TIGHAR
Amelia Earhart Search Forum => General discussion => Topic started by: Ted G Campbell on November 05, 2015, 03:57:21 PM
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All,
I have been analyzing “Betty’s Notebook” looking for clues that might decipher some of the number combinations that she recorded.
I have assumed the following:
When we hear numbers we normally write them down as numbers e.g. 3 rather then the word three
We tend to hear the rhyme of the word, if it isn’t absolutely clear, and we write down the number e.g. hear the word sea but write down 3
Then when we read them back to ourselves they rarely make sense e.g. 36 could be the words sea sick
I use the following “rhyme” aid to come up with what may have been said – try this link
http://rhymezone.com/
Some of my findings – TIGHAR’s pg. number under “Betty’s Notebook” followed by Betty’s pg. number – shown below:
Pg 49 (1) – W40K or WoJ Howland port – could be “weak Howland AIRport” referring to something AE heard from either Howland Island or the Itasca
Pg 53 (3) – 3EMJ38 – could be “we __ emergency”
Pg 57 (5) – 3Qrd36 – could be AE asking FN “are you sea sick Fred” - reverse the order of the rd and 36
Pg 57 (5) – 38-3 (heard as 38 dash 3) – could be “see freight crash ___ sea”
One final observation in Betty’s book are the numbers at the top of her second (Pg 51 (2)) page i.e. 58 and 338 could these be the revised “line of Position” 158-338 a difference of 180?
It will be neat to hear other possibilities from the members.
Ted Campbell
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Hmmm! No takers?
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A gallant effort, Ted. But this seems to me to be the linguistic equivalent of looking for shapes in the coral seabed. But I understand the effort. . .when you read those jumbled numbers, you *want* to see some message come through the glass darkly. Betty had the chance to review her comments with some editorial context, explaining what she thought she heard, who was speaking, etc. If there was a phonetic ambiguity in those numbers with her interpretation of what was being said, wouldn't she have made those comments too? Like, "3-6. . . this sounded like somebody was seasick." Nice analysis on your part anyhow. / Scott
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Admirable effort Ted, right, possible, improbably or wrong, it is through such speculation, analysis, insight and thought that mysteries can be furthered and even solved. A strong parallel are Detectives, without their turning every stone and questioning throughout many crimes would not be solved. We desperately need open strong and insightful discussion in this Forum, on many fronts, and devoid of the sickening childish trolling, cynicism and flamations, et al!
Thank you Ted, LondonRoger
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Ted,
Keep at it! I've been doing the same for quite some time now. It's helpful to note that the cup-shaped microphone was usually hanging on the left side of the cockpit under the window. In one letter Betty said the generator was blown when holding the key down too long. I believe there also was a switch which could be thrown to hold the mike in the open position. The point is that much of Betty's writings are not about AE officially radioing for help but recording the real life drama in the plane between the flyers. So you are approaching this logically. For example, I believe "Figure 8" is referring to photo #8 in a radio manual, or Bendix manual (not flying a figure 8 ) They undoubtedly would be trying to troubleshoot the receiver since they've not heard any replies. I've searched for every manual I could find. I even searched all the cryptic numbers used for vacuum tubes in the hopes one came from her radio manual. So far, no luck. But I don't stop searching. Carry on my friend.
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You don't suppose that Amelia had a MID-ATLANTIC ACCENT (http://magazine.good.is/articles/origins-of-old-timey-voice-revealed?utm_source=keywee&utm_medium=social&kwp_0=68590&kwp_4=386181&kwp_1=227967) do you? If she did, and emphasized it when using the radio, it may have affected what Betty thought she heard and subsequently recorded in her notebook.
MXM: fixed hyperlink. You must have javascript enabled, I think, and allow popup windows in order to use the hyperlink button.
I found that Windows 10 does not and won't support JAVA script. You have to open the application in Internet Explorer instead of Microsoft Edge. IE is included with the Windows 10 update. Just have to go to Favorites and look in the Microsoft Websites folder for IE Add-on.
Gotta love it.
Steve G
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Ted may be on to something......but take this
scenario....we most likely
know that Fred may have
had a stash of alcohol and in
the case that both were hurt...
alcohol was used to numb the pain....
If such is the case....numbers and words are
jibberish because of the excruciating pain and
the effect of the alcohol. So when u hear a person
at a bar that is drunk.....they're really not talking right
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we most likely know that Fred may have
had a stash of alcohol...
Randy, I folow your logic if alcohol were involved. I am concerned that while the "lore" has it that Fred was a drunk, the actual evidence indicating that to be so is simply very scarce.
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We know from Betty's letters that Fred was dead-on accurate with his navigation. They arrived at a location just one minute before Fred predicted they would. So that suggests he hadn't been drinking. She also said in her last letter from LAE that they reduced all the personal belongings as much as possible and that Fred only brought on his little tin that rattled, indicating, she said, that it wasn't full. He could have been drunk from liquor he drank in LAE, but certainly sober by the time they got to Gardner. If he smuggled alcohol on the flight I do believe he would have drank it after they were shipwrecked. But during that time it appears he was injured (his head hurt) and panicky, wanting to get out of the hot plane as the water was rising in it. Those emotions, injury and panic, are more likely what affected his voice. To Diane' point, there is scant evidence that he drank on his flights.
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I agree with Diane. The theory that he was a drunk, (Or at the very least, enough of an alcoholic to squirrel away liquor) has never been, at least in anything that I have read, substantiated. Its possible that they had liquor on board, perhaps as a gift, but I don't think its fair to paint Fred in that light without proof. As far as the possibility of the "numbers" actually being phrases garbled by attenuation, altered mental state (Alcohol, dehydration, head injury etc.) or a combination of both, I think it in an interesting theory. I don't think it is necessarily akin to hunting for shapes in coral. Betty was a young girl, thousands of miles away, scribbling down what she thought she heard in a notebook that then sat untouched for many years, leaving the specifics of that day up to memory. It wouldn't hurt to explore. Maybe a radio experiment is in order?
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It is my impression that most, if not all of the number references in Betty's notebook are attributed to AE, instead of Fred, ..who was for the most part background noise. If the notebook is true, and AE is identified as the sole coherent source of all/ most the numbers Betty wrote down,...Fred's contribution ( in whatever capacity) seems moot as far as Ted's study goes.
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I also agree with Diane. Look at Fred in the film (video) of the Lae takeoff. Watch how FN moves, balances and helps AE up onto the wing. Those aren't the movements of someone suffering from a hangover, etc. :)
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Head injury can be mistaken for intoxication, even by those who should know better, with tragic consequences:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/17/washington/17district.html (http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/17/washington/17district.html)
Inquiry Into Reporter's Death Finds Multiple Failures in Care
"A string of mistakes and inadequate training led to a collective and erroneous conclusion that Mr. Rosenbaum was drunk when in fact he had been beaten with a metal pipe and robbed, the inquiry found.
The assumption that Mr. Rosenbaum was drunk led ambulance technicians, police officers and the staff at Howard University Hospital to handle him with far less urgency than was necessary for a person with a serious head injury, it said.
The report said vomiting and other symptoms displayed by Mr. Rosenbaum were consistent with brain trauma as well as intoxication, and should have been recognized as such."
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We know from Betty's letters that Fred was dead-on accurate with his navigation. They arrived at a location just one minute before Fred predicted they would. So that suggests he hadn't been drinking. She also said in her last letter from LAE that they reduced all the personal belongings as much as possible and that Fred only brought on his little tin that rattled, indicating, she said, that it wasn't full. He could have been drunk from liquor he drank in LAE, but certainly sober by the time they got to Gardner. If he smuggled alcohol on the flight I do believe he would have drank it after they were shipwrecked. But during that time it appears he was injured (his head hurt) and panicky, wanting to get out of the hot plane as the water was rising in it. Those emotions, injury and panic, are more likely what affected his voice. To Diane' point, there is scant evidence that he drank on his flights.
You lost me, what does Betty's notebook have to do with Betty's "letters"? Are we talking two different Betty's? How could the Betty that heard a possible Post loss signal know anything about Noonans navigational skills?
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If Fred was sick then one could assume he died before Amelia. In that case she would presumably have made some effort to bury him. Not easy in that environment but she certainly wouldn't enjoy just having the body decompose. I recognise I may have missed it but I haven't seen any mention of using ground penetrating radar around possible camp sites. That would, I think, show up a shallow grave. If this has already been covered I apologise.
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If Fred was sick then one could assume he died before Amelia. In that case she would presumably have made some effort to bury him. Not easy in that environment but she certainly wouldn't enjoy just having the body decompose. I recognise I may have missed it but I haven't seen any mention of using ground penetrating radar around possible camp sites. That would, I think, show up a shallow grave. If this has already been covered I apologise.
We tried GPR at the Seven Site in 2010. We found that the porous coral rubble substrate defeated the radar's ability to detect disturbed ground. Small pockets of air showed up as buried objects. After painfully excavating a number of "hits" and find nothing, we concluded that the technology is not a useful tool in that environment.
The question of whether and how AE may have dealt with Noonan's corpse is an interesting one. Niku is not an easy place to bury anything except in sandy parts of the beach. Trouble is, in the first big storm the sand goes away. Bones rumored to have been found scattered near the shipwreck by the early colonists may be the remains of the four Norwich City casualties whose bodies washed ashore and were buried by the survivors.
During the visit by the Betchart Tourist Cruise last summer, one of the tourists noticed a linear and possibly unnatural pile of large coral stones near the NW tip of the island, prompting speculation that it might be a cairn covering Noonan's remains. The walking stick in the photo is four feet long. It's acknowledged to be a long shot but the next time someone from TIGHAR visits the island the feature will be investigated further.
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I suppose, if I think about it, a cairn is much more likely than a burial. I'd also forgotten that GPR does not work well with salt contaminated soils. Certainly think that coral pile would be worth investigating. Getting way ahead - are there any living relatives of Fred to enable DNA analysis if his remains were ever found? A pity that using cadaver dogs on the island is impossible.
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... A pity that using cadaver dogs on the island is impossible.
In his earlier post to the Forum, Ric called them "forensic dogs." (https://tighar.org/smf/index.php/topic,1757.msg38591.html#msg38591)
See that post for further details.
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I'm not sure much is to be gained by debating definitions however "forensic" covers a range of capabilities (drugs, explosives etc) . I specifically meant Human remains detection (HRD) dogs (aka Cadaver dogs) but really not worth debating since it is moot as using dogs on site is impractical.
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The dog people are sensitive about terminology. They would tell you that the training and capabilities of "forensic dogs" are very different from those of "cadaver dogs." In any case, as I reported earlier, we do have some apparent confirmation via forensic dogs as to exactly where the bones were found in 1940.
We have tried but have been unable to find any living relative of Fred Noonan. However, if we had an intact skull it should show a dental bridge in the front of his mouth, according to a story that he fell and knocked out some front teeth in Hawaii while flying with PanAm.
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I'm curious, at some point are we going to post scans of all the pages in Betty's Notebook, along with any other documentation TIGHAR has relating to it, such as the letter to Goerner, etc.? That would help immeasurably in overall context and further analysis, I would think.
LTM,
Monty Fowler, TIGHAR No. 2189 EC
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I'm curious, at some point are we going to post scans of all the pages in Betty's Notebook,
Scans of all of the pages of Betty's Notebook that contain Earhart-related entries, plus scans of two pages that are typical of pages that do not contain Earhart-related information, are on the TIGHAR website in Betty's Notebook (http://tighar.org/Projects/Earhart/Archives/Documents/Notebook/notebook.html).
along with any other documentation TIGHAR has relating to it, such as the letter to Goerner, etc.? That would help immeasurably in overall context and further analysis, I would think.
Betty never wrote to Goerner. The correspondence with Goerner was done by her neighbor John Hathaway. Those letters are on the TIGHAR website as the Goerner-Hathaway Letters (http://tighar.org/Projects/Earhart/Archives/Documents/Letters/Goerner_Hathaway/GoernerHathaway.html).