therefore: While we can not state categorically that the features seen in the 1938 photo are trails, all of the available evidence points to that conclusion. That's the best we can do. Our previously published maps of Niku showing Kanawa Point and the Aukeraime site do not include the "7" site because, at that time, we did not regard the "7" site as a serious possibility. We had checked it out in 1996 and found that the "water collection device" we had hoped might be an aircraft fuel tank was in a fact a steel tank brought down there from the village. It was only recently that Tom King suggested that the village-related material at the site may have been brought there BECAUSE the bones had been found there and the WPHC had ordered an "organized search." Reviewing what we learned about the site from our 1996 investigation, and in the light of new information we have found since then, several aspects of the "7" site now make it the prime suspect. The new Tracks does indeed have a map showing the "7" site as well as an in-depth, point-by-point analysis of all three sites. It does not, however, include a discussion of the apparent "trails." That all came up after the magazine was already set and ready for the printer. Over the years I've found that this investigation proceeds very much like the solving of a large and complex jigsaw puzzle. First you define the edges, and that's relatively easy. Then you start constructing individual elements, often not knowing just where (or in this case, if) they will eventually fit into the puzzle. There are long dry spells where nothing seems to fit and you wonder if the dog has eaten so many pieces that the puzzle is impossible to solve. Then you look at a piece you had previously discarded from a slightly different angle and - bingo - it drops into place. Once that happens, other pieces suddenly make sense and whole chunks of the puzzle come together very rapidly until you hit the next big snag. And so it goes. The realization that the "7" site was worth a fresh look may have been a breakthrough, or it may be yet another red herring. It's too early to tell. The important thing is to have the courage to pick up the pieces, see if they fit, accept them if they do, and put them back down if they don't. LTM, Ric ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 28 Feb 2000 09:34:50 EST From: Vern Klein Subject: Klaas/Gervais book I've just read "Amelia Earhart Lives." It's quite an interesting yarn, if you read it as fiction. Gervais apparently did run onto some pretty curious stuff. I wonder what it really was all about. I had not realized that Fred Goerner was a radio personality looking for a scoop. That explains quite a lot. Looking for a scoop, he goes to Saipan and brings back a japanese aircraft generator. I guess he could see no identifying marks on the outside. It seems he didn't realize that Lockheed would find those japanese characters and numbers on the bearings. Ball-bearings have always been marked that way by everybody. They're usually considered to be replacable. How many times I've pulled bearings and looked for those tiny little numbers so I could get a proper replacement. Yep, the Devil was in the details! ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 28 Feb 2000 09:39:07 EST From: Dick Pingrey Subject: Old trails and vehicle tracks Over the past 20 years I have spent hundreds of hours marking and mapping portions of the Oregon trail. We discovered a lot of interesting things about the trail some of which may apply to trails and ruts on Niku. For example the Oregon Trail passes through fields that have been cultivated for over 100 years and yet, at certain times of the year, the trail is very easy to see because of how the compaction of thousands of wagons affects plant growth even now. At other times of the year there is no trace of the trail at the same location. You can stand in the middle of the Oregon Trail in many locations and see no evidence it was there but when the same location is viewed from an airplane or helicopter from several hundred feet above the ground the trail is clearly visible. Even in areas that have been undisturbed by cultivation the trail can be easy to see or impossible to see from the ground but often it is clearly visible from the air. I have no idea how this relates to trails on Niku but I certainly have learned that evidence of human activity on the ground can last a very long time even with other human activity being there at a later time. Dick Pingrey 0908C ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 28 Feb 2000 09:46:23 EST From: Hugh Graham Subject: Re: "Happy Trails" by AE and FN? I didn't see the footpaths either, until I increased the "brightness" adjustment on my monitor. The uppermost black pointer points to the path. LTM(who needs glasses), HAG 2201. ************************************************************************** From Ric Increasing the brightness is our constant endeavor. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 28 Feb 2000 09:56:43 EST From: Dennis McGee Subject: Re: Turtle hunters (in reference to speculation about whether AE was killed by turtle hunters and Nicole Simpson by the Good Humor man.) Not only is this off-topic, but it's in pretty bad taste also. LTM, Dennis O. McGee #0149CE ************************************************************************ From Ric When we've offended McGee we know we've gone too far. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 28 Feb 2000 10:00:52 EST From: Dennis McGee Subject: The yacht "Yankee" Ric said: "The American yacht Yankee cruised the Gilbert Islands in 1940 ostensibly searching for Amelia Earhart but the WPHC, from whom they asked permission, suspected it was a scam to help fund the trip." The yacht Yankee . . .how big was it? I'm asking because I've just starting reading the biography of William "Wild Bill" Donovan the first head of the Office of Strategic Service (later the CIA) during W.W.II. Last night, in the book, Donovan's wife was taking a sea voyage on "the Yankee" to the South Pacific in the summer of 1940 to recuperate from recent surgery. The trip was cut short when the Donovan's daughter died in an auto accident near Fredericksberg, Va. Mrs. Donovan was dropped off at Guam (???) and picked up three weeks later by a Japanese (yes, Japanese . . .this was 18 months before Pearl Harbor) freighter for the return to Hawaii. An American ship took her back to L.A. and she took a train to D.C. for the funeral. Anyway, I just thought is was a marvelous coincidence that the "Yankee" in this book was in the South Pacific in the summer of 1940 at the same time another (?) Yankee was in the Gilberts. I will re-read that part of the book tonight and post appropriate passages (copyrights be damned!).for the Forum, if you want me to. P.S.: No conspiracy-theory lovers needed for this one. Donovan was not yet the head of OSS (though he did have FDR's ear on a number of current issues) and his wife truly was recuperating from surgery. LTM, who really is THAT prissy Dennis O. McGee #0149CE ************************************************************************** From Ric I'm not sure how big Yankee was but it's almost gotta be the same boat. Randy? Didn't you find a National Geo article about the voyage of the Yankee? ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 28 Feb 2000 10:11:26 EST From: Andrew McKenna Subject: Artifacts at the "7" I must have missed it, but could you summarize the artifacts that were discovered near the "7" in 96? Andrew McKenna ************************************************************************** From Ric Here's a repeat of the forum posting I put up on January 28th: As forum readers will recall, we are considering the possibility that a site surveyed and dismissed by TIGHAR in 1996 may, in fact, be the place where the bones of a castaway were found in 1940. The site surveyed by TIGHAR in February 1996 is located on the northern coastline of the atoll about 1,000 meters from the extreme southeastern tip. In this area the ribbon of land surrounding the lagoon is at it's narrowest, spanning only a little over 100 meters from lagoon shore to ocean beach. Today the region is solid scaevola ("te Mao") with scattered tournefortia ("Ren") but aerial photos show that in June 1941 there was a band of Pisonia grandis ("Buka") behind the beachfront bulwark of scaevola. The presence of many old fallen Buka trunks today confirms that the area was once open forest such as still predominates just a few hundred meters further along the coastline to the northwest. TIGHAR's attention was first drawn to this area in 1990 by anecdotal accounts from Coast Guard veterans who told of coming upon an abandoned "water collection device" while out exploring along the shore. The device was said to consist of a tank , possibly metal, with a covering of some kind rigged above it on poles so that rainwater would drain into it. There was said to be a pile of bird bones and feathers nearby and a place where there had been a small fire. We speculated that this could be a survival camp with a cistern fabricated from one of the aircraft's fuel tanks and, during our 1991 expedition (Niku II) we made a concerted but unsuccessful effort to find it. Late in 1995, forensic imaging of aerial photographs of the area taken in 1941 indicated the presence of manmade objects in a particular spot within the suspect area. Guided by the enhanced photos, a short ( 4 days on the island) expedition to Nikumaroro in February 1996 succeeded in locating the site but we were disappointed to find that the tank and several other artifacts nearby were clearly associated with the British colonial settlement, not an aircraft. Detailed measurements were made and the objects and features found were photographed and videotaped. Five artifacts were collected (see below). It appeared that the expedition had disproven the hypothesis that the site had been an Earhart/Noonan survival camp. This is what was present in 1996: About 25 meters into the bush from the vegetation line along the lagoon shore was a steel tank measuring 3 feet square by 4 feet high. It was painted white with the words "Police" and "Tarawa" dimly legible in blue. The corners and bottom were very rusty and the tank had not been watertight for a long time. The top was open, apparently rusted away, and in the bottom lay a steel ring which had clearly once been the fitting for a heavy round steel hatch that lay on the ground nearby with the words "Baldwin Ltd. - Tank Makers - London" molded into it. In the bottom of the tank were six coconut shell halves which had apparently been used as drinking cups. There were no coconut trees in the area. On the ground beside the tank were three wooden poles, each roughly two meters long, a few very rusted scraps of corrugated metal, and the base of an unusual -looking light bulb (which we collected and have as Artifact 2-3-W-3). About three meters from the tank was a small "Ren" tree at the base of which was a scattering of very dry bird bones. About seven meters from the tank, on the side away from the bird bones, was a depression in the ground roughly 3 meters across by less than a meter deep. The coral rubble in the bottom of the hole was quite loose, suggesting that the hole had once been deeper but the sides had slid down. At the time, we speculated that the hole represented an abortive attempt to dig a wel. Lying amid the loose coral rubble in the bottom of the hole was a spent .30 caliber rifle cartridge with the number "43" on its base (collected as Artifact 2-3-W-4). This is consistent with the M-1 carbines carried by the Coast Guard and reportedly used to shoot at birds. Beginning about 15 meters from the tank, going toward the ocean beach, and scattered over the next 24 meters were: - three small pieces of very fine copper screening. ( Sample collected as 2-3-W-1) - a dark brown four-hole button 15 mm (a little over a half inch) in diameter. Material uncertain. (Collected as 2-3-W-5) - a broken finished wooden stake approximately 1 inch square in cross section and perhaps 18 inches long. - an empty, very rusted can about the size and shape of a can of car wax. - a flattened roll of tar paper with green roof shingle material on one side. - an irregularly shaped sheet of asbestos (?) roughly a 18 inches square by 1/4 inch thick. ((fragment collected as 2-3-W-2) - the rusted remains of a steel barrel or drum. - a broken shard from a white porcelain plate ************************************************** The new TIGHAR Tracks has a plot showing where all of these items were found in relation to each other. LTM, Ric ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 28 Feb 2000 11:02:52 EST From: Bill Carter Subject: Re: Norwich City decoy Here's a scenario to consider but I realize that it would be extremely difficult to substantiate since AE & FN obviously aren't around to share their thoughts with anyone. Anyway, here goes - AE and FN, low on fuel and unable to make radio contact, fly over Niku and see from the air a ship (the Norwich City). Given their fuel situation, they think, "that's our ticket home" and land on or near the reef. Much to their shock and dismay, upon closer inspection they discover that the Norwich City isn't going anywhere anytime soon and that they unwittingly trapped themselves on Niku thinking that it was inhabited or that the good ship Norwich could take them to Hawaii. Or perhaps they mistook the Norwich City for the Itasca or Ontario. LTM Bill Carter #2313 ************************************************************************** From Ric It's hard to think that Captain Noonan would take the Norwich City for anything but what she was - a burned out hulk with her back broken. The Navy pilots certainly recognized her as a wreck. I suspect that by the time AE and FN reached Gardner they weren't real picky about what island to land on. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 28 Feb 2000 12:10:31 EST From: Dave Bush Subject: Re: turtle hunters >From Ric > >When we've offended McGee we know we've gone too far. It was not my goal to offend anyone. I was suggesting that AE the turtle hunters, finding someone there, might have seen that person as a threat and killed them. I don't know, because it is unknowable, whether any turtle hunters ever went there. If they did go there, did they find a living AE? If they found a living AE, did they kill her? If turtle hunters went there, they had to violate a rule as you mentioned. If they found someone there, in fear that the person would tell on them and get them in trouble, would they kill that person. Also, after I sent that post, I wondered, did the potential turtle hunters take any dogs with them? Seems strange that they would, but if they did, could that be why the skeleton that was found had been pulled apart. You mentioned that the dogs would not bother old bones, but would go after bones with meat still on them. So, if turtle hunters came with their dogs prior to the colonizing, then the bones would have been scattered by their dogs while there was still meat on them. When the colonists came, they would have found scattered bones with no meat. All speculative, of course, hardly off topic, but potentially germane to the line of study. As to Nicole Simpson, it was an attempt to point out that the items of evidence can be construed in various ways, albeit somewhat of a stretch - the evidence does fit the scenario that I gave. Again, all speculative, but without any "witnesses" or hard and indefutible evidence, one story is as good as another. LTM, Dave Bush #2200 ************************************************************************** From Ric Jeesh, I assumed that you were kidding about both the turtle hunters the Good Humor man. No, one story is not as good as another. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 28 Feb 2000 12:25:16 EST From: Forest Subject: Re: Wreckage A scenario wherein the empty fuel tanks (partially) filled with seawater and acted as battering rams is feasible. I can easily understand what happened to the cabin/cockpit area in even this hell-for-stout airframe if you follow this thread. And I must say again, that Emily Sikuli has made specific use of the word red - the "red" most likely being the leading edge paint scheme on the airframe - unique and memorable to her. ************************************************************************ From Ric You could be right, but the leading edge of the Electra's wings were not red. They were painted a brownish orange. Emily described the wreckage as "rust colored- red". All of the Norwich City wreckage is that color so it was hardly unique. The two factors that make whatever Emily saw unlikley to be part of the shipwreck are it's location "upstream" of the wreck debris and the fact this it was allegedly pointed out specifically as airplane wreckage even though there was lots of shipwreck debris in the same general area. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 28 Feb 2000 18:29:52 EST From: Dave Bush Subject: Re: turtle hunters >From Ric > Jeesh, I assumed that you were kidding about both the turtle hunters the >Good Humor man. No, one story is not as good as another. 1) Kidding - yes, you could take it that way. 2) True - but until we know what the "real" story is, several paths may look good at the beginning, but may not lead anywhere. We take the most likely assumption and follow it (in the Simpson case, as in most murders, the husband is the first and most likely suspect). After the husband comes itinerant turtle hunters, irate environmentalists, etc. *************************************************************************** From Ric First, you have to consider all the alternative paths for which there is evidence. You can also follow wild hunches and explore paths for which there is no evidence (turtle hunters and murders other than OJ) to see if you can find some, but that's really just guessing and it's rarely productive. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 29 Feb 2000 09:30:04 EST From: Randy Jacobson Subject: Re: The yacht "Yankee" Based upon the NG article, the Yankee was quite large: the family of about 5 or 6 plus a couple of others seemed quite comfortable. Shooting from the lip, I'd say the boat was at least 100'. The NG article ends with the ship in Easter Island. I was curious if the Yankee truly applied to WPHC, but they did visit the Gilberts and a number of the uninhabited Phoenix Islands. The skipper, Irving Johnson, is quite renowned in the yachting community. *************************************************************************** From Ric The WPHC had an entire file on the Yankee. Permission was requested, and granted, to visit the Gilberts for the purpose of searching for Amelia Earhart. On September 14, 1940, Jack Barley, the Resident Commissioner of the Gilbert & Ellice Islands Colony reported to his boss Sir Harry Luke, the High Commissioner, with the dates that the Yankee had visited various islands within the colony. There is no mention of the yacht calling at any island of the Phoenix Group. According to Barley, the ships compliment was 19 and all were U.S. citizens. Barley concludes his report with this paragraph: "All my sources of information state that the activities of the party appeared to be only those of ordinary tourists - batheing, sightseeing and fishing. Mention of Mrs. Putnam was made on one or two occasions, but the "search" was purely incidental to the voyage. Personally I incline to view that the question of Mrs. Putnam's disappearance was linked to the Yankee's voyage very largely in order to ensure publicity for Captain Johnson who, as Your Excellency will be aware, runs these voyages on a profit-making basis." Gosh. Maybe we've been going about this all wrong. LTM, Ric ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 29 Feb 2000 09:33:05 EST From: Ross Devitt Subject: Re: "Happy Trails" by AE and FN? It will be interesting when TIGHAR next visits the island, to see just what is at the convergence of the 3 tracks and if there is any sign of a further track from there.. RossD (Bet you thought I'd stopped reading the forum :-) ************************************************************************* From Ric I can tell form our experience there in 1996 that any sign of tracks or trails is long gone. We can certainly navigate our way along where the trails once were and search for anything that may be present, but it's going to be a tough job. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 29 Feb 2000 09:35:05 EST From: Ross Devitt Subject: Re: turtle hunters I've just been watching my dog chewing on an old (very old, dry) bone, with not a trace of meat on it, and not even any marrow inside it.. Food for thought?? RossD ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 29 Feb 2000 09:36:27 EST From: Tom King Subject: Re: Turtle hunters Do you suppose the hunters mistook her for a turtle? Gosh..... ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 29 Feb 2000 09:50:24 EST From: Vern Klein Subject: Artifacts at the "7" A lot of things at the "7" site seem to fit, others are just puzzling. The "Ren" trees were there for the castaway to perish under. How about "Kanawa" for the coffin? Gallagher's people evidently expected to spend enough time at the site to justify setting up a water catching/storage facility, but they did no coconut planting there. Was it just for the search for other artifacts associated with the castaway? The roll of tar paper is odd. It's of a type intended primarily for roofing although it might well be used on side walls as well. There's no evidence of other materials to suggest an intent to build a shack. I wonder if the roll of tar paper really belongs in 1940? Were there any markings on the back side that might provide a clue to its origin? I wonder if such tar paper was used at the Loran station? Who knows how it might have got that far away. ************************************************************************** From Ric We know that Coasties visited the site on at least one occasion but it's hard to imagine why they would bring along a role of tar paper. For one thing, tar paper is very heavy and site, although it may look close on the map, is a long hard slog from the Loran station. Other things about what was found there and what wasn't are puzzling. - six coconut shell drinking cups at the tank suggest at least six workers, but only one discarded food can? - why only a few scraps of copper screening? - whose button? Gallagher's? A worker's? Or is it from the castaway? - where's the rest of the plate? - a plate? Who eats off a plate? The guy who ate the food in the can? - why a tank AND a barrel presumably to collect water for such a small operation? Maybe a more thorough search will turn up more artifacts that will fill in the picture better (but that's exactly what Vaskess said in 1940). ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 29 Feb 2000 09:52:22 EST From: Vern Klein Subject: Totally Off-Topic The following was just received from a friend... a chain-letter sort of thing. It's slightly like 3rd Grade, "Voyage of Discovery." If you should see fit to post it, the kids might get some e-mail from here and there around the world. I've suggested that they might also like to follow the ongoing around the world balloon attempt... just made it to the African coast, from somewhere in Illinois, at midday, Feb. 28th. Reports are posted on the Illinois Institute of Technology web site at: http://gaia.ece.iit.edu Gotta get in a lick at the media... If you should see this balloon flight mentioned at all, they will call it a hot-air balloon. Of course, it's NOT a hot-air balloon. When did you see a huge hot-air balloon filled with helium? It's a helium balloon with heat assist to expand the helium. E-mail from the kids follows: Hello! We are in Mr. Marshall's 3rd grade class at Webster Elementary in St.Joseph, Missouri, USA. St. Joseph is 1 hour north of Kansas City and is the home of the Pony Express. We are also known for the Jesse James home. In Social Studies we have been studying geography and decided to map an e-mail project. We are really curious to see where in the world our e-mail will travel by internet throughout the rest of this school year. So, we would like your HELP!!! We ask that you do these two things: 1) E-mail us and tell us your location so that we can plot it on our world map. (city/town, state/province, country) 2) Forward this letter to AS MANY PEOPLE AS POSSIBLE!! (even if they live in the same town as you) Thank you for any help that you can give. Our e-mail address is: mark.marshall@sjsd.k12.mo.us Hope to hear from you soon! Your new friends, Mr. Marshall's 3rd grade class Webster Elementary St. Joseph, MO USA ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 29 Feb 2000 09:53:27 EST From: Tom King Subject: Trail longevity For what it's worth, prehistoric trails in the Sonoran Desert have remained pretty clearly visible for thousands of years, and George Patton's tank tracks are still a mess there. But the fact (well, as much of a fact as one can have from airphotos, I suppose) that the trails are not there a few months later is very suggestive that they're recent. Tom King ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 29 Feb 2000 10:00:54 EST From: Tom King Subject: Re: The "7" One thing that would make the "7" site tempting to a wandering castaway, including one exploring the island after leaving a plane crash on Nutiran, is that the adjacent beach is where a lot of turtles come ashore to lay eggs. Not too hard to turn a turtle over and knock it on the head, and the eggs are pretty easy to catch, too. Tom King ************************************************************************** From Ric Something that always bothered me about the Aukeraime site is that it is such a long way from the beach. Dragging a dead turtle that far would be an awful job and catching one in the lagoon would be an amazing feat. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 29 Feb 2000 11:05:36 EST From: Tom King Subject: Re: "Happy Trails" by AE and FN? I wonder if examining airphotos of Kanton would be of any comparative use, at least to see how vehicle tracks register. ************************************************************************* From Ric I just looked at some aerial photos we have of Kanton taken in 1943. Lots of roads. They look just like the long "trail" we see on Niku, except wider and not quite so wiggly. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 29 Feb 2000 11:22:07 EST From: Christian D. Subject: Re: Artifacts at the "7" Re-reading the camp description again, one idea came to mind: during the war, Australia /NZ had a system of Coastwatchers on the islands further west. Could this be something similar? May be not even officially sanctionned -just an effort from the British administrator? At least until the US entered the war and the Loran station came... I had also thought that this place is opposite from the village: so people would watch the "other 180 degrees" of the horizon. Matter of fact: why wouldn't AE and FN split up and watch a half of the horizon each? Last time they had visitors, a week after getting to the island, they weren't swift enough to make themselves seen... Even if the artifacts found in '96 are all PISS related, that doesn't mean the place couldn't have been "opened up" but AE/FN... As well, AE/FN might like watching the horizon toward Hawaii, rather than toward the SW, where shipping would be less likely ? Just a few thoughts. Christian D. *************************************************************************** From Ric A coastwatching station....interesting idea. The primary purpose of Gallagher's voyage aboard the Viti that ended with his arrival and death at Gardner in September 1941 had been to establish coastwatching stations at various islands in the Gilberts. There is no mention in the official record that coastwatching stations were to be established at Gardner or other islands of the Phoenix Group, but it's certainly possible. The aerial photo that shows clearing activity at the "7'" site was taken in June 1941 and the whole coastwatching project doesn't seem to have begun in the Gilberts until later that summer. The "7" site seems well-suited for coastwatching - but by whom? We need to do more research into coastwatching activities early in the war. LTM, Ric ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 29 Feb 2000 11:24:50 EST From: Ted Ostrowski Subject: Norwich Stew "The two factors that make whatever Emily saw unlikley to be part of the shipwreck are it's location "upstream" of the wreck debris and the fact this it was allegedly pointed out specifically as airplane wreckage even though there was lots of shipwreck debris in the same general area." Upon reading this a thought occurred: Could the bits of plane be now mixed within the wreckage of the Norwich City? A sort of Norwich Stew. Everyone's Irish in March. Ted O'strowski ************************************************************************** From Ric That is certainly possible. One of our tasks during Niku IIII will be to take a close look at all of the Norwich City wreckage now strewn about the reef. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 29 Feb 2000 12:43:22 EST From: Dennis McGee Subject: Journey of the schooner Yankee The recent discussion regarding the "yacht" Yankee and its appearance near Niku in 1940 has taken an interesting, but peripherally to AE/FN at best, twist. The following passage is from "The Last Hero: Wild Bill Donovan" (pp. 141-143) by Anthony Cave Brown, Times Books, 1982. (William J. Donovan was a W.W. I Congressional Medal of Honor recipient and prominent lawyer and political figure in New York who served as Assistant Attorney General under Herbert Hoover. In spite of his Republican affiliation his native intelligence and his ability to get things done earned him high marks in the Roosevelt White House before and during W.W. II. Roosevelt later asked Donovan to create and run the Office of Strategic Services, the predecessor the CIA.) "Not until October 13, 1939 did her doctors give Ruth [Bill Donovan's wife] a clean bill of physical health, but it was evident that she was depressed and needed a complete change of air, scenery, and companionship. That she discussed with David [her brother in-law, Bill's brother] the twenty-second, when she announced that the schooner Yankee was sailing for the Pacific and she would like to sail with it. . . . With all of the arrangements made, Ruth left Washington . . . on November 19 and joined the Yankee in the Panama Canal four days later." "Ruth was on watch when the telegram came in over the merchant marine voice radio at dictation speed, while the Yankee was off Samoa in the early hours of April 9, 1940. The telegram from Bill contained the most terrible news: Patricia [their daughter] had died following a road accident at Fredericksburg, Virginia, on the eighth. . . . Now followed a period of unbelievable agony for Ruth, as the Yankee put about for Samoa, about four days' distance, where she was to disembark and make her way to Honolulu and Washington." [But how was Bill able to reach her? Read on . . .four paragraphs later] "Uncertain about how to communicate with the Yankee, or even which latitude the schooner was in, Donovan gave instructions that Patricia was to be kept in a vault until Ruth's return to Washington. Then, WJD stated later, Roosevelt heard of Patricia's death and directed the naval authorities to find a means of communicating with the Yankee. The message from WJD was passed to Ruth, and a Japanese freighter, the Mariposa, was asked to meet the Yankee at Samoa and take Ruth to Honolulu." Ruth reached Samoa in the Yankee at 3:00 a.m. on April 15 . . .[and later learned] she would have to wait until May 2 or 3 for the Japanese steamer to arrive because of the great distance it had to travel. . . . At last the Mariposa arrived on May 3, 1940. She sailed almost immediately and arrived at Honolulu on the eight . . ." Comments: 1. If the Yankee's logs are not available this passage reconstructs at least part of its voyage. 2. Here is another example of Roosevelt using the armed forces to assist in a civilian matter, not unlike his actions in the search for AE and FN. LTM, who has visited a "schooner" or two herself Dennis O. McGee #0149CE ************************************************************************ From Ric The following points in the Yankee's voyage are documented in the WPHC file: April 4, 1940 Yankee arrives Canton Island from Honolulu with 20 passengers and crew (telegram from "Fleming" to Acting Sec. High commision. May 10, 1940 A handwritten (and hard to read) letter to the High Commission from "H.B.M. Agency and Consulate, Tonga" describes the Yankee as having a crew of 14 plus passengers and gives it's progress to date as "Panama, Ecuador, Galpagos, Easter, Pitcairn, Mangaina(?), Tahiti, Hawaii, Canton, Pago Pago, Tonga" September 14, 1940 report to High Commission from Resident Commissioner, G&EIC gives the following movements: May 13, 1940 Arrived Funafuti from Tokelau Group May 14, 1940 Arrived Vaitupu May 15, 1940 Departed Vaitupu May 20, 1940 Arrived Nikunau May 21, 1940 Arrived Beru May 23, 1940 Arrived Onotoa May 30, 1940 Arrived Tarawa May 31, 1940 Departed Tarawa June 3, 1940 Arrived Ocean Island June 6, 1940 Left Ocean Island for Vanikoro It's interesting to note that in a letter written later, Captain Johnson claimed that in June 1940 people on Tabituea told him that they had heard a plane high overhead the island at night. Johnson's visit to Tabituea was not mentioned in the above correspondence and may have occurred later in June. Had Yankee called at Gardner she would have had to do so sometime between April 4th when she arrived at Canton and April 15th when she arrived at Pago Pago. Gallagher would not arrive to live on Gardner until September of that year and the island had no radio, so it's possible that such a visit could go unreported but Johnson would have had to intentionally omit it from the itinerary he gave the British consulate in Tonga and it's hard to imagine why he would do that given that he freely acknowledged visitng Canton. LTM, Ric ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 29 Feb 2000 12:52:19 EST From: Frank Westlake Subject: Re: The "7" >From Ric >Something that always bothered me about the Aukeraime site is that it is such >a long way from the beach. Dragging a dead turtle that far would be an awful >job and catching one in the lagoon would be an amazing feat. I personally would be more comfortable camped at a location where I could see the entire atoll. I think a lagoon-side beach or an elevated area would increase my chances of spotting an incoming aircraft or vessel, giving me more time to signal. After a couple weeks without rescue I would look for a better site. I am not they, but does the Aukeraime site offer good visibility? ************************************************************************** From Ric No. Lousy. You can see some of the lagoon if you're on the shore but you're a long quarter mile from the ocean beach. There is no place on Niku from which you can see the entire atoll without a hot air balloon and a long tether. There are no hills, just some low mounds. To see both the ocean and some of the lagoon from the "7" site you have to climb a tree, but at least there are tall, climable buka trees in that area. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 29 Feb 2000 13:01:57 EST From: Paul Chattey Subject: Re: The yacht "Yankee" Resident Commissioner Jack Barley in 1940 takes a look at the Yankee's passengers and concludes that their search for AE was incidental to their voyage. Mention one or two times of Mrs. Putnam sounds like an afterthought. Did he mention her? Did the Yankee passengers talk about AE? It hardly matters, either way, it looks (to me) like he sees the topic as irrelevant to a group on holiday. I'm curious, did he have access to memos regarding the bones/box? I'd guess he would never mention official, confidential matters to a group of tourists, but (if he had knowledge of the bones/box) might he have speculated in private correspondence to Sir Harry Luke? LTM, whose lips never sank a ship Paul *************************************************************************** From Ric The Yankee is in the area in April-June 1940. Gallagher's first telelgram about the bones is September 23, 1940. Jack goes on leave September 24, 1940 and returns to duty January 4, 1941 so he's out of the loop during much of the bone thing anyway. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 29 Feb 2000 13:12:48 EST From: Ron Bright Subject: Artifacts by "7" Prof. Harry Maude's book may give some clues to the discovery of various artifacts at the "7" area and possibly the same area his good friend Gallagher found the bones,sextant box etc. (Were "ren trees present there in 1940). Prof. Maude says that he brought many more settlers to Gardner in 1940 and in Mar 1941 the settlers began work on "demarcation and plotting" of the land holdings-about 20. I'm not sure what he meant by demarcation,but it might means physical boundaries being established and other work throughout the Island for individual land for each settler. He was with a "working party" at the time of the discovery. This suggest that indeed that southeast corner (which he geographically described) might have been an area of settler activity-may account for tar paper,and many of the artificats associated with this "7" area. Any documentation from the social history of Gardner during those early days of settlers that there was some punishment,isolation from the group at the far southeast corner,or other social outcast type of "relocation",. Maude does mention some cases where the settlers may not have been one happy family. LTM,RON BRIGHT *************************************************************************** From Ric Maude's description of settlement activity on Gardner in "Of Islands and Men" is cursory and somewhat misleading when compared with his own official reports from the time and the subsequent reports filed by Gallagher. Maude himself was not involved in the settlement scheme after 1939. There was no settlement activity at the southeast end nor is there any indication that malcontents were "banished" to some remote part of the island. There was clearing and planting activity on Aukeraime which is both discussed in Gallagher's reports and evident in aerial photos. The little bit of clearing activity at the "7" site in 1941 is not described in any of Gallagher's reports nor have we found any material similar to the tar paper, sceening, plate, asbestos, etc. at the aukeraime site. Whatever was going on over at the "7" site circa 1941 sems to be quite different from anything else we see on the island. LTM, Ric ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 29 Feb 2000 13:14:11 EST From: Andrew McKenna Subject: Dogs and bones <> I don't know about your dogs, but my dog Ruckus will regularly pick up, chew on, and carry with him old dried out bones that he finds in the woods, mostly elk vertebrae, that have to be several years old. We're talking sunbleached white bones with not a scrap of meat left on them, I can break the thin edges by hand kind of dried out. Other critters have long since removed the easy stuff, but they must still smell good (at least to a dog) and have some falvor left in them as he will crunch on them and carry them with him for better than a half mile at times. I would not say that dogs will not spread old bones around. LTM (who loves her old bones) Andrew McKenna 1045C ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 29 Feb 2000 13:16:42 EST From: Clyde Miller Subject: Re: Totally Off-Topic Saw a report on the local news from St. Joseph that this particular web chain letter has in fact frozen and collapsed the schools email system. Probably not a good Idea to send anymore and contribute to the problem. Great idea for the kids, but it backfired big time. Their administrator commented that blanket requests like this can continue for years. The teacher is spending a lot of time deleting emails...... Clyde Miller ************************************************************************** From Ric Oooops......never mind. Try to be nice......... ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 29 Feb 2000 14:25:30 EST From: Dennis McGee Subject: Yankee My geography is rusty, here. 1. Are Pago Pago and Samoa the same place, or at least VERY close to each other? My source says Yankee was in Samoa on April 15 but your earlier forum posting states Yankee was in Pago Pago that day. 2. Are we getting too anal about this piece of minutia? LTM, who just LOVED "Wonder Boys" Dennis O. McGee #0149CE ************************************************************************** From Ric Historians are supposed to be anal .....aren't they? I think we've established that it's not likely that Yankee visited Gardner, and that was worth doing. Pago Pago, pronounced "Pahngo Pahngo" (or Pogo Pogo if you're Dan Quayle) is the principal seaport community of American Samoa. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 29 Feb 2000 14:36:47 EST From: Dave Osgood Subject: Vantage Point I agree with Frank Westlake that an elevated position would be desirable in order to increase the possibility of seeing aircraft or a ship. Would the S.S. Norwich City provide such a vantage point? Was the ship in good enough condition in 1937 that it could have provided both shelter and/or functioned as an observation platform for a person, or persons, looking to be seen? There would be an enhanced view of the surroundings if someone were to climb up a mast, funnel, or get on top of the bridge house. Dave Osgood *************************************************************************** From Ric Well, there's no doubt that if you went out and climbed up as high as you could get (there may have been a ladder on the funnel) you would be able to see farther than if you were standing on the shore. The problem would be the sun. You're gonna roast like a marshmallow on a stick. In 1937 the Norwich City was a burned out, rusted hulk. Not what you'd call a friendly friendly environment. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 29 Feb 2000 14:38:49 EST From: Dave Bush Subject: Turtle soup >From Tom King > >Do you suppose the hunters mistook her for a turtle? Gosh..... Your cousin, Stephen, could sure do something with that story...mmm...turtle soup! Sorry!!!!!!! LTM, Dave Bush #2200 ************************************************************************* From Ric Now THAT'S in bad taste. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 29 Feb 2000 18:47:11 EST From: Tom King Subject: Coastwatchers You remember we met a former coastwatcher, who'd been on Viti with Gallagher, at the airport in Funafuti in 1997; I have his name somewhere, and he mentioned a recent book about the whole business. TK ************************************************************************* From Ric Yeah, I forget his name. This is right down Peter McQuarrie's ally. I'll drop him an email. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 29 Feb 2000 18:50:09 EST From: William Webster-Garman Subject: Chain Letters Email chain letters are the "original email virus", and they do linger on the net for years (apparently longer than some trails on Niku). In snail mail, chain letters are illegal, for good reason. They can quickly exponentiate into a giant nuisance, especially on the Internet, where sending an email is usually nominally free. On the net, they are at best really bad "netiquette", generally clogging up mail servers, and at worst, they are grounds for having one's service yanked by one's ISP. Please don't ever respond to or forward chain emails. william 2243 *************************************************************************** From Ric Live and learn. Got sucked in by the "help the kids" thing.