As to its meaning to the case at-hand, I think it's been noted that the Vidal sidebar was a 'third hand' discussion (if that's the root of the need to understand the state of communications between mainland U.S. and Lae in 1937, etc.). Maybe one day Gore Vidal himself can shed more light as a living link of sorts, or maybe not.
LTM -
I wonder when Gore Vidal first started telling this story. If he told it in the '30s people would have been familiar with the state of communications of the era, including the extremely high cost of telephone calls and the sparsity of overseas phone links, so the story would not have been accepted at that time. If Vidal waited until the '70s, then the state of '30s communications would have been forgotten and he could have gotten away with telling a made up story. Also waiting until after George Putnam had died (1950) and after his father had died (1969), those who could dispute his story were gone. It is fairly common for people to try to insert themselves into famous events, it brings some sense of fame to themselves and this is a possible explanation for Gore Vidal to make up a story like this.
So, does anyone know when Gore Vidal first started telling the story about the impossible phone call from Lae to Putnam?
gl
This is what Gore Vidal said on a recent TV show:
"Narrator: Earhart flew over Africa without incident and continued over Arabia to Karachi and Calcutta. She fought monsoons that beat the paint off her airplane en route to Singapore. Then in Java, she took a short rest before flying onto Australia and finally to Lae, New Guinea. This would be her last stop before the long Pacific leg to Howland Island.
Amelia called the Herald Tribune office in New York where G.P. and Gene Vidal were waiting to hear from her.
Gore Vidal, author: Well, just the
night before the final flight, she reported in and they had a code phrase, “personnel problems,” which meant Noonan was back drinking. And my father said, “Just stop it right now and come home,” and G.P. agreed and said, “Come back, abort the flight, forget it, come home.” And then she said, “Oh, no,” and she said, “I think it’ll be all right,” something like that. So you may put that down to invincible optimism or it may have been huge pessimism."
-------------------------------------------------------------
Well, Putnam was in California at the time, anybody know where Gene Vidal was?
And what does it mean,
night before the final flight, is it the night in the States or the night in Lae? Let's explore if it was the night in Lae, say 9:00 p.m., Thursday night, July 1st. That would make it 6:00 a.m. in New York July 1st, and 3:00 a.m. in California, were Putnam and Gene Vidal in the Herald Tribune office that early? Would they have described this early morning call as "the night before" the final flight?
Let's say it was night in New York, 9:00 p.m.(6:00 p.m. in Oakland), making it noon in Lae the next day. So we know the call couldn't have been received on July 1st in New York, the "night before the final flight", because the Electra was rolling down the runway at Lae at that very moment. So it would have had to have been at least one day sooner, Noon on Thursday in Lae and 9:00 p.m. in New York (6:00 p.m. in Oakland) on Wednesday, June 30th. The personnel unfitness radiogram was received at 5:53 p.m. on June 29th in
Oakland (8:43 p.m. New York time)after being sent out from Lae at 6:30 a.m. on June 30th, (12:30 p.m. June 29th in Oakland.) so it only took five hours and 23 minutes to make it to Oakland, pretty good time since we have seen that other radiograms took a lot longer. Is it possible that it was actually received on June 30th instead of June 29th in Oakland making the travel time 29:23? If so, then Vidal's description seems to match the radiogram. We know that the "Denmark's a prison" radiogram took to a whole lot longer than 5:23 to travel from Lae to the Oakland. It took a minimum of 11:23 and that is
if Earhart had tossed it out the window of the plane as they were taking off. It is actually datelined Lae, July 1 so it must have gone out considerably sooner.
So it wasn't a telephone call that Gore Vidal was describing but the radiogram that we all knew about.
gl