Date: Fri, 1 Oct 1999 08:54:25 EDT From: Jim Tierney Subject: Re: A Ukrainian Opinion Interesting letter from our Ukranian correspondent..... It will be interesting to see if he gets any mail responses... I hope we hear from him again...... He must feel strongly about his thoughts because he had go out and find the Public Computer facility and pay probably a high price for the time online The rest of us just fall out of bed and cross the room and flip on the switch without changing out of our skivvies/jammies/whatever........ It is amazing the hold that this mystery has on people from all over the globe... Jim Tierney ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 1 Oct 1999 08:57:57 EDT From: William Webster-Garman Subject: AE as entertainment Ric wrote, >>The Earhart mystery at the turn of the milennium is basically what the >>Earhart World Flight was in 1937 - entertainment. And as you well know, Ric, just "wait" and see how entertaining things get if and when an identifiable artifact from NR16020 ever turns up. LTM (who got her kicks) william #2243 ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 1 Oct 1999 09:16:48 EDT From: Margot Still Subject: E! Ric, you really came off well last night on E!. How can we get a snappy shirt like you were wearing (and looking like a real babe)? LTM (who likes her children looking their best) MStill **************************************************************** From Ric Welllll I've been called a lot of things on this Forum and I have to admit that I prefer "real babe" to some of the others. Let me tell you about the shirts. Back prior to Niku III in 1997 a clothing company called Willis & Geiger Outfitters offered to outfit the expedition with their really high-end, over-engineered (and over-priced) expedition gear. We, of course, accepted their offer with great glee and had some of their very nifty shirts embroidered with the TIGHAR logo. They looked so good that the company decided to market them to their mail order customers and we were featured in their catalog. The shirts sold out practically overnight at $75 each but before Willis & Geiger could restock they went out of business. We should probably find another supplier and maybe produce a whole line of TIGHAR-tested outdoor clothing. Anybody have any connections at Lands End, Patagonia, Eddie Bauer, etc., etc.? LTM Ric ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 1 Oct 1999 09:23:51 EDT From: Robbie Subject: AE near Lae? Did your researcher did some survey in Papua New Guinea (particularly Lae)? Think about it. Today Lae is completely change and the old airstrip where Amelia took off is no longer there. But there is a mountain some miles away from the airstrip and if you fly over that mountain you'll be able to see some islands out in the sea. So I guessed the plane didn't fly out of Lae it might have take off but with Amelia didn't have enough expirence about Papua New Guinea terrain and mountain she must have climb up and because that mountain the top is always covered with clouds she must have seen those islands and she did the last contact saying that she can see some islands and moment later she crash into the mountain top. I believe the plane is in that particular mountain in Lae.. Hope for more feedback Regards Robbie ***************************************************************** From Ric I'm afraid that's not much of a possibility. Amelia did not say anything about seeing some islands and we know that she was very close to Howland Island (about 2,500 miles from Lae) with only a few hours of fuel left when contact was lost. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 1 Oct 1999 09:34:13 EDT From: Chuck Boyle Subject: Re: Question for Loran vets I have a copy of a report written by the UCCG shortly after the Phoenix Loran Stations were built which includes Gardner Island. I obtained it from the NW United States Coast Guard Museum located in Seattle, WA several years ago. It is a 26-page report and gives details of the work done at the four Stations. Statements made in the building of the Gardner Island Station are listed below which may help in preparing your report. "Work on the equipment hut and the power hut went on simultaneously, while a pole gang erected the radiator and the six 75-foot poles." (Used for antennas.) "Two storage huts, a galley and a mess hall, the crew's quarters and the officers' quarters and a tower of creosoted piling 20 feet long, for two 3000-gallon wood storage tanks was erected as a water supply system." If I remember correctly, we were served meal on regular dinnerware (not metal trays). To verify Ric's statement from time to time as he mentions the Tighar Team, on the trips to Gardner Island, because of the heat and humidity how difficult and exhausting it is to perform their work. This report tells, "The men (Young Coast Guardsman) could not stand up under the terrific tropical sun. Gardner is only four degrees from the equator. These men, who were picked for their physical stamina, found themselves exhausted after a few hours in the jungle." Thank you Ric and your team for what you go through on these trips so we can know more of what happen to AE and FN. Ric, I was told at the Coast Guard Reunion that a Tighar Track was sent out in the last two months. Is that correct? Lee (Chuck) Boyle 2060 *************************************************************** From Ric Thanks Chuck. Yes, we have a copy of that report but I hadn't remembered that it was so detailed. One of the problems with a research project that spans more than a decade is that you don't always remember what information you already have. No issue of TIGHAR Tracks was sent out recently. We have a big double issue in the works right now and hope to have it ready to mail by the end of the month. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 1 Oct 1999 09:36:03 EDT From: Tom King Subject: Re: Native recollections One specific in response to Don's query about finding more people who might have been involved in the Emily-alleged bones/airplane discovery: We've got a lead on the son of Koata, the magistrate, who according to Emily was in charge when the discovery was made, and who according to Gallagher had the Benedictine bottle. His son was apparently working on Ocean Island in the early 1950s, though not yet married, which suggests he was ten or so when the bones were found. We don't know if he was on the island, or involved in the bones recovery, but there's a reasonable chance. Lonnie Schorer is trying to contact a Norwegian anthropologist who worked with him and may know where he is. Beyond this, we're pretty much shooting in the dark, but one thing we hope to do on Tarawa if we get there in 2000 is to look for more ex-colonists. LTM Tom King ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 1 Oct 1999 10:19:56 EDT From: Herman De Wulf Subject: Re: A Ukrainian Opinion Alexandr is absolutely right. Aviation being what it was in the Thirties, there is no reason to believe today that Amelia Earhart was a worse pilot than anyone else. Today everybody remembers Louis Blériot for having being the first man to cross the English Channel in an airplane, not for the way he crashed it when landing near Dover. History tells us that Alcock and Brown were the first men to cross the Atlantic non stop in an airplane in 1919, but the picture of their Vickers Vimy standing on its nose after their arrival in Ireland reminds us they actually crashed in a bog. Maybe that is how the expression saw light that "any landing you can walk away from is a good landing". AE may have been involved in a number of incidents, never in an accident. As for flipping a Vega on its back, well, with the kind of taildraggers they flew in those days it could happen to anyone. There are even reports of experienced airline pilots flying scheduled services flipping a DC-3 on its back in the Thirties. And those were "experienced" pilots, probably more experienced than AE. The fact of the matter is that accidents will happen. Thankfully they are few these days. But back in the Thirties airplanes did not have the degree of safety and reliability we take for granted today. To beginwith pilots could not rely on all that modern equipment airplanes carry today. Radar did not exist. Neither did GPS. Radio beacons had yet to be invented. With all the wonderful equipment pilots rely on today one wonders how pilots in the Thirties even found their destinations by using only a compass, a stopwatch and a map. And in the case of AE/FN by watching the sun. That's why people like AE and FN should be remembered as daring pioneers. And all the myth spinning about AE being "a poor pilot" or FN being "not the good navigator he was said to be" has to be considered backbiting and slander. Herman **************************************************************** From Ric I think it's interesting to note that in the past 24 hours we've had input from the Ukraine with a supporting opinion from Belgium and a new suggestion from Papua New Guinea. Maybe TIGHAR is the New World Order everyone is worried about. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 1 Oct 1999 10:50:56 EDT From: Dennis McGee Subject: NWO Ric said: "Maybe TIGHAR is the New World Order everyone is worried about." And our uniforms will be Willis & Geiger shirts; pith helmets; walking shorts; riding crops; web belt with canteen, machete, compass, whistle, GPS/Comm unit; and a pair of "stout" walking boots with calf-high wool socks. All in shades of tan and olive drab. Are we going to be snappy, or what?! LTM, who's ready to safari right now! Dennis McGee #0149CE **************************************************************** From Ric I can see that this thread is going to get me in trouble (again). ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 1 Oct 1999 13:30:25 EDT From: Van Hunn Subject: AE program Next week there's a two-hour program(rerun) on the History Channel, "Mysteries of Amelia Earhart." Program description is "The aviator's rise to fame, achievements and mysterious disappearance." In the central time zone it's on Friday 8 Oct 7 PM & 11 PM, also Saturday 9 Oct 3 AM. Van ************************************************************************** From Ric It's a rebroadcast of the show they aired last December. Must be Amelia Earhart season again. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 1 Oct 1999 13:34:24 EDT From: Bob Subject: AE Question As a new member to this forum, I have a great interest in the AE mystery. Just out of curiosity, I understand that there are accounts of Amelia being taken prisoner and executed by the Japanese as a spy. Has anyone ever uncovered any Japanese documents that support or deny this claim? Please excuse me if I am covering old ground. Bob ************************************************************************** From Ric Very old ground, but easy to cover. No documents to support. Lots of documents to deny. The "Captured by the Japanese" myth is a very interesting subject which, unfortunately, we don't have time to get into here. ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 3 Oct 1999 08:39:26 EDT From: Randy Jacobson Subject: Re: AE near Lae? Robbie wrote: << Today Lae is completely change and the old airstrip where Amelia took off is no longer there.>> The current Lae airport is in exactly the same position as the original aerodrome/airport, based upon contemporary maps, both then and now. ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 3 Oct 1999 08:44:21 EDT From: Tom Robison Subject: TV Guide On the History Channel next week: Friday -- 10/08/1999 8:00/5:00 The Mysteries of Amelia Earhart. July 2, 1937--Amelia Earhart vanishes somewhere over the Pacific, and her final whereabouts remain one of the world's great mysteries. This 2-hour special chronicles her rise to fame, details the last flight, and examines views on her disappearance from a variety of experts and authors, which range from crash at sea to alien abduction. (cc) [TV G] ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 3 Oct 1999 09:00:31 EDT From: Dick Pingrey Subject: TIGHAR Shirts and Stuff As a member of the Board of Directors for a new and struggling aviation museum we have been looking at ways to make money for the museum. Our visits to other aviation museums has revealed that early on these institutions kept their heads above water financially through membership drives and sales in their museum store, mainly t-shirts, caps, etc. with the museum logo. I would think that an online store selling TIGHAR items might generate a fair amount of income. You might explore the idea if it hasn't already been looked at. I know where you can get a truck load of nearly new surplus army uniforms. A few alterations and a TIGHAR patch and you are all set to start selling with little cost for the items to be sold. I don't even want a finder's fee. Dick Pingrey 0908 ************************************************************************** From Ric In our experience, the biggest drawbacks to selling wearables are the cost of stocking inventory in a variety of sizes and the time it takes to fill orders. I'd much rather cut a licensing deal with a company that is already in that business (like we had with now-defunct Willis & Geiger). A few years ago an firm called The Eastwood Company produced a line of die-cast metal models of various old airplanes. One of the models they produced was a Lockheed Vega that was paited silver and carried the TIGHAR logo on the fuselage. We got a small piece of the action from each sale. It was a pretty good deal for us. It brought in several thousand dollars with virtually no associated cost other than the time it took to help get the design set up. We also did a special version of the plane for TIGHAR members only where we put the individual's member number on the wing as a registration number. Now those airplanes are real collector's items and are showing up in flea markets and shows at inflated prices. Thanks but we'll pass on the nearly new uniforms. LTM, Ric ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 3 Oct 1999 09:09:32 EDT From: Carole R. Subject: Wreck photo update I have looked all over the website for the info on why the wreck photo has seemingly been discredited, but cannot find anything? Where should I look, or has this info not been posted yet? ltm, who never liked coconuts anyway, Carol R. ************************************************************************* From Ric We haven't posted anything specific on the website by way of a Wreck Photo update, but we probably should. The logic is pretty straightforward. You can't have both Emily's account of bare-bones wreckage way out on the reef and the Wreck Photo showing a beat-up but largely intact wreck up in the woods. Emily's story appears to have some photographic corroboration while the Wreck Photo still stands alone as nothing but a photo of unknown origin. I gotta go with Emily. ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 3 Oct 1999 09:12:03 EDT From: Phil Tanner Subject: Landlubbers ahoy I'm not trying to re-open the radio debate, and apologies to navigators out there to whom this is as simple a matter as a description of how to tie a pair of shoes, but I found this brief idiot's guide to radio direction-finding in a report at the site of the Placerdome mining company, originators and finders of the Chater Report. http://www.placerdome.com/shared/dialogue/historical/earhart.html I found it helpful as a technophobe layman landlubber. LTM Phil 2276 ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 3 Oct 1999 09:20:16 EDT From: Christian Subject: Alexandr's Posting and follow-ups Alexandrs and Hermans postings show how good it is to take a walk aruond the block before you sit down and type a letter or mail to the forum. We could have avoided a lot of noise here if many answers were thought about and not "fall out of bed and cross the room and flip on the switch" as Jim described. Re. Papua New Guinea: Robbie suggested, AE had to fly over a mountain after take-off but I seem to remember a quotation which said that the Electra flew very low (ground effect) after take-off until it was out of sight due to the heavy load. My understanding was, to fly in ground-effect you have to be very low over an even surface like the sea but not over hills or even mountains. Please enlighten me. Christian ************************************************************************** From Ric Enlightenment R Us. There was no mountain in the way. Earhart's takeoff from Lae took her out over the Huon Gulf. There was about a ten foot embankment at the end of the runway that dropped steeply down to the shoreline. This has become an enormous cliff in various accounts of the takeoff. (You can see film of the actual takeoff on the TIGHAR website at www.tighar.org.) Apparently, after the takeoff the plane settled down to just above the surface of the water in "ground effect" for a time until enough fuel had been burned off to permit a slow climb. LTM, Ric ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 3 Oct 1999 09:38:21 EDT From: Don Neumannn Subject: Japanese author >From Bob >As a new member to this forum, I have a great interest in the AE >mystery. Just out of curiosity, I understand that there are accounts of >Amelia being taken prisoner and executed by the Japanese as a spy. Has >anyone ever uncovered any Japanese documents that support or deny this >claim? In her book..."East to the Dawn"..., Susan Butler quoted from an article & book written by Fukiko Aoki..."Was Amelia Earhart Executed"..., which were written & published in Japanese & contained interviews with Japanese personnel that had lived in the Mandates throughout the 1930's. All those interviewed denied any knowledge of or infomation about the AE/FN flight or its alleged landing somewhere in the Japanese mandated islands. The article was written in the April 1983 issue of the Japanese magazine..."Bungie Shunju"... & a subsequent book of the same title was written & published in 1984. Unfortunately, neither the article nor the book were ever published in the English language. I corresponded with the author (now Fkiko Aoki Hamill) earlier this year & she informed me that no English translation of her work has ever been published, although she did state that Susan Butler had arranged to have a "rough" translation of her magazine article for Butler's book; However, the translation was of very poor quality & Butler had her check over the book ("East to the Dawn") Butler had written before it was published, to correct any mistakes in that segment dealing with Aoki's article. I've written to Susan Butler requesting where I could obtain a copy of the article, but to date I've never received any response (I imagine she suspects I'm some conspiracy theorist writing my own book). I tried to question Aoki-Hamill about the sources of her interviews, however she never has directly responded to such inquiry & merely referred me to Susan Butler for any additional info about her writings. She was apparently a Japanese freelance journalist at the time her article & book were published. Don Neumann ************************************************************************** From Ric Yes, Fukiko Aoki was a freelance journalist living in New York when she wrote her book. Much of her research was taken from back issues of TIGHAR Tracks we sent her and from telephone interviews with this office. The whole problem with the Japanese capture thing (and I really don't want to relaunch that old dead thread) is that it is impossible to prove a negative hypothesis so, until somebody comes up with irrefutable proof that something else happened to Amelia, nobody can prove that she wasn't "captured" by the Japanese (or the Serbs, or the Iraqis, or whoever are regarded as the current bad guys). All you can do is demonstrate the absence of any evidence that it happened - and that has been done ad nauseum. LTM, Ric ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 3 Oct 1999 09:45:51 EDT From: Jaume Balaguer Subject: Spain!! You have forgotten the AE club of "fans" from Spain !!!!! Greetings from Spain to all members of this fantastic forum, I'm proud to partcipate in it! LTM ************************************************************************* From Ric By all means, let us not forget our Spanish contingent. ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 3 Oct 1999 09:51:15 EDT From: Bill Moffett Subject: Re. Antiques Roadshow Hello again, back with my weekly AR report: I watched/taped 4 of 5 half-hour programs & one 1-hour one. (VCR fouled up Tues.) As before the short ones were from the UK, long one from US, Hartford CT this week. None had a chronometer nor a numbered box. Stay tuned: WHYY has 3 hours of AR sched next Fri & 1 hr Sat. I'll try to watch/tape. If anyone can get South Jersey PBS-TV, Ch. 23, check their sched for AR on Tues. & Sat., Oct. 5 & 9. LTM (who has an attic full of this stuff) Bill Moffet #2156 ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 3 Oct 1999 09:53:39 EDT From: Don Neumann Subject: AE & FN abilities Whatever the previous shortcomigs of AE & FN as pilot/navigator, the fact remains they had reached Lae with no reports of any serious mishaps related to either AE's piloting skills or FN's navigating abilities & whatever occurred on the leg of the flight from Lae to Howland, probably happened during the last 600-700 miles of a 2000+ mile journey to reach Howland, an elevated "sandbar" in the middle of the Pacific, almost invisable until you are right on top of the island! Don Neumann ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 3 Oct 1999 09:57:04 EDT From: Phil Tanner Subject: Tarawa I don't know when exactly TIGHAR hopes to visit Tarawa, but Kiribati is due to host the annual South Pacific Forum summit next year. I believe it's always in or around October - this year's is about to kick off in Palau. I imagine there'll be a whole load of things to keep government officials fully stretched in the lead-up and during the meeting. That said, wouldn't it be great to do something else to catapult the country into the media spotlight during its big year? LTM, Phil 2276 ************************************************************************** From Ric At this time the TIGHAR rersearch trip to Tarawa is scheduled for January. We'll have more on this soon. ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 3 Oct 1999 10:02:08 EDT From: Bob Subject: Re: AE Question Actually, I found a web site that discusses the Japanese Kempeitai Secret military police, and Japanese military personnel who discuss AE and the documents surrounding their involvement . Thanks for the response Ric! Bob ************************************************************************** From Ric Got a URL for that? If there are actually contemporaneous documents that discuss AE's involvment with Japanese military or police authorities they would be extremely important and the first real evidence that any such involvement ever happened. ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 3 Oct 1999 10:22:32 EDT From: Joe Subject: Re: AE program Any chance of someone like Cdr Robert Ballard at Woods Hole, searching the area off the reef like he did for the Titanic? Joe W3HNK ************************************************************************** From Ric As far as I know Ballard is not a Cdr but a Dr (PhD-type). We're not yet sure that the area off the reef is a good place to look but if we decide it is there are plenty of good underwater search contractors we can work with. ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 3 Oct 1999 11:08:15 EDT From: Ric Gillespie Subject: Forensic Imaging Update Thank you. Contributions from the Forum and the TIGHAR membership have now made it possible for us to pay the $2,300 retainer to Photek which will get the forensic imaging work started on the historical photos of the reef and the wreckage. We're going to owe another $5,000 or so before it's over so we still need your support. Jeff Glickman at Photoek is getting right to work on the images we have and we've begun the process of getting our hands on good copies of the images we don't have. A request has been sent to the Rhodes Library at Oxford University in England asking that we be permitted to borrow the original print of Eric Bevington's 1937 photo of the reef (see The Carpenter's Daughter at http://www.tighar.org/Projects/bulletin.html) Likewise, the New Zealand Archive is now processing a request of copy-negatives of five photos. Forum subscriber Caroline Marx in Alabama is working with the USAF Historical Center at Maxwell AFB to find and obtain a copy-neg of a 1942 photo in their collection. The game's afoot. Just as with any "expedition," we won't know what we can find until we "get there" but the forensic imaging of photos which might just trace the fate of NR16020 certainly seems "worth the trip." And like any expedition, it can't happen without funding. Anyone who contributes $100 toward this forensic Imaging project will receive an 8 x 10 print of whatever turns out to be the best (possibly historic?) image Photek can come up with. A contribution of $200 gets you access to a private web page where we'll mount high-resolution images of all the photos being examined. You can send you check, payable to TIGHAR, to: TIGHAR 2812 Fawkes Drive Wilmington, DE 19808 Or can fax you credit card info to: (302) 994-7945 or phone it in to: (302) 994-4410 LTM, Ric ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 4 Oct 1999 12:37:13 EDT From: Mary Jane Subject: FBI files I know that this must be old hat to you but for someone new to the forum I found the following site interesting on the now historical letters held by the FBI and released under the Freedom of Information ACT on AE and her disappearence. The FBI home page www.fbi.gov/ has a section titled FOIA. Under Historical Interests was AE's name, which took me to the documents that they released under the Freedom of Information Act. Section 1, first letter was a letter from TIGHAR in 1990 and at the bottom a note for them not to take part in any press conference with TIGHAR. Also a letter from POW regarding his recollections during the war of AE being held in a prison and other such information which I am sure you are aware of. I wonder if TIGHAR has ever spoken to any of these people who wrote letters to the FBI? Is this where some of the early theories on her disappearence came from? ************************************************************************** From Ric A lot of those letters, as I recall, were generated by Fred Goerner's investigations in the 1960s. The history of Secret Agent Amelia is really pretty interesting and goes waaay back to at least 1942. I have a file about two inches thick labled "Japanee-Man-Take-Ladyflier-Saipan" with nothing but various servicemen's recollections about stories they heard and wreckage they saw and photos and log books and briefcases they found, etc., etc. The only thing missing is the evidence. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 4 Oct 1999 12:39:31 EDT From: Bill Leary Subject: Ballard titles > As far as I know Ballard is not a Cdr but a Dr (PhD-type). You're both right. Dr. Robert D. Ballard: Commissioned, U.S. Army Intelligence (I haven't been able to find out his rank). Commander U.S. Naval Reserve. B.S. University of California, Santa Barbara, 1965, Chemistry/Geology. Ph.D. University of Rhode Island, 1974, Marine Geology/Geophysics. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 4 Oct 1999 12:50:40 EDT From: Warren Lambing Subject: Re: AE Question > From Ric > > Got a URL for that? If there are actually contemporaneous documents that > discuss AE's involvment with Japanese military or police authorities they > would be extremely important and the first real evidence that any such > involvement ever happened. I don't have a URL on the Japanese Military police or anything like it. But I have a real humorous misleading URL concerning the find of the bones which mentions your name. http://caller-times.com/autoconv/newsworld99/newsworld102.html I find it hard to believe it is an AP article and of course no name for the author, but it is good fiction :-). Regards. Warren Lambing ************************************************************************** From Ric Nice to know that we're so entrenched in popular culture. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 4 Oct 1999 14:38:07 EDT From: William Webster-Garman Subject: Re: AE Question >From Warren Lambing >But I have a real humorous misleading URL concerning the >find of the bones which mentions your name. Unfortunately, this is the legit website of a Scripps Howard local newspaper, the Corpus Christi Caller Times, and the article appears to have been published in February, sloppily and somewhat sarcastically re-written from some AP wire copy. william 2243 ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 4 Oct 1999 14:39:37 EDT From: Jerry Hamilton Subject: Sextants Below is the reply I got from Capt. Clark regarding sextants used by Delta lines, where Noonan last worked before joining PanAm in Miami. "Delta Line did place instruments on board all ships, but in practice every deck officer had his own sextant. Usually they attached small brass plaque on case for identification. These were, of course, marine sextants. I still have three marine sextants and one air bubble sextant, none of which had numbers on the exterior of boxes, only engraved on the sextants. As info, the bubble sextant box measures 9" x 9" x 5 1/4" and marine sextant boxes about double that. Hope this info useful. Regards, Jay Clark" Looks like they didn't number the outside of the boxes, only the sextants themselves. Blue skies, -jerry ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 4 Oct 1999 15:02:51 EDT From: Bob Subject: Japanese Secret Police Don, Thanks for the info. In my haste to post my message about the Japanese Kempeitai Secret military police, I forgot to include the link to the web site. Perhaps it's old ground - and I apologize in advance to forum members for being redundant. Anyway, for what it's worth, here's the link. http://pages.hotbot.com/advice/merrill_t/Saipan4.html ************************************************************************** From Ric Well, the website referenced (which seems to be part of a psychic something-or-other), just has a bunch of messages by one Merrill See who quotes various secondary sources to rather exhaustively belabor the point that the alleged Japanese build-up in the Marshall Islands in the 1930s is myth. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 5 Oct 1999 10:49:45 EDT From: Dave Bush Subject: numbers on boxes Jerry Hamilton writes: >Below is the reply I got from Capt. Clark regarding sextants used by >Delta lines, where Noonan last worked before joining PanAm in Miami. >"Delta Line did place instruments on board all ships, but in >practice every deck officer had his own sextant. >none of which had numbers on the exterior of boxes, only >engraved on the sextants. >Looks like they didn't number the outside of the boxes, only the sextants >themselves. What were the numbers on the instruments themselves? Do they correspond to the numbers on the boxes? Would someone who owned several have placed the corresponding serial number on the box that held that particular instrument? LTM Dave Bush ************************************************************************* From Ric I can't imagine that Capt. Clark would now know the numbers that were on sextants belonging to individual captains. The answer to any question about whether or not someone would do something is, "maybe." ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 5 Oct 1999 10:52:40 EDT From: Mary Jane Subject: Re: FBI files Agree, evidence is the missing ingredient, however, it was still interesting to see those 1937 letters and telegrams written directly to the FBI by John Q. Public with most of their names and addresses blacked out. mjc ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 6 Oct 1999 08:52:52 EDT From: Michael Real Subject: AZIMUTH CIRCLE/SEXTANT BOXES To VERN, In a previous post 1999-07-19 , you requested information on AZIMUTH CIRCLES , which could indirectly relate to the search for the mysterious sextant box numbering system. You wrote: "I've seen photos of azimuth circles but I'm not sure what they are or how they are used.........Does anyone know exactly what these things are and how they are used? I have plenty of photographs which i can scan for you of different types used over the centuries, but as you have probably seen a modern version attached to naval warships, i can furnish you with the following explanation of how they are used: An azimuth circle is usually a term applied to a sighting arrangement which is fitted to a magnetic compass to enable bearings to be taken on distant objects. Its purposes were to obtain a bearing of a fixed point for navigation purposes, or to check the reading of the compass against a known bearing in order to find the magnetic variation, or to measure the relative bearing of another ship for station-keeping purposes. The sighting arrangements in some versions allowed bearings of stars to be taken. An azimuth compass would have such a sighting arrangement incorporated in it. In other types, a navigational compass might be supplied with an azimuth ring for use when required. With respect to the sextant box mystery: in light of the 2 surveys undertaken by the NEW ZEALANDERS , as well as the scientific expeditions launched by the BRITISH and the U.S.A. for the solar eclipse observations during this period , there must be a possibility that the mysterious box could have been incorrectly identified as a sextant box , rather than a survey instrument box used for levels or theodolites or an azimuth circle/compass. Survey instruments of many types were almost universally stored in similar wooden boxes of a similar size up until the 1970's , particularly levels. Could Gallagher and others have made a fundamental identification error?- although the PENSACOLA box with a similar numbering system could suggest otherwise . For the record , our faculty at the UNIVERSITY OF TASMANIA has two sextants of a GERMAN manufacture, C. PLATH of HAMBURG 39 , (1972) , box dimensions of 310 millimetres x 310 millimetres x 200 millimetres. They differ from the PENSACOLA box by having a "skinny lid" rather than the box being split - in - half by the lid. If you require images of various azimuth circle types, please don't hesitate to comntact me. REGARDS, MICHAEL REAL ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 6 Oct 1999 08:55:46 EDT From: Vern Klein Subject: Re. Antiques Roadshow for Bill Moffet Keep up the good work, Bill! I'm taping the 1-1/2 hours of AR being aired here each week. It continues to be all british - 3 half-hour segments. The VCR is programmed to record them so I don't forget and miss it. Then I fast-forward through them stopping for anything that looks interesting. Incidently, the AR people did respond by e-mail and confirmed what we already knew - Cincinnati, #203, Season 2. Maybe someone will get lucky and get it recorded eventually, and save me spending $20 for us to get a 1st-hand look and to hear exactly what was said about the chronometer. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 7 Oct 1999 09:16:51 EDT From: Robert Klaus Subject: Sea Classics The current issue of Sea Classics (Sept 99) has an article on AE which promises dramatic revelations. Nothing new here really, just a rehash of the Morgenthau conspiracy theory. There are a couple of standard photos of AE and NR-16020, plus (what makes it worth the price) some good pictures of the USS Colorado, the O-3U3s and (I think) the USCGC Itasca. The last mentioned is uncaptioned, but it is in a sidebar that mentions the Itasca. The last line of the sidebar mentions the Tighar Website, expect a lot of hits. LTM (who loves seeing her picture in the magazines) Robert Klaus ************************************************************************* From Ric Sea Classics is published by Challenge Publications which also publishes Air Classics (aka Air Comics). They frequently recycle articles. The one you describe sounds like Rolly Reineck's "Captive of the Japanese" article in the June issue of AC. By the way, anyone who wants to see and hear the estimable Col. Reineck (ret.) can see him do his thing on the History Channel documentary "The Mysteries of Amelia Earhart" which will air tomorrow (Fri.) evening. Check your local listings. Oh - you'll also get to see and hear Lt. Gillespie (ret.). ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 7 Oct 1999 09:41:29 EDT From: Dennis McGee Subject: Recycled stories Ric said: "Sea Classics is published by Challenge Publications which also publishes Air Classics (aka Air Comics). They frequently recycle articles. The one you describe sounds like Rolly Reineck's "Captive of the Japanese" article in the June issue of AC." I read Col. Rollin "Rockin' & Rollin'" Reineck's piece about AE in June's Air Classics. Normally I'd bomb the piece saying it was all smoke and mirrors, but in this case it is mostly just smoke. The story consists of occasional facts stitched together with a thread of fantasy. Air Classics is hardly a literary magazine, and has the editorial integrity of a London tabloid. Most of us buy it for the same reason we bought Playboy in our youth -- for the photos, not the articles. LTM, A2/C, USAF (ret.) Dennis O. McGee #0149CE ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 7 Oct 1999 12:20:33 EDT From: Ric Gillespie Subject: Call for volunteers This summer's field work on Nikumaroro and in Fiji has enabled us to refine our hypothesis that the Electra was landed safely on the reef at Niku, sent radio distress calls for two to three days, and was then destroyed by the surf leaving its crew quite literally "marooned on a desert island." Emily Sikuli may have given us the crucial missing piece of the puzzle - the exact spot where the Earhart/Noonan world flight ended. The forensic imaging work now underway at Photek could replace anecdote with contemporaneous photographic evidence of aircraft wreckage on the reef at Niku at a time when only one aircraft was unaccounted for in the Central Pacific. (see "The Carpenter's Daughter at http://www.tighar.org/Projects/bulletin.html) With increased suspicion that at least some of the alleged post-loss radio signals may have been genuine, it has become apparent that we need to take another look at what was reportedly heard. No in-depth analysis of the various reports has been done since Randy Jacobson's excellent compilation of all of the official message traffic was made available on CD (see http://www.tighar.org/Projects/CDad.html). Most of the suspected post-loss transmissions were passed along to the searchers and thus are among the 3,000 and some messages cataloged on the CD, but they've never been systematically dug out and categorized so that a full evaluation can be made. We'll also need to seek out messages reported in other sources (such as period newspaper accounts) that may not have made it into the official record. This is a call for volunteers for a TIGHAR research project the end product of which will be a documented chronology of all reported transmissions received in the days following the disappearance that were alleged or suspected of emanating from the lost aircraft. If you would like to volunteer for this project you need to be: - a member of TIGHAR (or willing to become a member). - willing to equip yourself with the necessary research material if you don't already have them. (The CD is $100). - willing to work with other volunteers to establish a format for the chronology and a division of labor for the research. I'll appoint a team leader from among those who volunteer and periodically pass along research results and needs to the forum. Who would like to help? LTM, Ric ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 7 Oct 1999 16:17:43 EDT From: Richard Johnson Subject: William Stewart and AE Ric, I was reading an article written by William Stewart who claims that Fred Noonan, in a reply to Navy Lt. Commander P.V.H. Weems on May 11, 1935, wrote about certain equipment for the planned flight. Noonan stated, " for reasons which I am certain you understand, we are not permitted to discuss the particulars of the flight for dissemination among the general public." Stewart uses this as a basis for his espionage theory. Are you familiar with this letter and exactly what is it in reference to? Why would Noonan write Weems in the first place? I realize this is a bit off topic but if anyone would know the truth here it would be you. Thanks for your time! Richard Johnson ************************************************************************* From Ric Well, similarly thin threads have been used to support spy theories. (For example: the Morgenthau transcript and the "love to mother" telegram). The letter appeared as an article in the the May 1938 issue of Popular Aviation under the title "A Letter From Fred Noonan to Lieut.-Comm. P.V.H Weems" with the introduction: "Lieutenant-Commander Weems was a personal friend of the late Fred Noonan. It was at the Weems navigation school that Noonan gained much of the knowledge that later was to be responsible for the many colorful transoceanic flights in which he participated." The statement seems rather odd given Fred's long career as a master mariner. I don't think we've ever seen any paper that indicates that Fred actually attended Weems' school but it would not be surprising if Phil Weems and Fred Noonan were acquainted. First of all, in the 1935 letter Fred is talking about the Pan Am survey flight to Hawaii, not the Earhart flight. (He wasn't even involved with Earhart until March of 1937.) His comment about not being permitted to discuss the particulars of the flight is perfectly in line with Pan American's corporate policies at that time. Transoceanic commercial aviation was in its infancy and was the subject of intense competition for international routes and landing rights. Pan Am was extremely proprietary about the techniques and procedures it had developed. LTM Ric ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 8 Oct 1999 10:20:20 EDT From: Jerry Hamilton Subject: Re: William Stewart and AE Boy, is this ever an example of somebody stretching the facts beyond reason! Ric is correct about the PanAm context. Noonan wrote Weems on May 11, 1935. In mid-April the first exploratory Clipper flight to Hawaii and back was completed. Understand that this was a trial of the first leg of what was to become the Clipper Manila service which eventually went Alameda(an island in the San Francisco Bay) to Hawaii to Midway to Wake to Guam to Manila. The Clipper and crew, including FN, had only arrived on the West Coast from Miami at the end of March. So this was an historical undertaking. Noonan wrote Weems in reply to a "congratulatory letter" he had received from Weems on April 1. One assumes the congratulations was for being the lead navigator for the new Pan American Clipper west coast operation. Noonan says in the letter introduction that he considers Weems, "...the foremost authority on the subject of aerial navigation,..." and that he knows he would be interested in the recently completed Hawaiian flight. He then goes on to describe in considerable detail the navigation equipment and methods used for the flight. He concludes the letter by saying he, "...would appreciate further communication with you upon any navigation matters which might be of mutual interest." Noonan uses the general disclaimer quoted by Stewart at the very beginning of the letter. He is writing only a week after the Hawaiian exploratory flight. The first Manila flight will not take place until November. As an employee of a company just beginning development of the first transPacific air service, with some risk involved, it makes sense that he make a cautionary statement to Weems. The fact that he goes into chapter and verse about the navigation aspects of the flight indicate he is not hiding anything. We have not been able to document that Noonan attended the Weems Navigation Academy. It is very clear, however, that they were in professional contact and, probably, friends. We do know that later in the same year Noonan received further correspondence and books from Weems. How anything in Noonan's letter to Weems can be turned into a conspiracy is way beyond my poor little pea brain. blue skies, -jerry ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 8 Oct 1999 11:14:30 EDT From: Phil Tanner Subject: Inquests Big news here in the UK is the London train crash. I live five minutes' walk from the station which was the last stop for the bigger of the two trains. It struck me that to get to the bottom of it the authorities will have to apply exactly the same thought processes as the Earhart Project. Of more relevance: Any death in unexplained circumstances here is formally considered at a coroner's inquest, which returns a verdict of death by accident, natural causes, unlawful killing or misadventure (which implies that the victim didn't take all the steps s/he should to ensure personal safety), or an open verdict if no cause is clear. The great majority are formalities and bigger cases are dealt with by a jury. Inquests are also held when UK citizens die abroad in unexplained circumstances, so if I went to Niku and impaled myself on a piece of aircraft wreckage the inquest would be held here in Reading, and I believe they also serve the purpose of pronouncing people dead who have been missing for a certain number of years. My question is: Does the US have an equivalent system (or do individual states), and if so were inquests held on Earhart or Noonan? And if they were, what documentation did they turn up? LTM, Phil Tanner 2276 ************************************************************************* From Ric An excellent question. Here's what Mary Lovell (The Sound of Wings, pages 307 and 308) has to say on the subject: "In Septermber 1938 .... George (Putnam) made it clear that he intended to try to establish proof of Amelia's death in order to have the will probated and to administrate the Estate in the manner in which Amelia had wished. To establish the necessary proof for the court, he wrote to Admiral Leahy who had commanded the search for Amelia, and through him obtained a sworn affidavit from Leigh Noyes, captain of the U.S.S. Lexington, on the scope and results of the search. It ended, 'No trace of either the Amelia Earhart plane or of its occupants was found.'...Armed with the necessary statements from Richard B. Black and Captain Leigh Noyes...and in the company of his employee Charles 'Cap' Palmer, George went to Los Angeles city hall to file evidence - all, it seemed likely, that there ever would be - of Amelia's death. it was accepted by the court and the will was duly probated." I imagine that Fred's widow went through a similar procedure, but it seems apparent that no in-depth investigation was carried out in either case. LTM, Ric ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 8 Oct 1999 16:44:19 EDT From: Tom King Subject: Re: William Stewart and AE Does anybody know who William Stewart is? There was a guy of that name who worked for the Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands when I worked there in the late 1970s; he did some historical stuff for the Dept. of Education, as I recall, and as I remember it it was pretty superficial. Wonder if it's the same guy. TKing ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 9 Oct 1999 09:23:57 EDT From: Richard Johnson Subject: Re: William Stewart and AE >From Tom King > Does anybody know who William Stewart is? Evidently William Stewart is a Military Historical Cartographer. This is how he identifies himself in the article concerning AE. I discovered the article on the web. The address is www.cnmi-guide.com/history/ww2/amelia/index.htm. Richard Johnson ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 9 Oct 1999 10:04:51 EDT From: George Myers Subject: Mrs. E. Roosevelt Tonight, on the History Channel was the "Amelia Earhart Mysteries," (10/8/99 in the Bronx, NYC) The "Scud Stud" (former reporter Kent) announced between the sections of the show that Mrs. Roosevelt had planned to fly with Amelia Earhart and never did get the chance. This led me to relive the section of the "Tuskegee Airman" show, hosted by Tony Brown, which had a report that Mrs. Roosevelt flew with one of the airmen there for about 45 minutes and really enjoyed it, though it drove her watchers crazy in that she was taking a chance. The effect was that Mrs. Roosevelt never flew again, and I thought here's a place for my two cents. Ironically, the man who made millions on aircraft sales and leases, who just endowed the Smithsonian's large artifact museum on the Dulles airfield, Washington, DC, made his first sale of a used Lockheed Electra. I thoroughly enjoyed the report. George J. Myers, Jr. ************************************************************************* From Ric Actually, Eleanor did fly with Amelia . In April 1933, while AE was visiting the White House after her transatlantic flight the year before, the First Lady mentioned that the lights of Washington must be beautiful from the air at night. Amelia made arrangements with Eastern airlines to take them for a ride and the two women, dressed in evening clothes, toured the city by air. ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 9 Oct 1999 10:12:16 EDT From: Michael Real Subject: WEEMS SCHOOL OF NAVIGATION/GATTY/NONAN With respect to the Weems School of Navigation, i have the following information which may be of interest, and involves the Pioneer Instrument Company which has been previously discussed in connection with the type of sextant boxes PAN AM used. Gatty opened his own school of navigation in LOS ANGELES in 1928, and in the process, secured an agency for the PIONEER company, which could possibly account for PAN AM AIRWAYS being supplied with this brand of sextant. ( I have located GATTY's personal sextant in FIJI, and will offer more details on this and the NOONAN relationship as soon as the information can be disseminated and authenticated). GATTY attended a lesson at the WEEMS school to compare his methods with those of WEEMS', and in the process was offered a job as an instructor with the school. GATTY collaborated closely with WEEMS on a number of breakthroughs in air navigation methods and equipment, for which WEEMS acknowledged in his text-book , "WEEMS SYSTEM OF AIR NAVIGATION". GATTY was responsible for the invention of the octant or air sextant , the aerochronometer, and the drift sight , amongst others. GATTY took over as manager of the WEEMS franchise in SAN DIEGO before navigating for ROSCOE TURNER'S attempt on the absolute U.S. transcontinental record in 1929 in the Lockheed Sirius. Although the absolute record was not broken due to severe headwinds, the commercial record was broken , the Sirius carrying 3 passengers. This first test of his navigation skills is interesting when his discussion of his reactions on landing after the flight of 19 hours and 51 minutes is compared to the NOONAN flight from LAE of a similar duration, in the context of the frequent appraisals from FORUM members of what NOONAN's condition could have been when arriving in the vicinity of HOWLAND : ************************************************************************** In 1957 he wrote: "Most of us have experienced that confused, bewildered and unpleasant feeling of uncertainty which accompanies an illusion of orientation in a strange city. Everything seems reversed and you begin to lose all confidence in your ability to find your way. In 1929 i accompanied Roscoe Turner on his attempt to break the air record between Los Angeles and New York. It was my first flight to Long Island , and after a long and trying nineteen hours' flying , we landed at Roosevelt Field in very bad weather. It was in the middle of the night. I was overtired and when I oriented myself on leaving the airfield I established the wrong directions. I kept feeling that I knew my directions perfectly and kept finding that i was absolutely wrong. What is more , on subsequent visits I carried my capacity for illusion with me. Everything seemed reversed. I made mistakes so consistently that I began to lose confidence in my ability to find my way. For years after that , when I was in the region of Roosevelt Field , I always felt that North should be South and that West should be East; and even though I knew perfectly well that these directions were wrong, I somehow could not rid myself of them and had to translate them correctly in my mind with an act of conscious will each time I visited the area ." What is also interesting when contemplating whether A.E. could have landed on that reef 'wheels-down', is TURNER's physical state at the end of that flight and his landing attempts: After 20 hours of flying, Turner's judgement was frayed. Weather was bad over the city ,and the runway was poorly lit. On the first attempt to land, he overshot the field and accelerated quickly to gain height. Circling , he tried again. Twice more, he threatened to overshoot and had to give her the gun to pull away in time. On the fourth attempt , he brought her in for a bouncing landing. landing. *************************************************************************** Gatty was a supremely modest man, and of course his next famous flight with BROMLEY(the flight of the TACOMA) proved just how good he was in returning to the starting point after flying blind for 21 hours in a slowly disintegrating aeroplane filled with choking exhaust fumes . Although this pinpoint accuracy was as a result of his dead-reckoning skills combined with the WEEMS system and his abilities in taking quick accurate sextant readings, he still confided later that it was luck and good fortune and maybe instinct that brought them safely home. He further added " From my experience in those twenty five and a half hours out over the Pacific, when I found that my research work in navigation had stood me in good stead and saved my life, I had learned some of the technical obstacles to long -distance flights." REGARDS MICHAEL REAL ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 10 Oct 1999 10:59:19 EDT From: Tom King Subject: Re: WEEMS SCHOOL OF NAVIGATION/GATTY/NONAN Michael -- Is it through Gatty's son in Fiji that you've located his personal sextant? We learned of Ray Gatty's existence while we were there, and got his phone number, but unless Kris Tague followed up on it after I left, we didn't get to phoning him. I'd been thinking about pursuing this, since the questions have arisen about Gatty-Noonan connections, but don't want to get too many cooks into the same broth, as it were. LTM (who likes her broth without cooks) Tom King ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 11 Oct 1999 09:11:03 EDT From: Bill Moffett Subject: Re. Antiques Roadshow Hello, again. I'm back with another weekly AR report: Saw all WHYY-Phila had to offer Oct. 3 - 9. No chronometers or boxes. The good news is - Vern, pls note - WHYY has 3 AR segments scheduled for the coming week: Fri, 10/15, 19:30 - 20:00; same date 21:00 - 22:00 which is billed as the Cincinnati, OH show and Sat, 10/16, Noon - 13:00. Hopefully the Cinti. show is the one we've been looking for. I'll tape it & advise. As info, southern New Jersey PBS, Ch. 23, (which I cannot receive) has AR scheduled Tues, Oct. 12, 20:00 - 21:00 (Inverness/Basingstoke) and Sat, Oct 16, 14:00 - 15:00 (place not specified). - Ric, the tag-end of WHYY's AR segment last Fri. came from Bridlington, Yorkshire, which was Amy Johnson's home, showed articles from a museum there which included a mannequin in flying suit which Amy designed and wore, a model of the Gypsy Moth biplane which she flew solo from England to Australia in 1930. It wound up with the statement that she disappeared in 1941 while ferrying a plane for the RAF. Her flight bag, shown, was recovered from the Thames estuary. Unknown whether she was "shot down, ran out of fuel or got lost". I've got this on tape. Are you interested? LTM Bill Moffet #2156 ************************************************************************* From Ric Thanks Bill but I've got my hands full (so to speak) with this other missing woman flier. I wonder if Amy was captured by the Japanese? They were everywhere you know. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 11 Oct 1999 09:14:14 EDT From: Michael Real Subject: GATTY SEXTANT TOM, In response to your enquiry below: >From Tom King > >Michael -- Is it through Gatty's son in Fiji that you've located his personal >sextant? We learned of Ray Gatty's existence while we were there, and got >his phone number, but unless Kris Tague followed up on it after I left, we >didn't get to phoning him. I'd been thinking about pursuing this, since the >questions have arisen about Gatty-Noonan connections, but don't want to get >too many cooks into the same broth, as it were. I agree with your sentiments about cooks. The only reason why i was pursuing the GATTY SEXTANT was for the purposes of using it as the jewel-in-the-crown centrespiece for a memorial display dedicated to Harold Gatty which i hope to establish in TASMANIA in order to alert the AUSTRALIAN populace to his monumental achievements, thereby hopefully encouraging due recognition . In the process of my research on the disappearance of the Lockheed Altair of Charles Kingsford Smith in the Andaman Sea in 1935, and the reasons why Gatty was not used on any of his long-distance oceanic flights, I discovered that the TIGHAR Forum and its quest for the Amelia Earhart/Fred Noonan wreckage had similar threads of interesting research interwovan with mine on a number of issues, but especially with regards to the Noonan connections. I have therefore released any pertinent information that I have to assist your quest whenever possible, and I can assure you that I shall happily divulge all the relevant information that I manage to obtain on the mysterious sextant box , the GATTY sextant and the Noonan connection as soon as they come to hand and can be verified, including photographs , etc. All that i ask is that you send me a group photograph of you all wearing that inevitable wide smile on all of your faces around a campfire somewhere on a lonely Phoenix island, with the sun just peeping over the horizon on a warm , partly cloudy, JULY morning , when the A.E. mystery is solved. I am currently at a sensitive point in the negotiations to have the sextant gifted to this planned memorial, and i am sure that you will respect the fact that any competition for it could jeopardise this quest to bring it 'home' , especially when considering the fact that it is the only known remnant of his personal effects which has not been donated to some museum or library in the U.S.A.,; we need this fountain of his wonderful navigation achievements brought to Tasmania. Therefore i am sure you can understand and respect my wish that its whereabouts are not divulged until i have secured it . To answer your guestion about RAY GATTY :- I do not know of any GATTY of this name, and the sextant is not with this person. All three of Gatty's sons are living in the U.S.A. as citizens of that country, and if there is a RAY GATTY, it could be a nephew that i am unaware of . BEST REGARDS MICHAEL REAL ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 11 Oct 1999 09:22:14 EDT From: Herman De Wulf Subject: Re. Antiques Roadshow I'm not an expert at aviation histroy, but as far as I know from reading on the subject, Amy Johnson got lost in fog while delivering an Avro Anson twin engine, I believe. Thecurrent story is that she got lost in fog, got lost over the North Sea and crashed. Some of her things were indeed recovered from the Thames estuary. Herman ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 12 Oct 1999 10:59:14 EDT From: Tom King Subject: Re: GATTY SEXTANT Thanks, Michael. No problem at this end. Let's all cooperate. When we were in Fiji we were assured that Ray Gatty was Harold's son, and a major plantation owner near Suva. He was in the phone book, but we never got around to following up with him. He may well be a nephew. Even if he's not connected with the Gattys you're negotiating with, I reckon it's best for us not to contact him till you give us the go-ahead. Thanks Tom King ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 12 Oct 1999 11:15:41 EDT From: Mike Meunich Subject: Tidal Data Here I go again, with apoligies. I noted in reading, (actually catching up), one of Mr. Gillespie's responses to reef wreckage, that the Navy photo taken at the time of the search, shows a "high" tide on the reef. I presume that we know or can find out Lambrect's time of departure, route and return to Colorado, and by calculation his approximate time or range of time over the reef. Would any of this be useful in working tidal times backwards to July 3? ************************************************************************** From Ric Establishing the time of what we have come to call "The Lambrecht Photo" is trickier than it would seem. The planes were catapulted from the COLORADO at 07:00 on July 9, 1937 and flew first to McKean Island before proceeding to Gardner. After spending an unspecified amount of time over Gardner they continued on to Carondelet Reef and then returned to the ship where they were hoisted aboard around 10:00. However, in returning to the ship their route ma y have taken them back over Gardner, so we don't whether the photo was taken during the initial inspection or on the way back to the COLORADO. That make as much as an hour and a half's difference in the time of the photo. All we can say with any certainty is that between, say, 08:15 and 09:45 there was high water on the reef at Gardner, but we don't know whether the tide pictured in the photo was at peak high water or on its way in or on its way out. One of the things this investigation has taught me is that it's just as important to realize and accept what you DON'T and probably CAN'T know as it is to understand what you DO and CAN know. LTM, Ric ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 12 Oct 1999 11:42:03 EDT From: Kabumpo Subject: Re: Antiques Roadshow For Bill Moffet: Kudos to you for watching all those Antique Roadshows. I saw the Cincinnati one (and reported same) a couple of weeks ago. The chronometer shown was numbered 8070 and made by an A. Johanson of London. What more should I have noted? Kabumpo ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 12 Oct 1999 11:43:06 EDT From: Ric Gillespie Subject: Contact needed TIGHAR member George Jones wrote to me: <> Anybody got an email address for Mr. Kristofferson? Okay, okay. So how do we find out who his agent is? LTM, Ric ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 12 Oct 1999 13:30:33 EDT From: Velina Subject: Kristofferson Ric wrote: <> The only web page that I found that maybe useful to you is at this address: http://www.wu-wien.ac.at/usr/h92/h9225291/kris/inter.html This web page contains a chat room and guest book. I'll keep searching for information. Velina ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 12 Oct 1999 14:20:29 EDT From: Randy Jacobson Subject: Re: Tidal Data I believe the Lambrecht photo was taken just before landing back on the Colorado. The photo was taken from high elevation from the SE. This position corresponds nicely with the reconstructed track of the planes with their return back from Carondelet Reef. If it was during their approach to Gardner, they would be at lower elevation and closer to the island, and not from the SE, as McKean is to the NE. If they were leaving Gardner to Carondelet, they also would have been at lower elevation, and would show a picture from the W. The only reasonable scenario for being S or SE of Gardner at elevation and distance is on the return to Colorado. It also makes sense that on the return flight back to the ship that personnel would have time to get the camera out and take a picture; otherwise their eyeballs would be concentrating on finding wreckage. While not proof, this scenario makes an awful lot of sense. ************************************************************************ From Ric (Randy and I have hassled about this before.) Plotting this out on a chart of the Phoenix Group and using the COLORADO deck logs, I can't make it work. I don't see how a photo taken upon departure from Gardner for Carondelet would show the island from the west. Carondelet is southeast of Gardner. if you leave Gardner to head for Carondelet Reef you depart the island from just east of the island's southeastern tip - just where the Lambrecht photo was taken from. The photo shows no part of the airplane in the frame. The only way to do that with an 03U-3 is to shoot looking toward the 4 to 5 o'clock or from the 7 to 8 o'clock position. The angle of the Lambrecht photo is consistent with a departing shot taken toward the 4 to 5 o'clock position. The altitude looks to be ballpark 1,200 feet - no big deal to climb there from a search that, according to Lambrecht, didn't go lower than 400 feet. Drawing a line back from Carondelet Reef past the point where the photo was taken misses the COLORADO's track entirely. (Randy will be here for a planning conference later this month and we'll have a chance to draw lines on maps, pound on desks and throw coffee cups at each other.) LTM, Ric ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 12 Oct 1999 14:24:18 EDT From: Chris Kennedy Subject: Re: Kristofferson For what it's worth, I believe there is some sort of association of actors/singers, etc. called ASCAP. I don't know what the letters stand for, but it may show up in a web word search. Also, I believe that all actors (if you call Kristofferson that) need to belong to the actor's union called "Equity", and there is a publication dedicated to actors/actresses called "Variety". Lastly, you might try a blind call to the Morris Talent Agency in L.A. This is one of the largest talent agencies around, and perhaps they will have good leads---actually, I hope that they do, as otherwise a lot of this information comes from my mother, who did some stage acting awhile back (her big moment was starring as the distraught wife of Pontius Pilate in what I suspect was a pretty ghastly play; I don't remember, as she was pregnant at the time with me). --Chris Kennedy ************************************************************************** From Bill Carter I will have the name and phone number for Kristoffersen's agent for you today or tomorrow. I have some connections to the entertainment industry. -Bill Carter ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 12 Oct 1999 14:36:53 EDT From: Ric Gillespie Subject: Caroline comes through Forum subscriber (and new TIGHAR member) Caroline Marx has successfully sought out and copy-photoed one of the images we need for the forensic imaging project. It's a January 1942 U.S. Army Air Corps photo showing the section of reef where earlier photos show objects consistent with the airplane wreckage described by Emily Sikuli (see "The Carpenter's Daughter" at http://www.tighar.org/Projects/ArchivedBulletins.html) Previously we had only had a photocopy of this photo but Caroline has now gotten us a photographic copy plus a scanned image. These will be essential to the study being done by Jeff Glickman at Photek in trying to ascertain what was there and where it went. A sincere Thank You to Caroline for a job well done. LTM, Ric ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 12 Oct 1999 15:49:27 EDT From: Mike Muenich Subject: The Last Tidal Data Posting From today's posts it looks like we might have a starting point to narrow the possiblities on the tides. It looks from Mr. Gillespie's response to my post that we have a range of 08:15 and 09:45 for the time of the photo. Is there enough detail in the photo, (shadows), given it's known position relative to the island, to determine the angle of the sun and thus the time of day? We don't know whether the tide was ebb or flood, but appears to be higher than would allow a plane to land. Using those assumptions, is there enough to determine a range of possiblities during the "time window" for AE to land. Since the tidal flow cycles approximately every 12 hours, it would appear that some form of high tide was in place between 08:15 and 09:45 on July 3rd. I would be a lot more comfortable with TIGHAR'S current theory about the landing north of Norwich if we didn't have what appears to be a "wet" reef during the projected range of time for arrival. ************************************************************************** From Ric Who says we have a wet reef during the projected time of arrival? You're grossly oversimplifying the tidal situation. Just because there was some flavor of highish tide between 08:15 and 09:45 on July 9th you can not extrapolate that the same condition existed at that time of day a week earlier (Earhart disappeared on the July 2nd, not July 3rd). I'll say it one last time. We've looked into this with expert help and there just are not sufficient data available to determine the tidal state at Nikumaroro late in the morning of July 2, 1937 with sufficient certainty. The thread is dead. LTM, Ric ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 12 Oct 1999 16:05:26 EDT From: Ric Gillespie Subject: media matters This morning I did a short (6 minute) live television interview for the Fox Cable News network. It was a fairly routine interview (What's the latest on the search for Amelia Earhart?) except for a couple of interesting subtleties: - in the intro to the interview the search was described as being conducted by the International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery. I was introduced as the group's Executive Director. In the past, the tendency has been to describe the search as something that I was doing and TIGHAR often did not get mentioned at all except as "Gillespie's group." This is a big improvement. - there was no mention of any other theory, even though I know that the show's producer had a review copy of Elgen Long's new book in front of her when she called me on the phone to set up the interview. LTM, Ric ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 13 Oct 1999 08:54:45 EDT From: Vern Klein Subject: Re. Antiques Roadshow Bill Moffet wrote: <> Great! I think we're in luck! I doubt there was more than one show done in Cincinnati. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 13 Oct 1999 08:59:56 EDT From: Vern Klein Subject: Antiques roadshow >Kudos to you for watching all those Antique Roadshows. I saw the >Cincinnati one (and reported same) a couple of weeks ago. The chronometer >shown was numbered 8070 and made by an A. Johanson of London. What more >should I have noted? Since I'm sort of in the middle of this Antiques Roadshow/Chronometer thing, perhaps I should say something in response to the posting below. Indeed we remember your reporting on the Cincinnati show. My own wishful thinking is something like this... IF the presence of a 4-digit number on the box has any relationship to the 4-digit numbers on the two sextant boxes we know of, then it's worth pursuing as far as we can. That may well not be very far! I believe it was originally reported that the number was stencilled on the Chronometer box. That makes it all the more interesting. Gallagher said the 4-digit number (3500) was stencilled on the Gardner Island sextant box. I would like us to have a video record of what the number looked like on the Chronometer box. And I would like us to know exactly what was said about the origin of the Chronometer and box. For us, the interest is essentially the question, who stencilled the number on the box? Was it possibly the same party who stencilled a number on the Gardner Island sextant box? And does this relate to the similar 4-digit number handwritten on the Pensacola sextant box known to have once been in the possession of Fred Noonan? That brings us to the really hard part that may well prove to be a deadend. What was said on the AR Roadshow program will probably be of little help. So, we'll be confronted with the task of trying to find and make contact with the current owner of the Chronometer and box. Then we hope more is known about its origin than was said on the show. Yes, it's a very, very long shot but I feel we must pursue it to the bitter end. There are precious few navigational instrument boxes around with numbers stencilled, or handwritten, on them. I think we have to chase any one that does surface. It may prove to be one of those things Ric just spoke of - a thing we have to recognize we can never know, and let it go. Vern ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 13 Oct 1999 09:27:42 EDT From: Roger Kelley Subject: Re: Caroline comes through Is there any sign of debris on the reef in the photos Caroline Marx obtained? Roger Kelley #2112 *********************************************************************** From Ric With the "naked eye" I can't see any sign of the same stuff that can be seen in the 1937 and 1938 photos but Jeff Glickman may be able to see more. It is also apparent that sometime between those photos and this one (1942) the island got hit with a big enough storm to break the entire aft end off the Norwich City. Most of the stern sank out of sight off the edge of the reef but some debris was also scattered shoreward. The wreck has a similar appearance in photos taken in June of 1941. My suspicion is that the storm that did the deed was the whopper that Gallagher described hitting the island in December 1940. Any event strong enough to rip that freighter apart should certainly be enough to move whatever we see in the 1937 and 1938 photos. Whether that debris is, in 1942, mingled with the fresher wreckage from the ship is another question. LTM, Ric ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 13 Oct 1999 09:31:53 EDT From: Bill Zorn Subject: Re: Contact needed go searching down the wierd wall of the web world, Ric, see if he has what is refered to somethimes as an offical site. You'd be surprized at the people who are out there (here?) And how many will actually answer. ************************************************************************** From Ric No argument. What could be weirder, or more fascinating, than this forum? ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 13 Oct 1999 14:58:02 EDT From: Skeet Gifford Subject: Space Imaging On local TV news last night and in the paper this morning was the report of Space Imaging, Inc., of Thornton (Denver metro area), Colorado. Their satellite pictures are "spy-level" resolution. One report stated 3-meter accuracy; another said that objects as small as one meter could be identified. Oblique and vertical images are available. Price for map-quality pictures is quoted at $200-$300 per square mile. Interpretation would be another matter. Skeet Gifford 0001CBE ************************************************************************** From Ric That is certainly better resolution than has been previously available to non-spooks. To be useful to us they would first have to have imagery of Niku available (which, in our experience, is pretty unusual) and second, have it in a spectrum that would permit foliage penetration (even more unusual). But there's no harm in asking. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 13 Oct 1999 20:36:23 EDT From: Dave Porter Subject: time traveling Tighar team? I'm guessing that this is merely fallout from your Fox News interview of a few days past. Fox 2 News here in Detroit reported tonight that a "team of amateur archeologists" was in Fiji searching for a wooden box thought to contain the bones of Amelia Earhart, and that said team was currently being stymied in it's efforts because the Prime Minister wasn't letting them search his official residence, where the team suspects the box is. I gave them a quick phone call to correct their timeline. LTM, Dave Porter, 2288 ************************************************************************* From Ric Amazing. We didn't talk about any of that in my interview and the story was badly distorted when it was current back in July. Tom King will be thrilled to know that he's an amateur archaeologist. LTM, Ric ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 14 Oct 1999 09:33:30 EDT From: Tom King Subject: Time travelling <> Oh well, wasn't the original meaning of "amateur" one who does things for the love of doing them? I can live with that. LTM (who's in it for the love of it, too) Tom King ************************************************************************* From Ric I've gotten a couple of phone calls about that same old news story. Apparently it went out on the wire yesterday. Weird. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 14 Oct 1999 09:38:21 EDT From: Jim Thompson Subject: Lambrecht photo vantage point and tidal data Re-reading Lambrecht's report of the flight to Gardner and back leads me to believe that aspects of both Randy's scenario and Ric's scenario seem plausible. Lambrecht states that the planes did "repeated circling and zooming". If they circled anti-clockwise, the island would be to their left; clockwise circling would put it to the right.Would Ric's "4 to 5 o'clock position" taken during departure from a clockwise circling yield the same results as Randy's "picture from the W" if they had been circling anti-clockwise? And would this also be the same as Ric's "7 to 8 o'clock position" given anti-clockwise circling? Similarly, based on the "pickup" time (1030) listed by Lambrecht, the position of the Colorado at this time (174.40 W, 4.50S), and the position of the SE tip of the island (174.49W, 4.70S), the difference in distance between a "direct" flight path back from Carondelet Reef to the pickup point vs. a "detour" via the island appears to be on the order of less than 15nm. If this wouldn't take much additional time, the fliers could have returned to "take one last look", taking Randy's picture from the SE in the process. Clearly more speculation! I suppose it would be expecting too much to see well defined shadows somewhere in the image! Sources: Lambrecht report 07/16/1937 posted on TIGHAR website Colorado.pdf (record 167) from TIGHAR Research CD USS Bushnell Survey (Sheet 9) via Randy Jacobson ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 14 Oct 1999 11:44:17 EDT From: Kathy Gire Subject: Antiques Roadshow To Vern: Thanks for your explanation about the chronometer. I wish I had paid more attention at the time, but we had company and I only got the number and maker into my feeble brain. My impression is that the number was NOT stenciled or handprinted, but you should be able to solve that when you see the tape. I hope such diligence is rewarded...for all of us! Kathy Gire ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 14 Oct 1999 12:15:14 EDT From: Randy Jacobson Subject: Re: Lambrecht photo vantage point and tidal data I apparently relied upon memory, by assuming Carondelet Reef was SW of Gardner: it is really SSE. Nevertheless, the flight path back from Carondelet to the USS Colorado places the planes relatively close to Gardner, and the view would have been to the pilot's left. If the photo was taken upon departure from Gardner, the prevailing view would have been directly behind the pilot's seat. I think the most reasonable time of the photo being taken would be just prior to landing in the lee of the Colorado. ************************************************************************** From Ric According to the deck log, COLORADO sighted Gardner Island "bearing 179.5 degrees (True), distance about 15 miles" at 09:45. They "sighted a wrecked ship a little to right of island bearing 180 degrees (True)." That places the ship about 15 miles directly north of the island on a heading of 150 degrees True and a speed of 13 knots 35 minutes before they changed course to create a lee for the first plane to land at 10:20. That puts them about 12 miles northeast of the island when the planes are recovered. In order to take the photo on the way back to the ship the flight would have to deviate 8 miles west from a direct course from Carondelet reef. There is no mention in any of the reports (Capt. Friedell's offcial report, Lambrecht's article for the Weekly Newsletter, or Short's letter to his father) of two flights being made over Gardner Island. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 14 Oct 1999 12:23:46 EDT From: Pat Gaston Subject: Flight manifest Does anyone know where I can get a copy of the manifest or inventory listing all items aboard the Electra when it left Florida? I know I've seen it, I just don't remember where. I need to ascertain whether Fred was packing a bottle of B&B or just plain Benedictine, a much inferior concoction. You know what a drinker he was... Okay, I'm kidding about the last part. But would appreciate a copy of the manifest, or directions on where to find it. ************************************************************************* From Ric I'm aware of no such manifest. Sure wish there was one, but I suspect that you're thinking of the inventory of the plane that was done by the Army Air Corps following the Luke Field accident that ended the first world flight attempt. In her usual style, Earhart walked away from the wreck and went home that same day leaving the Army to clean up the mess and ship the plane back to California. A young lieutenant (bless his shavetailed heart) made an obsessively detailed inventory of the contents of the plane as part of that process. We'll put up on the TIGHAR website as a Document of the Week very soon. It's fascinating, informative and contains some items that we can't even identify (what, dare we ask, is a Vibracorder?). LTM, Ric ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 14 Oct 1999 13:46:03 EDT From: Dave Bush Subject: Re: flight manifest (what, dare we ask, is a Vibracorder?). TRY AN EARLY FORM OF "TAPE RECORDER" LTM -- Blue Skies, Dave Bush ************************************************************************* From Ric Is that a guess or do you know for sure? ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 14 Oct 1999 13:55:29 EDT From: Harry Poole Subject: Vibracorder I cannot guarantee it, but I believe it might be a recorder of some type using a vibrator power supply. Power supplies from generators at that time often used a vibrating reed relay to convert the DC power to AC for transformers. These were described as vibrator power supplies. LTM Harry #2300 ************************************************************************* From Dennis McGee OK, I know Ric put this up here just for me, so I'll bite . . . an early form of a tape recorder, right? You know, "vibra" as in vibrate as in vocal cords . . . . I'm gonna stop right there and not go ANY further. LTM, (nope, not gonna say it!) Dennis O. McGee #0149CE ************************************************************************* From Ric Thank you Dennis. The complete entry is - Vibracorder "Ohmer-Kienzle" - which, I presume, must be the manufacturer. I didn't think that the magnetic tape recorder had been invented yet in 1937. I know there were "wire recorders" that came first. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 14 Oct 1999 16:30:09 EDT From: Bob Cullinan Subject: Vibracorders I found this definition on the web: "Vibracorders are specially designed clocks with chart recorders that measure movement." I'm not sure what AE &FN would use this for, but at least we know what it is. Bob Cullinan ************************************************************************** From Ric Hmmmm. I know that a "barograph" is a device that combines a clock with a barometer (altimeter) and records readings over time on a graph on a revolving drum. They're used to verify record flights. ************************************************************************** From Toņo Hello good people of Tighar. I found this searching yahoo. GRAZING BEHAVIOR OF MARES AND STEERS ON ORCHARDGRASS AND MARES ON COMMON BERMUDAGRASS To evaluate the differences in grazing behavior, three Quarter horse mares and three yearling steers were grazed together on a .75 hectare (ha) orchardgrass pasture. Grazing behavior was measured using a vibracorder attached to the halter of each animal. Vibracorders are specially designed clocks with chart recorders that measure movement. During grazing, the movement of the head marks the chart and grazing activity can be determined. ... Atentamente Antonio (Toņo) Gómez Abraham ************************************************************************** From Ric Sounds like there was some weird stuff going on in the back of that airplane. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 14 Oct 1999 16:35:01 EDT From: Randy Jacobson Subject: Re: Lambrecht photo vantage point and tidal data Graphical analysis of the bearings made indicate the Colorado was at 4degrees, 33'S, 174degrees, 26.5'W, and from Carondelet, the flight path was primarily northerly. They would pass Niku at the photo angle at about a range of 2.5-3 miles, which looks about right. ************************************************************************** From Ric Graphical schmaphical. The bearings were made at 09:45 and the planes weren't recovered until 10:20 by which time COLORADO had gone another 8 miles. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 14 Oct 1999 16:44:03 EDT From: Toņo Subject: Canton Engine Hello good and valiant people of Tighar. I would like to ask about the Canton engine. It does not get mentioned in the three Expedition Reports I have seen from the admirable Niku IIIIP journey. Is it still of the same interest? I'm a Canton engine go-person. Please tell us about it as much as is available. thank you. Faithfully yours Antonio (Toņo) Gomez A. *************************************************************************** From Ric We're still very interested in the Canton Engine but we did not go to Canton to do any further on-site investigation during Niku IIIIP. We're trying to find witnesses and, ideally, written records which can corroborate Bruce Yoho's recollections and possiblt help us determine where the engine was found. So far, we have not been able to find anyone who was there that remembers the engine being recovered although some have a recollection of an old engine being around the maintenance shop on Canton. We're still trying to track down some of the pilots. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 15 Oct 1999 10:52:00 EDT From: William Webster-Garman Subject: Vibracorders galore To my knowledge, there was never an audio recording device called a "vibracorder". Wire recorders were VERY primitive (read: "not very useful") and expensive in 1937. People generally used transcription discs, which sounded fairly good by then, for really important stuff. By 1940, wire recorders were being successfully marketed to the US business community as dictation devices. Their bandwidth was very narrow, distortion and dropouts were high, and they were barely able to handle the reproduction of a slow, clearly enunciated voice. The magnetic tape recorder was slowly developed in Germany through the late 30s-early 40s and was essentially unknown outside of Germany until 1945. That year, allied intelligence types had become mystified how Germany could afford to assemble full, high quality symphony orchestras to play Beethoven and Wagner live at 3AM in the waning days of the war. The mystery was solved when the Reichrundfunk studios in Hamburg were overrun: The place had several new magnetic tape machines and reels of celluloid tape coated with red iron oxide containing recordings of orchestral music. The two big, early American tape recorder manufacturerers, Ranger (named after the elite army unit) and Ampex, inherited their original technology directly from machines looted by US army personnel from German radio studios and smuggled privately back to the states. This formed the basis of audio recording technology in the US and Europe for the next 35 years. william 2243 ************************************************************************** From Ric Is this a cool Forum or what? ************************************************************************** From Tom King Well, it WAS the "Flying Laboratory," after all. Do you suppose they were trying to quantify variation in vibration under different flight conditions, or something? Or maybe they had horses. On pingpong balls. LTMares Tom King ************************************************************************** From Ty Sundstrom Many early aircraft used vibrator type time recorders that would show flight hours, as recording type tachometers were not in vogue until after W.W.II and were seldom seen on light aircraft (Taylorcraft, Luscombe, Aeronca, etc.) as standard equipment until even later. The more expensive light aircraft or slightly larger (Cessna 195, Beech 35, etc.) ones, often were the first to have recording tachs as standard issue equipment. They (vibrating recorders)often were secured from tampering via a key lock built into the recorder box. Sort of like an early flight data recorder in its simplest form. Ty Sundstrom ************************************************************************* From Ric Mystery solved. Thanks Ty. ************************************************************************* From Natko I found this at http://www.kienzle.net/new-e.htm. I should be very mistaken if this is not the same Kienzle who made AE's vibracorder. <> I took the liberty to make an online enquiry about the Ohmer - Kienzle vibracorder. I'll keep the Forum posted on the answers. Natko ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 15 Oct 1999 10:57:52 EDT From: Barb Norris Subject: Re: media matters I guess we're on the fringes of some major media blundering. So what else is new..? A friend just called to say she heard on the radio today that, "a group of archeologists from the U.S. were CURRENTLY searching the Fiji Islands for a box of bones they believe contain the remains of Amelia Earhart. Seems the group is facing serious opposition from the President of Fiji who is unwilling to let them search his premises. Sounds like he has something to hide." Good grief. Barb Norris ************************************************************************** From Ric I was answering phone calls about this all day yesterday. Apparently some pea brain resurrected a three month old story that was woefully inaccurate in the first place and threw it out onto the wire as current news. Lord protect us from slow news days. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 15 Oct 1999 11:11:19 EDT From: Dean Alexander Subject: Re: Canton Engine I was wondering same about he engine. In reading back thru past postings etc., the engine is mentioned several times but it doesn't seem that anyone has made an attempt, if its actually known where it is located, to go check it out, and see if it is from the Electra or not. This, even if it could not be determined exactly where it came from, would confirm that at least one of the engines was dismembered from the aircraft we are seeking at some point. Also, has anyone attempted to dive around the reef or just beyond it, if thats even possible, to see if any debris can be spotted underwater possibly wedged in the coral? With the newest revelation from our witness on Fiji, Emily, it seems that water exploration in the area of the "Steel Frames" might be fruitful. Just from reading all of the many great posts, and looking at the map and seeing where everything was found, it seems that the plane, or a plane, found itself at the northwest end of the island/atoll just northwest of where the SS. Norwich City wreck is. It most likely ended up close to or maybe on the reef, and in all likelyhood damaged. Soon afterward a storm came in from the west, northwest and ravaged it into pieces. Its easy to see a throwing pattern from the west northwest to south southeast of debris. I can't help but think some careful underwater exploration, especially in the area where that "beam" is seen in those photos, would be fruitful indeed. In any event, I am a novice with some raw observations, and gut feelings, who finds this all facinating. Great work so far to all. This is one of the last unresolved great mysteries of our time. Take care....DA ************************************************************************** From Ric That's a pretty good test. If we've got this thing right it should be obvious to a novice from raw observation. If you'll read the articles about the Canton engine on the TIGHAR website (http://www.tighar.org/Projects/AEArts.html) you'll see that we've been to Canton and found that the dump in which the engine is said to have been placed has been buried. We have not yet figured out a way to economically excavate several tons of coral rubble. A whole lot of scuba diving was done in by the Niku I expedition in 1989 but not right in that area. What we really need to figure out is whether the heavy stuff Emily saw on the reef in 1940 (and apparently shown in the photos taken in 1937 and 1938) went seaward or shoreward. We're hoping that the forensic imaging project will give us some clues. LTM, Ric ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 15 Oct 1999 11:21:07 EDT From: Ric Gillespie Subject: Photos Up All ten photos that are being examined by the Forensic Imaging Project are now up on the TIGHAR website at: http://www.tighar.org/Projects/bulletin.html You guys are gonna LOVE this research bulletin. LTM, Ric ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 15 Oct 1999 11:22:41 EDT From: Jim Thompson Subject: Space Imaging In the past, I've used the search engines of a few Satellite Image providers to look for images of Niku. Usually it's a matter of just typing in lat/long and indicating the desired imagery. Typically the matter of "cloud cover" enters into the matter. Using the "I'll take anything you've got" criterion has always yielded "No Results". Too bad. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 15 Oct 1999 11:38:25 EDT From: Randy Jacobson Subject: Re: Lambrecht photo vantage point and tidal data Excuse me, Ric, but graphical analysis of the bearings made by the Colorado, between 1000 and 1050 local time, a total of ten separate bearings, of both the north and south tip of Gardner simultaneously is a much better navigational method than extrapolation from star sights at 0600 and the log entry at 0800. The reconstructed navigation of the Colorado using reported fixes (excluding the bearings) is quite similar to that of the bearings, including the turn into the wind of the Colorado just before recovery. This indicates two separate, contemporaneous documents which agree to precisely locate where the Colorado was just prior to and after recovery of the aircraft. There is no other similar quality of navigational fixes anywhere for any ship during the entire search. If you are not interested in tried and true methods of scientific methodologies to determine what went on, why are we all here? I deplore your sneering attitude towards this analysis. ************************************************************************** From Ric Ahhh Jeez...I'm in trouble again. You apparently have access to information I was not aware of, in which case I owe you an apology. Where are you finding these ten bearings? I have a copy of the COLORADO deck logs and the only bearings I see are the two at 0945 which have the island at 179.5 True and the shipwreck at 180 True. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 15 Oct 1999 11:52:44 EDT From: Ignacio Subject: Crash Site Picture Rick, I have just learned about this forum in the last couple of months; I have attempted to read most of of the FAQ, latest postings to the forum, the TIGHAR tracks, and the reports from the expeditions. One item that I am still not clear in my mind is based on the following events: 1 - Friday July 2, 1937 - AE crashes somewhere on or near Niku 2 - Week July 3 through July 8, 1937 - AE's Electra 10E possibly destroyed/hidden by rough surf waves 3 - Friday July 9, 1937 - Airplane search launched from USS Colorado, reports of no airplane crash visible, but 'recent habitation'. If the crash site picture, 99.99% (appx) identified to AE's Electra 10E was taken, looks like it would have to have been taken during #2 above, or the plane was hidden out of site (underwater ?).... 4 - Then perhaps if the plane was submerged, later on was brought back out to the reef/beach, by a subsequent surf wave action ? 5 - OR perhaps the picture was taken elsewhere ? If the picture was taken during the week of July3-July 8th, seems to me like this would have been a very newsworthy and famous event, so it can almost be ruled out ? Then we are left with the plane 'was hidden from view' during the search of July 9, 1937, and was brought back out, almost intact after that search, the picture was then taken, and then the airplane was either totally destroyed by the surf or hidden back under water. Then the TIGHAR expedition finds a 99.99% certainty piece (of Plexiglas) window that most likely came from AE's Electra on Niku, Are these the sequence of events as it is now thought to have happened ? I'm struggling with #4 and #5 above; does anyone have more insight or ideas as to what happened in #3 and #4 above ? Regards, Ignacio ************************************************************************** From Ric I can't resolve the Wreck Photo with Emily's recollections and the photographs that seem to corroborate them. I agree that the Wreck Photo shows a big-engined Lockheed 10 (a C or an E) but there is nothig in the photo that is unique to NR16020. forced to choose between the Wreck Photo (of unknown provenance) and the "Wreckage Photos" of known provenance, i have to go with the latter. I don't know where the Wreck Photo was taken or what airplane it shows, but I don't think it was taken on Niku and I don't think it's Earhart's plane. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 15 Oct 1999 11:57:54 EDT From: Don Neumann Subject: Norwich City/Reef Debris In several posts over the past month, we've made much about the seeming paradox of the native islanders seeing wreckage that they perceived to be from an aircraft & european persons visiting the island, who never recorded ever seeing such wreckage. It has occurred to me (being an avid fisherperson) that if many of the islanders spent much of their time fishing on &/or off the reef, they would probably have spent a great deal of that time around the immediate area of the Norwich wreck, because the wreck itself & it's debris field would prove to be an excellent artificial structure serving as a relatively safe haven for forage fish seeking to flee from the jaws of larger, predator fish foraging for food on or around the reef. Thus these islanders, spending considerable time, in reasonably close proximity to the wreck & having a fairly intimate familiarity with the reef & it's environs, on a frequent basis, would certainly have far greater perception of the debris/wreckage that existed on the reef than visitors lacking that same perspective. Also, the question was raised as to why would AE/FN leave the immediate area of the Norwich City for any other location on the island. We might recall that AE/FN had no knowledge that the US Navy was about to launch such a broad based _aerial_ search & probably concluded their only hope of rescue was the Itaska, which had been unable to home in on their radio signals; Therefore, since the Norwich City could only be seen on one side of the island (from sea level), it would seem prudent to explore the island (at least along the open beaches) to establish (if possible) more than one visable site from which they could look for the approaching Itaska, before their strength, water & any provisions they had available, ran out. My only problem with such scenario, is why they didn't try to leave some sort of signal or sign as to which direction they headed. (Of course maybe they did but the transient nature of the signals or signs they left were quickly obliterated by the hostile environment of the island.) Unfortunately, 62 years later, it's almost impossible to reconstruct the factual scenario they were acutally faced with (one or both injured or ill, shortage &/or lack of fresh water & food, the aircraft badly damaged upon landing or destroyed by high/rough surf shortly thereafter), so the best we can do is speculate what they _might_ have done under various circumstances_we_might envision, with no degree of certainty that is what they actually_did_ & of course we keep on looking for the remains of the plane & the crew. (Certainly a tantalizing combination of fascination & frustration!) Don Neumann *************************************************************************** From Ric I really really like your point about why you go fishing near the Norwich City. Not being a "fishperson" myself I hadn't thought of that. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 15 Oct 1999 12:02:34 EDT From: John Subject: Canton Engine & Tree Trunk I landed on Canton Feb.13 1942. I observed A tree trunk on the beach It must have been 3 1/2 to 4 ft across by 35 to 40 ft. long. It was washed up on the beachby a storm There were no trees on CANTON , only one coconut tree on the north side. Maybe the same storm that carried the tree trunk to CANTON washed the electra off the reef. Just a thought. CANTON & GUADALCANAL JOHN ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 15 Oct 1999 12:09:28 EDT From: Mark Turner Subject: More vibracorders I believe that the Ohmer-Kienzle Vibracorder is now similar to the Mannesman VDO Kienzle Tachograph. It could have been used to show that the airplane had not landed prematurely during a World Flight attempt, or the non-stop flight from Hawaii to California. See this Web page http://www.vdokienzle.com/comvehic/2111.htm Historical data on Kienzle. A heritage of innovation in precision instrumentation. The tachograph was invented in 1921 by Kienzle Apparate GmbH, a German company which was the original parent of VDO Instruments. Today VDO Instruments, VDO Instruments and Kienzle are part of Mannesmann AG, a multinational corporation with annual revenues of over $18-billion. Mannesmann is a leading supplier of high technology products, with a major emphasis in vehicular and process control instrumentation. This commitment to innovation and precision in instrumentation is a valuable resource to VDO as it strives to meet the high expectations of North American companies and public agencies for advanced fleet operation information systems. Mark L. Turner ************************************************************************** From Ric Earhart was scheduled to make many, many stops during the world flight attempt. Nobody cared how many stops she made. From what Ty Sundsrtrom says it seems most likely that the vibracorder was aboard simply to keep track of engine time in the absence of recording tachometers. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 15 Oct 1999 12:11:09 EDT From: Chris Kennedy Subject: Re: Space Imaging I have contacted Space Imaging for advice/guidance with respect to a separate project I am working on in the Middle East. I will let the Forum know what I find out, but I am told by Space Imaging that, as of now, only photos "in inventory" are available. Apparently, the group has launched their own satellite, which will begin taking pictures to order in late December or early in the new year. Their web site is www.spaceimaging.com. They have several sample photos. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 15 Oct 1999 16:02:08 EDT From: Randy Jacobson Subject: Re: Lambrecht photo vantage point and tidal data Capt. Friedell wrote a letter to the Naval Hydrographic Office documenting the mislocation of Gardner Island. Included in that letter were all of the bearings, times, and a chart of the Colorado track from prior to 6AM, IIRC. I do remember that the 6AM star sight fix had at least 6 star fixes to constrain the location very tightly. I will bring you a copy of the letter next weekend. ************************************************************************* From Ric I was not aware of that. This information could help us georeference the island to the GPS data we collected in 1997. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 15 Oct 1999 16:08:40 EDT From: Ignacio Subject: DF on Howland In Wilhelm Friedell's (Captain of the U.S.S. Colorado) report, the portion of the paragraph quoted below states that at Howland Island there were weather observers with a direction finder; was there ever a report filed by these people, stating where the last known AE's radio signals were coming from ? "On Howland Island there are four weather observers, from Honolulu equipped with a direction finder for this flight, and a radio for communication with the Honolulu Radio Station, and the Coast Guard Cutter ITASCA." Ignacio ************************************************************************** From Ric The direction finder on Howland was a high frequency unit brought there aboard the ITASCA. No directional bearings were obtained on Earhart's inflight transmissions but a dubious "NW/SE" bearing was taken one of the alleged post-loss signals. The activities of the DF on Howland are documented in a log kept by the operator. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 15 Oct 1999 16:25:54 EDT From: Russ Matthews Subject: Re: Norwich City/Reef Debris << I really really like your [Don Neumann] point about why you go fishing near the Norwich City. Not being a "fishperson" myself I hadn't thought of that. >> This is a very interesting idea about good fishing near debris. I'd have to say that the sharks of Niku agree with Don's observation. I spent a good deal of time on the reef during our past trip. In the Norwich City wreckage and out along the Westen edge (where there are large chunks of coral rubble thrown strewn about the surface) I could see at least half a dozen sharks at any one time chasing their next meal. The smooth areas remained relatively quiet. LTM, Russ ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 15 Oct 1999 16:34:19 EDT From: Jim Subject: Photo #5 I saw the list post on the photos. Interesting work. Maybe good photo analysis will turn something up...even after all these years. Regarding photo #5. A comment. Although the photos may have been taken by PBY, the outline of the "aircraft" in the photo does not at all resemble a PBY. It looks more like a Curtiss Helldiver (don't ask me the BU number!). They are very big. Helldivers have a thick body and a very distinctive large rudder. Wings, mounted low on fuselage, may not be visible if A/C is moving right to left and in a right hand bank so you only see a silhouette. As low as it is it would be a dicy maneuver. But, back then risks were relative. A PBY has a pylon mounted high wing and twin engines. Although it has a large rudder the body is slim and under hangs the wings. Even if the plane was banking to the right you should see the necelles the pylon and maybe parts of the wings since they are high and not buried in the shadow of the fuselage. Lastly, the object appears to be nearly on the same plane, or on the same plane, as the tidal flats. Although the shape is not close to a Lockheed, damage, shapes and shadows can play tricks on the eye. How interesting! Regards, Jim ************************************************************************* From Ric I know what you mean. When I first saw the profile I too immediately thought of an SB2C but it's too big for a Helldiver and the type didn't go into production until a year after the photo was taken. What's throwing you off, I think, is that the PBYs that were flying this mission were not the PBY 5s and 5As we're used to seeing but the earlier version with the more rounded vertical tail. (We have good photos of them in other pictures from the same mission.) But I agree with you that he must be right down on the deck. ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 16 Oct 1999 10:16:08 EDT From: jvanzanten Subject: Re: Photo #5 I was beginning to wonder why there is no shadow if it is "on the deck". I suppose it could be overcast, but I also got wondering if the image is the shadow of the aircraft from which the photo was taken. Is this possible? ************************************************************************* From Ric I don't think so. If you saw the whole frame you'd see that the camera plane is way too far away to cast such a well-defined shadow. Good question though. If the shape is a plane flying low over the reef where is its shadow? ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 16 Oct 1999 10:19:02 EDT From: Dick Evans Subject: Howland For those interested in Howland Island here is a very nice web page: http://geography.miningco.com/education/scilife/geography/library/cia/blchowland.htm ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 16 Oct 1999 10:20:27 EDT From: Bill Stout Subject: VIBRACORDER I remember a FBO in the Chicago area that had trouble with folks turning off the hobbs meters (via master switch)and cheating on the amount of time (rent)they paid for. A recording tach would be lower if flown with a low rpm. He cured the problem by mounting these big ugly recording clocks over the hat shelf on all of his fleet. They were activated (you guessed it) by vibration. I was told at the time that these devices were commonly used by off-road machinery and trucks to record engine time, since they were virtually impossibe to foil. LTM (who is off subject) Bill Stout ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 16 Oct 1999 10:37:06 EDT From: Tom King Subject: Re: media matters Ric wrote: <> Hoo, boy, that could do wonders for our relations with the Government of Fiji. ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 16 Oct 1999 10:40:55 EDT From: Jim Tierney Subject: Re: Photos Up Ric---Nice photos....... I am sure that when you get a better view of #5- it will be easier to determine the a/c in the picture.......... Even I cant do much with what is shown.......I guess that most likely it is a PBY.. Makes sense based on the facts you have......... LTM---- Jim Tierney ************************************************************************* From Ric Yeah, I'm a lot more interested in the stuff on the reef in Photos 1 and 3 and whether we can find it in Photos 2 and 4. ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 16 Oct 1999 10:46:32 EDT From: Tom King Subject: Re: Norwich City/Reef Debris If I recall correctly (I'm on the road without the necessary reference), in "Of Islands and Men" Harry Maude mentions shooting sharks with pistols off the wreck of the Norwich City. Sharks, especially of the common garden variety, wouldn't deter a skillful Gilbertese fisherman, however, especially fishing on a rising or falling tide on the reef edge -- a VERY productive habitat, especially around the wreck. LTM (who doesn't personally approve of shooting sharks) Tom King ************************************************************************** From Ric The Gilbertese are not at all intimidated by ol' Bakoa (pronounced BAKwa). The consider it great fun to grab a shark by the tail and lop it off with a machete. ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 16 Oct 1999 10:52:23 EDT From: Warren Lambing Subject: Re: Norwich City/Reef Debris > From Don Neumann > > Unfortunately, 62 years later, it's almost impossible to reconstruct the > factual scenario they were acutally faced with (one or both injured or > ill, shortage &/or lack of fresh water & food, the aircraft badly > damaged upon landing or destroyed by high/rough surf shortly > thereafter), so the best we can do is speculate what they _might_ have > done under various circumstances_we_might envision, with no degree of > certainty that is what they actually_did_ & of course we keep on looking > for the remains of the plane & the crew. (Certainly a tantalizing > combination of fascination & frustration!) I have wondering this for a while (and it is an unanswerable question), what physical condition they were in, at the time Lt. Lambrecht flew over. As you said it is an unknown factor, but it could explain why they were not visible on the fly over. Thanks for the fishing information, I have learn a lot of useful information on this list, I consider that among it. Regards. Warren Lambing ************************************************************************** From Ric As we know from personal experience, you don't have to be incapacitated to miss an airplane flying over Niku. If you're back in the bush at all you can't see the sky and the ambient noise of wind and surf masks the sound until the plane is very close. Then it can easily take ten or fifteen minutes to fight your way out to the beach even if you're in a hurry. ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 17 Oct 1999 09:45:44 EDT From: Don Jordan Subject: Photos I notice debris from the Norwich City on the reef in one of the photos. Will you elaborate a little more on what type of debris this is. Where did it come from on the ship? Were there big, or heavy items up on the shoreline in the trees? Was there a specific pattern to the debris field? Was any ship debris found anywhere else on the island? Now far to Starboard and Port was debris found? I think you mentioned something about this in the last expedition report. I also think one team member said he explored the wreck in detail on the last trip. Thanks, Don J. ************************************************************************** From Ric There is now, right at the edge of the beach probably an eighth of a mile southeast of the ship, a section of iron hull plating about 15 feet long by maybe 6 feet wide that must weigh at least a ton. The biggest pieces of debris I've seen actually up in the treeline weigh, I would guess, on the order of several hundred pounds. The pieces of debris you can see on the reef in Photo #5, #6, and #7 could easily weigh a ton or more each. Exactly where on the ship they came from is hard to tell untill we get a better look at them forensically. Look at Photo #2 and think of the ship as if it was sitting on the edge of a table with the stern hanging off the edge. The edge of the "table" is signified by the line of breakers. As you see, the ship is about half up on the reef and half off. As you can see from Photo #1, #2, and #4, there is little or no ship debris on the reef prior to Photo #5 which was taken in June 1941 after the stern had broken off the Norwich City. The pattern of wreckage distribution is especially apparent in Photo #5, #6, and #7. If we consider the bow of the ship to be 12 o'clock, you'll see that the wreckage is distributed shoreward almost exclusively between, say, 11:30 and 2 o'clock. This is entirely consistent with the storms out of the northwest and west between November and April (been there, done that). What is interesting is that there seems to be one anomalous object visible as a black dot in Photo #6 (June 1941) at about 10 o'clock which may have moved shoreward some by Photo #7 (January 1942). I wonder if it may be part of the stuff we see a little closer to the reef edge in Photo #1 (October 1937) and Photo #3 (December-February 1938). LTM, Ric ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 17 Oct 1999 10:27:04 EDT From: Shirley Subject: Post-Loss Radio Project & Skin Diver Can't wait to get started on the post-loss messages chronology. Nice cover on November Skin Diver mag. Article isn't too bad either. I'll bet there are some really neat things to see on/under the reef. LTM Shirley 2299 *************************************************************************** From Ric Shirley and four other TIGHAR members: Jon Greenberg 2047 , Rob Hammet 2319S, and Bill Moffet 2156; with Jim Thompson 2185 as Team Leader are about to get started on a project that will pull all of the reported post-loss radio signals out from among the 3,000+ official government radio messages contained on the Research CD. We'll then database them here so that they can be examined and evaluated for patterns that may not have been previously apparent. In a separate project Bob Brandenburg 2286 is evaluating both the inflight and post-loss transmissions from the aircraft using computer modeling of the radio system and environmental factors. As Shirley mentioned, the cover article in the November issue of Skin Diver magazine is a very well-written account of our 1997 expedition by "Cat" Holloway who is on the Nai'a crew and is also TIGHAR member 2043. LTM, Ric ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 17 Oct 1999 10:31:48 EDT From: Vern Klein Subject: Wire Recorders, one more time. Maybe the forum can stand one more off-topic post on this subject, just for the curiosity of it. In 1943 I was maintaining a bunch of wire recorders that were actually pretty good. Thinking we might not have much good old big-band stuff to listen to in Europe, we had some of it recorded. The quality was very nearly as good as the 78 RPM records of the day. If I remember correctly, these things were built by Western Electric. They were not exactly experimental units, but units that were ready to go into field service, which they did. They bounced around in half-tracks all over Europe. An interesting aspect of these things is that they were "cassette recorders and players." The "cassettes" weighed about 6 pounds each and were pretty big. But they were smaller than a bread-box! There was a splined drive shaft to couple to the motor in the record/playback unit and mating electrical connectors for the audio signal. The cassette contained two wire spools about 2 inches in diameter and, maybe 3 inches tall, and a level-winding mechanism - like a fishing reel. The record/playback head was part of the level-winder - the wire-guide slot with the magnetic gap to sense magnetic fluz induced by the wire. Of course, the wire was magnetized in a longitudinal direction - twist didn't matter. The wire did break occassionally. If you could avoid getting the wire all snarled up in hopeless fashion, it was very small and springy, you could repair the break. You would heat the ends with a match or lighter flame to anneal the hardened steel wire. Then you would tie a square knot and trim the ends close. It usually worked well. The knot would rotate to a favorable orientation and go right through the guide in the level-winder! Some of those repaired cassettes continued in service for many hours of running time. As mentioned here, we eventually found that the germans had some pretty good wire recorders too. I never saw evidence of magnetic tape recording anywhere I got to. The first magnetic tape recording I was aware of was experimental work at the MIT Radiation Lab. shortly after WWII. ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 17 Oct 1999 17:19:03 EDT From: Monty Subject: Photos and Emily interview It has been a long time since I have been on the Forum, so please excuse me if I print some things that have already been covered. But I find the recent photos and the Emily interview very interesting. The witness accounts of aircraft wreckage on the northwest side of the island near the ship wreck, leads me to believe that they contain some truth. I believe that location is where Earhart and Noonan would want to be,mainly because north or northwest is where they would expect ships searching for them to come from. Now that the wreckage has been placed near the reef and breakers a good distance from the beech, it helps to clear up some doubts I had about the search planes not seeing it. I believe it is several little things that add up to not sighting the aircraft by the planes from the USS Colorado. First, evidently it was hightide. when the search was conducted. Their eyes would be mostly on the beech. Lambrecht's report seemed to imply that he thought most likely if Earhart landed on this island it would be in the lagoon. Plus the white breakers could contribute to making it hard to see the wreckage. Also the search planes themselves, You have to look over the side to look down, the lower wing blocks some of the view especially for the man in front, Even sight of the shipwreck could of distracted their eyes to contribute to over seeing the visiable parts of the aircraft, and at hightide I don't think they would expect to see any airplane out near the reef anyway. I do have a few questions about finding aircraft pieces today, after over 60 years. I understand that the reef is a coral reef , coral would cover things up some. Is there a lot of sand out on the Island side of the reef where pieces could be buried? Just one more question, I noticed in one of the photos that the reefflat seemed to slope down from the beech to the reef at what looked like a pretty good angle. Could this slope have made landing an airpllane more difficult? Thank you Monty 2224 ************************************************************************** From Ric There is little or no new