The tire in the photograph at the museum is from an L10E that was donated to the museum. The plane was manufactured a few months prior to Earhart's Electra. You can investigate that yourself if you are so inclined.
Heath, I want to take you up on your gracious offer to let me investigate that by myself. Please provide me with the specifics of which museum has the
L10E and where that museum is located. It's okay if you just provide a link to the museum's website. I hope you'll also provide details of how you ascertained the manufacture date for that specific aircraft. Oh, I pray you're not going to tell me that it's the New England Air Museum, and that their
Lockheed L10A, c/n 1052 (just 3 numbers before AE's L10E, so
obviously "manufactured a few months prior to Earhart's Electra"), is really an L10E! We'll just have to demand a change in their signage and the disciplining of their curator! Regardless, how dare they display any Lockheed Electra with tires more suitable to today's paved runways! Don't they know we're depending on them to help us discover the
facts about something that happened 75 years ago? Sheesh!
Maybe a pretty comprehensive list of museums and other places where
the remaining Lockheed Electras are would be of help.
The photographs of the Electra as it made the journey around the globe trump speculation, documentation, and or any other paper evidence that can be produced. This is of course something that can be studied by those with the capability going forward although I doubt there is much interest to do so. I have already done the measurements and am convinced that the tire was not 35 or 36" in diameter.
I'm glad that you're convinced that Amelia pulled a fast one on the inspector from the Bureau of Air Commerce who
certified that the tires on NR16020 were 35" in diameter. Where do you think they secretly swapped the tires? Miami? Puerto Rico? Obviously, I'm still convinced that they were what the inspector said they were.
Concerning the results shared by Jeff Glickman at last month's Earhart75 Symposium, you wrote:
I have had the 4800 dpi image for a couple of months. Personally I do not see anything that resembles an Electra landing gear, tire, and mangled versions of either.
Could you share that 4800 dpi image with the rest of us? All I've seen is a hand-held shot of Jeff's PowerPoint image on a projection screen, taken by Irv Donald from 50-75 feet away (Thanks, Irv! Love your camera. I still owe you for dinner.), and if that's all you've got to look at, too, I agree that it is quite difficult to interpret -- but then, neither of us is highly trained in photogrammetry, right? (Gee, do you think it might just be a weird piece of coral?

) But I've got a good excuse -- according to you, I'm challenged to even make enough sense of a clear picture of AE's L10E sitting on the ground in Venezuela to correctly judge the size of its tires.

... but I would like to see Glickman's analysis of the Bevington oject if he ever decides to publish it.
Wouldn't we all!
"... not having any idea of what they were looking at ..."
I think that in court, that would be known as "hearsay" evidence. When I heard Dr. Ballard say that in his remarks at the State Department meeting, I smiled and wished for a TV camera to have been focused on the faces of those unnamed photo analysts. I remember thinking to myself, "Now, Bob, let's not get carried away."