Advanced search  
Pages: 1 ... 13 14 [15] 16 17 ... 34   Go Down

Author Topic: FAQ: Colorado / Lambrecht Search, 9 July 1937  (Read 548550 times)

dave burrell

  • T3
  • ***
  • Posts: 111
Re: FAQ: Colorado / Lambrecht Search, 9 July 1937
« Reply #210 on: August 19, 2012, 09:20:49 PM »

good catch, I used the wrong word.
Logged

Gary LaPook

  • T5
  • *****
  • Posts: 1624
Re: FAQ: Colorado / Lambrecht Search, 9 July 1937
« Reply #211 on: August 20, 2012, 04:37:49 AM »


Gary, if the messages did not "cross" at Gardner, why was the navy searching the Phoenix Group? At first they were sure she was 200+ miles north, Noonans fellow captains thought he would have turned back, George Putnam was convinced until he died she was lost near the Gilberts...

But anyway back on topic of my question, Why was the Navy so quickly convinced she was in the Phoenix group and did a total about face from their orginal North of Howland search?
It was the radio signals correct?
So are you saying the Navy could not (or mistakenly) triangulated those signals, when in your opinion they could not be triangulated because the messages came at different times?
Don't ask me that question, ask the captain of the Colorado. Read his reasoning in his report here. I'll give you a hint, you won't find any mention of radio bearings in his reasoning for searching the Phoenix Islands.

gl




« Last Edit: August 20, 2012, 04:56:46 AM by Gary LaPook »
Logged

dave burrell

  • T3
  • ***
  • Posts: 111
Re: FAQ: Colorado / Lambrecht Search, 9 July 1937
« Reply #212 on: August 20, 2012, 07:18:09 AM »

Thanks Gary, reading that report it is clear the Navy started searching to the southeast based on winds and currents. NOT radio transmissions.
So when exactly, did someone first come up with the triangulation theory?

 Was it the Navy at some point later, or private researchers decades later? If you know of course. (there is a lot to read here)
« Last Edit: August 20, 2012, 09:30:01 AM by dave burrell »
Logged

Adam Marsland

  • T2
  • **
  • Posts: 88
Re: FAQ: Colorado / Lambrecht Search, 9 July 1937
« Reply #213 on: August 20, 2012, 04:35:59 PM »

Some good back and forth here.  One thing I just want to chime in on that nobody seems to be thinking about:  my understanding is that AE and FN had no reason to expect an AERIAL search, and that they were more likely, things being as they were at the time, to be expecting someone to rescue them by boat.  All the thinking here is centered on the idea that they were thinking about being spotted from the air...but that's retrospective because we know that's what happened.  If their ground-level expectation is that the rescue is coming by boat, that changes the calculations a bit.

Also, the length of time that had elapsed since the landing and the last transmissions is, I think, relevant.  Again looking at it from ground level, it's just long enough to give up hope and assume no one's coming, and move on to survival mode.

And again, Gary chimes in with his ever-optimistic best case scenario to show us that because someone somewhere managed to do something despite great stress and contradictory factors, it shows that we should not factor these things in at all.  It's amazing that anyone ever crashed a plane or died of starvation, us being a planet of superhuman, infallable MacGyvers impervious to stress and fatigue...   :)

Just adding these ideas to the fire...
Logged

Gary LaPook

  • T5
  • *****
  • Posts: 1624
Re: FAQ: Colorado / Lambrecht Search, 9 July 1937
« Reply #214 on: August 20, 2012, 06:36:48 PM »



And again, Gary chimes in with his ever-optimistic best case scenario to show us that because someone somewhere managed to do something despite great stress and contradictory factors, it shows that we should not factor these things in at all.  It's amazing that anyone ever crashed a plane or died of starvation, us being a planet of superhuman, infallable MacGyvers impervious to stress and fatigue...   :)

Just adding these ideas to the fire...
I only bring these things up when others claim that she landed, sent some radio messages and then just dropped dead.

There is a series on called "I shouldn't be alive" which chronicles stories of just normal people overcoming events much worse than the situation that Earhart faced so there is no reason to believe that Earhart with the assistance of Noonan would not have survived more that a couple of days.

gl
Logged

Adam Marsland

  • T2
  • **
  • Posts: 88
Re: FAQ: Colorado / Lambrecht Search, 9 July 1937
« Reply #215 on: August 20, 2012, 07:35:01 PM »

That's just my point, Gary...they wouldn't make a TV show about such situations if they didn't represent an incredible and unusual story -- a situation where people would otherwise be expected to have a bad outcome.  It's right there in the title:  "I shouldn't be alive."  My problem with your analysis of nearly every situation is your dismissal of mitigating factors simply because someone, at some point, managed to overcome them...therefore it's as if they didn't exist. 

There's every reason to believe they might not have survived, and nothing far-fetched about the idea that the radio messages were all they could manage.  Let's see...they were on a desert island, they'd crashed a plane, there wasn't enough fresh water, heat stroke, jellyfish bite (kidding), gangrene...to assert that there's no reason to think they might have perished or been incapacitated, and done so quickly, is just as far-fetched as any of the scenarios you've voiced skepticism of.  Just because Joe Hero on Discovery cut off his arm and reached help doesn't prove anything about what happened to anyone else, except that, if it's something that anybody at all could or would manage, Discovery wouldn't feel the need to make a show about it.

What we would have done, in the comfort of our air conditioned homes on a full night's sleep with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight and 75 years of history, doesn't tell us much about what happened, or even what was logical to have done if you're not sitting on that island or in that cockpit.  Dismissing the very real factors of fatigue, stress, sleep deprivation, possible injury, poor communication, confusion, etc. facing the participants and influencing their decisions in that moment is even less likely to lead one to the right conclusion.  Is all I'm sayin'.

On a broader note, the main reason I don't find this whole skepticism about Lambrecht's overflight and the lack of an SOS signal to be all that substantive is the length of time between the last theoretical transmission and the search arriving at Niku.  Four days.  If it was more like the day after, I'd be more inclined to share the skepticism.  Four days on a desert island with no tie to the outside world is a long time -- to lose strength, to lose hope, to wonder if fresh water or perhaps even some other human being lay on another part of the island, to fall victim to any number of injuries, for planes and perhaps SOS signals to wash away, for fires to go out.
« Last Edit: August 20, 2012, 07:53:46 PM by Adam Marsland »
Logged

Gary LaPook

  • T5
  • *****
  • Posts: 1624
Re: FAQ: Colorado / Lambrecht Search, 9 July 1937
« Reply #216 on: August 20, 2012, 10:12:24 PM »

That's just my point, Gary...they wouldn't make a TV show about such situations if they didn't represent an incredible and unusual story -- a situation where people would otherwise be expected to have a bad outcome.  It's right there in the title:  "I shouldn't be alive."  My problem with your analysis of nearly every situation is your dismissal of mitigating factors simply because someone, at some point, managed to overcome them...therefore it's as if they didn't exist. 

They are unusual stories in that few people face these situations, they are not unusual stories in that people commonly survive these situations. These are stories about just ordinary people thrust into very difficult situations and surviving. One of the shows was about a guy who survived 76 days, that's right, SEVENTY-SIX days in life raft, all by himself, drifted all the way across the Atlantic and made landfall in the Lesser Antilles. He was hungry and thirsty, he lost a lot of weight, but he was still alive. Earhart and Noonan were not just ordinary people. Noonan had survived having three ships torpedoed out from under him in WW1 so I doubt that he just sat in the corner and cried himself to death on Gardner. Don't come back with the Betty story that he was injured, very unlikely in a plane that ended up standing on its own legs, and the Betty story is like all the other alleged messages, none had a location, no mention of Gardner, no mention of the word "Phoenix" as in the phrase "we are on one of the Phoenix islands, come and pick us up," and from an alleged transmission that even Brandenberg, after applying lots of lotion and massaging his figures for many days, could only give it a one chance in one and a half million that Betty could have heard a transmission from Gardner. So there is no real reason to believe that Noonan was injured and unable to contribute to a joint effort at survival.

Although I believe that Earhart made some serious errors in ignoring her own radio planning for the world flight, I believe that everybody would admit that she was one tough cookie. There is no reason to believe that either one of these people would go to pieces in a survival situation and it is even less likely with a team of two working together to solve their problems. There is no reason to believe that these two people would just go to pieces, curl up into fetal positions and just wait to die. Lambrecht was overhead only seven days after Earhart would have landed on Gardner and it is impossible to starve to death in only seven days. Each pound of fat (and even Earhart had some fat on her) contains 3,500 calories so will keep you alive almost two days if you are active and almost four days if you aren't and even after all your fat is used up the body can use muscle tissue for a long time. You might be real hungry but you will still be alive. And there is the old wisdom "that you can't starve on a seashore" because there are always things to eat clinging to the rocks, swimming in the tide pools after the tide goes out, and buried in the sand. On Gardner there were all those delicious crabs to eat, delicacies to the natives, and birds. On another TV show, "Survivorman" last night the hero was dropped off on a deserted island in the Cook Islands and he had to survive for a week. In addition to all the stuff in the sea he also ate a booby bird after smashing its head with a stick. (See how Mythbusters handled the same situation here.) He said as he was eating the bird "it's ironic that I am eating the breast of a booby."
Your response is that it might be very difficult to actually kill a bird. Well guess what, the full time job of all animals on earth is to find food and most animals do that almost 24/7, only humans in the western world just walk to the refrigerator. So they had all day to score one bird. Let's say you miss with the stone you throw at the birds one thousand times in a row in a twelve hour period but then you connect with the one thousandth and one, DINNER! and enough food to keep you alive for another day.

As to water, according to the official Air Force manual you can survive for at least nine days without any water in the conditions on Gardner. The PISS settlers found drinkable water, maybe not palatable but good enough to keep you alive. And the TIGHAR theory has a storm knocking the plane off the reef, how about collecting rainwater from the storm?

I wrote this before,
 "Well this is kinda important. They had some water on the plane but we don't know how much. Based on the Air Force manual they would last 9 days with no water at all and longer based on the amount of water they had. If they went down at sea I don't see how they would be able to obtain fresh water except from infrequent rain showers because emergency inflatable solar stills for use at sea were not produced until 8 years later. But we also know that infrequent rain can allow survival for 47 days as proven by Zamperini. If they made it to land then it would be a lot easier to find one quart a day than two gallons a day as Harry claims they needed. On the sea shore they could make a crude still out a piece of aluminum to make a pot to boil seawater and another piece to hold over the pot to collect fresh water condensation. If they were on Gardner then it would appear that they could last virtually indefinitely, finding or making the needed amount of water and with unlimited crab cakes to eat. They should have still been alive when Maude arrived only three months later. And Maude's people were able to find drinkable water by digging several wells."

I also wrote this before:

"Look at the table in AFM 64-5 and the line for 80° F and no activity and you find you can last 9 days without any water. You can also see that for every extra quart of water you have you will last another day. So what good is just one pint of water obtained per day? During the nine days you should last without any water your solar still will make 4 1/2 quarts so bringing your survival time up to 13 1/2 days. But in 13 1/2 days the still will make 6 3/4 quarts so you should actually last 15 3/4 days which then makes 7 7/8 quarts so you last 16 7/8 days but then you run out of time so one pint a day adds about 8 days to your survival at 80° F in the desert. Something else you can get from this table is that with one quart a day you can last indefinitely so two stills should keep you alive forever in the desert. The caption under the table points out that it takes two to three times as much water to survive in the desert than it does in other environments, so on a sea shore or at sea a person could survive on only one-half to one-third of the amounts of water listed in this table. Go here to read the original post and see the Air Force Manual.

So, sure, they might have been killed by a meteorite or they could have been gobbled up by a shark as they wadded across the boat channel on the way ashore from the plane but those types of events are extremely unlikely so there is no reason that they would not still be alive when Lambrecht flew over and, in fact, they should still have been there when Maude arrived in October. Your imagined scenarios are much less likely than that they simply survived like many others have accomplished.

gl
« Last Edit: September 01, 2012, 09:55:55 PM by Gary LaPook »
Logged

Monty Fowler

  • T5
  • *****
  • Posts: 1078
  • "The real answer is always the right answer."
Re: FAQ: Colorado / Lambrecht Search, 9 July 1937
« Reply #217 on: August 21, 2012, 10:16:25 AM »

... so there is no reason that they would not still be alive when Lambrecht flew over and, in fact, they should still have been there when Maude arrived in October.

Assuming things again, Mr. LaPook? "Would not still" ... "should" ... Those are, I believe, guesses. Along with all of ours. Makes for fun speculation, but that's all that any of us can do, since none of us were there.

LTM, who remembers the old saying about assumptions,

Monty Fowler, TIGHAR No. 2189 CER
Ex-TIGHAR member No. 2189 E C R SP, 1998-2016
 
Logged

Gary LaPook

  • T5
  • *****
  • Posts: 1624
Re: FAQ: Colorado / Lambrecht Search, 9 July 1937
« Reply #218 on: August 21, 2012, 10:53:12 AM »

... so there is no reason that they would not still be alive when Lambrecht flew over and, in fact, they should still have been there when Maude arrived in October.

Assuming things again, Mr. LaPook? "Would not still" ... "should" ... Those are, I believe, guesses. Along with all of ours. Makes for fun speculation, but that's all that any of us can do, since none of us were there.

LTM, who remembers the old saying about assumptions,

Monty Fowler, TIGHAR No. 2189 CER
No, not assuming, I made reasoned arguments from the facts, both the specific facts about Earhart and Noonan and also the facts developed by the Air Force and the facts of human physiology.

gl
« Last Edit: August 21, 2012, 04:50:34 PM by Gary LaPook »
Logged

Kevin Weeks

  • T3
  • ***
  • Posts: 236
Re: FAQ: Colorado / Lambrecht Search, 9 July 1937
« Reply #219 on: August 21, 2012, 11:18:16 AM »


No, not assuming, make reasoned arguments from the facts, both the specific facts about Earhart and also he facts developed by the Air Force and the facts of human physiology.

gl

but you are assuming. because you pick and choose what you want to believe you make your own history. you reason that because you don't believe betty's signal that there were no injuries. You assume that they had something to boil water in, you assume that they knew you could dig a well (which took several experienced men a couple days to do btw).

How long would an injured person last with no food or water. we could go down this road for ages, it's been done countless times. both sides end up making "reasoned guesses" that have no basis in any fact.
« Last Edit: August 21, 2012, 11:20:52 AM by Kevin Weeks »
Logged

Gary LaPook

  • T5
  • *****
  • Posts: 1624
Re: FAQ: Colorado / Lambrecht Search, 9 July 1937
« Reply #220 on: August 21, 2012, 02:39:55 PM »


No, not assuming, make reasoned arguments from the facts, both the specific facts about Earhart and also he facts developed by the Air Force and the facts of human physiology.

gl

but you are assuming. because you pick and choose what you want to believe you make your own history. you reason that because you don't believe betty's signal that there were no injuries. You assume that they had something to boil water in, you assume that they knew you could dig a well (which took several experienced men a couple days to do btw).

How long would an injured person last with no food or water. we could go down this road for ages, it's been done countless times. both sides end up making "reasoned guesses" that have no basis in any fact.
I've already stated the facts that support my position that Betty did not hear Earhart and you are they guys that are making the unreasonable assumption that she did in spite of your own expert, Brandenberg, giving it an infinitesimally small probability and the fact that it contains no mention of Gardner or the word "Phoenix."

One of the main pillars of the TIGHAR theory is that the plane was standing upright which makes injury to the occupants highly unlikely especially when compared to the Hawaiian accident damage in which no one was injured, but you guys make the opposite, unreasonable, assumption all just to support your favorite theory.

As to making a still, they had seven thousand pounds of sheet aluminum to use and you are ignoring the storm that TIGHAR loves (to push the plane off the reef) and the rain water that could be captured. Since the radio messages stopped after only three days then the storm must have occurred then so they could capture water at that time, after only being thirsty for three days, and then have enough to last a long time after.

I already have posted facts that show it is impossible to starve to death in only seven days, read that again, it is IMPOSSIBLE to starve in seven days, after all, that is the reason that animals have fat on their bodies, to keep them going between possibly well separated meals. One pound of body fat will keep you alive for between two and four days depending on your activity level.  I have posted the official U.S. Air Force Survival manual that states that you can survive nine days, at least , with no, none, ZERO, nada, water, in the DESERT and much longer in a more benign environment such as the seashore but you assume the exact opposite. But, in spite of the FACTS, you make the unreasonable assumption that Earhart and Noonan accomplished the impossible and managed to starve to death.

You also unreasonably assume that these two people managed to trip and fall and sustain life ending injuries in spite of them having successfully followed their mommies' advice for forty years to "watch where you are walking" and had managed to avoid such injuries for forty years.

Did they get eaten by sharks? Well there are about 5 people killed by sharks WORLDWIDE in a full year so you assume that these two people represented 40% of the worldwide yearly shark deaths, that looks a lot like an unreasonable assumption to me.

Did they get hit by a meteorite? I don't know if anybody gets killed by one every year, I put that one in to illustrate the ridiculousness of your assumptions.

gl
« Last Edit: August 22, 2012, 03:24:55 PM by Gary LaPook »
Logged

Gary LaPook

  • T5
  • *****
  • Posts: 1624
Re: FAQ: Colorado / Lambrecht Search, 9 July 1937
« Reply #221 on: August 21, 2012, 03:15:21 PM »

Quote
the official U.S. Air Force Survival manual that states that you can survive nine days, at least , with no, none, ZERO, nada, water


"O.K., Fred, I THINK at LEAST nine days have gone by now....whew, we can die now!"
Lambrecht flew over only SEVEN days after they disappeared.

gl
Logged

Malcolm McKay

  • Read-only
  • *
  • Posts: 551
Re: FAQ: Colorado / Lambrecht Search, 9 July 1937
« Reply #222 on: August 21, 2012, 07:28:13 PM »

Am I the only one who finds the special pleading argument which is adopted to explain why, if Earhart and Noonan were on Nikumaroro, the Navy searchers didn't see them just a little too contrived.

The basic facts are that the Navy flew over the island 7 days after the disappearance as part of a search of islands in that area. They made several passes over the island and and according to Lambrecht reported "Here signs of recent habitation were clearly visible but repeated circling and zooming failed to elicit any answering wave from possible inhabitants and it was finally taken for granted that none were there.", to which added the following general observation "In fact, on any of these islands it is not hard to believe that a forced landing could have been accomplished with no more damage than a good barrier crash or a good wetting.". That is the sum total of the eyewitness account and basically says that they didn't see the lost pair or an aircraft.

Now the Navy's inability to find them has been explained in a number of ways, none of which are anything other than assumptions based on the immediate necessity of making the Nikumaroro hypothesis work. The various explanations in point form are (forgive me if I missed any) -

1. The Electra was not seen because it was landed on the outer reef near the Norwich City wreck and after several days was washed off by either waves or the tide,

2. Using the much discussed and questionable accuracy of Betty's Notebook it is argued that while Earhart was relatively uninjured in the landing, Noonan was injured to the extent his judgement and nerve was impaired, leaving Earhart as the only active person,

3. Sometime in the next few days Earhart and Noonan became seriously weakened by starvation and dehydration and were immobilised to the point where when the Navy did fly over they could not attract attention. It is further argued that they expected to be found by ships, not aircraft, and therefore were not prepared,

4. Special pleading is at its worst when the failure of the Navy searchers is dismissed as a product of their lack of training and incompetence for the task.

5. Doomed by this terrible conjunction of tragic circumstances including incompetent Navy searchers Earhart and Noonan then die.

However as Gary LaPook has shown the chances that either of them would be reduced to immobility in just seven days is unlikely. Also if we accept that somehow the aircraft was torn off the reef then that must have been caused by bad weather and if so then there is the strong possibility that this was accompanied by rain which would provide fresh water which would collect either on the island or in parts of the Norwich City wreck. In addition while not especially palatable to a refined Western palate there was food in the form of fish, clams, crabs and birds available in very large quantities on the island. Unless you were a dedicated Vegan you would not starve on Nikumaroro.

As to the matter of a signal fire, and disregarding the hearths at the Seven Site because there is no archaeological evidence that links them directly to the pair, this does not mean that they could not have lit a fire with materials either salvaged from the Electra or from available friction sources on the island. In fact I do not think it is stretching the validity of assumption to argue that the best place for such a signal fire would be near where the Electra is purported to have landed which is close to the island's one great landmark the wreck of the Norwich City. If the pair were on the island is it too much of a stretch to think that they would have stayed near the wreck and based their own rescue strategy on using it as a beacon in conjunction with a fire.   

So that is why I don't accept the special pleading necessary to explain why the Navy search failed. It really is driven by the necessity to make the Nikumaroro hypothesis work rather than by allowing the actual information to tell its own story. The information available tends to tell us that they weren't there, or at a pinch, if they had been there they never made it out of the Electra.   
Logged

Gary LaPook

  • T5
  • *****
  • Posts: 1624
Re: FAQ: Colorado / Lambrecht Search, 9 July 1937
« Reply #223 on: August 21, 2012, 07:52:25 PM »


Did they get hit by a meteorite? I don't know if anybody gets killed by one every year, I put that one in to illustrate the ridiculousness of your assumptions.

gl
According to this site, the last time a person was killed by a meteorite was 1929.

gl
Logged

dave burrell

  • T3
  • ***
  • Posts: 111
Re: FAQ: Colorado / Lambrecht Search, 9 July 1937
« Reply #224 on: August 21, 2012, 08:38:47 PM »


Did they get hit by a meteorite? I don't know if anybody gets killed by one every year, I put that one in to illustrate the ridiculousness of your assumptions.

gl
According to this site, the last time a person was killed by a meteorite was 1929.

gl

1929 Hmmmm.. Was that a clear or White meteorite?
Logged
Pages: 1 ... 13 14 [15] 16 17 ... 34   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