========================================================================= Date: Fri, 1 Jun 2001 08:27:09 EDT Reply-To: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum Sender: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum From: "Richard E. Gillespie" Subject: Re: Ghostbusters/Edge of Reef MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit From Chris Kennedy I guess I'm curious---can you tell me what your ethnographers and cultural head told you the reaction of Gilbertese children would actually be, i.e., would they stay away from the site? I read your response to be that Gilbertese view ghosts differently, which is fine, but tells nothing about reactions and leaves the ultimate conclusion hanging. The reason what they told you is relevant and important is that in the interview you mention with Tapania Taiki, below, after she says the adults tried to scare the kids away with ghost stories, she adds "The kids would play with the pieces on the reef and near the European permanent house" (Source--"I Saw Pieces of an Airplane.....TIGHAR"). She also mentions playing with the pieces another time in the interview. Also, to the extent that we think that colonists were using the airplane to make combs, fishing lines (Mims story) etc., the ghosts didn't scare them away either. Now, who you gonna call? --Chris Kennedy *************************************************************************** From Ric Ghosts played a huge role in traditional Gilbertese religion and a general acceptance of the existence of the spirits of the dead as active agents in the world of the living survived the transition to Christianity. That's the main difference between the Western view and the Gilbertese view. In our culture, there are still plenty of people who believe in ghosts despite the conventional wisdom and popular attitudes that deride such belief. In Gilbertese culture, not everyone believes in ghosts but nobody thinks you're being silly if you do. Grimble describes a general Gilbertese belief that, if the deceased expired without receiving the proper "lifting of the head" ritual (which showed the soul the way to way to the afterlife), the ghost could get lost and wander around in this world causing trouble. They could cause bad dreams, evil thoughts and even strangle the living. Kids, of course, can disregard warnings in any culture, but I think it's safe to say that for a Gilbertese kid to say "I ain't 'fraid of no ghosts." took more guts than it did for us when we were kids. LTM, Ric ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 1 Jun 2001 08:32:45 EDT Reply-To: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum Sender: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum From: "Richard E. Gillespie" Subject: Dozer work MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit From Dick Evans Hi, The only thing that comes to mind was that the natives were clearing a stretch from the ocean to the lagoon for the purpose of planting -as I recall -coconut trees. They had always helped us unload diesel fuel so they asked if someone could bring out the bulldozer and help them clear the site. This was done. The area was somewhere between the southernmost channel and the SE tip where the Loran station was located. Hope this is some help. Dick Evans *************************************************************************** From Ric Bingo. That's where we're seeing the feature in the satelite imagery. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 1 Jun 2001 08:38:41 EDT Reply-To: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum Sender: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum From: "Richard E. Gillespie" Subject: Re: Prioirities MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit From Alan Caldwell For Don Neumann Don, this has been beat to death but here is my take. I have no clue whether AE ever said she had a half hour of fuel left but it makes no difference. Obviously she had far more. I ran a fuel curve on her and she probably had about four hours of fuel left at that time. Her gauges should not have been so close to zero as to have allowed her to be that far off. Possible though. If they had preplanned their fuel they would have known 30 minutes could not have been right. If you think this through it makes no sense. The gauges were not that accurate in the first place and looking at them defies anyone stating an exact amount of fuel left. She might have said "low" or "nearly out" or "almost on empty" but "30 minutes" defies credibility. Returning to Saigon from an emergency crew recovery mission I had half my boost pump lights on on down wind but I couldn't have told you how long I could fly. It is clear to me from the nature of her broadcasts her fuel was still sufficient to go for a considerable time and distance. Thirty minutes of fuel or any amount precluding flying to nearest land in the Phoenix group meant they were going to ditch and nothing in her transmissions indicated any such kind of urgency or even that they had decided or needed to decide on a course of action. In my opinion "30 minutes" was never said. Nor is there any evidence or indication her transmission was cut short. Who ever suggested that is implying she cut herself short by changing frequencies in the middle of her own sentence or transmission. Do you hang up in the middle of a phone call you have initiated? I think that was a senseless suggestion by who ever made it. In trying to reconstruct what may have occurred one needs to suggest the most logical events within known facts. Then recognize not everyone does the most logical thing but few do really stupid things when their life is in the balance. Both AE and FN were pilots. I would have a difficult time believing either one panicked and most certainly not both at the same time. They may have made judgment errors that in hind sight should not have been made but I can't see them coming unglued. Alan #2329 ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 1 Jun 2001 08:39:47 EDT Reply-To: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum Sender: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum From: "Richard E. Gillespie" Subject: Re: Put downs MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit From Alan Caldwell For Bob Sarnia > Alan, I'm sorry if I'm slow on the uptake and not as smart as Bob, I pointed to the two statements you made that common sense has to tell you are invalid. If you can't see that you may well be correct. Alan #2329 ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 1 Jun 2001 08:40:43 EDT Reply-To: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum Sender: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum From: "Richard E. Gillespie" Subject: Re: Putnam As Spy Guy MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit From Ross Devitt It's interesting that although both Amelia Earhart and Eleanor Roosevelt rate a mention in the declassified FBI FOIA files at http://foia.fbi.gov there is no mention of Putnam so far among the people the FBI was keeping an eye on in those days... Th' WOMBAT ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 1 Jun 2001 08:43:51 EDT Reply-To: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum Sender: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum From: "Richard E. Gillespie" Subject: Re: Put downs MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit From Bill Leary > We can argue facts all day long (and we do) but when it becomes apparent that > somebody doesn't grasp the basic principles of the investigative process, > there's not much I can do. I think it's important to stress that this is THE investigative process, not the "Niku theorists" process. This methodology is used anywhere that one want's to get to the actual facts that lie behind any situation. It's used by crime scene investigators, crash investigators and even in more mundane situations like system failure analysis or even car repair. If you want to get to the facts, this (or a domain specialized variant of it) is how you do it. - Bill #2229 **************************************************************************** From Ric Amen. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 1 Jun 2001 08:53:26 EDT Reply-To: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum Sender: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum From: "Richard E. Gillespie" Subject: Re: Recovery and restoration MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit From Dick Evans Gentlemen or Ladies as the case may be, For what good it will do anyone, let me comment on the business of the Japanese taking the Lockheed off Gardner and all the speculation about whether or not it would have been possible or practical. As one note comments there was an occasion when a bulldozer fell into a crevasse and had to pulled out with another bulldozer. This occurred after we were there about 6 months when the CG, for some senseless reason, decided to replace our one DC generator with two more AC generators. A crew was sent down with the equipment on a net tender from Hawaii. They towed a landing barge (LCM- Landing Craft Mechanized) hauling a bulldozer that was two or three times bigger in size than the one we had. There was no trouble bringing the equipment ashore. They used the usual technique of running the barge up onto the shelf and unloading the gear. When the weight was taken off the barge it immediately popped up in the water and they could manuever it under its own power. Getting a loaded barge off the reef was another story. When they were done making the generator switch, which took about a week, they loaded the equipment on the barge and the big bulldozer pushed the barge into deep water and it returned, under its own power, to the net tender. Now came the tough part. How do we get the bulldozer back to the ship? The first attempts tried to push the barge with the bulldozer on board into deep water by using the small dozer that was part of the manning station equipment. This was done by pushing on the front end of the barge while the coxswain revved up his engines to top speed when a wave was rolling under the barge. But every time they tried that the front end of the barge stayed on the shelf and the rear broached to. Now the small dozer had to push the barge back into line with the fingers (what Ric refers to as "spur and groove features") and try again. Same results. It was on one of these attempts to turn the barge that the small dozer tipped into the crevasse. Now what? The net tender signalled that it would shoot in a line and pull the barge off the reef. The problem with that was that the reef prevented them from getting close enough to the barge for the line to carry. We formed our usual line of guys walking out onto the finger about 20 or 30 feet past the barge and they shot a line over our heads. Someone grabbed the line, ran it over and handed it to the crew on the barge. They began to pull it onto the barge and we could see that there was about a 3 inch hawser attached. They looped the hawser over the davit on the end of the barge and with each wave lifting the rear of the barge the net tender was able to pull the barge a couple of feet closer to the deep water. After 4 or 5 waves it popped into deep water and went out under its own power. The barge with the dozer on board must have weighed 10 or 12 tons and pulling it off the shelf took about 10 or 15 minutes after the line was attached. But now what do we do about the small dozer which the manning detail needed? This was taken care of the next morning while I was on watch so I did not see it being done. I was told that the barge brought the dozer back onto the shelf and was pulling a tow rope. The big dozer pulled the small one out of the crevasse, rolled back onto the barge, and the net tender pulled it off the reef. How long did this take? By the time I got off watch at 12 Noon the small dozer was parked beside the generator hut and the big dozer, the barge, and the net tender were over the horizon and out of sight. So it is not a matter of weight; it is a matter of bouancy. Now, would a sealed aircraft body with empty gas tanks provide enough bouancy to enable someone to pull the plane off the shelf - even with no wheels? My suspicion is that it would but I was wrong one other time in my life but that is another story. That is why we must send an expedition back down and hope that they can come up with something that will prove the situation one way or the other. If the Lockheed was in fact dragged off the shelf it undoubtedly suffered some damage and perhaps a piece of the plane can be found. I the wing was torn off during this, the Japanese probably pulled it off the shelf and took it along. There is, of course, the possibility that some of the parts dropped between the fingers but I hope nobody is stupid enough to try to go down there and look. On the other hand, if they find aircraft parts it may raise more questions than it answers. Does all of this yacking suggest that a ship coulld have pulled the Lockheed off the shelf? I will leave that to the experts - but in my opinion it could. Does all this yacking with unexpert opinion added prove that this is what was done? Good Lord NO! And although the search party, being human, will undoubtedly go with specific expectations the ones I know will have open enough minds to realistically consider whatever they find. So good luck Ric. I hope you find something definitive and I'll see you on TV - again. And it wont be a dress rehearsal. Dick Evans **************************************************************************** From Ric Thanks Dick. Unfortunately, it looks like we're going to have to find somebody stupid enough to go down and look in the fingers in the area north of the Norwich City, and I'm the only one that meets that qualification. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 1 Jun 2001 09:05:54 EDT Reply-To: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum Sender: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum From: "Richard E. Gillespie" Subject: Re: Dozer work MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit From Tom King Bingo indeed. Dick, can you recall about when the 'dozing was done? Thanks much. Tom King *************************************************************************** From Ric Ya know, it's really encouraging that we can use the satelite imagery like this. Tom had noted an apparently bulldozed area back in '89 but he couldn't pin it down on a map. The satelite imagery shows a very even area of vegetation, suggesting a thorough clearing and leveling at some time. Dick has now confirmed that such an event took place in the very area the satellite imagery caused us to suspect. In other words, the imagery led us to a hypothesis that we were able to test and confirm (albeit anecdotally). We should be able to test it on the ground later this summer - not that it partucularly helps solve the mystery but it's a good example of using a combination of anecdote, remote sensing, and "ground truth" to establish facts. It's the same process we're using on the western reef to look for airplane wreckage. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 1 Jun 2001 09:09:04 EDT Reply-To: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum Sender: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum From: "Richard E. Gillespie" Subject: Off-Topic catastrophies MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit From Ric It's totally off-topic but I can't resist. Anybody seen Pearl Harbor? Reviews? ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 1 Jun 2001 09:22:59 EDT Reply-To: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum Sender: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum From: "Richard E. Gillespie" Subject: Re: Recovery and restoration MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit From Marty Moleski > *** From Ric > > Thanks Dick. Unfortunately, it looks like we're going to have to find > somebody stupid enough to go down and look in the fingers in the area > north of the Norwich City, and I'm the only one that meets that > qualification. Have you got some kind of scuba armor that you can use? :o( Marty **************************************************************************** From Ric The need to do this has only recently become apparent. I'm just getting through the Denial and Anger phases and am beginning to work on Bargaining. Grief and Acceptance will have to wait. Seriously, this will be a major topic of conversation with our team. It's going to take some careful planning. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 1 Jun 2001 10:35:45 EDT Reply-To: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum Sender: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum From: "Richard E. Gillespie" Subject: Re: Recovery and restoration MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit From Tom King Dick -- Thanks for giving us a full account of the Bulldozer Incident, which we'd heard about but never had the full story on before (as far as I know). It says something about how times have changed that when Ric and I met with NOAA to review the satellite images, they scolded us for even WALKING on the reef flat. LTM Tom King ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 1 Jun 2001 10:41:05 EDT Reply-To: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum Sender: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum From: "Richard E. Gillespie" Subject: The lost 'dozer MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit From Randy Jacobson So, the anecdotal story Ric has told about a 'dozer still sitting out beyond the reef edge is bogus? I remember stories about the Oceaneering sonar survey that couldn't find the dozer. It seems we now know the reason why. *************************************************************************** From Ric Just another one of Gillespie's lies. When we first heard the story of the lost dozer there was no mention of it having been recovered. Much later, on the forum, we learned of the recovery ( I guess you were absent that day). Dick Evans has now given us a full account of the episode. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 1 Jun 2001 11:14:35 EDT Reply-To: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum Sender: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum From: "Richard E. Gillespie" Subject: Finger Food MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit From John Pratt I know that you do these things very carefully and safety is a major consideration in these expeditions (notice the accounts in the Nai'a webpages),but the area seems potentially dangerous. Maybe there is some better way to investigate these features. Can you provide a description of the "fingers" and let Forum members suggest alternatives? LTM John Pratt 2373 *************************************************************************** From Ric Our knowledge of them is limited to what we can see in the aerial photos and satelite imagery (which isn't much) and videotape taken by our divers in 1989 when they did a preliminary exploration of one or two of these features, but not in this exact area. In the tape, the diver swims up a crevasse or crack in the reef face that is perhaps ten feet wide at the mouth and gradually narrows and shallows the more shoreward you go. There are surely crevasses that are bigger and smaller. Overhead you can see the breaking surf rolling by and with each wa ve the diver is alternately propelled forward then sucked backward. The further he goes and the narrower and shallower the crevasse becomes, the more pronounced the surging effect. It's not clear from the tape whether the surf was relatively calm or about average, but I don't think it was unusually rough on this particular day (hard to tell when viewing it only from below). The bottom of the crevasse is sand, some of which can be seen surging back and forth with the water. The walls of the crevasse are irregular and jagged. There is no living coral in the crevasse as there is along the reef face outside. The diver turned around before he got to the really shallow area where he would be hit with the breaking surf. It's my impression that, as long as the surf wasn't unusually big, a diver could explore these crevasses from the seaward side without undue risk up until a depth of maybe ten feet. Beyond that he may be able to see up ahead to the end of the crevasse but it would probably be too narrow and violent for him to go there. I wasn't down there myself, so the above is just my impression. I'll check with Tommy Love who was on our Dive Team in '89. If my impression is correct it may be that the best way to check out the grooves is from the seaward side and only approach from the landward side if there is something interesting that needs closer inspection. For one thing, if you're approaching underwater from the seaward side, the predominant force (the seaward surge of water draining off the reef flat) is moving you away from the hard stuff. LTM, Ric ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 1 Jun 2001 11:15:51 EDT Reply-To: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum Sender: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum From: "Richard E. Gillespie" Subject: Re: Off-Topic catastrophies MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit From Doug Brutlag > Anybody seen Pearl Harbor? Reviews? Yep. Just saw it last weekend. Kinda like Titanic. Great sets, good costuming, spectacular special effects. They could lose the love story is the only flaw. Looked fairly accurate to me right up to Yamamoto's famous quote("I fear we have awakened a sleeping giant") and the B-25's taking off from the carrier on the Doolittle raid. It's worth a few bucks to see. Doug Brutlag #2335 ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 1 Jun 2001 14:16:27 EDT Reply-To: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum Sender: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum From: "Richard E. Gillespie" Subject: Re: Off-Topic catastrophies MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit From Doc Ric, I haven't seen it yet; but my father-in law has. He was on an escort carrier during WW II. His only comment about the movie was that it made him P.O'd at the Japs all over again. Doc *************************************************************************** From Ric Yeah, that has been a concern. Hollywood has great power to stir emotions and they don't do it for any of the right reasons. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 1 Jun 2001 14:21:18 EDT Reply-To: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum Sender: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum From: "Richard E. Gillespie" Subject: Re: Finger Food MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit From Dave Bush Ric: It would seem to me that with that much current in the narrow ends of the crevices that it is unlikely that anything small or light would stay there for very long, let alone 60+ years. So, if anything is in the narrow ends, it is going to be big and heavy, thus making it fairly obvious, unless very coral or barnacle encrusted. Here is where you need a remote operated camera. LTM - who says body armor may be the only way to go! Dave Bush #2200 *************************************************************************** From Ric There's no way a remote camera is going to have enough thrust or enough control to survive in that envirnment. I agree that the only material that could survive wedged into a reef groove would be something like a gear leg, an engine, or possibly even the main beam (even though it's aluminum). Sheet aluminum would likely be gone in a matter of hours, ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 1 Jun 2001 14:25:13 EDT Reply-To: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum Sender: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum From: "Richard E. Gillespie" Subject: Re: Putnam As Spy Guy MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit From Ron Bright Ric,et al, Having studied the FBI docs re Putnam, it is clear that George spent an extraordinary time and energy attempting to persuade the FBI to latch on to Kamal, then actively gathering information for the Japanese consulate, as an "asset" that is a counter-spy. Why? He even went to the highest levels including J. Edgar Hoover himself. Finally he gave up but persisted in maintaining contact and offering his services through out the years. It could be as simple that some guys are attracted to police work and love to ride around in police cars!!! For those who beleive AE was in Japanese hands, and maybe George still had some doubts in 1938, he may have believed that sending Kamal on to Japan might also uncover AE's "true fate". Patroitism, of course, but his efforts seem to exceed the average citizen. To my knowledge he never wrote about those days. My guess is that when he received the LTM msg from Kamal, he knew that AE was not there at Weihsein and closed that chapter of AE falling into hands of the Japanese . Ron Bright **************************************************************************** From Ric Perhaps the most revealing aspect of the affair is that, while Putnam paid a great deal of attention to the FBI, they apparently paid little or no attention to him. He has all the earmarks of a wannabe. ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 2 Jun 2001 09:14:47 EDT Reply-To: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum Sender: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum From: "Richard E. Gillespie" Subject: Re: Putnam As Spy Guy MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit From Chris Kennedy Speaking about Putnam, coincidentally my parents called me a few minutes ago to tell me about a recent article about Putnam and Earhart which appeared in The Washington Post. The article dealt with someone having a dinner conversation with the Putnams shortly before Earhart left on the World Flight, during which the subject of radio direction finding and the Howland leg of the flight came up. Apparently, the person at the dinner recounted how unprepared Earhart seemed for the flight, how interested Putnam was in the p.r. and how good a navigator Noonan was (concerns about his sobriety were expressed). The person also recounted telling Putnam that the plane needed to have a special antenna installed (a long trailing antenna---this all sounds familiar), but Putnam was concerned that the time needed to take to install the antenna would delay the flight, and threaten Putnam's December deadline for publishing the book chronicling the flight. As I said, this all sounds familiar, but perhaps p eople in the Washington D.C. area might want to try and locate the article. My father said he would look to see if he and my Mom still have it. --Chris Kennedy **************************************************************************** From Ric Dennis McGee sent me a copy of it. It was an interview with Brad Washburn, who is quite an adventurer in his own right. I interviewed Brad many years ago about his discussion with Earhart and Putnam. ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 2 Jun 2001 09:24:23 EDT Reply-To: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum Sender: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum From: "Richard E. Gillespie" Subject: Re: Off-Topic catastrophies MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit From Woody Ric, And not a single plane with the correct paint scheme. Not flashy enough for Hollywood. The planes that attacked Pearl never got below 500 feet, unless they were shot down. They certainly didn't fly between ships"on the deck" as portrayed in the movie. It rates a "ho-hum" in my book. Woody *************************************************************************** From Chris Kennedy Ric, I don't know what you consider the "right reasons" for stirring emotions in this context, but it is sort of difficult to do a story about the attack on Pearl Harbor and not include or mention Japan. I'm seeing the movie this weekend, but have read that in an attempt to avoid upsetting contemporary Japan the script deletes all references to Japan's attack on Manchuria/China, the "Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere", the pact with Hitler, etc., and makes Roosevelt's cut-off of oil used to support all this the cause of the attack. If the movie actually does this, that to me looks like the biggest disservice of all. --Chris Kennedy **************************************************************************** From Ric There is only one "reason" to do anything in Hollywood - money. I, too, plan to see the film this weekend. I really don't expect a shoot-em-up special effects show to present a thoughtful analysis of the cascade of mistakes that led to WWII, nor does it pretend to. What films like this purport to show is "what it was like." The question is, how well do they do that? ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 2 Jun 2001 09:25:59 EDT Reply-To: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum Sender: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum From: "Richard E. Gillespie" Subject: Re: Pearl Harbor MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit From Jim Pearson Ric and Forum, I went to see the movie Pearl Harbor and I thought it was great, but what really made an impression on me was the reaction of the people in the audience who were old enough to really remember WWII. They stood and clapped loudly when the movie was over. It really choked me up. Jim Pearson # 2422 *************************************************************************** From Ric Apparently the film ends on a positive note, unless you saw it in Japan. ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 2 Jun 2001 09:26:51 EDT Reply-To: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum Sender: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum From: "Richard E. Gillespie" Subject: Re: Recovery and restoration MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit From Woody To Dick Evans, I am happy to see someone share my opinion of the possibility that the plane was recovered without concern as to its condition by the Japanese. My question is only in reference to it's location. Woody ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 2 Jun 2001 09:31:07 EDT Reply-To: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum Sender: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum From: "Richard E. Gillespie" Subject: Re: Staying with the aircraft MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit From Hugh Graham From Hugh Graham > From Ric > Tom, any speculation that the Japanese journeyed a thousand miles from their > nearest commercial outpost (there was no military base, as such, in the > Marshalls at that time) into American and British waters ------(snip) -----But I thought two Japanese ships participated in the search for AE, or was the 1937 NY Times report of same in error? HAG 2201. **************************************************************************** From Ric Only one Japanese ship seems to have actually been where it COULD have conducted any sort of search, and that was limited to waters that were already part of the Mandate. No Japanese ship was asked to or was alleged to have come south into British/American waters to search for Earhart. ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 2 Jun 2001 09:40:06 EDT Reply-To: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum Sender: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum From: "Richard E. Gillespie" Subject: Niku reef edge MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit From Dave Porter Ric, When you mentioned the "crevasses" present on the Niku reef edge, supposing that stuck fast in one of them was the airplane wreckage reported by Emily Sikuli, something jogged in my memory, and I went to the archived Document of the Week section of the website. Sure enough, Floyd Kilts suspected that Earhart's plane ended up in one of what he called "canyons" which cut across the reef surface at Gardner. If that turns out to be the case, ya think the San Diego Tribune might want to do a follow up story? 41 years ahead of everyone else would be one helluva scoop. Do we know if Floyd has any surviving relatives? BTW, from your description, the area seems rather dangerous just to look in. How in the world could you recover anything you might spot there? LTM, Dave Porter, 2288 *************************************************************************** From Ric Good call! I had forgotten that Kilts specifically mentioned the "canyons". Makes you wonder if he may have heard stories about the same thing Emily saw but didn't have an exact location. Tom King has been in touch with Kilts' daughter. Floyd was going to write a book about Earhart landing at Gardner but never finished it and the manuscript is apparently lost. ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 2 Jun 2001 09:40:56 EDT Reply-To: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum Sender: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum From: "Richard E. Gillespie" Subject: Pearl Harbor Movie MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit From Dick Pingrey Ric, A friend of mine saw the movie a couple of days ago and said the first half in a love story and the second half has the attack action. He said any one that was actually there in 1941 wouldn't like it. That is the only rep[ort I have heard. Dick Pingrey 908C ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 2 Jun 2001 09:49:55 EDT Reply-To: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum Sender: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum From: "Richard E. Gillespie" Subject: Re: Woulda Coulda Shoulda MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit From Patrick Gaston Alan Caldwell writes: "I have no clue whether AE ever said she had a half hour of fuel left but it makes no difference. Obviously she had far more. I ran a fuel curve on her and she probably had about four hours of fuel left at that time." I think it makes a great deal of difference. I agree that AE >shoulda< had about four hours of fuel left at closest approach to Howland, but she >coulda< had a lot less, for reasons previously enunciated. My fundamental problem with the TIGHAR/Caldwell scenario arises from the fact that AE rarely transmitted anything of significance. She almost seems to have regarded it as bad form to complain about her picky little in-flight dilemmas. Stiff upper lip and all that, wot? Yet at 7:42 am this woman, who previously has not even bothered to give position reports, feels it important enough to inform the Itasca that she is "low on fuel" or words to that effect. It is simply inconceivable to me that Earhart would have wasted her breath on this transmission if all she really meant was, "We're down to our four-hour reserve." If "low on fuel" meant anything less than three hours, then IMHO the most logical course of action >woulda< been to keep searching for Howland, just as Bob Sarnia suggests. Let's not forget AE believed she was close -- "We must be on you" -- and where else you gonna go? Alan continues: "Nor is there any evidence or indication her [final] transmission was cut short. Who ever suggested that is implying she cut herself short by changing frequencies in the middle of her own sentence or transmission. Do you hang up in the middle of a phone call you have initiated? I think that was a senseless suggestion by who ever made it." As far as I know the suggestion was first made by Cmdr. Thompson of the Itasca, who believed the final transmission was incomplete. As for the reason, it is well-documented that on the Oakland-Honolulu run (first attempt) Harry Manning blew the Electra's transmitter by holding down the CW key for a full minute so that Makapu Point could get a bearing. Something similar happened off Darwin, although the details are sketchier. It's my belief that the same thing >coulda< happened during Earhart's 8:43 am transmission -- which also explains why nothing further was heard from the Electra, even during the supposed 400-mile run to Niku. The argument that she doomed herself by switching to 6210 has always seemed unpersuasive to me. If you were heading into unknown territory, wouldn't you use every available frequency to advise potential rescuers of your heading, airpseed, etc.? Somehow I can't picture AE saying, "Hell, Fred, we told 'em once we were running on 157/337, and once is enough." LTK, Pat Gaston **************************************************************************** From Ric All gets back to "Woulda" and that, by definition, is pure speculation. ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 2 Jun 2001 10:03:57 EDT Reply-To: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum Sender: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum From: "Richard E. Gillespie" Subject: Re: Finger Food MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit From Lawrence Hello: Diving in canyons, caves, reef crevasses can be a very risky ordeal. As an amateur S.C.U.B.A. diver for over thirty-years, I urge you to reconsider. If you are still "Hell bent for leather" then hope for a mild, mild day Mr. Starbuck. Lawrence *************************************************************************** From Ric Thank you. One of our bumper-sticker axioms for these trips is: "It's never worth hurting live people to search for dead ones." I have a very high regard for my own butt and, if anything, a higher regard for the safety of the expedition team. We have an exemplary safety record on all 36-plus TIGHAR expeditons from New Guinea to Newfoundland and it's not because we never deal with hazardous environments, or because we're unusually lucky (Lord knows), or because we're Crazy-Brave. I suspect that we'll find a way to deal with the reef edge inspection within acceptable parameters of personal risk. If we can't, we won't do it. LTM, Ric ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 2 Jun 2001 10:07:15 EDT Reply-To: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum Sender: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum From: "Richard E. Gillespie" Subject: Re: Niku reef edge MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit From Tom King Wow; I'd forgotten Kilts' "canyon" reference, too. VERY interesting. And an interesting idea about a follow-up by the Tribune, especially since Ric and Van found information on Tarawa about the Tribune's effort to verify Kilts' account. I've been meaning to get back in touch with Kilts' daughter; we found her last year through newspaper and real estate records. She said her father was undoubtedly looking down on her with great displeasure because she couldn't remember what had happened to the ms. of a book he was writing about AE's fate when he died. He was doing it for a writing class supervised by Scott O'Dell; Barb Norris followed up with O'Dell's widow, and that turned out to be a dead end, too -- no known place where student assignments got filed. LTM (who likes canyons) Tom King ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 2 Jun 2001 10:13:29 EDT Reply-To: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum Sender: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum From: "Richard E. Gillespie" Subject: Re: Off-Topic catastrophies MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit From Mike E. #2194: I saw it on Memorial Day. For those interested in reviews, go to www.imdb.com and look 'em up. They are by-and-large a good representation. >I, too, plan to see the film this weekend. I really don't expect a >shoot-em-up special effects show to present a thoughtful analysis of the >cascade of mistakes that led to WWII, nor does it pretend to. What films >like this purport to show is "what it was like." The question is, how well >do they do that? Be prepared to shed some tears. The scenes of cutting through the bottom of the capsized USS Oklahoma will get to you. That, I promise. The sequence in the hospital during the attack will too. Excellent. Yes, the film was "sanitized" (some may say, "Disneyfied") for "political correctness." Disney doesn't distinguish between Yankee dollars, and yen. They like 'em all. Personally I think this approach is akin to a Hoover! If you can ever find it, a darn good film is a JAPANESE (!!!) production called, "I Bombed Pearl Harbor." I think it must date from the 60s. In that one the film ends with Midway... and a bunch of Japanese pilots in the water after their carrier gets blown to hell by SBD's (YEAH!) As for the planes/paint schemes... the book "Pearl Harbor: The Movie and the Moment" (a fascinating read, for those with film interest, as I have -- I teach screenwriting) tells us, "The correct planes for this film don't exist anywhere in the world, at any price." There are no extant (that I know of) A6M2-model Zeros anywhere, in flying condx at least... only A6M5s of 1944 vintage. No P-40B/C/D either... the film uses N-models. Certainly no B-17C/D models (one of my favorite a/c next to the P-36 and SBD Dauntless.... wish I could afford this summer's TIGHAR Course) No B-25Bs, the film uses J models. And the Messerschmitts are powered by MERLIN Engines! SACRILEGE! (Yeah I know, they are Spanish CASA models, and were built with Merlins because the supply of Deutsch engines dried up rather suddenly....) And the Kates and Vals are built from BT-13s! But they look good for the camera. Wasn't there one actual Val dive bomber salvaged from a Pacific island in the late 60s/early 70s which was made flyable? I recall reading that it was traced back to one of the Pearl harbor-task force carriers and may well have been a participant. Was it used in "Tora Tora Tora"? I think it flew with a B-25 engine and prop because the original was too far gone. (Info may be from an old Air Tragics mag that i picked up at a flea market.... hmm.) LTM (who goes to the movies to "worry") and 73 Mike E. **************************************************************************** From Ric I don't recall anything about a surviving Val of any description. They cobbled together a bunch of quasi-Vals for Tora Tora Tora. ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 2 Jun 2001 10:16:27 EDT Reply-To: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum Sender: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum From: "Richard E. Gillespie" Subject: Off topic (or is it?) but interesting MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit From Mike E. #2194: Has anyone seen the book, "Hunting Warbirds: The Obsessive Quest for the Lost Aircraft of World War II," by Carl Hoffman? Published 2001 by Ballantine. I got it thru Military Book Club a couple of weeks ago. This concentrates on Darryl Greenamyer's attempt to salvage the B-29 "Kee Bird" in the Artic. It's a really good read. 73 Mike E. ************************************************************************** From Ric Lauditory, critical, balanced? ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 2 Jun 2001 11:46:52 EDT Reply-To: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum Sender: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum From: "Richard E. Gillespie" Subject: Re: Woulda Coulda Shoulda MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit From Mike E. the Radio Historian #2194: Interesting... WHERE is this documented? I'd like to see it. >As far as I know the suggestion was first made by >Cmdr. Thompson of the Itasca, who believed the final >transmission was incomplete. As for the reason, it is >well-documented that on the Oakland-Honolulu run >(first attempt) Harry Manning blew the Electra's >transmitter by holding down the CW key for a full >minute so that Makapu Point could get a bearing. >Something similar happened off Darwin, although the >details are sketchier. > I' not so sure I really believe this however. That transmitter was pretty conservatively rated and a minute of key-down would make it get pretty warm, but would not be enough to "blow" it. The rig used 2 tubes in the final amplifier which had a combined "plate dissipation" rating that was about equal to the 110-watt plate power input. Most military a/c transmitters of the era were similarly overbuilt/underrated. Remember, this thing was built for commercial airline use.... Consider this: Most tube-type ham transmitters have a final-amplifier plate dissipation rating of something like half the power input rating. And a minute of key-down doesn't really hurt things unless the rig is severely mistuned. Well... come to think of it, in AE's case, as I have said before, the evidence of mistuning is there, caused by Joe Gurr's monkeying-up the antenna. Such mistuning could (and probably did) result in a plethora of harmonics... But that was after the March attempt.... 73 Mike E. **************************************************************************** From Ric I must be getting lazy, or just war-weary, because I didn't call Patrick on this one. The "blowing the transmitter" thing is mythology. First, nobody ever said that the transmitter malfunctioned. Earhart's inflight notes, reproduced in Last Flight, include the phrase: "The generator just went out. Harry has held the key down so long it grew tired." That's it. That's the complete reference. Earhart is referring to the generator on the engine that recharges the battery that powers the radio. It stopped charging. The U.S. Army report that followed the Luke Field wreck was meticulous in detailing the events that transpired between Earhart's arrival in Hawaii and her abortive departure. "Exhibit A" in that report is a statement by 1st Lt. K.A. Rogers, Army Air Corps, who was the Station Engineering Officer at Wheeler Field where the flight landed upon it's arrival from Oakland. It reads, in part: "(I)t was also determined that the reason the generator failed to show a charge during the latter part of the trip was due entirely to the fact that the fuse was blown out and not to the control box being out of order, as Mr. Mantz had insisted upon landing." The details about what happened in Darwin are not sketchy. Darwin heard nothing from Earhart as she approached the airport. When she landed they asked her why. She said that her "D/F receiver...was not functioning". An inspection by RAF Sgt. Rose revealed that "the fuse for the D/F generator had blown." As Patrick has suggested, this may be the same problem that occurred on the Oakland/Hono flight. Both the transmitter and the receiver run off the batteries (the main battery under the floor amidships and an auxilliary battery in the cabin) which are continuously recharged by a generator on the right engine via the dynamotor under the pilot's seat. If the generator blows a fuse it stops charging and the batteries quickly run down, especially if she's transmitting. Question is - where's the fuse? If you need to get under the cowling to change the fuse, there's nothing you can do about it until after you land. If it's somewhere in the cockpit (which would be odd, given that the generator is out there on the engine) then you could fix the problem in flight. Let's speculate for a moment that, sometime during the attempts to contact Itasca, she blows the fuse. She'd still be able to transmit for a short while, but it seems like her transmissions would get weaker and weaker as the battery ran down. If that supposition is correct, we do not not seem to have that phenomenon indicated in the Itasca radio log. LTM, Ric ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 2 Jun 2001 11:48:28 EDT Reply-To: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum Sender: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum From: "Richard E. Gillespie" Subject: "Hunting Warbirds" book MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit From Mike E. #2194: Carl Hoffman's book "Hunting Warbirds" seems to be pretty well balanced. He is a journalist who writes for Mens Journal (a mag which I think has some pretty good writing therein, especially stuff they have done re Old West Indian-war archaeology/adventures), Air & Space, etc. He does a pretty good job (so I think) of characterizing the various people involved. Greenamyer does not come off as a saint by any means... and the "politics" of warbird recovery, and the insider-look at the Confederate Air Force, are interesting. I have not finished it yet (still teaching) but it is well worth reading. 73 Mike E. **************************************************************************** From Ric Sounds interesting. ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 2 Jun 2001 12:01:23 EDT Reply-To: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum Sender: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum From: "Richard E. Gillespie" Subject: Re: Off-Topic catastrophies MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit From Mike Holt > >From Ric > > I don't recall anything about a surviving Val of any description. They > cobbled together a bunch of quasi-Vals for Tora Tora Tora. Finally, a topic on which I have the data! From Air Classics of July, 1971. I have it before me now; see page 14. Bob Diemert found the D3A2 on Ballale in 1968. He brought it and three Zeroes to his workshop in Manitoba. The airframe was in god shape but the engine was shot, so the B-25 engine and cowling was grafted onto the plane (1300 Hp in the Kinsei vs 1700 in the Cyclone). First flight was November 22, 1969. Diemert was the pilot, and reporting getting her to 260 knots, but felt that it was capable of 325. He said it handled like a big AT-6. Heavy on the controls, but "quite speedy and very manueverable, of course." Incidentally, he was able to get the orignal bluprints for the project. No mention of it being in Tora-Tora-Tora. LTM (who has all her original parts, but a new and accurate paint job) Mike Holt **************************************************************************** From Ric Interesting. My sources show a maximum speed of 210 knots with the original 1,300 horse Kinsei. Another 150 knots from 400 more horsepower on a basically dirty airframe sounds like a lot. I wonder what ever became of the airplane. ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 2 Jun 2001 12:07:55 EDT Reply-To: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum Sender: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum From: "Richard E. Gillespie" Subject: Re: Woulda Coulda Shoulda MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit From Marty Moleski > From Patrick Gaston > ... it is > well-documented that on the Oakland-Honolulu run > (first attempt) Harry Manning blew the Electra's > transmitter by holding down the CW key for a full > minute so that Makapu Point could get a bearing. > Something similar happened off Darwin, although the > details are sketchier. I'm not one of the radio gurus, but from reading the Forum's treatment of post-loss reports, this is exactly the kind of transmission that AE failed to make when she wanted the Itasca to get a bearing on her. She whistled for a while, but not long enough. One of the gurus said it might have been sufficient simply to hold the mike key for a minute, even without whistling. I guess in that case the direction would have been determined by watching a gauge showing the strength of the signal as the DF antenna was rotated rather than listening for a "minimum" from the audio signal. The problem ***seems*** to have been the AE did not understand what kind of signal Itasca needed to get a good bearing on her. After that, there would have been the problem of Itasca communicating with her to tell her which way to turn. The only evidence that AE ever heard Itasca is when they transmitted the letter A on 7500--but they couldn't talk to her on that frequency because that radio was set up for CW only. If there was a failure to understand the DF process, it must have been on FN's part as well. AE was the only one who transmitted, but if he had known more than she, perhaps things >woulda< turned out better. Marty ****************************************************************************Fr om Ric Supposin' the reason she couldn't hear the transmissions from Itasca was because her dedicated receiving antenna on the belly was gone and the only reason she heard the "A"s on 7500 was because she had switched to her only operable receiving antenna - the Bendix loop. And supposin' she had been clever enough to figure that out and, after failing to get a minimum on the "A"s, had NOT switched back to the missing belly antenna but had stayed on the loop when she changed her receiver back to 3105. Might she suddeny have started hearing voice? ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 2 Jun 2001 12:11:29 EDT Reply-To: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum Sender: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum From: "Richard E. Gillespie" Subject: Re: Off-Topic catastrophies MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit From Marty Moleski > *** From Ric > I don't recall anything about a surviving Val of any description. They > cobbled together a bunch of quasi-Vals for Tora Tora Tora. They also did some body work on AT-6s to create replica Zeroes. Great Planes has R/C kits available of the "Hollywood Zero." Marty **************************************************************************** From Ric Oh yeah, and they combined T-6s and BT-13s to make "Kates" and Paul Mantz used T-6 and BT-13 parts to create the abortion that killed him in filming Flight Of The Phoenix, and on and on. A T-6 can be anything you want it to be. ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 2 Jun 2001 12:13:33 EDT Reply-To: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum Sender: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum From: "Richard E. Gillespie" Subject: Re: "Hunting Warbirds" book MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit From Tom King Mike's mention of "Men's Journal" reminds me: our publisher is looking for less-than-obvious publications (i.e. besides the NY Times, etc.) that might be interested in reviewing our forthcoming book about The Quest ("Amelia Earhart's Shoe"; for info go to www.altamirapress.com and search for Amelia Earhart). I've passed on "Men's Journal" as a possibility, and Ric is passing various aviation-related magazines on to me, but I'd appreciate hearing from any Forum member (or anybody else) who's associated with, or subscribes to, or just knows of a magazine that might be interested in reviewing the book or in which it might be fruitful to place an ad. The book, by the way, is on track to go to press in July, and will probably be on bookshelves by the time we return from Niku. Thanks in advance for any recommendations. LTM Tom King *************************************************************************** From Ric Please send your recommendations directly to Tom at TFKing106@aol.com ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 2 Jun 2001 12:31:20 EDT Reply-To: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum Sender: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum From: "Richard E. Gillespie" Subject: Nai'a opportunity Comments: cc: naia@is.com.fj MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit From Ric Anyone looking for a real bargain on a diving holiday in Fiji aboard THE VERY SAME ship we use on our expeditions to Nikumaroro should check www.naia.com.fj or email Alexx Edwards at naia@is.com.fj The Sept 29th charter immediately following our Niku IIII expedition unexpectedly cancelled and Alexx is eager to make up a new charter. I don't have details on prices but it's sure to be a great opportunity and it's certainly a wonderful ship, (We promise not to totally trash it like we did in '97). LTM, Ric ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 3 Jun 2001 10:14:33 EDT Reply-To: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum Sender: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum From: "Richard E. Gillespie" Subject: Re: Staying with the aircraft MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit From Ron Bright According to Aoki's book, unoffical translation, the Koshu did venture for a short time a bit south of the Marshalls into American waters, but the Capt became "uncomfortable" and returned to the mandated areas and arrived at Jaluit on 13 July 1937. There is no evidence based on the Koshu logs, says Aoki, that the ship was anywhere near the Phoenix Islands. Ron Bright ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 3 Jun 2001 10:17:47 EDT Reply-To: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum Sender: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum From: "Richard E. Gillespie" Subject: Coulda,woulda,shoulda MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit From Don Neumann <> ******************************************* (...'Methinks thee doth protest too much'...) As I recall, in the last paragraph of my post, my _own_ conclusions were similar to yours, as any pilot (though I'm not one) facing imminent fuel exhaustion, might reasonably have been expected to make that the very _first_ subject of discussion in any of their subsequent radio transmissions, in addition to any immediate plans to deal with that fuel emergency. Unfortunately, there has never been any factual resolution of the question as to _why_ Itasca never received any further radio transmissions after the 8:43 message, so all of our many unsubstantiated speculations & assumptions in that regard (however logical & reasonable they may seem to us), must simply remain... our _own_ speculations & assumptions. As for the alleged...'half-hour' gas remaining... issue, I believe my post clearly implied that if the Electra was _still_ airbourne an _hour_ after that broadcast, whatever those persons actually in or about the Itasca radio room may have _thought_ they _heard_, the simple _fact_ remains, the Electra was still in the air & AE was still able to transmit long past the alleged half-hour fuel exhaustion deadline! Actually, in one of his interviews, given to a conspiracy author years later, the chief radio operator himself insisted _he_ also heard AE say...'half-hour' gas remaining..., that is until he was confronted with his _own_ contemporaneous log entry of...'running low on gas'... Though it has been factually well documented how much fuel was loaded on board the Electra at Lea, the _fact_ remains, no one (not even the Longs) can state with absolute accuracy just how much fuel remained on board the Electra during the course of the radio transmissions actually received by Itasca & unfortunately AE , the only person who _could_ have known, never provided any details regarding her fuel remaining situation, during her last transmissions. You also said: ...'In trying to reconstruct what may have occurred one needs to suggest the most logical events within known facts. Then recognize not everyone does the most logical thing but few do really stupid things when their life is in the balance'... Seems to me that was the train of thought I was trying to express in my post... unfortunately I failed to make myself sufficiently clear, at least to your satisfaction & for that shortcoming I must sincerely apologize. Don Neumann ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 3 Jun 2001 10:30:59 EDT Reply-To: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum Sender: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum From: "Richard E. Gillespie" Subject: Re: Putnam As Spy Guy MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit From Roger Kelley What conclusions can be drawn from the Washington Post's article describing a dinner conversation between Earhart, Putnan and an unknown person? Ric indicated that he interviewed Brad Washburn, yet I missed the link between Washburn and our two heroes. Was Washburn present during the conversation? The subject of Noonan's drinking was discussed at length on this forum a few years ago. Yet, I find most interesting this reference to concerns about Noonan's sobriety which were apparently expressed prior to the second world flight attempt in 1937. As a result of the alleged dinner conversation, is it possible to authenticate any concerns Earhart or Putnam may have had about Noonan's drinking, or lack of drinking? LTM, Roger Kelley *************************************************************************** From Ric Washburn says he was consulted by Earhart and Putnam about navigation for the upcoming World Flight. They had dinner and talked about it. Washburn says he advised her to have a radio positioned at Howland that could give her bearings and that she should be able to commuicate on 500 kcs because all ships guard that frequency. Putnam was reportedly resistant because of the time it would take to make the arangements, this delaying the flight and the book that was it's whole point. Brad didn't say anything to me about concern over Noonan's drinking and, because the conversation allegely took place during the early planning phase - long before Noonan was associated with the flight - it's hard to believe the subject actually came up. Washburn's story is just one more Earhart anecdote. No notes, no documentation. Just a recollection. I would suspect that it's largely accurate but we certainly can't draw any conclusions from it. Sometimes it seems like everyone over the age of about 80 knew Amelia Earhart. ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 3 Jun 2001 10:32:41 EDT Reply-To: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum Sender: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum From: "Richard E. Gillespie" Subject: From a Canadian site: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit From Mike Holt While trying to find the fate of Diemert's VAl, I found this. Mr. Diemert, by the way, has been the target of criticism over his engineering practices, on http://www.warbirdsworldwide.com/messages. http://manet.merlin.mb.ca/metks4/instruct/iru/pubs/bibs/flight1.html Amelia Earhart : queen of the air. [United States] : A & E Television Networks, 1996. 1 videocassette (46 min.) + 1 guide. A Cable in the Classroom initiative. Produced by Greystone Communications Inc. for A & E Network. Producers, Sofia Perez, Laura Verklan ; editor, Scott Lazea, Kevin P. Browne ; writer, Sofia Perez ; executive producers, Bill Harris, Craig Haffner, Donna E. Lusitana. SUMMARY: Chronicles the life and career of Amelia Earhart describing her early years, and the development of her interest in flying. Examines the impact of her accomplishments on the public and how society's view of women influenced her and her work in aviation. Describes her solo flight across the Atlantic from Hawaii to the mainland as well as her constant struggle to raise money and remain in the public eye. Concludes with a look at her last flight in 1937 in which she disappeared while attempting to fly around the world. Includes archival footage and interviews with researchers, historians, colleagues and family members. Audience: Grades 7-Senior 4. Booking #1695. ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 3 Jun 2001 10:34:43 EDT Reply-To: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum Sender: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum From: "Richard E. Gillespie" Subject: Re: Woulda Coulda Shoulda MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit From Hugh Miller > From Marty Moleski > > > From Patrick Gaston > > > ... it is > > well-documented that on the Oakland-Honolulu run > > (first attempt) Harry Manning blew the Electra's > > transmitter by holding down the CW key for a full > > minute so that Makapu Point could get a bearing. > > Something similar happened off Darwin, although the > > details are sketchier. This is one of the elementary facts that i was not aware of. Must have been a power supply related failure, such as the fuse for the high voltage supply, because tubes generally last quite a bit longer than one minute even when severely stressed (the glass envelope and/or the innards have to meltdown). >from Ric > > Supposin' the reason she couldn't hear the transmissions from Itasca was > because her dedicated receiving antenna on the belly was gone and the only > reason she heard the "A"s on 7500 was because she had switched to her only > operable receiving antenna - the Bendix loop. And supposin' she had been > clever enough to figure that out and, after failing to get a minimum on the > "A"s, had NOT switched back to the missing belly antenna but had stayed on > the loop when she changed her receiver back to 3105. Might she suddeny have > started hearing voice? In the idea i advanced, that reception "with the loop" actually was by means of signal from the sense-antenna and NOT the loop, which i suggest could NOT tune to these frequencies, not 7500 kHz anyway- even if AE had known how to operate it correctly, which i think is open to question- the answer to your question would have to be, "Yes". I have a an acquaintance promising me to run a test of such situation. I have a similar loop antenna but unfortunately workload just does not allow any more projects right now. I also have an aircraft transmitter with a similar output circuit to the WE one AE used, and the test equipment to do the harmonic output measurement that i believe would be of high interest, but i have to postpone this also, til at least near the end of the year. Hue Miller ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 3 Jun 2001 10:38:19 EDT Reply-To: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum Sender: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum From: "Richard E. Gillespie" Subject: Re: Woulda Coulda Shoulda MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit From Alan Caldwell > Yet at 7:42 am this woman, who previously has not even > bothered to give position reports, feels it important > enough to inform the Itasca that she is "low on fuel" > or words to that effect. Pat, we don't know what position reports she tried to make. All we know are the ones received. > to me that Earhart would have wasted her breath > on > this transmission if all she really meant was, "We're down to our > four-hour reserve." > Pat, if they needed four hours worth of fuel to get to an alternate then that would mean "We can't look for you any longer. We must depart now." I did the exact same thing in a B-47 over Fairford, England. The weather in England and most of Europe was socked in and I had to go to Madrid (ha, ha, ha) as my nearest alternate. I declared low fuel for my destination and that I had to depart at once for my alternate. Look at a map and you'll see how far that was and at 4,000 lbs per hour the great amount of fuel I had remaining at the time. Yet it was low fuel. > If "low on fuel" meant anything less than three hours, then IMHO the most > logical course of action >woulda< been to keep searching for Howland.... No one could argue with that. If they haven't enough fuel to go any where they have no choice. There's no need to look to logic for that. There was no decision to make. > > As far as I know the suggestion was first made by Cmdr. Thompson of the > Itasca, who believed the final transmission was incomplete. > > I'm sure you are right, Pat but I missed that. Could you point me to his > comment. > > As Ric pointed out a lot of what we write IS speculation but sometimes it > presents an idea that is actually pursuable and might be of value if for no > other reason than eliminating possibilities. I welcome that but I do have > trouble with statements that are clearly inaccurate and may confuse newer > folks and lead them astray. I am mainly referring to absolute statements > such as they made no position reports or someone's comment that if nothing > was found then they weren't there. Those are statements the fallacy of > which someone outside the forum could see. Then they get repeated as fact > that no position reports were made and AE never went to Niku. Alan #2329 ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 3 Jun 2001 10:44:18 EDT Reply-To: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum Sender: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum From: "Richard E. Gillespie" Subject: Sunday Forum? MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit From Ric I'll be out of the office all day Monday so I posted the existing submissions Sunday morning. The forum will resume it's regular schedule on Tuesday but, fair warning, for the next couple of weeks I'll be making minimal comments on postings (applause, applause) as I scramble to prepare for the upcoming Niku IIII Team meeting and the Aviation Archaeology Course and Training Expedition. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 5 Jun 2001 09:32:48 EDT Reply-To: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum Sender: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum From: "Richard E. Gillespie" Subject: Pearl Harbor MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit From Tom Byers I haven't seen the movie, however, I do remember the movie "Tora, Tora, Tora" which I saw with my father who was a Pearl Harbor Survivor (USS MacDonough DD- 351 tied up alongside the destroyer tender Dobbin) ....His comment was..." 'it' (the actual event) was not as well organized as the movie" Tom Byers ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 5 Jun 2001 10:26:37 EDT Reply-To: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum Sender: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum From: "Richard E. Gillespie" Subject: Anachronism Harbor MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit From Ric Well, I saw Pearl Harbor over the weekend. My expectations were pretty low and they were certainly fulfilled. The subtitle should be " The Titanic Legacy." Take a famous disaster, use it as the backdrop for a love story, then turn the computer animation people loose with a huge budget and hype the bejesus out of it and - voila! - box office hit. Okay, let's give them the airplanes. Everybody always gets the airplanes wrong in movies like this. The only historical aviation film I can think of that came close to getting the airplanes right was the old Jimmy Stewart "Spirit of St. Louis." The writing? Well, it's a bad sign when you can finish most of the actors' lines before they say them. Portrayal of the historical period? Forget it. All historical films are really set in the present anyway, but this one did a poorer job than most in conveying the feel of the times it purported to portray. These are Gen-Xers playing dress-up in their grandparents' clothes. These are the 1940s without the really wierd hairstyles, the casual sexism and racism, the slang, or even (believe it or not) the cigarettes. Disney, as always, gives us history as it should have been. Anachronisms? Too many to catalog, but some of the best are: - a "cropduster" in 1923, using a Stearman no less. - a reference to a "backhoe" in the 1920s. - the Imperial Navy staff back in Japan ominously tearing off the page of a calendar from December 6 to December 7 and giving the go ahead for the attack that morning (which was December 8th in Japan.) - and (I love this one) a B-25 practicing short takeoffs for the Doolittle raid, pulls into takeoff position, guns its engines, and (swear to God) squeals its tires as it accelerates down the runway. Special effects? Breathtaking, in some cases, but cartoonish in others. The airplanes zinging between ships and buildings were not only absurd but looked like a remake of the scene in Return of the Jedi where Luke and Princess Lea are riding their scooters madly through the forest. On the other hand, I suppose a film where Jimmy Doolittle gets hair and B-25s get rubber can't be all bad. LTM, Ric ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 5 Jun 2001 10:32:00 EDT Reply-To: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum Sender: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum From: "Richard E. Gillespie" Subject: Re: Coulda,woulda,shoulda MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit From Alan Caldwell Don Neumann wrote: > Seems to me that was the train of thought I was trying to express in my > post... unfortunately I failed to make myself sufficiently clear, at > least to your satisfaction & for that shortcoming I must sincerely > apologize. > No, no, no, Don. I understood and was not maligning YOU. My comments were not directed at anyone in particular although it might have seemed that way. Recent posts that I may have taken exception to were merely statements we have heard many times over. You made a good point in support of my complaint that erroneous statements when repeated often enough seem to become "facts" that lead folks astray. The point was that having heard the 30 minutes of fuel so many times even the main radio operator began to believe he himself had said it. Of course it appears not so. The reason I have such a concern about being careful about statements is that I believe each person on the forum has the potential to contribute something valuable. Maybe they will just keep everyone on their toes. Maybe they will notice a fallacy in someone's theory. Maybe they will see something or think of something no one else has seen or thought. If they are put off some trail by a careless statement they may close out that track and thus miss a good possibility. For example if the team doesn't come up with anything really positive this trip and we follow the theory that that proves AE was never there what do we do next? Do we give up on Niku and search another island or just give up? If we decide AE just didn't bother making radio reports why should we pursue the subject any further? Case solved. But maybe they DID try and something prevented them from transmitting and receiving. Maybe it makes no difference but maybe there is something significant to be learned. I'm not trying to be a know it all or arrogantly police each post. I screw up just like anyone else. I DO reread my posts and try not to say things that are clearly in error. If I'm not sure about something I go to the web page and look it up. I catch myself using absolutes too but I try to catch them. They are almost always wrong. I nick at posts in the hope the author will be a bit more careful and actually read what he or she says before hitting "send." Alan #2329 ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 5 Jun 2001 10:33:48 EDT Reply-To: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum Sender: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum From: "Richard E. Gillespie" Subject: Re: The drinking Irishman MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit From Alan Caldwell > , is it possible to authenticate any concerns Earhart or > Putnam may have had about Noonan's drinking, or lack of drinking? > I spent 20 years in the USAF including 5 in Vietnam. We partied and drank like fish. We DID NOT drink during or close to flying. Noonan was Irish and may well have tipped quite a few but what does that have to do with anything? Our joke was no smoking within 24 hours of flying and no drinking within 15 feet of the aircraft. At one time I had a pilot who was a bad alcoholic but he never drank close to or during a flight. He was one of the top pilots in the wing. I think the drinking Noonan thread goes nowhere unless someone can prove he was hung over on the LAE flight or was drinking on the way. I suspect that proof is non existent nor do I expect to hear of any reliable testimony on that subject. I think it may well be a dead issue. Alan #2329 ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 5 Jun 2001 10:35:02 EDT Reply-To: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum Sender: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum From: "Richard E. Gillespie" Subject: Fuel Remaining MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit From Dick Pingrey Ric, The logic that Alan Caldwell expressed regarding AE's fuel remaining is probably obvious to most pilots if not some of the Forum members. If you have less then the fuel needed to go to your alternate remaining in your tanks then you don't head for that alternate. On the other hand, when you are approaching the minimum fuel need to go to your alternate and you can't find or can't land at your desired destination it is time to go to the alternate. We must also keep in mind that AE didn't know that her prefered destination wasn't along the LOP that would take he to her alternate. She could have been either north or south of Howland. It isn't a specific amount of fuel that determins if you are low on fuel. It is the amount of fuel you need to get to either the destination or the alternate. That could be 30 minutes in one case or 4 hours in another. Dick Pingrey 908C ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 5 Jun 2001 10:38:38 EDT Reply-To: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum Sender: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum From: "Richard E. Gillespie" Subject: Woulda Coulda Shoulda MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit From Patrick Gaston Serves me right for lapsing into colloquialisms on a Forum filled with technical types! Yes, Ric, I'm aware of the both the Army report on the Luke Field crash and Sgt. Rose's report on the Darwin difficulties, both of which ascribe the problem to a blown generator fuse and not the generator or transmitter itself. I also should have said that the details of the Darwin malfunction were "confusing" rather than sketchy. Confusing because AE said the problem was in her "D/F receiver" while Rose found that it was a fuse in the "D/F generator," both comments suggesting that Earhart had a separate generator for the D/F equipment -- something which we don't know for a fact; which, I believe, TIGHAR denies; and which I therefore wanted to stay away from. We also don't know the circumstances under which the failure occurred. Darwin complained they "heard nothing" from her, but did they mean voice or a D/F signal? Why would a problem with the "D/F generator" affect voice communications? Etc., etc. So I will accept 20 lashes with an antenna wire for my sloppy use of the vernacular. Manning didn't "blow the transmitter." He (apparently) pressed the key that blew the fuse that protected the generator that supplied the current that recharged the batteries that powered the electrical system (that included the radio, that was composed of a transmitter and a receiver) that was housed in the plane that Lockheed built. Something similar, which is not to say identical, happened on the approach to Darwin. But the fact remains that Earhart's electrical system was demonstrably susceptible to failure -- perhaps from all that new-fangled equipment on board -- and keying the transmitter for more than a few seconds at a time seems to have provided the straw that broke the camel's back (metaphorically speaking; we are reasonably certain that no camels, bactrian or dromedary, were aboard the Electra). As Mike E. points out, even keying the transmitter for a full minute should not have been enough to produce this result under ordinary circumstances, "unless the rig is severely mistuned." Or, one might add, unless the electrical system already was loaded to the gills. One could also theorize that this known susceptibility explains why Earhart' s transmissions on the Lae/Howland run were both infrequent and brief. She was aware of the problem, and the last thing she wanted was a dead radio when she needed it the most, i.e., on the approach to Howland. You speculate that, even with a blown generator fuse, AE shoulda been able to transmit for a short while on battery power alone. You point out that this phenomenon is not reflected in the Itasca radio logs, implying that no such malfunction occurred. But it could also mean that your premise is wrong. Certainly there is no mention in "Last Flight" of any further transmissions after the generator (fuse) went south. I would like to hear Mike E's take on this question. How long could AE have transmitted on batteries alone? Was her other instrumentation drawing power from these same batteries, and how would that affect the equation? What if the "rig" had indeed been mistuned, either by Gurr or by Balfour's subsequent fiddling at Lae? Would this have compounded the problem? Lost in all of this is the whole point of my original post -- which was was to challenge the assertion that the seeming lack of urgency in AE's final transmission necessarily meant she had lots of fuel left. LTK Pat Gaston ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 5 Jun 2001 10:42:22 EDT Reply-To: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum Sender: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum From: "Richard E. Gillespie" Subject: Searching the canyons MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit From Dennis McGee Ric said: "I suspect that we'll find a way to deal with the reef edge inspection within acceptable parameters of personal risk. If we can't, we won't do it." For what's it worth here is my solution for getting a camera up the crevices on the reef without endangering a diver in the process. Zodiacs. Two to be exact; each with a crew of four, a driver, two haulers and one spotter. Take four lengths of rope and mark them (knots, tape, whatever) at specific intervals, say, 12 inches. Secure the ropes on the underwater camera at the four "corners" (fore port, aft port, fore starboard, aft starboard). Suspend the camera between the Zodiacs at the mouth of the crevice approximately 10 feet above the bottom (A diver can help with that). Have the Zodiacs move slowly toward the shore with the crews hauling in the ropes in a coordinated fashion ("up one mark . . .up one mark . . . .up one mark") as the Zodiacs approach the head of the crevice and the water gets more shallow. The down side of this solution would be a lot of tricky coordination between the drivers and the haulers. First the Zodiacs would have to have matched power/speed settings to enable them to move abreast as they moved up the crevice. Second the haulers and spotters would have to be on their toes to keep hauling in the right amounts of rope as the water got shallower and as the Zodiacs, traveling down the converging sides of a "V," got closer together. This is probably not too practical considering the logistics and coordination (practice, practice, practice) that would be needed. But the idea is free -- and you get what you pay for here. {:-) LTM, who is just back from Carlisle! Dennis O. McGee #0149EC *************************************************************************** From Ric I 'spect that if the sea was calm enough to do what you propose it would be also be calm enough to just swim up into the canyon. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 5 Jun 2001 10:44:12 EDT Reply-To: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum Sender: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum From: "Richard E. Gillespie" Subject: Pearl Harbor Comments MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit From Jim Tierney Ric and Forum--- Did we all see the same movie?????? I have seen it once and will go back to see it again with a pad/pencil/small flashlight to write down all the mistakes/innaccuracies, etc.. Now-Having said that--I feel that ANYBODY who is interested in planes/history/ WWll/Pearl Harbor-should see it... It is a remarkable movie--not a good one just remarkable.. You can see where the $140 million went--on the computer/special effects/explosions/etc...They probably paid the writer $50K to write a bad love story..... The 40 minutes in the middle --of the attack and aftermath are good but hokey in some spots..Yes-- the ..planes did not fly between the ships and buildings... I went expecting a mediocre movie based on reading all the reviews and articles in the papers and my funny magazines... I saw a badly written-turgid-slow-inaccurate movie.. Nobody clapped in my showing-tho the theatre was jammed om Memorial Day..... It was the longest three hours of my life...Even my wife said it was bad.... The mistakes start with the incorrect spelling of Mitchel Field in NY..They spell it Mitchell-then it goes down hill from there........ A movie about 1941 service people-where nobody smokes and nobody swears.. Some of the uniforms may be inaccurate.. The planes as a group-are marvelous-and yes - some of the models flown and paint schemes shown are incorrect for that year....... Navy Nurses of 18 years of age that are portrayed stupidly and shallow.. Alec Baldwin as Jimmy Doolittle-- I could go on but you get my drift....... Thats all I have to say...I will let you know if I get an answer to my letter to Michael Eisner/Disney..... LTM Jim Tierney. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 5 Jun 2001 10:52:46 EDT Reply-To: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum Sender: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum From: "Richard E. Gillespie" Subject: Re: Finger Food: Leather n' Chains MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit From Mike Z. All kidding about scuba armor aside, I assume you'll be looking into helmets of some kind to protect your divers. There are divers in the Bahamas that wear special chain mail suits to protect them from shark bite (e.g., http://www.nassau-scuba-centre.com/sharks.htm). Perhaps you could rent one of those to provide some abrasion protection. As an alternative to consider, motorcycle road racers swear by heavy leather suits to shield their skin from those 100+ mph asphalt belt sanders they occasionally find themselves sliding on (e.g., http://www.zcustom.com/). Or maybe just a double layer of wetsuit will provide sufficient sacrificial protection. Perhaps armor should be a last-ditch safety measure. It's probably even more important to somehow stabilize the diver in the finger. Maybe you can try running ropes down the length of the crevasse, anchored with rock climbing hardware at each end (e.g., http://www.rei.com/reihtml/gear_shop/climb.html?stat=7712). The diver could move him/herself along with Jumars or other ascending equipment. Ratcheting up in would come naturally. Backing out, well, that's an issue. I haven't dived since my checkout nearly 20 years ago, I haven't rock climb in even longer, and I've certainly never done both at once, so I have no idea if any of this will work. What is really required is for your divers take this other ideas to the relative safety of a local (sandy?) beach and try it out to see what works. At the very least, it will save a lot of precious time on Niku. --Mike Z. *************************************************************************** From Ric The more I get into this the more I suspect that the only real solution is to wait for good sea conditions. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 5 Jun 2001 11:00:29 EDT Reply-To: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum Sender: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum From: "Richard E. Gillespie" Subject: debris in canyons MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit From Ric Dr. Tommy Love, our physician and member of our Dive Team on the 1989 expedition sent me the following: ************************************* RIC: I have just been reviewing (catching up) the recent forum posts-esp. the 'canyons' on the reef. The ones that I remember exploring were those to the south of the main passage. The ones to the north of the NC were filled with what we felt were NC debris. Also, the day we dove that part of the reef, it was more rough than normal and we stayed out of them to prevent getting hung up on debris, or worse getting cut and having to content with the Tiger sharks that were known to frequent the area. Tommy ************************************* I've asked Tommy to elaborate on some specific points. LTM, Ric ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 5 Jun 2001 11:06:20 EDT Reply-To: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum Sender: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum From: "Richard E. Gillespie" Subject: Re: Anachronism Harbor MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit From Tim Henderson Loved your read on it! Did you by chance catch that 727 landing at the distant airport? *************************************************************************** From Ric No, I was looking at the GPS antenna on the C-47. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 5 Jun 2001 13:02:31 EDT Reply-To: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum Sender: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum From: "Richard E. Gillespie" Subject: Re: Anachronism Harbor MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit From Bob Brandenburg I haven't seen the film yet, but I have seen a preview. You can add to your list of anachronisms the group of 1990s vintage destroyers in the background of a scene. It speaks volumes that the idiots who make such mistakes think no one will notice. LTM, Bob Brandenburg, #2286 ************************************************************************** From Ric It's worse than that. Those sleek puppies are prominently featured in several scenes. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 5 Jun 2001 13:03:54 EDT Reply-To: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum Sender: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum From: "Richard E. Gillespie" Subject: Re: debris in canyons MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit From Tom King Sheesh! Tiger sharks! Chain Mail! Biker leathers! If we can't get media attention with this gig, we'll never get it. LTM (who's on the edge of her seat) Tom King ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 5 Jun 2001 13:05:30 EDT Reply-To: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum Sender: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum From: "Richard E. Gillespie" Subject: Re: Woulda Coulda Shoulda MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit From alan Caldwell > Lost in all of this is the whole point of my original post -- which was was > to challenge the assertion that the seeming lack of urgency in AE's final > transmission necessarily meant she had lots of fuel left. Pat, I agree. The two don't necessarily go together. In flying school I was shooting a forced landing in a T-28. My instructor in the back seat keyed the intercom and in a quiet casual voice said, "Caldwell the reason you would have a forced landing is that you have lost your engine and you wouldn't have it to get you out of trouble. At the moment your airspeed is about 2 knots above stall so what you want to do is......" He was calm as I was about to fall out of the sky. I was the one who expressed great urgency. Alan #2329 ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 6 Jun 2001 10:08:56 EDT Reply-To: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum Sender: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum From: "Richard E. Gillespie" Subject: Re: Anachronism Harbor MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit From Mike Holt > >From Ric > > It's worse than that. Those sleek puppies are prominently featured in > several scenes. Tora!Tora!Tora! featured (gasp!) some DEs in a couple of scenes! And the star on a floatplane lacked the central red dot. I was, in general, pleased by the Pearl Harbor. I did wonder, as I watched it with a friend who is also fascinated by the era, what would happen if the production team were given the AE/FN story and the same budget. LTM (who has a modest budget and all the right markings) Mike Holt *************************************************************************** From Ric Lest we appear discriminatory in our ridicule, the very name of the film Tora! Tora! Tora! is based upon a myth. Nobody ever said that. The code for the Japanese character "To" was sent three times by Fuchida's radio operator to confirm that surprise had been achieved. A few minutes later the character "Ra" was sent three times to announce "commencing attack." The two characters, if combined (which they never were), happen to spell "Tora" which means tiger. Somewhere along the line the story got started that the words "Tiger Tiger Tiger" has signaled the attack. Total baloney. **************************************************************************** From Skeet Add to the list: Japanese aircraft in the movie were equipped with previously Top Secret guns that fire at a declination of 20 degrees, enabling the aircraft to fly in level flight while firing at targets located below them on the ground. An advanced optical system was included so that the pilot could acquire his target even though the large radial engine obscured his view below. **************************************************************************** From Joe Hi Ric I didn't see the picture and don't plan to....however another film where I think the scenes were so real, was in the movie about Doolittle with Spencer Tracy...."30 Seconds over Tokyo" with Robert Walker and Van Johnson...the shots looking out the bombadier"s window was awesome photography I thought as the B-24 skimmed at low altitude over the trees and water approaching the Japanese mainland. An I saw that movie in 1943 or 44..... Joe W3HNK **************************************************************************** From Hugh Miller > Did we all see the same movie?????? > I have seen it once and will go back to see it again with a pad/pencil/small > flashlight to write down all the mistakes/innaccuracies, etc.. > Now-Having said that--I feel that ANYBODY who is interested in > planes/history/ > WWll/Pearl Harbor-should see it Hmmmm. I wonder if this is an example of non sequitur. I was going to forward some of the commonts from this group to another email list, but after reading about the movie in the May 14, Newsweek, I think I will just drop it. There's a quote from screenwriter Randall Wallace about a scene in the movie: "If it didn't happen, it should have happened". People don't go to entertainment movies for history, they go for love scenes, explosions, car chases, humor. If they wanted history, they would read a book, or find someone to read a book to them. Movies of course are a consumer commodity. They have to keep rolling off the conveyer belt on some kind of regularity. There are rules about the ingredients used, and the length of time and workmanship that can be expended. Hue Miller **************************************************************************** From Ric It would be nice if everyone recognized that movies are just entertainment, but they don't. Historical films have a tremendous impact upon public perceptions of historical events because most people have zero interest in reading about history but are happy to be entertained. **************************************************************************** From Tom Robison There is a growing list of inaccuracies/discontinuities about "Pearl Harbor" at http://www.movie-mistakes.com I've not seen the movie, and probably won't, once I heard that Alec Baldwin was playing Jimmy Doolittle. Talk about mis-casting.... they should have had Industrial Light and Magic do a computer animation of Doolittle. Tom ************************************************************************** From Ric Mis-casting? You wanna talk mis-casting? How about Dan Akroyd as the Naval Intelligence guy who trys to warn Washington of the impending attack? You're sitting there and you're saying, "Wait a minute. Is that....? Naw, it couldn't be.... yes, good Lord, that's Dan Akroyd!" and from then on everything that comes out of his mouth sounds like a line from Ghost Busters. ************************************************************************** From Doug Brutlag It was reported recently that 2 (slightly) different versions were made to be shown to Japanese & German audiences. Political correctness strikes again! GAG! Doug Brutlag #2335 **************************************************************************** From Ric Dear Ric, I had heard that the subject movie was one hour of fake combat and two hours of soap opera. I was thinking about seeing it anyway but now I don't have to. You did the thinking for me. The Stearman aircraft was certainly a boo-boo. BUT a B-25 getting close to a STOL is a give-away that these people are totally FUBAR. That aircraft, empty, couldn't burn rubber. And, obviously, these war machines were running at maximum load capacity -- and then some. The trade-off is between ordnance and fuel. My wife, who is typing this, thinks it might have worked if only they had done a background soundtrack of Jan and Dean singing "Burn up that quarter mile!" LTM, Joel (and his typing wife Sheila) **************************************************************************** From Ric Actually Doolittle's Tokyo Raiders did get incredible STOL performance from their stripped down B-25s. The point about "getting rubber" is based on the fact that, in an airplane, all thrust is imparted by the propellers or jet exhaust. There is no power to the wheels. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 6 Jun 2001 10:26:01 EDT Reply-To: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum Sender: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum From: "Richard E. Gillespie" Subject: Re: Woulda Coulda Shoulda MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit From Ross Devitt What if the "rig" > had indeed been mistuned, either by Gurr or by Balfour's subsequent fiddling > at Lae? Would this have compounded the problem? > > Lost in all of this is the whole point of my original post -- which was was > to challenge the assertion that the seeming lack of urgency in AE's final > transmission necessarily meant she had lots of fuel left. > Don't forget, there is at least one documented occasion of Earhart transmitting, then changing frequencies against advice and losing contact. Oddly, if I recall correctly, the frequency change was the other way around. The situation was vaguely similar. She was being read quite clearly on once frequency, announced she intended to change frequencies and was requested not to. She changed anyway, and contact was lost until the approach to Howland when she was heard on the frequency that she had switched to when contact was lost. Careful reading and re-reading of the report suggests that she was in two way communication that night, but does not actually say it, therefore we have usually assumed - with good reason - that she was only being heard. The following quote indicates that on the day before they departed Lae the Electra had 2 way communications: "At 6.35 a.m., July 1st, Miss Earhart carried out a 30 minute air test of the machine when two way telephone communication was established between the ground station at Lae and the plane." And this one suggests that for the first part of the flight at least there were 2 way communications on 6210Kcs: "The Lae Operator heard the following on 6210 KC -"HEIGHT 7000 FEET SPEED 140 KNOTS" and some remark concerning "LAE" then "EVERYTHING OKAY". The plane was called and asked to repeat position but we STILL COULD NOT GET IT." 'Asked To Repeat Position But We Still Could Not Get It' implies that the Earhart replied to their request. No further signal was received once she was on 3105. In the morning however, she was received on 3105, but could not hear Itasca. It is documented that she considered 6210Kc to be her daytime frequency, and it appears it had been working in 2 way communication the day before so I suppose it was logical to at least try that frequency. What interests me is why earhart was heard by Itasca on 3105Kc until well into the morning when she used 6210 during daytime? I would have thought she'd change frequency sooner. Th' WOMBAT *************************************************************************** From Ric You and I have debated this before. There's no way to know whether or not Earhart's repetition of the message that Balfour couldn't understand was in response to his request. It does appear that two-way communication was achived during the test flight and it's abundantly clear that Earhart experienced difficulties in that respect the very next day - so it's worth asking, what was different? From a reception standpoint we have the photographic evidence that she lost the belly antenna on takeoff. We don't know for sure what significance that had, but it's certainly something that was different. From a transmission standpoint, the test on July 1st was carried out virtually on top of the station. After departure on July 2nd it was four hours before Lae heard any of the hourly reports Earhart had promised to send. Because she was using 6210 at that time, the implication would seem to be that if the airplane was between one hour and four hours away (call it 100 to 500 miles) it could not be heard on 6210. Sound familiar? LTM, Ric ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 6 Jun 2001 10:31:13 EDT Reply-To: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum Sender: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum From: "Richard E. Gillespie" Subject: Re: Niku reef edge MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit From Christan D Hello forum! I just flew out of Xmas Island: the airstrip is close to the shore, and the plane veers sharply very soon after take off, and indeed I have noticed colors which could indicate lots of roughly parallel canyons... I could not judge depth differences, but the darker greenish fingers are there, obviously coral growth, may be 100ft long or much more, separated by a fraction of that distance. The space between the fingers looks like light colored sand, and hence quite possibly a "canyon"... From the varying shade of the coral "green", it seemed to me the finger top might not be quite level, but sloping down and out. Now Xmas is in another island group, but Palmyra (just next door) seemed very similar to Kanton, as far as I could compare them from hiking on the reef flats. I too could visualize these places as some kind of an "airframe catcher" on the edge of the reef drop off. If needed, Kim, who runs a Dive shop on Xmas should be able to give more details to these structures. Which reminds me: wasn't Nai'a supposed to do some reef exploration on their own a while back, to satisfy their own interest? Christian D. PS: by the way, the locals spend lots of time on Xmas diving for petfish for export, and I would suspect that they also visit these canyons. Also people go snorkelling in there to catch lobster for local consumption.... May be we should hire a couple of experienced local people? And the site of interest on Niku is on the sheltered side of the island, so it might be rather safe, on settled days. **************************************************************************** From Ric The information we're getting tends to support the idea that the canyons are no problem, as long as the sea is relatively calm. I also suspect that if the sea is rough there is no way to make it safe to go near the darn things. So we wait for a calm day. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 6 Jun 2001 10:33:21 EDT Reply-To: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum Sender: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum From: "Richard E. Gillespie" Subject: Re: metal detectors MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit From Chistian D Ric wrote: > If an airplane engine sat in a paved parking lot for 64 years, how deep > would > it be buried now? That's pretty much the situation on the reef. The > shipwreck debris that arrived there in 1929 is still right on the surface. > Well, yes and no: if a compact chunk of steel is stuck in a small fracture on the reef flat, it likely won't be covered with silt. But down in the "canyons", what is the bottom like? How deep is the sand layer? Christian D. **************************************************************************** From Ric Dunno. It's a good application for the underwater metal detectors. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 6 Jun 2001 10:41:34 EDT Reply-To: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum Sender: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum From: "Richard E. Gillespie" Subject: Re: Question from someone new to this site MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit From Chris Can anyone tell me in detail the of the friendship between Amelia and a woman named Clara Adams. Thank you, Chris **************************************************************************** From Ric Sorry. The name doesn't ring a bell. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 6 Jun 2001 11:27:47 EDT Reply-To: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum Sender: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum From: "Richard E. Gillespie" Subject: Additional off-topic comments MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit From Dennis McGee Ric said: "It would be nice if everyone recognized that movies are just entertainment, but they don't. Historical films have a tremendous impact upon public perceptions of historical events because most people have zero interest in reading about history but are happy to be entertained." Word up, bro! Then there was that "famous" scene in Oliver Stone's "JFK" where the Kevin Cosner character (New Orleans Attorney General, Jim Garrison) meets the Donald Sutherland character in a Washington DC park, at which time the Sutherland character explains the entire assassination plot/conspiracy to Garrison. That event NEVER happened but I've talked with people who saw the movie (Read a book? Fagetabotit!) and believe it did happen. And when I explained to them it DIDN'T happen, they're dumbstruck; jaws drop, eyes widen etc. etc. But burning rubber on take-off? Man, I've got to go this weekend just to see that. Way cool. LTM, who never burns rubber Dennis O. McGee #0149EC ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 7 Jun 2001 10:21:22 EDT Reply-To: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum Sender: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum From: "Richard E. Gillespie" Subject: Re: Question from someone new to this site MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit From Jim Tierney Ric/Chris---- I dont know if there was a relationship between Clara Adams and AE-but it may be possible they knew each other.... Mrs Clara Adams of Stroudsburg, PA was a well known world traveller in the 1930s. She was a paying passenger on the first Pan Am Clipper flights between SFO/Manila in Oct 1936 and SFO/New Zealand in Sept 1940... She may have met AE in the course of her travels ...... I guess you could call her an aviation groupie--altho an older one -at that time.... Maybe somebody else has more info... Jim Tierney **************************************************************************** From Jon Watson Hi Ric, I don't have a clue what their relationship may have been, but a quick check of the 'net resulted in finding a couple of pictures of a Clara Adams (unknown if it's THE Clara Adams which Chris is seeking). Look in www.airships.net/adams.htm . Clara Adams seems to have been something of an adventuress (is that a politically correct term any more?). She apparently f lew in the Graf Zepplin, and on the first passenger flight of the Hawaii Clipper (10-22-36) (if the photo captions could be believed). Say... wasn't there some fella named Noonan on that flight? Hmmmmmmm. Also, back up one level to www.airships.net, and there are some other references to Clara Adams. Doesn't reference AE though. ltm jon *************************************************************************** From Ric By any chance did Clara Adams become Clara Livingston? In Puerto Rico, AE and Fred stayed overnight with Fred's "friend for seven years" Clara Livingston. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 7 Jun 2001 10:26:08 EDT Reply-To: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum Sender: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum From: "Richard E. Gillespie" Subject: Re: Anachronism Harbor MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit From Bill Zorn I haven't seen the movie, saw enough wrong in the airplanes in the endless pre release hype to know it was not going to be particularly accurate. But 727s in the background, and tire squealing take offis in B-25's? (wrong version Mitchells any way) Say, ....they didnt try to weave AE/FN into somehow did they? (cue scary music) Think I'll wait the Mad Magaizine version. Wild bill's movie rule number one The louder and longer the prepaid hype for a movie, the worse it will be. A good WW2 movie is the German film "Die Bruke" (the Bridge) from 1959.(B&W with subtitles) They get the airplane wrong in that one too, unless someone was still using (what appears to be) a P-40 in spring of 1945 for ground attack in the European theater. (Maybe the French or British?) Still, it's worth renting, if you can find it. *************************************************************************** From Ric Can anybody come up with a WWII movie where they get the airplanes right? ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 7 Jun 2001 10:28:27 EDT Reply-To: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum Sender: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum From: "Richard E. Gillespie" Subject: Movie Non-history MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit From Dick Pingrey Ric and all, No matter how bad "Pearl Harbor" may be in terms of incorrectly representing the true history of the attack in 1941 it can't hold a candle to "The Patriot" for historical fantasy. Dick Pingrey 908C *************************************************************************** From Ric You mean "Lethal Hatchet"? Braveheart with flintlocks. But we digress. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 7 Jun 2001 10:29:42 EDT Reply-To: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum Sender: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum From: "Richard E. Gillespie" Subject: Re: Clara Adams MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit From Don Neumann ere is a website address featuring information/photos of Zeppelins, including photos of & copies of letters written to Clara Adams, a female journalist in the 1930s, who specialized in making first aviation flights: Airships: The Zeppelin history and photo website, featuring the Hindenburg, Graf Zeppelin, Akron, Macon, Shenandoah, Los Angeles, and other great dirigibles. Address:http://www.airships.net/index.shtml Changed:6:56 AM on Thursday, June 7, 2001 (Unfortuately, no information about any connection with AE, though both were obviously contemporaries.) Don Neumann ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 7 Jun 2001 11:27:37 EDT Reply-To: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum Sender: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum From: "Richard E. Gillespie" Subject: The reef edge MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit From Jon Watson Hi Ric & Tom, Have to say this - I move that henceforth divers from the Niku expeditions (past and future) HAVE to be known as Tighar Sharks. By the by, how do these ravines, canyons, fingers, or whatever, end on the seaward side? Do they just keep getting gradually bigger and bigger (that is wider and deeper), or is this where everything just suddenly drops off to the bottomless pit? ltm, jon 2266 *************************************************************************** From Ric The 1989 dive team became known as The Bubble Heads. Don't ask. I dug out the video they shot of the canyons they looked at. Pretty amazing stuff. There's footage of two canyons, both of which were reportedly south of Tatiman (pronounced Tasman) Passage -the main lagoon passage. The day was very calm and the underwater visibility was excellent. The first canyon began at a water depth I estimate to be about 30 feet and went for perhaps 50 yards before ending in a jumble of coral boulders at a depth of what appears to be about 10 feet. Of course, there's no way to tell from the video what the state of the tide was. The seaward-side mouth of the canyon was about twelve feet across and gradually narrowed to about five feet across at the shallow end. The diver had no difficulty negotiating the canyon but the seaward surge of retreating water sucked him a few feet backward with each wave that passed overhead. On this particular day, the waves were not running parallel with the canyon but at about 45 degrees across its long axis. The canyon was not a simple straight crack running toward the beach but had some minor changes in direction, a few branches running out to either side, and several large coral outcroppings in the middle along the way. An object of any appreciable size that fell into the canyon at the shoreward end would stand virtually no chance of being swept out and over the steep lip of the reef without getting hung up. You couldn't design a better wreckage-trap if you tried. The floor of the canyon appeared to be pea-gravel sized chunks of coral rubble of indeterminate depth (but probably not more than a foot or two deep). The second canyon was narrower and shorter than the first, becoming almost cave-like at one point as the walls closed in overhead. Otherwise it was very much like the first one. It's clear from the video taken in 1989 that the underwater reef-edge environment off the west end of the atoll is not a simple drop into oblivion but features several yards of gradually descending terrain that is a very rugged jumble of coral. This is "the ledge" we've talked about. Along the shoreward side the ledge is periodically cut with spurs and grooves (canyons). On the seaward side it really does drop into oblivion. From what I can see, it should be no problem for our divers to check out the reef edge approaching from seaward underwater at high tide on a calm day. Approaching from the landward side, walking on the reef flat, is probably not a good idea even on a calm day at low tide unless the area is already explored and mapped by the divers. In other words, if the divers find something worth investigating and it's in really shallow water, we might be able to get to it from the landward side safely if conditions are right. LTM, Ric ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 7 Jun 2001 11:48:32 EDT Reply-To: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum Sender: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum From: "Richard E. Gillespie" Subject: Re: Anachronism Harbor MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit From Skeet >From Ric > >Can anybody come up with a WWII movie where they get the airplanes right? Twelve O'clock High. ************************************************************************** From Ric Good call. The B-17s are "F"s as they should be for that time in the war. ************************************************************************** From Wes Smith Sure, 12 O'clock High. ************************************************************************** From Ric Hmmm...I sense a consensus. ************************************************************************* From Doug Brutlag I vaguely remember a flick called "Battle Of Midway". I was much younger when I saw it. It seemed to rely on alot of historical footage in the battle scenes. Anybody got accuracy reviews on that one? Where were the 727's butting in during the Pearl Harbor flick- I missed that. I thought bloopers like that were edited out. Doug Brutlag ( who has high reguard for the B-727 & B-25) #2335 **************************************************************************** From Dennis McGee Ok, Ok, OK! Right up front -- Hollywood will NEVER make an aviation-related movie that is 100 percent accurate -- especially for the purists. They can't. It's timing, guys and gals. By the time the movie is made several years AFTER the event all of the airplanes have been melted back into pots and pans. All of this crying about the inaccuracy of the aircraft in Pearl Harbor (which I'll see this weekend) is just a bunch of elitist hoo-hah. For crying out loud, maybe one person in 100,000 knows the difference between an F4U-4 and a F4U-5, much less the difference between the many Zero variants. OK, maybe a squadron marking is wider than it really was. It's really no big deal. Let's not try to apply the science of investigation to the art of film making. Films are entertainment, and unless they make a claim of 100 percent accuracy, then we've got to accept some fiction. Yeah, I'd like to see 100 percent accuracy but I'm enough of a realist to accept that it is impossible for Hollywood to do. Most of the jabbering here and in the warbird community about the inaccuracies of the aircraft in Pearl Harbor is just a bunch of jocks bragging and showing off their knowledge of WWII-vintage airplanes. The longer it goes on the more it looks like a mutual masturbation clinic. Everybody feels real good about how much they know and they all slap each other on the back telling each other how smart they are. After about the 58th time it gets thin, you know? Yeah, they're experts. and Holywood is wrong. So? I think we should be glad that Hollywood even went to the trouble of making the movie. OK, so the airplanes aren't 100 percent accurate, but when was the last time you even SAW a P-40 or a B-17 in flight. Not all of us can go to every air show and see every airplane every weekend. I think we need to cut the movie guys some slack here. Now if they used P-51s with Japanese marking, well, that is a whole different issue. But complaining about whether something is a Dash 2 or a Dash 3 variant borders on the obsessive. Give us a break! And the truth is most movie goers don't give a rat's patoot! Now, as for the 727 in the background and the B-25 ("wrong variant" - good Lord, does this mean the world is coming