Eric H. Chater

General Manager, Guinea Airways Limited, on July 2, 1937. He wrote what we call "The Chater Report" in response to a request by his friend, M. E. Griffin of Placer Management, Ltd. The report provides details of how the aircraft was prepared for the final flight.

Griffin had been asked by the Bureau of Air Commerce in the States to use his contacts in New Guinea to find out what had happened in Lae. The report was sent to Griffin, and sat for almost 60 years until an executive of Placer Dome, Ltd.of Vancouver, BC, discovered the original file while looking for something else.

Book excerpt: Book excerpt: Placer Development and Amelia Earhart’s final flight

TIGHAR’s conclusions were aided unexpectedly by the discovery of a file marked “Bulolo Gold Dredging, Ltd./Amelia Earhart” in Placer Dome’s basement storage in Vancouver about 1991. The file contained a report for the U.S. Bureau of Air Commerce written by Eric Chater, General Manager of Guinea Airways at Lae, three weeks after Earhart’s disappearance.

It was written after the Bureau asked Frank Griffin, a Placer Development director in San Francisco, for any “information of interest relative to Miss Earhart’s visit and flight,” and Griffin cabled Chater for help.

Of particular interest to TIGHAR were the confirmation of the fuel load carried, and the fact that Earhart made an unsuccessful attempt to test her radio direction finder prior to that flight.

“We greatly appreciate Placer Dome’s generosity in making it [Chater’s report] available,” TIGHAR said.