TIGHAR
Project Midnight Ghost => General Discussion => Topic started by: Captain Andy on March 29, 2015, 05:22:21 PM
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was the white bird and its engine hauled out of the maine woods in 1974 by loggers and hunters
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Without speaking officially for TIGHAR, I think it's safe to say the answer is "no."
But if you've discovered some new documentary evidence to the contrary, by all means feel free to share.
LTM,
Monty Fowler, TIGHAR No. 2189 ECSP
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Decre' may have an opinion on it...
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Well does anyone recall seeing a remember seeing a documentary in 1974 or 75 that told of
two hunters who found and with the help of loggers removed an old
aircraft engine and aircraft wreckage from the Maine woods
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That story was published by Bill Wiggens, "Mystery of the White Bird." Air Classics, July 1999.
Neff
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I mean does anyone recall seeing that documentary
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I don't. Do you?
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My 2 cents - anecdotal recollections of events that happened decades ago, regardless of whether they were written about or filmed for a documentary, are just that - recollections. I remember with vivid clarity certain defining moments in my life, but the precise details get muddled over time. Someone making a documentary doesn't prove something happened. Original film taken as the event was happening might demonstrate that what happened is what people say or think happened.
Or so it seems to me.
LTM,
Monty Fowler, TIGHAR No. 2189 ECSP
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Good 2 cents worth, Monty, and my impression is that had anything truly material to the White Bird emerged in 1974, we'd of heard much more about it by now.
This story of the hunters / whomever and removing stuff in 1974 sounds more like a anecdotal fascinator (which may well have surfaced in a 'documentary') than fact. If it was fact, the bones removed don't seem to have emerged as credibly those of White Bird.
The report does not seem reliable.
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I remember with vivid clarity certain defining moments in my life, but the precise details get muddled over time.
I have a very vivid memory of watching OJ Simpson break a run for a touchdown that allowed the lowly Buffalo Bills to defeat a great team.
I thought it was the team that went on to win the Super Bowl.
Maybe 78 yards.
In a year when the Bills had just two wins.
A moment of glory!
As far as I can tell, this never happened, despite my firm conviction that it did.
I've searched the records, and I can't even find anything like it.
BUT--I remember failing to confirm my memory!
I know I was mistaken, because I remember what I thought and I remember searching in vain to confirm it.
So memory is not all bad.
[No animals were harmed in the telling of this anecdote, that I know of, anyway.] :)
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An apt example, Marty - well put.
No harm to this animal, but my head hurts a bit after reading through all that... ;D
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I remember with vivid clarity certain defining moments in my life, but the precise details get muddled over time.
I have a very vivid memory of watching OJ Simpson break a run for a touchdown that allowed the lowly Buffalo Bills to defeat a great team.
I thought it was the team that went on to win the Super Bowl.
Maybe 78 yards.
In a year when the Bills had just two wins.
A moment of glory!
As far as I can tell, this never happened, despite my firm conviction that it did.
I've searched the records, and I can't even find anything like it.
BUT--I remember failing to confirm my memory!
I know I was mistaken, because I remember what I thought and I remember searching in vain to confirm it.
So memory is not all bad.
[No animals were harmed in the telling of this anecdote, that I know of, anyway.] :)
Ah - I have it on good authority that in fact you got two things correct about that game and the Bills that year, which you may realize:
The Bills DID only win two games that year (the ONLY year they went 2 and 12 while OJ was with them), and OJ did only rush for 78 TOTAL yards in 24 carries - possibly his worst game while he was with the Bills. Perhaps that aggregate 78 yards popped into mind as 'a great carry' as in, barring one carry for 9 yards, and a reception for 10, I just can't believe 'only 2.68 yards per carry (withstanding the two exceptions) and your worst game? Say it ain't so, OJ!' - LOL!!!
Or who knows... your memory obviously isn't shot, just challenged - like the rest of us. What a friend calls 'slightly fershimeldt' (discombobulated, in correct technical English... LOL!!!).
In reading up a bit on the long, tangled history of not just L' Ouiseu Blanc's loss but the various search notions, yes there's anecdotal stuff about a 'large engine' being hauled out of some lake for scrap, etc. in the underbrush of history - and yes, that and other cool anecdotal stuff has been reported fairly visibly. And yes, all such reports have to-date fallen miserably short of real progress toward a real solution. One interesting summary can be read here (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/france/8069540/French-flying-aces-beat-Charles-Lindberghs-record.html).
I had for some reason believed the White Bird to have had a Hispano Suiza engine - which sort of / kind of fit the 'large V8 engine' recovered from the lake (as reported) - although a 500 HP Hisso was a BEAST, larger than your average automotive type. Actually, the White Bird (a Pierre Levasseur PL-8) of fame apparently had the 'W' configured (3 banks, 60 degrees apart) 460 HP Lorraine-Dietrich engine - distinctly DIFFERENT from ANYTHING of likely automotive origins in the area where found. Whoever might have found such a creature well might have realized they had stumbled onto something of significance - at least perhaps the junkman who might have received it would have known it was odd. As such, I tend to believe more might have been told that would lead to a more meaningful search had there been anything to the 'motor in the lake' after all.
According to Wiki (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_White_Bird), a subsequent version of the original PL-8 DID have a Hisso engine of 600 HP, and I believe it was of the more conventional - if large, V8 design. It is not clear to me what became of that second PL-8, or whether the record is even correct as to which of the two special planes was flown by and disappeared with the brave French aviators.
All the meandering 'might haves' and lapses of which just show how discombobulated my own memory and string of reason can be at times... :P
This is another of those mysteries that picks at our minds and causes us to chase every anecdote and presentation like cats after a laser dot, I'm afraid. It truly deserves thoughtful study for the serious buff or professional, no doubt. But in the end, it may well be another 'unfindable' - the seas of earth are so large and can consume so easily, and the cousin of that wilderness is the region known as the Maine back woods and the out-lying territories of Canada, etc. Man may never know for certain.
One thing is for certain: as brave and noteworthy as Nungessor and Coli were, they did not make it successfully to NYC, and that was the 'prize'. I don't say that to disparage, but with head bowed: reaching the mainland was not the goal, it was a successful arrival at NYC or Paris from the other end of that pair that was the 'deal', and however unfair the gods were that day, they did not make it. They must be held in esteem, however - and Lindbergh could just as easily have been the subject of an equal mystery to this day by a single sigh of the gods.
The true grail we can actually see and admire from that era (in a reflective way) is the spirit and bravery of all who did try, and to note Lindbergh simply as the one who did make it. It is easy to overlook others like Redfern (http://tighar.org/smf/index.php/topic,1271.0.html), for that matter - but we ought to remember that his own effort was an auxiliary extension of the same spirit - to push back the remote and bring ports of call together in a meaningful way.
Lindbergh is noteworthy in many ways to me. He was not without his own ego and confidence, but I was always struck by his respectful tone in his writing of these others. He admired the bravery of those others who tried and clearly felt the loss of the French aviators very personally, even if it left him with the chance to succeed where otherwise he'd of been a footnote. Had he been handed that role of a footnoted player he'd of perhaps been regarded by history as one who had been on a fool's errand, intending to fly solo for such a journey, a fool who may have been saved only by the success of others.
Ain't history odd. We can see it so well once that which was 'preordained' has come to pass - and yet it could have been so many different things by the single sigh of the weather gods, etc. Maybe that's one hint of why the mysterious aspects die so slowly - we KNOW something other than what was wanted happened, but we can't see what it really was - and we just can't stop picking at it.
So, these hunters found an engine, and... ;)
Well, whatever happened, RIP Francois and Charles, you did it well and except for the company of Chamberlain, Lindbergh and a very few others, upheld the spirit far beyond the reach of lesser mortals.
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Andy, the white bird was featured in an episode of Unsolved Mysteries in 1989, the story they used sounds like what you remember although the date doesn't fit.
http://unsolvedmysteries.wikia.com/wiki/Charles_Nungesser_and_Francois_Coli
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Looks like that fits, Matt. Good work! Andddd ... it sounds anecdotal to me.
LTM,
Monty Fowler, TIGHAR No. 2089 ECSP
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Hmmm ... something seems to be missing?
LTM,
Monty Fowler, TIGHAR No. 2189 ECSP
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https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=2457&dat=19881103&id=yKhJAAAAIBAJ&sjid=Ow4NAAAAIBAJ&pg=5714,802378&hl=en
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Hmmm ... something seems to be missing?
Indeed. Hadn't the original poster, Mr. Poppens, put up a link to a TIGHAR Tracks article that fully supported the question in his original post? It didn't seem controversial, so I don't understand why it was removed. In fact, it was rather enlightening to the subject at hand.
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Hmmm ... something seems to be missing?
Indeed. Hadn't the original poster, Mr. Poppens, put up a link to a TIGHAR Tracks article that fully supported the question in his original post? It didn't seem controversial, so I don't understand why it was removed. In fact, it was rather enlightening to the subject at hand.
Neither I nor any of the other moderators removed or edited any of Andy's posts.
I don't remember the thread beginning with such a link.
I am familiar with lots of TIGHAR Tracks articles (http://tighar.org/wiki/TIGHAR_Tracks) about Project Midnight Ghost. I created a "Sortable index" (http://tighar.org/wiki/TIGHAR_Tracks#Sortable_index) to the articles. Click on the funny little sort symbol next to the word "Code" in the table, and all of the Project Midnight Ghost (PMG) material will be grouped together alphabetically.
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That being the case, here is the edition Andy had posted previously. It took a while to find it again! The specific article he referenced starts on page 3.
http://tighar.org/Publications/TTracks/1990Vol_6/0605.pdf
The rest of the edition provides a treasure trove of other insights into TIGHAR's history as well.
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http://tighar.org/Publications/TTracks/1991Vol_7/0705.pdf This talks about the TV documentary about the white bird being hauled
You might want to also read this newspaper clipping https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=2457&dat=19881103&id=yKhJAAAAIBAJ&sjid=Ow4NAAAAIBAJ&pg=5714,802378&hl=en
Im sorry I got rid of the original post none of you were responding to it
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My apologies, Andy. There are a lot of competing interests in here at times, as you can imagine. What kind of response were you hoping for, if I may ask?
LTM,
Monty Fowler, TIGHAR No. 2189 ECSP
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Responses about the the TV show which told of the white bird being hauled