Advanced search  
Pages: [1] 2 3   Go Down

Author Topic: Nina Paxton  (Read 23840 times)

Ric Gillespie

  • Executive Director
  • Administrator
  • *
  • Posts: 6098
  • "Do not try. Do or do not. There is no try" Yoda
Nina Paxton
« on: July 30, 2018, 09:23:02 AM »

Les Kinney, who found the photo in the National Archives that became the subject of the History Channel show "Amelia Earhart - The Lost Evidence," has asked that I post his research about Nina Paxton on the Forum. Paxton's reception of a message she believed was from Earhart is Message Number 47 in the new post-loss radio study.  We judged it to be "Credible" but not "Credible Beyond a Reasonable Doubt." 
Les is not a TIGHAR member and so is unable to post on the Forum, but I am happy to post his work and also a copy of the research I did on Paxton back in 2011.  This will mean some very long posts.
Logged

Ric Gillespie

  • Executive Director
  • Administrator
  • *
  • Posts: 6098
  • "Do not try. Do or do not. There is no try" Yoda
Re: Nina Paxton
« Reply #1 on: July 30, 2018, 09:24:25 AM »

BY Les Kinney:

At about 2:20 in the afternoon of July 3rd, 1937, 41 year old Nina Paxton was fiddling with the tuner on her Philco radio in Ashland, Kentucky when she heard Amelia Earhart. "KHABQ calling, KHABQ calling. We are down here in the ocean on a little island –perhaps a coral reef at a point near Marshall Islands." For a few seconds, Nina attended to the needs of her five year old son Paul, thinking Miss Earhart must be on a training flight. When she realized Amelia was crying for help, she took a few notes. A few minutes later, Earhart was gone and Nina Paxton would never be the same.
On July 3, 1937, Nina had no idea where the Marshall Islands were located. Nor did she know the call sign for Amelia Earhart's Lockheed Electra wasn't KHABQ. After hearing Earhart on her radio, Nina called the Ashland Police Department and then a nearby Coast Guard Station. They laughed and said the call sign for Earhart's Electra was KHAQQ. Nina would never have known the call sign for Earhart's previous plane, a Lockheed Vega was KHABQ. A tired, exhausted, worried, and emotionally drained, Amelia Earhart blurted out her old call sign. It would have been an easy thing to do. Nina was embarrassed and the reason she didn't tell the local paper of Earhart's distress message until a week later.
It took me three years and quite a bit of luck to locate the Paxton papers. Eventually, I found them at tiny Mars Hills University in the mountains of western North Carolina. They were donated to the University by a wife of a doctor who had worked with Nina in the 1950's. Nina Paxton's file had been collecting dust in a library store room since 1975.
I planned to report the Paxton findings in the book I am writing on the disappearance of Amelia Earhart. Recent events caused me to change my mind. TIGHAR just released a new Post Loss Radio Study touting the claims of Betty Klenck. Betty was 15 in 1937 and claimed to have heard Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan over a period of several hours on her home radio. According to Betty, she was doodling in her notebook drawing sketches of movie stars, when
she heard Earhart. But the downed flyers never once gave their location. According to the jottings in Betty's notebook, Amelia seemed to be more concerned what was in her closet back home in North Hollywood, California.
None of the other 56 post loss radio messages collected by TIGHAR gives a location where Amelia and Fred went down. The Paxton paper's tells us Earhart and Noonan landed in the Marshall Islands. Since Mars Hills University recently decided to put a few of Nina Paxton's letters on the internet, http://southernappalachianarchives.org/ /show/4 I decided it was time to share my findings.
After hearing Amelia, and when time permitted, Nina stood vigil over her radio through the rest of July and into August 1937. Occasionally, she picked up a few garbled words, but she was never sure it was Earhart. For the next several days, she tried to remember the three or four hundreds words she thought Amelia spoke, and then put them in sequential order. On July 22, Nina wrote to Mrs. Noonan, and on the 30th sent a letter to George Putnam, Amelia's husband. Both letters contained an attached "message." The "message" was the compiled notes Nina had later typed while listening to Earhart on July 3, 1937.
"This is an SOS. KHAB calling, KHABQ calling. We are down here in the ocean on a little island – perhaps a coral reef at a point near Marshall islands." At that point Earhart's voice must have been fading in and out as Nina wrote, "Directly north-east of a part of Marshall Islands, 90 *** *** *** *** *** *** 173 longitude and 5 latitude." Nina then recorded what she thought Earhart was saying, "We missed our course yesterday and came up here. We can see a part of Marshall Islands in daytime. There isn't any habitation or life here but some vegetation. There are no trees here but we can see a few small trees on a part of Marshall Islands in daylight."
Nina didn't hear every word Earhart uttered. In an early letter to George Putnam dated August 5, 1937, Nina described the Marshall Islands as "Marshall Island," and gave Earhart's location as 173 Longitude, 5 Latitude." It is doubtful Nina heard "there were no trees here" unless Earhart was describing the reef at low tide with an island close by. Nina's letters conveyed honesty. If she wasn't sure of what she heard she said so. In her first letter to Putnam she wrote, "Since hearing her so well on Saturday, July 3, I have heard a few sentences at times that could have been KHAQQ unless they were KHAQQ," and in a letter to Congressman Vinson on August 12th said, "Sunday August 8, at 10:15 p.m., I heard the word "Earhart" and a few sentences which I could not understand other than the sound "matoe" on 12 megacycles." In a third letter to George Putnam dated September 20, 1937, Nina said, "Since July 3rd, I have heard
-2-
sentences at various times which may have been KHAQQ but nothing of importance unless they were KHAQQ."
By the third week of September, Nina must have been looking at maps of the Pacific to make sense of what she heard. Her September 20th letter to Amelia's husband, Nina offers an opinion where Earhart might be found. "In my own mind, I am wondering if they could have landed on a reef as far north as 8 or 10 longitude and near 180 degrees latitude which I believe would have been directly northwest of Marshall Island (location of 173 latitude and 5 longitude may have been for Marshall Island.)"
Several months later, Nina wrote to Rand McNally looking for detailed information on the Marshall Islands. She continued to search for new memories, words, and phrases Amelia might have spoken that escaped her. Throughout the rest of the summer of 1937, Nina caught a few static filled voices for a second or two on her Philco and wondered if they were Amelia and Fred still crying out for help.
Nina began telling anyone who would listen she had heard a distressed Amelia Earhart on her radio. In the mid-1940's, she reached out to the Office of Naval Intelligence, Walter Winchell, and the FBI. In a July 10, 1944, letter to Henry Luce, editor of Life Magazine, her exasperation was on display. My effort over the period of years since July 3, 1937, at 2:20 P.M. E.S.T. to get the attention of anyone interested in these lost flyers has almost acquired the comical atmosphere of a "Neglected Nanny", movie short."
Lack of enthusiasm didn't dampen Nina's letter writing campaign. In 1947, she wrote to the State Department and in the late 1960 to Fred Goerner, the bestselling author of The Search for Amelia Earhart. Her letters carried the same message: Amelia Earhart landed in the Marshall Islands and nothing has been done about it.
Skeptics have said Nina could have gotten her information from newspapers, radio, and seeing the 1943 movie Flight to Freedom. The fact that she waited a week to tell her local newspaper didn't help Nina's credibility. On July 9th, 1937, a brief article appeared in the Ashland Daily Independent. It varies from Nina's notes from July and August 1937. For instance, the news article reports "our plane about out of gas. Her notes say "our plane out of gas." "Out of gas" versus "about out of gas" changes everything. Earhart's couldn't transmit off the battery for more than a few minutes unless one of the Lockheed Electra's engines was sending power to the generator. As is often the case, it appears the reporter didn't get it all right. Nina had more to say than the local reporter sent to print.
-3-
Ashland Lady hears Earhart
Mrs. C.B. Paxton, 3024 Bath Avenue, told the Independent she heard the distress message of Amelia Earhart noted American woman flyer lost in the Pacific ocean last Saturday afternoon at two o'clock. Miss Earhart and her navigator Frederick J. Noonan, last were heard from in the air at 2:12 EST last Friday when they said they had only a supply of gas good for thirty minutes. "The message came in on my short wave set very plain," Mrs. Paxton said, "and Miss Earhart talked for some time. I turned the radio down one time to talk to my little child and then turned it back up to catch the last part of the message. I didn't understand everything Miss Earhart had said, Mrs. Paxton told the Independent," because there was some noise." She gave the following message as she understood it: "Down in ocean, then Miss Earhart either said on or near little island at a point near… after that Mrs. Paxton understood her to say something about directly northeast although she was not sure about that part. "Our plane about out of gas, Water all around very dark." Then she said something about a storm and that the wind was blowing." Will have to get out of here," she said. "We can't stay hear long."
The message was proceeded by Miss Earhart's call letters, KHAQQ calling, KHAQQ calling."
Prior to my finding the Paxton papers, the handful of known letters Nina's wrote in the mid-1940 were so passionate, I suspect what she said was true. She had no motive to lie; she was educated, married, a registered nurse, caring and had an excellent professional reputation. She had no bone to pick and didn't seek out fame. When I started investigating her background, I discovered Nina died a widow in Ashland, Kentucky on Christmas Day in 1970. She left no family and had few friends. Her husband, a railroad agent, had passed away in 1954. An only son, the one mentioned in the news story, got into one scrape after another until he ended up in prison.
There are well over a hundred letters, some notes, and a few newspaper and magazine clippings making up the Paxton material. The first known letter is dated July 14, 1937 and addressed to the Editor of Time Magazine. Nina continued to write and offer insight into the Earhart disappearance until close to her death. After my review of the Paxton Papers, it's apparent there are a letters and reference notes missing. There is one piece of correspondence from the mid-1940 that speaks despairingly of Amelia's husband. One might wonder how that spat came about.
Nina Paxton heard the only post loss radio message of Amelia Earhart that gives a specific location where Amelia and Fred landed. During the two months following Earhart's disappearance, Nina enclosed her rough notes in the letters she sent to Mrs. Noonan, George Palmer Putnam, Walter Winchell, and Congressman Fred M. Vinson. Nina typed the rough notes out twice and tried not to embellish what she had heard. She created spaces where she was unsure of a word or phrase. The first rough note is without a heading. The second one is titled, "Call of a Courageous Lady." She didn't like that either and scratched it out.
-4-
In some of Nina's later notes, not on Mars Hill's web site, she wonders why Amelia used 2:20 as her arrival time. She possibly thought Earhart might have converted the time to Eastern Standard Time and makes that point in later letters. It’s a confusing point and Nina put's this confusion in parentheses. Nina's rough notes held by Mars Hill University seem to be a cumulative compilation from sometime in August of 1937. Nina says "the plane was damaged in landing near a part of Marshall Islands," and "Noonan was injured," and that he "doesn't walk very well, and that he (Noonan) bruised his leg badly when landing."
In the letter to George Putnam of August 5, 1937, Nina said she found a piece of scratch paper she had written while listening to Earhart. ""Miss Earhart mentioned three little islands. The little one (perhaps a reef) they were on, north of Howland Island at a point very near an island she called "Marshall". (Sadly, this little piece of scratch paper is missing from the Mars Hill holdings.) Rather naively, Nina tells Putnam, "If there is an island known by the name of Marshall and it can be contacted, I believe it well worth-while to do so at once as I am sure Miss Earhart, and Captain Noonan will be found in this area."
Vincent Loomis and Oliver Knaggs, Earhart researchers from the late 1970's and early 1980's interviewed several Marshallese witnesses at Mili Atoll. Those witnesses said a silver plane went down long before the war inside the ocean side reef and pointed to the middle of three islands at the northwestern corner of Mili Atoll. Loomis and Knaggs took a photo of that island. On our recent trips to the Marshall Islands, we discovered airplane artifacts at the middle island of a grouping of three small islands close to the northwest corner of Mili Atoll it's the same island photographed by Loomis and Knaggs.
No one knows whether Fred Noonan carried sectional maps for the Marshall Islands. The U.S. Navy hadn't the opportunity to map the area since the Japanese had taken control of most of Micronesia in 1914. They weren’t on Amelia's planned route and its likely Fred relied on an old British map of the Pacific from his sea faring days. There is a picture of Amelia and Fred on the internet standing next to the tail of the Electra looking over such a map. If they relied on that map, Fred would have only had a general idea where he and Amelia had gone down.
When Nina heard Amelia Earhart on the afternoon of July 3, 1937, she wrote down Amelia's words. "90 ******173 longitude and 5 latitude". If you look on a map, 5 degrees North latitude and 173 East longitude is close to Mili Atoll.
Leslie (Les) Kinney
lgkinney@msn.com
July 25, 2018
Logged

Ric Gillespie

  • Executive Director
  • Administrator
  • *
  • Posts: 6098
  • "Do not try. Do or do not. There is no try" Yoda
Re: Nina Paxton
« Reply #2 on: July 30, 2018, 09:43:20 AM »

My research from 2011:

Nina Paxton
Of all the shortwave listeners Mrs. Nina Paxton of Ashland, Kentucky was by far the most persistent in trying to convince others that she had really heard Amelia Earhart. 
-   She contacted her local newspaper on July 9, 1937 and was quoted in an article headlined “Ashland Lady Hears Earhart”.
-   On August 25, 1943 she wrote a letter to the Office of Naval Intelligence. A Lt. Col. Boone (presumably USMC)  wrote a polite brush-off on Sept. 3rd.
-   Undeterred, Mrs. Paxton wrote to Commander H.W. Baltazzi USNR at the Office of the Chief of Naval Operations on Sept 17, 1943.  The handwritten reaction of the officer who reviewed the letter (obtained through a 1986 Freedom of Information Act request by an Earhart researcher) was, “ I do not believe this is of any interest to the Navy.”

Trying a different tack, on September 22, 1943 Mrs. Paxton told her story in a letter to nationally syndicated columnist Walter Winchell. in which she claimed to have received a distress signal from Amelia Earhart on her shortwave set “on July 3rd, 1937 at 2:20 P.M. E.S.T.”  and on several subsequent occasions until as late as August 10th, 1937.   She explained that,“ I made an attempt to get the attention of someone who was interested in these people but at the same time I thought their calls had been received by the proper authorities.  I was not informed until quite recently (that) nothing had been heard from Miss Earhart.”
The letter is very specific in saying that “This message contained some 300 to 400 words in which she described Mille (sic) or Mulgrave Atoll, Klee Passage, Knox Island and (Earhart) seemed to be located on a small island of 133 acres directly N.E. of a part of Marshall Island.” 

Note that Mrs. Paxton does not say that Earhart named any of those places - only that Amelia “described” them.

The date of the letter may explain why Nina came forward at that time and why she interpreted Earhart’s location the way she did.  RKO Pictures released “Flight For Freedom”  in the summer of 1943,  The film, whose heroine (a thinly disguised representation of Amelia Earhart), is asked by the U.S. Navy to intentionally “get lost” in the Japanese mandated Marshall Islands.  Paxton’s letter describes the geography of the southeast part of Mili Atoll with considerable accuracy, although some of the names she uses are now archaic. There is, however, no “…small island of 133 acres directly N.E. of a part of Marshall Island (Mili Atoll).” 

Mili (the spelling varies) is a fairly large atoll in the Ratak Chain made up of over 90 individual islets encircling a lagoon roughly 35 miles in diameter. Mili was first known to the Western world as Gilbert and also Marshall Island.  By the turn of the 20th century it was known as Lord Mulgrave of simply Mulgrave Atoll.  To the southeast lies another much smaller atoll known today as Narik (also Nadik or Nadikdik) but previously as Knox Island.  It is made up of about 10 individual islets surrounding a lagoon 10 miles in length and is uninhabited.  The six miles of ocean separating Mili and Narik is known variously as Klee Straight or Klee Passage.

-   On October 20, 1943 a Lieut. Comdr. A.E. Hindmarsh, Acting Head of Far Eastern Theater, Division of Naval Intelligence wrote back to Nina saying that the information she had forwarded was “of real interest to us” and thanking her for her “generous cooperation and assistance.”
-   On March 24, 1944 she again wrote to Naval Intelligence, this time claiming to have picked a mysterious message referencing Earhart and Noonan in early January 1944.
-   On May 24, 1944, Mrs. Paxton wrote to Comdr. Baltazzi at the CNO’s office with the same story.  Apparently the Navy’s only reaction was a handwritten comment in the margin, “Strange!”.  Two days later she sent another letter copy of the letter with some typographical errors corrected.

That appears to be the end of Nina’s wartime attempts to make her story known. 

The next time that the Earhart  disappearance made news was in the early 1960s when KCBS Radio reporter Fred Goerner was investigating allegations that Amelia had been imprisoned as a spy on Saipan.  In 1962 “A number of reportedly factual statements…that stating emphatically that Amelia Earhart and her navigator Capt. Fred Noonan landed in Japanese territory…” prompted Nina Paxton to contact the Louisville Courier-Journal. Her article entitled “I Heard Amelia Earhart’s SOS” was published in the Sunday magazine section of the paper.

The story Mrs. Paxton told in 1962 was essentially the same one she had outlined in her letter to Walter Winchell nearly twenty years earlier, but there were a few more details.  The time of the first reception was reported as “2:20 P.M., exactly 24 hours after she came down.”    Earhart’s last transmission heard by the Itasca was at 20:25Z on July 2nd. Nina says she heard her at 19:20Z July 3rd – not “exactly 24 hours” but quite close. Nina wrote that “(Amelia) said they had lost their course and ‘came up here’ yesterday.  As I understood it, her plane had run out of gas.”   The phrase “came up here” implies a position north of Howland.

The Wrong Letters
Paxton also insisted that she had heard Earhart give her call letters as KHABQ rather than KHAQQ,  She was well aware that press reports had given the letters as KHAQQ and she believed that to be a tragic error.  In her 1962 newspaper article she wrote:
“It must have been the work of the prince of darkness that, at the time of the crash, allowed the wrong letters (KHAQQ) instead of the correct call letters of Amelia Earhart (KHABQ) to be given to the public in this area.”
Mrs. Paxton seems to have been unaware that KHABQ had indeed been Earhart’s call sign for her Lockheed Vega NR965Y in which she made record-setting flights from Honolulu to Oakland, California and from Mexico City to Teterboro, New Jersey in 1935.

If Nina was making it all up why would she insert something that appears to reduce the story’s credibility?  If she simply misheard a genuine or a hoaxed transmission what are the chances that she would make an error that just happened to match the one other call sign that Earhart really had used for a year and a half (all of 1935 and half of 1936)?  If she “knew” that KHABQ was Earhart’s call sign from press reports in 1935 why didn’t she say so to bolster her case?  Or did she really hear AE mis-speak herself under stress and use her old call letters? This curious anomaly in Nina Paxton’s story could be an example of occult information.

More Details
The 1962 article also elaborated on Earhart’s situation.  Mrs. Paxton now reported that Earhart had said,” The captain is with me, but unable to walk well due to injuries in landing yesterday.”  She later wrote that Noonan had bruised his knees during the landing.  The Lockheed 10 cockpit is unusual in that it features a shelf at the base of the instrument panel in front of the crew’s knees.  There is reason to believe that the copilot’s control yoke had been removed from NR16020 to give Noonan more room.  Knee injury to someone sitting in the right seat in a rough landing does not seem far-fetched, but it also seems highly unlikely that Nina Paxton, a Registered Nurse in Kentucky, would know that.  This could be an example of occult information.


Nina’s 1962 article added,“She also said their food supply was good ,but the water was contaminated . It was raining, however, and with Amelia Earhart’s resourcefulness, the water problem, I presume, was solved.”
Ms. Paxton wrote, “I picked up much broken reception during that long-ago month of July, and I am positive that, at a later date, I heard the captain’s voice calling.  From the broken sketches of reception I picked up, I do not believe the fliers were executed by the Japanese, nor were they executed in Japanese-mandated territory that year.

At different intervals I heard Amelia Earhart’s voice.  On August 10 I heard her quite clearly.  This time she gave the international distress call, “Mayday – Mayday!’  Her voice was distressed and sounded as though she was sobbing.”

Nina also wrote of her own distress:
-   “I was frightened and overwhelmed at the confusion surrounding this misfortune, and the manner in which it was handled.  The utter helplessness and hopelessness of the situation was almost too much to endure.

The Goerner Correspondence
Nina Paxton made several attempts to contact Fred Goerner.  On January 15, 1964 she wrote a letter to Goerner via Argosy magazine, asking them to forward it. (Goerner had written an article for the January issue entitled “I’ll find Amelia Earhart”.)  She received no reply.  She kept trying and finally, after writing to KCBS in San Francisco in July 1968, she received a reply from Goerner dated July 9th saying that he would be “pleased to learn any information you may have regarding Miss Earhart and Captain Noonan.”  There followed an exchange of several letters over the next three months in which Mrs. Paxton repeated and expanded upon the story she had told so many times before. Goerner was interested and polite but plainly skeptical and at times a bit puzzled and exasperated.

Nina on July 15th:
“Notice you used KHAQQ as the case letters.  My pertinent question is, why?
Even at this late date I do not feel free to put some things on paper.
You speak of ‘we’ in the investigation.  Does this include part of the Government Service?”

Goerner on July 18th:
‘Your reference to KHAQQ escapes me.  As far as I know, those were Miss Earhart’s call letters during the round-the-world flight.
Why you would be afraid to ‘put things on paper’ at this late date also escapes me.  The U.S. and Japanese governments have certainly withheld information in this case, but they exercise no control over the private citizen.
When I speak of ‘we’ in the investigation, I refer to myself and to many friends with CBS, The Scripps League of Newspapers and the Associated Press who have helped much with the investigation over the past eight years.  This does NOT include any representative of the government or the military.”

New details of the story that emerged in Mrs. Paxton’s 1968 letters to Goerner include:

“She (AE) mentioned at first they thought they could see a hut on a part of Marshall Islands in daylight, but later decided a few small trees was all they could see.  They had everything and were alright at that time. Their food supply was good.  It was storming and getting very dark, and it was quite warm.” - letter of July 22, 1964

They could have been looking from one islet to another on an atoll, but they could not have seen that much detail across the six miles of Klee Straight.

“She (AE) definitely said,’The plane is drifting in the passage’ AE described Klee but due to household interruption I did not understand this part.” - letter of July 22, 1964

Klee Straight is six miles of ocean.  If the plane was drifting afloat in Klee Straight it was not sending radio calls. 

“Miss Earhart was using Eastern Standard Time, and gave the time as 2;20 P.M.” - letter of July 22, 1964

This is curious.  Apparently Earhart said the time and Nina noted that it was the same time in Ashland.  But why would Earhart give the time at all, much less in Eastern Standard Time?  During the flight Earhart was using Greenwich Civil Time.

In a letter dated August 28, 1968, Goerner asked five specific questions which Paxton addressed in an answering letter.

Goerner - On what frequency were you listening?
Paxton – My short wave set was either super sensitive or possessed a defect that was an advantage in receiving.  A.E. was heard between  9 - 10 megacycles. Also near 13 megacycles.

Goerner – What call letters did you hear Miss Earhart use?
Paxton - Miss Earhart used KHABQ in her SOS following and in connection with her name.  The letters were clearly spoken as was Eastern Standard Time.  Although George Putnam states she would use only West Coast time. (Putnam is not known to have made any such statement.)


Goerner – What significance do you attach to the different call letters?
Paxton – I did not understand why these letters were used by AE instead of KHAQQ as publicized.

Goerner – To whom (SPECIFIC NAMES) did you report the messages you heard.
Paxton -  George Palmer Putnam.  My aim was to establish that they survived the crash landing. (We are not aware of any contact between Paxton and Putnam.)

Goerner – What was the response of those to whom you reported the messages.
Paxton – Apparent disbelief was the general response to my efforts of making known I had really heard Amelia Earhart.

Nina Paxton died on Christmas Day, 1970.




Analysis
Nina Paxton’s repeated efforts to make her story known over a span of at least 25 years (1943 to 1968) have made her the most famous of the shortwave listeners. Adherents to the theory that Earhart landed at or near Mili Atoll in the Marshals embrace Mrs. Paxton’s mention of that island even though it seems clear that the location is nothing more than Nina’s attempt to find a place on the map that fit both her perception of the geographical situation had Earhart described and rampant Hollywood-inspired  speculation that Earhart had come down in the Marshalls.  Some claim the existence of a local newspaper article describing Nina’s reception of signals from Earhart dating from late December 1937.  Such a contemporaneous account would be invaluable in sorting out how much of her story is embellishment, but unfortunately the newspaper archives at the Boyd County Public Library in Ashland, Kentucky contain no such article.  It is also said that Mrs. Paxton communicated with the Navy but no documents have been offered to support the allegation.  Earhart’s mother Amy and sister Muriel visited Mrs. Paxton in Ashland, but Nina’s correspondence with Goerner only that, “I corresponded with her mother and have many letters from her, written in her clear hand writing.”

Parallel Patterns
Perhaps Paxton’s account is a fabrication prompted by the film, but the film could also have been the catalyst that both prompted and colored the telling of her story.  In any case, the situation she describes in her 1943 letter to Winchell includes some interesting parallels with the situation described by Mabel Larremore in her 1990 letter to TIGHAR.

Paxton – “(Earhart) seemed to be located on a small island. … There was not any habitation or life but some vegetation and it was a bleak place…”
Larremore – “The plane was down on an uncharted island.  Small, uninhabited.

Paxton – “Miss Earhart described the damage to the plane and said it was drifting.”
She later said that the plane was “evidently near the water’s edge.”
Larremore – “The plane was partially on land, part in water.”

Paxton – “She spoke of the Captain’s injury.”
Larremore – “She stated that her navigator Fred Noonan was seriously injured.”

Nina Paxton was in Ashland, Kentucky.  Mabel Larremore was in Amarillo, Texas.  There is no evidence to suggest that they knew each other or even knew of each other, and yet their basic story is the same.





Logged

Matt Revington

  • TIGHAR member
  • *
  • Posts: 396
  • member #4155
Re: Nina Paxton
« Reply #3 on: July 30, 2018, 10:33:55 AM »


Kinney mentions a letter to Putnam in August 1937:
"In the letter to George Putnam of August 5, 1937, Nina said she found a piece of scratch paper she had written while listening to Earhart. ""Miss Earhart mentioned three little islands. The little one (perhaps a reef) they were on, north of Howland Island at a point very near an island she called "Marshall". (Sadly, this little piece of scratch paper is missing from the Mars Hill holdings.) Rather naively, Nina tells Putnam, "If there is an island known by the name of Marshall and it can be contacted, I believe it well worth-while to do so at once as I am sure Miss Earhart, and Captain Noonan will be found in this area."

I don't see this referenced in your research Ric, does that letter exist as quoted?

Update
Okay I found the letters between Paxton and Putnam
http://southernappalachianarchives.org/collections/show/4
In her first letter ( that Kinney doesn't mention) she claims AE said she was close to Howland Island and it was only after Putnam wrote her back and said  that there were no other islands within 200 miles of Howland that she wrote the 2nd letter and claimed she had meant to say Marshall instead of Howland, not a particularly credible claim.
« Last Edit: July 30, 2018, 11:01:40 AM by Matt Revington »
Logged

Ric Gillespie

  • Executive Director
  • Administrator
  • *
  • Posts: 6098
  • "Do not try. Do or do not. There is no try" Yoda
Re: Nina Paxton
« Reply #4 on: July 30, 2018, 11:26:33 AM »


Kinney mentions a letter to Putnam in August 1937:
"In the letter to George Putnam of August 5, 1937, Nina said she found a piece of scratch paper she had written while listening to Earhart. ""Miss Earhart mentioned three little islands. The little one (perhaps a reef) they were on, north of Howland Island at a point very near an island she called "Marshall". (Sadly, this little piece of scratch paper is missing from the Mars Hill holdings.) Rather naively, Nina tells Putnam, "If there is an island known by the name of Marshall and it can be contacted, I believe it well worth-while to do so at once as I am sure Miss Earhart, and Captain Noonan will be found in this area."

I don't see this referenced in your research Ric, does that letter exist as quoted?

Update
Okay I found the letters between Paxton and Putnam
http://southernappalachianarchives.org/collections/show/4
In her first letter ( that Kinney doesn't mention) she claims AE said she was close to Howland Island and it was only after Putnam wrote her back and said  that there were no other islands within 200 miles of Howland that she wrote the 2nd letter and claimed she had meant to say Marshall instead of Howland, not a particularly credible claim.

The letters are new information to me and very interesting.  We'll be doing some dissecting.
Logged

Jerry Germann

  • TIGHAR member
  • *
  • Posts: 421
  • Go Deep
Re: Nina Paxton
« Reply #5 on: July 30, 2018, 12:24:42 PM »

Concerning the image Les mentions Earhart and Noonan hold while posing near the tail of the Electra,...I don't know of any images that show a British map, .... Map H O 5192 produced in the mid 30's is what Earhart and Noonan hold in the image I believe les refers too.

http://earhartforum.com/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=1591.0;attach=9460;image
« Last Edit: July 30, 2018, 04:56:33 PM by Jerry Germann »
Logged

Ric Gillespie

  • Executive Director
  • Administrator
  • *
  • Posts: 6098
  • "Do not try. Do or do not. There is no try" Yoda
Re: Nina Paxton
« Reply #6 on: July 30, 2018, 03:01:30 PM »

I think its good to have them Chronological order.
I'll delete my post to avoid confusion

I agree. I'll remove my original posts and replace then with a correct list.
Logged

Ric Gillespie

  • Executive Director
  • Administrator
  • *
  • Posts: 6098
  • "Do not try. Do or do not. There is no try" Yoda
Re: Nina Paxton
« Reply #7 on: July 30, 2018, 03:09:22 PM »

First batch.
Logged

Ric Gillespie

  • Executive Director
  • Administrator
  • *
  • Posts: 6098
  • "Do not try. Do or do not. There is no try" Yoda
Re: Nina Paxton
« Reply #8 on: July 30, 2018, 03:11:47 PM »

Second batch.
Logged

Ric Gillespie

  • Executive Director
  • Administrator
  • *
  • Posts: 6098
  • "Do not try. Do or do not. There is no try" Yoda
Re: Nina Paxton
« Reply #9 on: July 30, 2018, 03:18:49 PM »

Third batch.
Logged

Ric Gillespie

  • Executive Director
  • Administrator
  • *
  • Posts: 6098
  • "Do not try. Do or do not. There is no try" Yoda
Re: Nina Paxton
« Reply #10 on: July 30, 2018, 03:20:29 PM »

Letter to Goerner
Logged

Ric Gillespie

  • Executive Director
  • Administrator
  • *
  • Posts: 6098
  • "Do not try. Do or do not. There is no try" Yoda
Re: Nina Paxton
« Reply #11 on: July 30, 2018, 03:22:42 PM »

1962 article.
Logged

Greg Daspit

  • TIGHAR member
  • *
  • Posts: 788
Re: Nina Paxton
« Reply #12 on: July 30, 2018, 04:31:52 PM »

I’m trying to understand how the information Nina is providing gets embellished or changes over time. One problem is the “message” she mentions as “enclosed” seems to be missing in two of the letters.

The July 22 letter to Noonan’s wife mentions an “enclosed message” but it’s not provided.

The July 30th letter to Putnam  mentions an enclosed message (that he sent to Mrs. Noonan). There are two sheets provided in the letter.  Neither sheet appears to be the a "message".
Both the 8-5-37 and 7-30-37 letters to Putnam appear to have bleed through printing apparent (typed on both sides of 1 sheet)

The July 30th letter to Winchell also has 2 pages. The first page mentions a “copy” of a message. The 2nd page appears to be in the format of a message with “The Call of a Courageous Lady” at the top. A very dramatic title scratched out.

So what is the enclosed "message" referenced in the July 22 letter to Noonan’s wife and in the July 30th letter to Putnam?  Is it the same as "The Call of a Courageous Lady” page attached to the Winchell letter?


3971R
 
« Last Edit: July 30, 2018, 04:45:34 PM by Greg Daspit »
Logged

Greg Daspit

  • TIGHAR member
  • *
  • Posts: 788
Re: Nina Paxton
« Reply #13 on: July 30, 2018, 07:30:22 PM »

In the Southern Appalachian Archives.org site.
"The Call of a Courageous Woman" document notes the last time she heard Earhart was August 10th but it's grouped with a letter dated July 30th?
The date of this document and what "message" was actually "enclosed" with the letters is important.
3971R
 
« Last Edit: July 30, 2018, 07:55:14 PM by Greg Daspit »
Logged

Ric Gillespie

  • Executive Director
  • Administrator
  • *
  • Posts: 6098
  • "Do not try. Do or do not. There is no try" Yoda
Re: Nina Paxton
« Reply #14 on: August 01, 2018, 09:33:01 AM »

In the Southern Appalachian Archives.org site.
"The Call of a Courageous Woman" document notes the last time she heard Earhart was August 10th but it's grouped with a letter dated July 30th?
The date of this document and what "message" was actually "enclosed" with the letters is important.

Remember, these documents came from Paxton's papers so they are her copies.  The pencilled notes are her edits. It's apparent (to me anyway) that Paxton typed up the original version of "The Call of a Courageous Woman" document some time after her talk with the newspaper on July 9 and before her July 14 letter to Mrs. Noonan. She subsequently added to and edited the document as her memory of the reception evolved. As you noted, the version of "The Call of a Courageous Woman" document included with the July 30 letter to Walter Winchell could not have included the final paragraph. Also, Putnam's letter to her of August 5 disputes her reference to land northeast of Howland but she says nothing about land northeast of Howland in "The Call of a Courageous Woman" document.   

It's only after Putnam disputes her original account of what Earhart said that Paxton discovers the piece of scratch paper and changes her story to include "an island she called Marshall."  After that, she's off and running with her Marshall Islands references
 
"The Call of a Courageous Woman" document pretty well destroys Paxton's credibility.  After repeatedly sayin she wasn't pay close attention to what she heard on July 3rd, she writes an extremely detailed account of what Earhart supposedly said, including:
"The Captain isn't right here with me; he is over near the plane."  Earhart would never refer to Noonan as "the Captain" and she has to be in the plane to be on the radio.

The first report of Paxton's claim appears six days after the event and the reported content does not fit with any of the other credible messages. She then changes her story in response to Putnam's incredulity and embellishes it with details that cannot be true.
In light of this new information provided by Les Kinney (thank you Les), I think we have no choice but to move Nina Paxton to the "Not Credible" category.

 
Logged
Pages: [1] 2 3   Go Up
 

Copyright 2024 by TIGHAR, a non-profit foundation. No portion of the TIGHAR Website may be reproduced by xerographic, photographic, digital or any other means for any purpose. No portion of the TIGHAR Website may be stored in a retrieval system, copied, transmitted or transferred in any form or by any means, whether electronic, mechanical, digital, photographic, magnetic or otherwise, for any purpose without the express, written permission of TIGHAR. All rights reserved.

Contact us at: info@tighar.org • Phone: 610-467-1937 • Membership formwebmaster@tighar.org

Powered by MySQL SMF 2.0.18 | SMF © 2021, Simple Machines Powered by PHP