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Author Topic: AE & FN injured?  (Read 95318 times)

Ric Gillespie

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AE & FN injured?
« on: May 10, 2013, 01:16:59 PM »

One of our researchers has raised an interesting question.

"We believe it is likely that Betty listened to the transmission on 5 July. Prior to that
   do you know if she might have learned thru the media that Earhart had reported
       her navigator was seriously injured (per the credible signal on 2 July heard by
       Larremore)?
        If it appears that Betty could not have known about what appears to be a significant
       injury to Noonan, then that piece of information both strengthens the authenticity of
       the Notebook per hearing Earhart, and the validity of the Notebook wherein "the man"
       appears to behave in ways indicative of a possible injury to his head."


The answer is surprising. 

1. Mabel Larremore on the night of July 2nd (Message 27 in the Catalog).
"She stated that her navigator Fred Noonan was seriously injured. Needed help immediately. She also had some injuries but not as serious as Mr. Noonan.”  As far as we know, Mabel's account never appeared in the press.

2. Nina Paxton on the morning of July 3rd (Message 47 in the Catalog).
We've judged as credible the initial July 1937 newspaper account of what Paxton heard.  That article makes no mention of injuries but Nina told her increasingly embellished story many times over the years to anyone who would listen.  In 1962 she reported that Earhart had said,” The captain is with me, but unable to walk well due to injuries in landing yesterday.”   The credibility of that embellishment is marginal at best.

3. Dana Randolph on the morning of July 4th (Message 81 in the Catalog).
Randolph's reception "Ship on reef southeast of Howland" was widely reported in the press the next day.  It's possible that Betty saw the story if it was carried in the St.Pete papers but Randolph reported no mention of injuries.

4. Mrs. Ernest Crabb on the morning of July 4th (Message 82 in the Catalog).
Mrs. Crabb's reception was coincident with Dana Randolph's.  Mrs. Crabb heard snatches of conversation between AE and FN but no mention of injuries. An account of Crabb's reception appeared in the Toronto Daily Star on July 5th and 6th but the story was not picked up by American newspapers.

5. Mrs. Ernest Crabb early morning of July 5th (Message 140 in the Catalog).
Mrs. Crabb heard snatches of conversation between AE and FN but no mention of injuries.

6. Betty Klenck later on morning of July 5th (Message 142 in the Catalog).
Betty heard snatches of conversation between AE and FN. No overt mention of injuries but Betty's transcription implies that Noonan is behaving in a matter consistent with a traumatic head injury and that AE has an injury that causes her to cry out in pain.

6.  Mrs. Ernest Crabb early morning of July 6th (Message 161 in the Catalog).
Mrs. Crabb heard snatches of conversation between AE and FN but no mention of injuries.

7. Thelma Lovelace early morning of July 7th (Message 170 in the Catalog).
“We have taken in water, my navigator is badly hurt; (repeat) we are in need of medical care and must have help; we can’t hold on much longer.”
Reference to "we" needing medical care implies that she is also injured.  Lovelace's account never appeared in the press.

So, to summarize:
• Larremore, Klenck and Lovelace independently describe or imply severe injury to Noonan and less severe injury to Earhart.
• All three women came forward with their stories many years after the event and had no knowledge of each other. 
• None of the accounts of post-loss radio receptions that were reported in the press in 1937 - whether credible, uncertain, or not credible - included mention of injuries.  Among the not credible reports, expressions of desperation ("can't hold on much longer") were common but there was no mention of injuries.
• Paxton's 1962 description of Noonan's knee injury is not consistent with the type or severity of injury reported by Larremore, Klenck and Lovelace.
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richie conroy

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Re: AE & FN injured?
« Reply #1 on: May 10, 2013, 04:05:00 PM »

Ric

Given the fact Amelia's round world flight was main headline news at the time. And it was headline news that Fred Noonan was her navigator.

Have you ever asked Betty why she writes "MAN, HE, HIM etc instead of Fred ?

Did Betty actually know the name of Amelia's navigator ?

Sorry if this has been brought up before  :)

Thank's Richie 
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Al Leonard

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Re: AE & FN injured?
« Reply #2 on: May 11, 2013, 12:13:27 AM »


In Finding Amelia, Ric makes the following observations about Nina Paxton’s 1937 newspaper account about hearing Earhart:
“The entire propagation path between the Paxton’s location and the search area was in daylight and the probability for her…to have heard a transmission from the Earhart Electra was less than one in ten million.  Improbable is not the same as impossible, of course, and extraordinary events do occur. There is nothing, however, in Nina Paxton’s claims that argue for her credibility.  All the elements of Earhart’s situation, as Paxton first described it, can be found in press accounts published in the newspapers in the days before Paxton contacted the newspaper.

Ric suggest in his post above that Paxton’s 1962 recollection that Noonan had an injury incurred during landing that made it difficult to walk was of marginal credibility, at best. Ric doesn’t explain why he thinks so, but in Finding Amelia, Ric says that in 1943 that Paxton claimed that Earhart made specific references to the Marshall Islands in her radio message. Also, she went on to repeat these claims in the ‘60s, and also claimed that she heard secret messages from Hitler.

Additional potential credibility-busters:

According to the 1937 newspaper article (as quoted in the post-loss radio catalog) “Mrs. Paxton claimed to have heard Earhart say “down in ocean,” then “on or near little island at a point near …,” then something about “directly northeast,” and “our plane about out of gas. Water all around. Very dark.” Then something about a storm and that the wind was blowing, “will have to get out of here,” “we can’t stay here long.”

According to Bob Brandenburg’s tide analysis, the tide level was about 0.45 meters below the bottom of the Electra’s wheel at the time; also it was 8 in the morning at Gardner--daytime. So, Paxton’s remarks about ‘Water all around’, ‘getting dark’, ‘will have to get out of here’ don’t seem to make a lot of sense without vigorous arm waving. Same goes for the ‘down in ocean’ quote; if the plane went in the ocean, it wouldn’t be able to transmit.

I leave it to forum readers to decide for themselves, given all of the above, how much weight should be given to Paxton's 1937 report of hearing Earhart and her later remarks about Noonan's injures.

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Al Leonard

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Re: AE & FN injured?
« Reply #3 on: May 11, 2013, 08:02:10 AM »

One of our researchers has raised an interesting question.

"We believe it is likely that Betty listened to the transmission on 5 July. Prior to that
   do you know if she might have learned thru the media that Earhart had reported
       her navigator was seriously injured (per the credible signal on 2 July heard by
       Larremore)?
        If it appears that Betty could not have known about what appears to be a significant
       injury to Noonan, then that piece of information both strengthens the authenticity of
       the Notebook per hearing Earhart
, and the validity of the Notebook wherein "the man"
       appears to behave in ways indicative of a possible injury to his head."


One problem I see with this argument is that we don’t know that Fred was injured. If we did, then the fact that Betty’s notebook suggested Fred was injured would be somewhat interesting, but even then, it isn’t a great leap to think that someone might have been injured in making an emergency landing on a remote island.

Should reports of Fred being injured strengthen the authenticity of the report? Have a look at An Avalanche of Psychics.  People claiming psychic powers reported injuries to Fred and/or Amelia. A July 5 telegram about the visions of an ‘Eminent Psychic’ reads “PLANE PRETTY WELL CRACKED UP BUT BOTH ARE SAFE. MISS EARHART IN BETTER SHAPE THAN NOONAN”.  Sounds a lot like Betty’s notebook doesn’t it? Also, there is this: “A woman from Detroit sent a series of unique sketches she called “human radio wave pictures” depicting Amelia Earhart dragging Captain Noonan ashore on a barren island. The woman is an architect with two university degrees, and she was impelled to draw the pictures by a power she could not explain.” One of her drawings show an injured/dead Noonan on the reef, being attended to by  Amelia.  Another of her ‘human radio wave pictures’ (received on the fourth harmonic of Amelia’s brainwaves, perhaps?...) shows what is labeled ‘a box of some sort’. The castaway was found with a sextant box! This truly is a piece of occult information, isn't it? This Detroit woman couldn’t have known that a skeleton with a sextant box would be found by Gallagher, so the fact that she ‘saw’ this box, AND also 'saw' an incapacitated Fred, enhances the credibility of her visions, doesn’t it? I think most of us will agree the answer is ‘No’.

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Ric Gillespie

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Re: AE & FN injured?
« Reply #4 on: May 11, 2013, 06:49:01 PM »

In Finding Amelia, Ric makes the following observations about Nina Paxton’s 1937 newspaper account about hearing Earhart:
“The entire propagation path between the Paxton’s location and the search area was in daylight and the probability for her…to have heard a transmission from the Earhart Electra was less than one in ten million.  Improbable is not the same as impossible, of course, and extraordinary events do occur. There is nothing, however, in Nina Paxton’s claims that argue for her credibility.  All the elements of Earhart’s situation, as Paxton first described it, can be found in press accounts published in the newspapers in the days before Paxton contacted the newspaper.

Finding Amelia was written in 2005.  Bob Brandenburg and I completed the Post-Loss Signals Catalog in 2012. Remember, in the Catalog, "credible" does not mean "proven to be authentic." Deciding what to do with Nina Paxton was difficult but we ultimately decided that her initial report had to go in the "credible" column because there is nothing in it that automatically disqualifies as being a genuine reception of an Earhart transmission. 

Ric suggest in his post above that Paxton’s 1962 recollection that Noonan had an injury incurred during landing that made it difficult to walk was of marginal credibility, at best. Ric doesn’t explain why he thinks so, but in Finding Amelia, Ric says that in 1943 that Paxton claimed that Earhart made specific references to the Marshall Islands in her radio message. Also, she went on to repeat these claims in the ‘60s, and also claimed that she heard secret messages from Hitler.

I'm happy to explain why I think Paxton's 1962 recollection is of marginal credibility.  By then she had a track record of questionable, if not downright ridiculous, embellishments to her original account and her description of Noonan's injury is at odds with what I consider to be the more credible reports by Larrmore, Klenck and Lovelace.

Additional potential credibility-busters:

According to the 1937 newspaper article (as quoted in the post-loss radio catalog) “Mrs. Paxton claimed to have heard Earhart say “down in ocean,” then “on or near little island at a point near …,” then something about “directly northeast,” and “our plane about out of gas. Water all around. Very dark.” Then something about a storm and that the wind was blowing, “will have to get out of here,” “we can’t stay here long.”

According to Bob Brandenburg’s tide analysis, the tide level was about 0.45 meters below the bottom of the Electra’s wheel at the time; also it was 8 in the morning at Gardner--daytime. So, Paxton’s remarks about ‘Water all around’, ‘getting dark’, ‘will have to get out of here’ don’t seem to make a lot of sense without vigorous arm waving. Same goes for the ‘down in ocean’ quote; if the plane went in the ocean, it wouldn’t be able to transmit.

"Down in ocean on or near a small island" could describe being on the reef without excessive arm waving.  Even at low tide there is water "all around," both to seaward and landward.   "Getting dark" could be describing a severe local squall.  Having been there under those circumstance I can tell you that it gets very dark.  "Will have to get out of here" is interesting because it implies there is somewhere to get out of here to, i.e. on shore.

I leave it to forum readers to decide for themselves, given all of the above, how much weight should be given to Paxton's 1937 report of hearing Earhart and her later remarks about Noonan's injures.

It's always up to forum readers to decide for themselves.  I'm personally comfortable with Nina being in the credible column for her initial report but not her later embellishments, such as her description of Noonan's injury.
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Ric Gillespie

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Re: AE & FN injured?
« Reply #5 on: May 11, 2013, 06:52:31 PM »

Ric

Given the fact Amelia's round world flight was main headline news at the time. And it was headline news that Fred Noonan was her navigator.

Have you ever asked Betty why she writes "MAN, HE, HIM etc instead of Fred ?

Did Betty actually know the name of Amelia's navigator ?

Sorry if this has been brought up before  :)

Betty was not an Earhart fan.  She didn't know that she had anyone with her, let alone that he was her navigator and that his name was Noonan. Betty didn't even get Amelia's married name right. She wrote Putman instead of Putnam.
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Ric Gillespie

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Re: AE & FN injured?
« Reply #6 on: May 11, 2013, 07:04:50 PM »

One problem I see with this argument is that we don’t know that Fred was injured. If we did, then the fact that Betty’s notebook suggested Fred was injured would be somewhat interesting, but even then, it isn’t a great leap to think that someone might have been injured in making an emergency landing on a remote island.

You miss the point.  The fact that three independent witnesses describe hearing descriptions of the same situation suggests they got their information from the same source.


Should reports of Fred being injured strengthen the authenticity of the report? Have a look at An Avalanche of Psychics.  People claiming psychic powers reported injuries to Fred and/or Amelia. A July 5 telegram about the visions of an ‘Eminent Psychic’ reads “PLANE PRETTY WELL CRACKED UP BUT BOTH ARE SAFE. MISS EARHART IN BETTER SHAPE THAN NOONAN”.  Sounds a lot like Betty’s notebook doesn’t it? Also, there is this: “A woman from Detroit sent a series of unique sketches she called “human radio wave pictures” depicting Amelia Earhart dragging Captain Noonan ashore on a barren island. The woman is an architect with two university degrees, and she was impelled to draw the pictures by a power she could not explain.” One of her drawings show an injured/dead Noonan on the reef, being attended to by  Amelia.  Another of her ‘human radio wave pictures’ (received on the fourth harmonic of Amelia’s brainwaves, perhaps?...) shows what is labeled ‘a box of some sort’. The castaway was found with a sextant box! This truly is a piece of occult information, isn't it? This Detroit woman couldn’t have known that a skeleton with a sextant box would be found by Gallagher, so the fact that she ‘saw’ this box, AND also 'saw' an incapacitated Fred, enhances the credibility of her visions, doesn’t it? I think most of us will agree the answer is ‘No’.

It's a bogus comparison.  If three people who don't know me personally and don't know each other tell you that, on separate occasions, they overheard me talking about my horse - you would be justified in concluding that I probably have a horse.  If three people who don't know me personally and don't know each other tell you that, on separate occasions, they dreamed of me on a horse you would probably think it was an interesting coincidence.  Larremore, Klenck, and Lovelace had quantifiable ability to legitimately obtain the information they related. The psychics did not.
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Al Leonard

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Re: AE & FN injured?
« Reply #7 on: May 12, 2013, 12:34:50 AM »

To repeat what I said above, there is nothing remarkable in imagining that Amelia or Fred would be injured in an emergency landing on an island; 'Are the passengers and crew safe?' is the first thing we all think of when we hear about a plane crash, isn't it?

Larremore et. al. needn’t have gotten information from a common source (e.g., Amelia), they merely had to have had similar, quite understandable, expectations about injuries sustained by the Electra crew upon making an emergency landing, and applied these expectations to whatever it was they heard (or later remembered hearing*) on the radio.

The story of the two psychics shows that even people who clearly didn’t hear Earhart could come up with injured crew stories that sounded like those reported by Larremore et. al.  The psychics didn’t need to have received information from a common source, and they didn’t need to have really heard the Electra (obviously they didn’t), to tell their stories. The same can thus be said about Larremore, Lovelace, and Klenck.

---
* note:  Larremore and Lovelace’s didn’t tell their stories till the 1990’s, therefore there was plenty of time for their recollections to be influenced by later media accounts. Betty’s statement that the man she heard ‘complained of his head’ is also a decades-old recollection.
« Last Edit: May 12, 2013, 06:52:32 AM by Al Leonard »
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Tim Gard

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Re: AE & FN injured?
« Reply #8 on: May 12, 2013, 03:22:31 AM »

My take is that Fred was injured during the forced landing because the Electra's lat longs did not dominate the post loss transmissions. The aircraft's fix would have eliminated the need for so many retransmissions and avoided so much of the coast guard's northwest of Howland uncertainty. Certainly the desperate referencing of the Norwich City wreck would have been unnecessary.

I also think some  sort of touchdown trouble occurred on the Electra's port side that prevented taxiing to a location clear of the tide line.

From Betty's Notebook, Amelia attempts to identify her position and reports everything written on the paper(s) in front of her hoping that someone will be able to make sense of it all.

This implies some difficulty Fred was experiencing in relaying the simple Gardner Island lattitude and longitude to her from wherever he was inside the Fuselage.

Either Fred had been unable to shoot the sun and stars after touchdown, or his figures subsequently became unintelligible to Amelia.
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« Last Edit: May 12, 2013, 04:41:58 AM by Tim Gard »
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Will Hatchell

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Re: AE & FN injured?
« Reply #9 on: May 12, 2013, 08:36:47 AM »

My take is that Fred was injured during the forced landing because the Electra's lat longs did not dominate the post loss transmissions.

Tim and Al,

You both make some very logical, and I believe, sound points. Your arguments, in combination with what we might glean from the radio messages, reinforce my contention that AE and FN never made it to the Seven Site, or for that matter, very far from the Electra or off the reef toward the beach at all, between the time of their landing and July 5 when the transmissions ceased. It would seem to me that they elected to stay with the craft in attempting rescue through radio contact, given what little survival equipment and resources they had with them, and the likely nature of their landing.
Hatch

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Ric Gillespie

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Re: AE & FN injured?
« Reply #10 on: May 12, 2013, 09:19:03 AM »

To repeat what I said above, there is nothing remarkable in imagining that Amelia or Fred would be injured in an emergency landing on an island; 'Are the passengers and crew safe?' is the first thing we all think of when we hear about a plane crash, isn't it?

Let's accept that premise.

Larremore et. al. needn’t have gotten information from a common source (e.g., Amelia), they merely had to have had similar, quite understandable, expectations about injuries sustained by the Electra crew upon making an emergency landing, and applied these expectations to whatever it was they heard (or later remembered hearing*) on the radio.

That's certainly a possibility.

The story of the two psychics shows that even people who clearly didn’t hear Earhart could come up with injured crew stories that sounded like those reported by Larremore et. al.  The psychics didn’t need to have received information from a common source, and they didn’t need to have really heard the Electra (obviously they didn’t), to tell their stories. The same can thus be said about Larremore, Lovelace, and Klenck.

Also true.

---
* note:  Larremore and Lovelace’s didn’t tell their stories till the 1990’s, therefore there was plenty of time for their recollections to be influenced by later media accounts. Betty’s statement that the man she heard ‘complained of his head’ is also a decades-old recollection.

Ditto.

Let's test your hypothesis.  You feel that the fact that Larremore, Klenck, and Lovelace described injuries is unremarkable and insignificant because, when hearing of a plane crash, our first concern is for the safety of the people.  We would, therefore, expect that people making up or imagining stories about hearing from the people on the plane would include references to injuries. 

There were 36 reported receptions of post-loss messages - 16 by hams and 20 by casual listeners - that were alleged to contain intelligible voice. Of those, only 3 (8%) made reference to injuries. Those 3 happen to be among the 10 receptions alleged to contain intelligible voice which have been judged (by other criteria) to be credible. Whether or not you accept our judgments of "credible" or "not credible," your hypothesis doesn't hold up.  92% of the reported post-loss receptions that could have contained information about injuries didn't. The 3 that did described or implied the same distribution and severity of injuries among the crew members. 

It's hard to argue with your basic premise - that the first thing we all think of when we hear about a plane crash is the safety of the crew.  The fact that, in the case of the presumed Earhart crash, such a tiny percentage of a fairly sizable number of alleged receptions mention injuries is, itself, remarkable.
« Last Edit: May 12, 2013, 09:30:25 AM by Ric Gillespie »
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Ric Gillespie

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Re: AE & FN injured?
« Reply #11 on: May 12, 2013, 09:35:30 AM »

You both make some very logical, and I believe, sound points. Your arguments, in combination with what we might glean from the radio messages, reinforce my contention that AE and FN never made it to the Seven Site...

You have to deal with all the evidence.  You can't be selective. If you can offer convincing evidence that they never made it off the reef, you don't need to explain who the castaway was or where the stuff found at the Seven Site by Gallagher and by TIGHAR came from.  If you can't, you do.
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richie conroy

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Re: AE & FN injured?
« Reply #12 on: May 12, 2013, 03:48:38 PM »

Hi All

Ric

I believe if you re-read Will's sentence you will see what he meant,

Will.   reinforce my contention that AE and FN never made it to the Seven Site, or for that matter, very far from the Electra or off the reef toward the beach at all, "between" the time of their landing and July 5 when the transmissions "ceased"

Ric not sure if i have read a post on this before but, Have Tighar searched the vicinity of the sign's of recent habitation site for fred's remain's ?

Thank's Richie
We are an echo of the past


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Zach Reed

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Re: AE & FN injured?
« Reply #13 on: May 12, 2013, 04:37:24 PM »

The last credible transmission is on the sixth...

...what was the date of the Navy flyover?
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Greg Daspit

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Re: AE & FN injured?
« Reply #14 on: May 12, 2013, 06:12:13 PM »

The planes from the Colorado searched on July 9th per Lambrecht's Report

A specific location of the "signs of recent habitation" was not described in Lambrecht's report.
The Bevington Object looks like the Electra's landing gear, IMO
The closest point ashore from the Bevington Object, and maybe a little north, seems like a good area to look for Camp Zero and evidence of Fred Noonan, if he made it to shore.   

Assuming injuries kept one or both in the plane and the plane floated off near the Bevington Object, useful items could have floated ashore south of it. A camp could have been made close to where items were salvaged. Sort of like Noland did in Castaway, stacking up salvaged items and making first camp there.  So it seems logical to start looking just near the notch close to the Bevington Object and extend the search south from there, staying close to shore and near tree lines for shade.
I hope Niku VIII does inlcude looking for Camp Zero.
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« Last Edit: May 12, 2013, 06:59:29 PM by G. Daspit »
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