Did Earhart carry parachutes on the flight to Howland

[Jeff Victor Hayden]

Post removed due to excessive quotation.  MXM

[Heath Smith]

Gary, I'm not clear about the hypothesis of the post loss transmissions. Were they transmitting each time the tide went out, after it had flooded the radio equipment? Is that correct? If it is then the radio equipment must have been extremely watertight to be able to function again after a dowsing of seawater, valves, variable resistors, capacitors, battery etc...

I believe at high tide the water level is 3ft higher than at low tide. It would also be necessary to right the starboard engine (I believe this is engine where the alternator / magneto was located) so the prop could not touch the water. If the tires flattening upon the reef landing, you would lose a bit more clearance for the prop.  I am not sure if the battery compartment could handle flooding or not but this topic must have been discussed previously on the forum over the years.

Another area of discussion that I have not yet heard is assuming that the belly antenna was indeed torn off during take-off at Lae, did they have any spare wire to rig up a new antenna for the receiver? Betty's notebook suggests that AE was calling out to someone named Marie, presumably someone she was hearing on the radio, it would be reasonable to assume that they had fixed the belly antenna in order for this to be true.

[Irvine John Donald]

Jeff H.

Gary has said clearly he does NOT believe there were ANY credible post loss radio signals.  He doesn't believe there were ANY transmissions by AE so any question to Gary on how they transmitted is moot.  He can only say they never happened.

However there are numerous threads and posts on this topic throughout the forum.  The radio equipment was not waterproof however the tides were at their lowest point when AE landed on Gardner.  During the week of post loss radio signals, if you believe in them, the tide was rising and, while the Electra was believed to be able to transmit for that week, by the Thursday the tides pulled it off the reef edge.  So during high tide that week the radio gear was dry and not getting doused.  Heath gives a good summary of that.

[Jeff Victor Hayden]

Jeff H.

Gary has said clearly he does NOT believe there were ANY credible post loss radio signals.  He doesn't believe there were ANY transmissions by AE so any question to Gary on how they transmitted is moot.  He can only say they never happened.

However there are numerous threads and posts on this topic throughout the forum.  The radio equipment was not waterproof however the tides were at their lowest point when AE landed on



Gardner.  During the week of post loss radio signals, if you believe in them, the tide was rising
and, while the Electra was believed to be able to transmit for that week, by the Thursday the
tides pulled it off the reef edge.  So during high tide that week the radio gear was dry and not
getting doused.  Heath gives a good summary of that.

Ok thanks Irv, so it was possible to transmit, that's all I needed to know.
Jeff

[Jeff Victor Hayden]

Did they still have the life raft with them when they took off from Lae? In the film 'Amelia' it was binned to save weight. Surely that can't be right?

[Harry Howe, Jr.]

Jeff Victor
Don't believe everything you see/hear in the movies (or on TV, n the radio, in the papers, on an internet Forum etc  LOL)
I don't remember seeing a life raft listed on the Luke Field inventory, but it did list 4 life vests.
AE did decide to leave the trailing wire antenna and its wind-in, unwind-out apparatus, presumably for weight reasons.  My understanding is that with that antenna they could have (yeah, Marty, coulda) picked up the Itasca/Howland RDF frequencies.

[Jeff Victor Hayden]

"Don't believe everything you see/hear in the movies (or on TV, n the radio, in the papers, on an internet Forum etc  LOL)"

Hollywood interference methinks Harry :)

[Gary LaPook]

Did they still have the life raft with them when they took off from Lae? In the film 'Amelia' it was binned to save weight. Surely that can't be right?

Her husband said that she had a life raft on board, see attached newspaper clipping. Putnam was interviewed on July 2nd and the story was published on July 3rd.

gl

[Heath Smith]

I am guessing a "Very Pistol" was a flare gun? I have never heard that before.

I found an interesting reference to a pistol here.

"In one letter to Chief Bellarts, Balfour stated that Amelia handed her facility book plus a lot of papers along with her pistol and ammunition to him prior to her takeoff for Howland Island."

Could flares have been referred to as "ammunition"?

[Harry Howe, Jr.]

Very, after the inventor, Edward Very. US NAVY

[Irvine John Donald]

Re: Heaths last post. Can anyone tell me what a facility book is? 

[Gary LaPook]

I am guessing a "Very Pistol" was a flare gun? I have never heard that before.

I found an interesting reference to a pistol here.

"In one letter to Chief Bellarts, Balfour stated that Amelia handed her facility book plus a lot of papers along with her pistol and ammunition to him prior to her takeoff for Howland Island."

Could flares have been referred to as "ammunition"?

Earhart carried a Model 1903 .32 cal Colt Automatic Pocket Pistol with her for self-defense which is the one she gave to Balfour along  with ammunition for it. She did not give away her "Very Pistol" which is a flare gun.

Balfour also wrote the same thing to Holbrook as I posted before:

------------------------------------------------------

From Lovell's book:
"...Her obsession with weight may have been taken to extreme length,
for according to Harry Balfour, radio operator at Lae, survival
equipment was also taken off. Balfour claimed that "she unloaded all her
surplus equipment on me including her [Very] pistol and ammunition,
books, letters and facility books"".

I don't know who placed the "Very" inside the brackets but, according to Balfour, the "pistol" that Earhart gave him was an "automatic pistol," apparently carried for personal protection, not an emergency signaling "Very Pistol." I don't know who was the person who made this change to Balfour's words and if it was done out of ignorance or if it was due to "political correctness." I am still curious who changed "automatic pistol" to "[Very] pistol", was it Ms. Lovell or her source? She footnotes this information as coming from Francis X. Holbrook, NA&SM Library, Amelia Earhart General File: F0171300. The fact "Very" was put in brackets shows that it was deliberately changed, but why and by whom? The letter from Balfour containing this quote was sent to Holbrook. Almost every book about Earhart repeats this as the basis for claiming that Earhart did not have a very pistol with her but it does not support that claim.

See:https://tighar.org/smf/index.php/topic,555.msg8280.html#msg8280
-------------------------------------------------
gl

[Randy Reid]

Very pistol, bore is about 1.5 inches. The cartridges are similar to shotgun shells, but instead of shot they may contain various color flares including parachute flares. This will fire a flare several hundred feet into the air, IIRC, one of the flares would reach 1200 feet.
Randy

[Ric Gillespie]

Earhart carried a Model 1903 .32 cal Colt Automatic Pocket Pistol with her for self-defense which is the one she gave to Balfour along  with ammunition for it. She did not give away her "Very Pistol" which is a flare gun.

Balfour also wrote the same thing to Holbrook as I posted before:

Let's remember that anything Balfour wrote to Bellarts or Holbrook many years later is an anecdotal recollection.  Maybe he was remembering accurately.  Maybe he wasn't.  A contemporaneous written source - such as the Darwin parachute newspaper articles - would be much better.

If Earhart had a pistol with her she was violating the conditions of the clearances obtained for her by the State Department.  If a pistol had been found during an inspection of the aircraft during the world flight she could have been in deep doo-doo.

[Irvine John Donald]

Interesting point Ric. Presumably you mean if a pistol was found in a foreign country where she landed. Is it likely these clearances meant US soil?  If not US soil then the suggestion is she turned over a pistol as she was about to leave the last foreign soil of the trip when she didn't need to worry about it.  Howland, Hawaii then the mainland. It wouldn't be logical to turn over her pistol at Lae. Doesn't this reinforce that it was likely the Very pistol since its also reported she dumped her survival gear? 

Why would she dump all her survival gear at Lae?  Just weight concerns?