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Author Topic: AE & FN injured?  (Read 95333 times)

Al Leonard

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Re: AE & FN injured?
« Reply #30 on: May 15, 2013, 11:26:11 AM »

This thread began with the question of whether people might have heard through the media that Fred Noonan or Amellia were injured.  The issue here is what Ric calls “expectation bias”, i.e., if Betty Klenck, Mable Larremore, or Thelma Lovelace were exposed to the idea that Fred or Amelia were injured upon making an emergency landing through their exposure to newspapers and radio, these media sources may have influenced what the three women reported they they heard on the radio.

Of course, there is no reason that the three of them could not have had this idea themselves, as I've previously pointed out--remember the two psychics and Nina Paxton. Nevertheless, I happened to looked at the script of the March of Time broadcast last night and I see that on page 6 there is a scene where George Putnam is speaking to Mrs. Noonan. Putnam says to Mrs. Noonan: "Either they were hurt on landing and may die, or they weren’t hurt and may be picked up. I think the messages prove they’re still alive!”.
 
So here we have an instance of a widespread radio program that might have created expectation bias in the case of Thelma Lovelace and Betty Klenck. I note here that we don’t know the date Betty recorded what she heard as previously discussed elsewhere on the forum. Betty didn’t record the date of her listening session so she could have been listening any weekday on the week of July 5, or the following week for that matter, so as far as I can tell we can't assume Betty's listening date was prior to the MOT broadcast date.

As discussed above on this thread, the date Thelma Lovelace heard whatever it was she heard is unclear—the date given in the post loss catalog relies solely upon her recollections 50 years after the event in question
« Last Edit: May 15, 2013, 05:48:34 PM by Al Leonard »
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Ric Gillespie

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Re: AE & FN injured?
« Reply #31 on: May 15, 2013, 06:24:03 PM »

So here we have an instance of a widespread radio program that might have created expectation bias in the case of Thelma Lovelace and Betty Klenck. I note here that we don’t know the date Betty recorded what she heard as previously discussed elsewhere on the forum. Betty didn’t record the date of her listening session so she could have been listening any weekday on the week of July 5, or the following week for that matter, so as far as I can tell we can't assume Betty's listening date was prior to the MOT broadcast date.

As discussed above on this thread, the date Thelma Lovelace heard whatever it was she heard is unclear—the date given in the post loss catalog relies solely upon her recollections 50 years after the event in question

Elsewhere we've discussed at length why July 5 makes the most sense for when Betty heard what she heard.  Thelma Lovelace had a clear recollection of what day she heard what she heard and explained why.  Maybe we have the dates right, maybe we don't - but we can't change them without a good reason. That Larremore, Klenck and Lovelace all remembered hearing Earhart before the date of the March of Time broadcast and that all three not only described injuries but the same pattern of injuries - Noonan severe, Earhart minor - is remarkable.  In my opinion, the possibility that all three made the same leap of imagination after hearing the March of Time broadcast (which none of them remembered hearing) is less likely than the possibility that all three heard Earhart.
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Al Leonard

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Re: AE & FN injured?
« Reply #32 on: May 15, 2013, 06:54:22 PM »


Elsewhere we've discussed at length why July 5 makes the most sense for when Betty heard what she heard. 


Where was that discussed, Ric? What is the rationale?
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Bruce Thomas

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Re: AE & FN injured?
« Reply #33 on: May 15, 2013, 07:19:59 PM »


Elsewhere we've discussed at length why July 5 makes the most sense for when Betty heard what she heard. 


Where was that discussed, Ric? What is the rationale?
Ric's comments on March 27, 2013, in another topic (Betty & Bob) may be what you're seeking, Al.
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Bruce
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Ben Stevens

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Re: AE & FN injured?
« Reply #34 on: May 15, 2013, 08:25:11 PM »

Some other threads on the forum bear upon the issue of whether Betty really heard a transmission from the Electra and are thus relevant to the discussion here.

According to Betty’s Notebook (http://tighar.org/Projects/Earhart/Archives/Documents/Notebook/notebook.html) we don’t know what day Betty recorded her notes.  The relevant quote goes: 

A 15 year old girl – whom we’ll call “Betty” for now – was living in St. Petersburg, Florida in the summer of 1937. One afternoon in July – the exact date is not known – at about 3 p.m. Betty was sitting on the floor in front of her family’s radio console.

As discussed in the ‘Betty and Bob’ thread (http://tighar.org/smf/index.php/topic,1153.0.html) Betty’s notebook has Amelia saying ‘waters high’, ‘waters knee deep’, ‘we can’t bail out’, and ‘knee deep over’ all at a time when Bob Brandenburg’s tide reconstruction has the reef dry – sea level was half a meter below the Electra’s wheels according to Bob’s tide reconstruction. The discrepancy is true of subsequent days as well.

Also on that thread, Bob’s Brandenburg’s analysis of the probability of Betty’s radio receiving a transmission from the Electra Harmony and Power, (http://tighar.org/smf/index.php/topic,1153.msg24385.html#msg24385) indicates that on July 5, that probability of a reception was about 1 in 800 during the 2100 to 2130 GMT time interval; about 1 in 330,000 during the 2130 to 2230 GMT interval; and 1 in 50,000 during the 2230-2314 GMT interval. Those are not very good odds. The odds of Betty hearing the transmission on subsequent days are vastly poorer, more in the 1-in-a-billion range during the middle of her listening period.

We do not know the model of shortwave radio Betty was listening to. Many shortwave sets could not reach the frequency that it Tighar hypothesizes Betty was listening on, and we also don’t know if Betty’s radio was one of the ones that could tune to the 4th harmonic of the Earhart transmission frequency. This was discussed here (http://tighar.org/smf/index.php/topic,883.0.html).

So there are a number of reasons to think that the garbled message Betty heard was not a broadcast from Amelia:
-Betty’s notes don’t agree with Bob’s tide height reconstruction;
-According to Bob’s radio analysis, the odds of Betty hearing Amelia and Fred were quite low on July 5 and much lower on subsequent days.
-We don’t know if Betty had a radio that could receive the 4th harmonic of Earhart’s transmission frequency; many shortwave radios did not.

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Al Leonard

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Re: AE & FN injured?
« Reply #35 on: May 15, 2013, 10:06:40 PM »


Elsewhere we've discussed at length why July 5 makes the most sense for when Betty heard what she heard. 


Where was that discussed, Ric? What is the rationale?
Ric's comments on March 27, 2013, in another topic (Betty & Bob) may be what you're seeking, Al.

Bruce,

I think Ric makes a good case for ruling out the weekend since Betty’s dad was at work (I think the 5 day work week was already the norm by ‘37).

But Ric’s explanation for why the date was July 5 is simply speculation about Betty’s notes about a very garbled radio message (which incidentally includes a ‘waters high’ remark at a time when Bob Brandenburg’s tide reconstruction indicates the reef was dry underneath the Electra).

Isn’t there anything more solid to go on than this for Ric’s assumption that July 5 was the date?
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Greg Daspit

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Re: AE & FN injured?
« Reply #36 on: May 15, 2013, 11:26:10 PM »

In the Betty and Bob thread, I posted several possible reasons for why Betty's notes may not agree with the Tide Anaylsis. I think either one of them, or combination of them, would allow for Betty to hear what she said and for the Tide analysis at the time she heard it. I don't think it's hard to believe that the plane could move to a lower point on a reef due to tidal and/or wind forces, or move back and forth if it could taxi.

Regarding why the 5th. Like Ben said "According to Bob’s radio analysis, the odds of Betty hearing Amelia and Fred were quite low on July 5 and much lower on subsequent days" That explains why the 5th is a reasonable date when you combine that point with the point that the weekend was before that date. It's low on the 5th, but possible.

If we don't know what kind of radio Betty had, and even if many radios could not recieve the signal, that does not make her not credible IMO
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« Last Edit: May 15, 2013, 11:38:09 PM by G. Daspit »
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Joe Cerniglia

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Re: AE & FN injured?
« Reply #37 on: May 16, 2013, 06:01:47 AM »

We do not know the model of shortwave radio Betty was listening to. Many shortwave sets could not reach the frequency that it Tighar hypothesizes Betty was listening on, and we also don’t know if Betty’s radio was one of the ones that could tune to the 4th harmonic of the Earhart transmission frequency. This was discussed here (http://tighar.org/smf/index.php/topic,883.0.html).

Betty's exact model could never be known with certainty without a time machine but when shown a photograph of the Zenith Stratosphere 1000Z, she recognized it as the one her family had owned, according to Brandenburg's paper.  That first link says the 1000Z was perhaps the best radio then commercially available.  Even slightly later models had ample reception range to have included any of the feasible harmonic frequencies in Bob Brandenburg's paper. Bob says it was "very capable." Looking at the photos of the wiring and circuitry, this seems like an understatement.

From the photos included in the link, I think it would be difficult to forget a radio like that one. I wonder if even the Coast Guard had anything like that.

From the site:

Stratosphere 1000-Z (Chassis 2501)

Country: United States of America (USA)
Manufacturer/Brand: Zenith Radio Corp.; Chicago, Illinois
Year: 1935 – 1936
Type: Radio or Tuner
PrincipleSuperhet with RF-stage; IF-Freq. 485 kHz
Tuned circuits: 9 AM circuit(s);
Wave bands: Broadcast, Short Wave(s) and Police.
Power type and voltage: Alternating Current supply (AC) / 117 Volt
Loudspeaker/pwr.out: 3 Loudspeakers / 16 W
Model: Stratosphere 1000-Z (Chassis 2501)
Material: Wooden case
Shape: Console with any shape - in general (details vary).
Dimensions (WHD): 30 x 50 x 19 inch / 762 x 1270 x 483 mm
Weight: 275 lbs.
Valves / Tubes: 25

Notes: The Zenith Stratosphere 1000-Z was introduced in December 1934 for the wholesale market. Like the Scott line of deluxe consoles the Zenith Stratosphere 1000-Z used also a chrome-plated chassis. The 1000-Z has 5 bands covering 535 to 63600kc but the 63600 kc were soon dropped to 45000 and later to 32000 kc. The Stratosphere 1000-Z comes with 3 speakers; has two subchassis: lower 2501-P power supply, upper 2501-C control (receiver). It was designed in 1933 and 1934. There are several interesting books about Zenith and some articles about the Stratosphere 1000-Z. It was a milestone for the radio industry of that time.

Price in first year of sale: $ 750 USD
Collectors' prices: $ 75,000 - $ 125,000 USD
Circuit diagram reference: Rider's Perpetual, Volume 6 = 1935 and before

Reference: The Radio Museum.org

On a personal note, I spoke with Betty by phone two years ago. She asked me to call after I friended her on Facebook (Betty keeps up with the times.) I don't know if you've ever had someone from her generation (a grandmother perhaps) grab you by the sleeve, look you in the eye and tell you that something is as true and as plain as can possibly be, but that's the impression I got.  You could feel the temperature drop in the room when she said, calmly, simply, quietly, "I know." She knows, I thought, and we'd know too if we'd been sitting there. The anguished cries she heard were no radio play cueing up a word from our sponsor.  This was real.

Joe Cerniglia
TIGHAR #3078 ECR

Betty knows what she heard and she's held on to that.
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Ric Gillespie

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Re: AE & FN injured?
« Reply #38 on: May 16, 2013, 06:26:11 AM »

I think Ric makes a good case for ruling out the weekend since Betty’s dad was at work (I think the 5 day work week was already the norm by ‘37).

But Ric’s explanation for why the date was July 5 is simply speculation about Betty’s notes about a very garbled radio message (which incidentally includes a ‘waters high’ remark at a time when Bob Brandenburg’s tide reconstruction indicates the reef was dry underneath the Electra).

Isn’t there anything more solid to go on than this for Ric’s assumption that July 5 was the date?

On March 27 I wrote:
"On the first page of notes, one of the first entries is an apparently garbled phrase (spoken by Amelia, according to Betty's later recollection) "W40K Howland port or W O J Howland port." Whatever Earhart actually said, she was apparently attempting to get a response from Howland.  Noonan, in the context implied by the rest of the notebook, is irrational and panicky.  He makes the comment "waters high." He's frightened and he wants to abandon ship. Apparently seeking to calm him down, AE says "Here , put your ear to it."  Put his ear to what?  Probably the headphone ear piece.  She has been calling Howland and hears a response.  She wants Noonan to hear it so that he will calm down.  This would be occurring at or very shortly after 21:30 GMT.

At 21:30 GMT and again at 21:35 GMT on July 5, ITASCA sends a transmission to Earhart in Morse code.  If Earhart heard it she wouldn't be able to understand it but it would be an encouraging sign.

Monday, July 5 is the only day on which we see this kind of possible correlation between Betty's notebook and the Itasca log."

That's "simply speculation," but any interpretation of Betty's transcription is "simply speculation."  If you'll read what I wrote you'll see that my speculation that the date was July 5 is based not on the garbled phrase "W40K Howland port or W O J Howland port." but on the AE's admonition to Noonan "Here, put your ear to it.", a matching entry in the Itasca log, and the fact that July 5 is the only day on which we see this kind of possible correlation between Betty's notebook and the Itasca log.  Unless you have speculation about the date that is better than that, your dismissal of the July 5 as the most probable date for Betty's reception is simply troll-ism.

The troll continues to roll when you try to discredit the entire transcription by noting the a clearly irrational and panicky Fred Noonan makes reference to water depths somewhere (it's not at all clear where) that don't agree with Bob Brandenburg's calculation of the actual conditions. That makes about as much sense as saying the notebook cannot be a record of an actual call from Earhart because Noonan is alleged to have said, "Hello Bud" and there was clearly no one named Bud for him to greet.

 

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Ric Gillespie

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Re: AE & FN injured?
« Reply #39 on: May 16, 2013, 06:41:11 AM »

Betty's exact model could never be known with certainty without a time machine but when shown a photograph of the Zenith Stratosphere 1000Z, she recognized it as the one her family had owned, according to Brandenburg's paper.

Joe is right but his link is to an early version of Bob's paper Harmony & Power.  An updated version is here.

Betty's Notebook has been exhaustively vetted over a period of more than a dozen years. It's always worth re-examining previous research and assumptions but trolls are not interested in rational review.  Their agenda is to debunk. Trolls pick at little things and don't do their homework before making grand dismissive statements.  They waste our time and we have much more important things to do than play whack-a-troll. 
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Bill de Creeft

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Re: AE & FN injured?
« Reply #40 on: May 16, 2013, 11:01:08 AM »

I just went over and looked at the old Stromberg-Carlson radio we have here that I've mentioned before.

It says"Short Wave......5.6 -18  megacycles
          Aircraft..............1.7-5.6          "
           Broadcast........  .53 -1.7        "

This is a regular old household radio like a lot of people had in their homes and I would guess the same as Betty's.
This one has the green "Eye" for tuning, so I would count it as good quality...it stands 43 inches high and 28 inces deep in a nice wooden cabinet with a huge speaker!

The last time we used it was before 1970.
In those days I had a lot of flying to do at "break-up" time when the ice went off the lake and I had freight staked up in the cabin waiting for the first trip of the season to some of the cabins across the Bay.
This time it was a Chocolate Lab puppy that we kept for about a week waiting for the lake to open and the puppy chewed the electric plug off the radio cord and we just never have gotten around to fixing it...it is such a neat old radio, and I have a log cabin I built with axe I'm proud of, so it is Alaskan Decor these years ...along with old snowshoes , etc.

All this talk has me ready to blow the dust out of the cabinet and fix the plug and see what music is out there ...!?!

The shortwave radio I used to talk to the airplane, before we went to Marine VHF. is the one I picked up Darwin on at times; not this one.

Bill

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Steve Lee

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Re: AE & FN injured?
« Reply #41 on: June 11, 2013, 07:39:48 AM »


Isn’t there anything more solid to go on than this for Ric’s assumption that July 5 was the date?

On March 27 I wrote:
"On the first page of notes, one of the first entries is an apparently garbled phrase (spoken by Amelia, according to Betty's later recollection) "W40K Howland port or W O J Howland port." Whatever Earhart actually said, she was apparently attempting to get a response from Howland. 


Two questions:

While approaching Howland, Earhart failed to hear all but one of Itasca’s messages to her. So, why would Earhart have been able to hear Itasca once she landed on Nikumaroro?

If Earhart heard a message from Itasca, why would she reply to Howland, instead of Itasca? In all her radio transmissions while approaching Howland, she never tried to reach Howland (did she even have knowledge that there was a radio team on Howland listening for her?).


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Ric Gillespie

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Re: AE & FN injured?
« Reply #42 on: June 11, 2013, 02:13:35 PM »

While approaching Howland, Earhart failed to hear all but one of Itasca’s messages to her. So, why would Earhart have been able to hear Itasca once she landed on Nikumaroro?

The only time during the approach to Howland that Earhart heard Itasca was when she was trying to take a bearing with her loop antenna.  That should have tipped her off that she had an antenna problem, not a receiver problem - but she didn't make that connection.  Having failed to "get a minimum" with the loop (because the frequency was way too high) she switched back to the missing belly antenna to listen for replies to her voice messages and, of course, heard nothing.
Upon landing at Gardner and getting out of the airplane it seems reasonable to assume that she noticed that the belly antenna was gone.   At some point it may have dawned on her that the loop is not just a direction-finding device, it's a receiving antenna (duh!) - not as sensitive as the belly wire but capable of receiving signals nonetheless.

If Earhart heard a message from Itasca, why would she reply to Howland, instead of Itasca? In all her radio transmissions while approaching Howland, she never tried to reach Howland (did she even have knowledge that there was a radio team on Howland listening for her?).

Good question.  As evidenced by her pre-flight communications from Lae, Earhart was pretty confused about arrangements at Howland and aboard Itasca.  She thought there was a meteorologist aboard Itasca (there wasn't).  She knew Richard Black was the head of the support expedition and would be on Howland but she thought he was the captain of the Itasca (he was a Dept. of Interior employee). I don't know whether she knew there was a radio on Howland.
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Gloria Walker Burger

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Re: AE & FN injured?
« Reply #43 on: June 11, 2013, 03:32:20 PM »

Ric wrote:
Quote
It's interesting to track the phrase "can't last [or hold on] much longer" in the reported messages.  Is there reason to think it is a phrase Earhart actually used or is it a phrase that propagated from one bogus report to another?   The earliest version occurs on the morning of July 5 when Ernest Henderson in Auburn, WA (Catalog entry #119) hears AE say "50 -128 - QQ - waterlogged - can't last much longer."  We have judged the report to be not credible, mostly because of the reference to "waterlogged" but it occurs to me that "128-QQ" could very easily be KHAQQ.

I was looking at old pictures of the Norwich City and a few things came to mind. If the Electra was half on and half off the reef (maybe caught on something) like the NC was, then phrases like can't last much longer, waters knee deep, and waterlogged might make more sense at a time when the reef was supposed to be relatively dry.

Also is there any way for the old pictures of the NC (1935, 1937, 1938) to be enhanced to see whether the words Norwich City is still legible on the top, front side of the ship? Have you already done that and I'm just behind the times?

In the Betty DVD (which was well worth the money to buy, and I recommend you do, too :), Betty says that the [panicky] man was the one saying Marie, Marie, but did anyone notice that Betty herself, when reading from the Notebook, said 'Marry' (as in will you marry me) instead of Marie at least 3 times? (at 28:37 and 58:53). Marry sounds a lot like Mary B, what Fred called his wife.
Gloria
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Bruce Thomas

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Re: AE & FN injured?
« Reply #44 on: June 11, 2013, 03:50:05 PM »

Also is there any way for the old pictures of the NC (1935, 1937, 1938) to be enhanced to see whether the words Norwich City is still legible on the top, front side of the ship? Have you already done that and I'm just behind the times?
Gloria, a spirited discussion of that question ensued after a posting on that topic in March 2011.
LTM,

Bruce
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