3 Problems with Niku hypothesis / inconsistencies

[Martin X. Moleski, SJ]

For interesting books, I recommend "An Island to Oneself" (originally "An Island to myself") by Tom Neale.  ...

"An Island to Oneself" is available online, with lots of other pix and info from those who knew him.  There is extra material on the web that is not available in the book.  Don't ask me how I know.

[Thom Boughton]

"An Island to Oneself" is available online, with lots of other pix and info from those who knew him.  There is extra material on the web that is not available in the book.  Don't ask me how I know.

How do you know?



....TB


(sorry....couldn't resist the temptation)

[Martin X. Moleski, SJ]

"An Island to Oneself" is available online, with lots of other pix and info from those who knew him.  There is extra material on the web that is not available in the book.  Don't ask me how I know.

How do you know?

(sorry....couldn't resist the temptation)

In the Society, we call it "evidence of a wasted youth," although in my case it is evidence of a wasted late middle age.  I spent hours reading the book, then googling to find out more about Tom Neale.  It's a complex story.

[Alex Fox]

Got the Tom Neale book, and am about halfway through.  It's definitely not something I feel like I've read before!  Unique stuff. 

This is not a very easy book to order, though!  Amazon was totally sold out, except for a few hardbacks for like $40 (price gouging galore) and one used paperback copy for $11, which I bought.  It's in terrible shape, but a book is a book, right?  I'll send it for free to someone on here if you pm me an address.  I don't think it's very comparable to what Amelia or Fred would've been going through, but it certainly does give you an idea what living alone on an island in the South Pacific is like.

[Mark Petersen]

"The sex lives of cannibals: adrift in the equatorial Pacific".

Forget the book, this sounds like it would make a heck'uva movie for adult late night pay-per-view  ;D

[david alan atchason]

There's actually no sex or cannibals in this book (to speak of, anyway), it's actually a good & funny book about modern Tarawa. His second book, Getting Stoned with Savages, by J. Maarten Troost is also great, it's about Vanuatu and Fiji, is available on Kindle. It's educational to learn how different these island are from each other. No, he doesn't find Amelia or Fred.  :-[

[George Main]

Hello TIGHAR Team,

Thank you for your diligent work on the search for Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan. I read with great interest the team's Nikumaroro hypothesis. I have three problems with it:

1. If they landed and transmitted signals for over a day, why didn't they transmit their location calculated by Fred Noonan or by description of what happened?

2. Why didn't overflights of the island detect their presence, because they would have constructed SOS land signals seen from the air?

3. Why weren't artifacts of their presence found? They would have created some memorial structure or objects to mark their presence in contemplation of their deaths.

Thank you for reading. I wish you good luck this summer!

[Adam Marsland]

I think Ric is fond of saying "would have" is a guess mascarading as fact.  #2 and #3.  Did they have enough energy to do an SOS by the time it became apparent that rescue wasn't coming right away?  Were they even expecting an air rescue at all? By the time they were nearly dead, would they have prioritized building a bunch of rocks to mark their presence, or finding food and water?  If they had left some kind of a marker, would it even have been recognized as such?  What you think they would have done are not in any way "no brainers" in the situation they were in.  I don't think the fact that they seemingly didn't do any of these things is much to discount the Niku hypothesis.

I think the first point, though, is a really good one.  Why in the dickens didn't Fred Noonan transmit their location?  Possible answers that have been suggested by the available evidence at hand are, if I recall correctly:
1.  They didn't know exactly where they were, possibly because the shape of the island did not match what was on the maps they had at their disposal, and did not want to misdirect the search effort by giving the wrong island name.
2.  Fred may have been incapacitated and unable to do the necessary navigational readings.
3.  They did try to transmit their location, but none of those signals were ever picked up.  (Most of the post-loss messages are fragmentary, garbled or non-existent [e.g. carrier waves or indistinguishable voice].  The only lengthy message that exists is Betty's Notebook, and that is fragmentary and filled with numbers and letters that may have been garbled attempts to transmit that information -- numbers that are one degree off the line of position they last flew recur several times in the notes, as do the words "New York" or "New York City" which may have been a mishearing of "Norwich City," the shipwreck the plane may have landed near and the most identifiable landmark nearby)

I do feel you on this last point, because even though in the main I'm convinced by TIGHAR's circumstantial case, I do have a problem with the idea that Fred Noonan was too incapacitated to figure out where they were but he was still OK enough to man the radio a night or two later.  I can construct a plausible scenario where that's how it went down, but it troubles me a bit.

[John Ousterhout]

George,
some understanding of the problems with the post-loss radio signals may be found by reading  Brandenberg's SNR analysis, the Catalog and Analysis Report, and of course the Overview Wiki, which includes yet more links.  The poor reception quality of some of the post-loss signals prevented any understanding of words, so we just don't know what sort of message was intended by whoever sent them.
The triangulated bearings from Wake, Midway and Hawaii are described as being very difficult to hoax, making them among the most compelling arguments I've run across.  They need to be explained away if the "Gardner hypothesis" is to be rejected, IMHO.

[George Main]

Hello Adam,

Thank you for pointing out the problem with my "would have" comments. My intended point is to look at the conduct of AE and FN from a common sense viewpoint. What do people do in those circumstances? I have not seen detailed research into the survival behaviors of AE and FN, so we have only human nature as a guide. While acknowledging the passage of time and specific circumstances put a wall between us and them, we can use human nature as guide to create questions and search for answers. Has someone gone through the personal histories of AE and FN, studied their reactions to stress and danger, and provided the information to psychologists or behaviorists to suggest their actions on Nikumaroro?

Regarding the first point, you've well discussed why FN may not have been able to provide location information, but there remains the question why the radio record has no description of what happened. Are crash victims closed mouthed about their survival? Not in my experience.

[Alfred Hendrickson]

George:

You ask, "Why didn't they transmit their location?" How do you know they did not transmit their location?

You say, " . . . they would have constructed SOS land signals seen from the air?" How do you know they what they would have done?

You say, "They would have created some memorial structure . . . " How do you know this? How do you know what they would have created?

You may be a skeptic, George. There's nothing wrong with that, I guess. But try to come up with a better set of arguments, something that has some substance to it.

Alfred

[John Ousterhout]

To clarify Allfred's statement "How do you know they did not transmit their location?", keep in mind that the records of radio transmissions received in the first few days after the disappearance were not intelligible - no words could be understood.
2) why construct any sort of signal to be see from the air when they've got a big, shiny airplane parked on the reef?
3) without water, any survivors would only have a few days of functional capacity to do anything requiring physical activity.  If the aircraft washed over the edge of the reef by the 6th day, it seems to me unlikely that they were still alive and active enough to build a monument or anything else, although the 7 site is a curiosity, as is Lambrecht's report of seeing signs of recent habitation.
Endless discussions of "what might they have done"  have been posted here, going back to TIGHAR's early days.  Many of the same questions get asked over and over again, but without evidence or clues, there are no conclusions to be drawn.

[John Ousterhout]

At the risk of sounding like I'm contradicting myself, I'd like to suggest that thinking about how AE/FN might have behaved (based on what we know of them, plus knowing what different crash victims have done, plus our own imaginings) can help identify things to look for.  That process has been a staple to TIGHAR's  search for decades.  For example, knowing about Fred's navigation techniques, combined with some imagination, leads us to look closely at the 157/337 LOP and how it can lead to Gardner.  Proposing Gardner as a landing spot attracted the attention of knowledgable experts, who have "helped' identify weaknesses in the theory, which in turn have prompted more imaginings that have narrowed the likely scenarios even further.  George's 3 questions narrow the questions to be answered quite nicely.  So, although I said "there are no conclusions to be drawn", there are some scenarios we can rule as highly unlikely, based on suggested clues that have proven to be lacking, and by using "how they might have behaved" scenarios.   Narrowing the search is what this is about.

[Malcolm McKay]

So, although I said "there are no conclusions to be drawn", there are some scenarios we can rule as highly unlikely, based on suggested clues that have proven to be lacking, and by using "how they might have behaved" scenarios.   Narrowing the search is what this is about.

So I suppose that you are not open to the abducted by the Giant Squid Troopers of the Emperor of Atlantis hypothesis  ;D

Seriously though you are perfectly right about looking at things from a rational view. I am as sceptical as George regarding the Nikumaroro hypothesis. In my case my scepticism is just me admitting that I find the available evidence both circumstantial and extraordinarily compromised by the overlying detritus of the PISS settlement from 1940 to 1965 as well as the LORAN station in the war years; and, as I have speculated elsewhere, by the unreliable nature of the islander recollections regarding wreckage (given the disintegrating Norwich City) and skeletons. The post-loss radio transmissions are simply too vague to be other than, pardon the pun, background noise.   

However we must also accept that the Nikumaroro hypothesis is at present just as valid as the ditched and sank, Gilbert Islands  and East New Britain hypotheses and quite possibly the captured by Japanese hypothesis. But this is the TIGHAR Nikumaroro site, therefore it is here we discuss that particular hypothesis and its strengths and weaknesses until, as we hope, something that settles the issue either way comes out of the next trip there. The most obvious evidence and the most likely to have survived would be a sizable and identifiable portion of the Electra, while identifiable skeletal material would also be good I'm not optimistic on that score given the time that has elapsed. As to which hypothesis I personally favour I simply admit that I have no preference other than to see each tested. 

[Jeff Victor Hayden]

I would suggest that there are more than 3 problems with the Nikumaroro hypothesis but, that also applies to the numerous other hypotheses. That doesn't excuse the lack of hard evidence in the Tighar scenario but, what it does do is test the opposing theories and ideas within that scenario. Each time an idea/opinion/theory etc... Is put forward within the TIGHAR scenario it is OPEN to examination, testing and debate. Some are eventually shown to be dead ends and, some not. It has been 75 years since the Electra vanished, in another few months the TIGHAR hypothesis will have another piece added to the scenario. Will it be the piece that shows the 'smoking gun', who knows? After 75 years I'm sure we can wait another few months.
Please understand that I consider the TIGHAR hypothesis the most extensively researched and investigated of the hypotheses, that does not mean it is correct! Simply that it is one of the two most likely scenarios. Having said all this I would add that if the outcome depended purely on determination and decades of hard work alone then the TIGHAR team deserve to be successful. Yes, I know the outcome doesn't depend on this :)