According to Long, they landed at Lae at 3:05 p.m. on the 29th ...
... not much time to do any sightseeing that day since sunset was less than three hours later and they had to put the plane to bed first, check into the hotel etc., and she reported some sightseeing in the first dispatch.
I agree it is a narrow window of opportunity for all of the events portrayed in the newspaper article.
I looked at your table of transmissions. Looking at the disputed dispatch it could not have been sent on the 29th. Read the story as reprinted in Last Flight and you will find her saying "We stayed at a hotel...", past tense, not a present tense, "We stay at a hotel..." or "We are staying at a hotel..." It is clear that this was sent after spending a night in the hotel in Lae so it must be June 30th, not June 29th.
OK. I've removed the quibble. So you do have a copy of the newspaper article?
No, I do not have a copy of the newspaper, I thought that Ric did. I've been working from the last chapter of
Last Flight which is a reprint of those two stories. So Ric is working with a secondary source which brings up the possibility of another source for the erroneous byline. If the first person writing a book about Earhart got this wrong, wrote "telephone" instead on "telegraph," then everyone copied from his book as in the other examples I gave.
I believe the credit arrangement allowed her to send both of the dispatches from Lae.
OK. That's conceivable.
By Nukulau in the Fijis, I take it you are talking about a cable landing in Suva.
No. By "Nukulau" I meant "Rabaul." Don't ask me how I arrived at that inversion.
There were no telephone cables to Suva either from the U.S or from New Guinea in 1937, see chart of cables.
You're overworking that chart, which hasn't been properly introduced to us.
It's a secondary source.
The caption says this, with emphasis added:
"Fig. 119. Cable and wireless communications. This map shows cables and the main outline of wireless communication in the Pacific area in 1939. Based on various sources."
That means that the map is not an exhaustive list of "wireless communication in the Pacific." It can't be used to exclude Lae, nor can it tell us when someone in Lae could make a phone call to the U.S. by means of a landline and a patch to a wireless transmitter.
Moreover, it's got a lot of small islands listed.
- Tarawa
- Beru
- Funfuti
- Nauru
- Moumea
Whatever it is charting, it doesn't sound as though it was the huge, prohibitively expensive operation you outlined earlier.
These were short range radio telegraph links, not the trans-ocean link necessary to reach the U.S. 6,500 SM away.
Remember, "wireless" is short for "wireless telegraphy" which means CW using Morse code. Of course the chart does not exclude Lae from having wireless communications since we know that it did, Mr. Balfour pounding away on his telegraph key. It does show that no telegraph cable went to New Guinea. See the
details of the short range radio links necessary to get radiograms to and from Lae. Information about two "point-to-point" stations showing the massive antenna farms needed
is here and
here.There were no telephone lines out of Lae to anywhere, which is why it was a big deal when local radiotelephone links were established in 1939.
Source (secondary or otherwise)?
We are confronted with the difficulty of a proving a negative, that they did NOT have telephone service in Lae in 1937. We are not going to find a series of articles in the "Lae Daily Journal" (if there was such a paper) stating:
"Byline Lae NG, January 1, 1920, No telephone service in Lae to the outside world available yet."
"Byline Lae NG, January 1, 1921, No telephone service in Lae to the outside world available yet."
"Byline Lae NG, January 1, 1922, No telephone service in Lae to the outside world available yet."
"Byline Lae NG, January 1, 1923, No telephone service in Lae to the outside world available yet."
"Byline Lae NG, January 1, 1924, No telephone service in Lae to the outside world available yet."
"Byline Lae NG, January 1, 1925, No telephone service in Lae to the outside world available yet."
...
"Byline Lae NG, January 1, 1937, No telephone service in Lae to the outside world available yet."
"Byline Lae NG, January 1, 1938, No telephone service in Lae to the outside world available yet."
We have to make reasonable inferences from what we do have such as the announcement of local service to four towns in 1939. A reasonable inference is that these are the first four towns, including Lae, to be linked by radiotelephone, that no such service existed to anywhere prior to this. An
unreasonable inference from this would be that Lae had communications with every other town on earth and these were the last four to be reached. Additional support for the logic that there was no telephone service was the lack of any newspaper stories during the heat of the search headlined:
"EXCLUSIVE! PHONE CALL TO LAE REVEALS......."Since the newspapers, especially the Herald Tribune, would be expected to make such contact, if it were available, the lack of it lends support to the inference that it was
not available.
Even in murder trials with the burden of proof being "beyond a reasonable doubt" jurors are allowed to decide that something is a fact, that was not proved by direct evidence, by reasonable inference from the facts that were proved by direct evidence.
John is found shot dead and nobody saw the actual shooting. Bill is on trial for the crime. Charles testifies " I came into the room and saw Bill standing over John with a smoking gun in his hand." Bill is convicted because the jury made the reasonable inference, from the
proven facts, that Bill shot John. I have attached the standard California jury instruction given in all jury trials in California addressing this issue.
gl