========================================================================= Date: Wed, 2 Jan 2002 10:17:20 EST Reply-To: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum Sender: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum From: "Richard E. Gillespie" Subject: Searching for engines MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit From Woody Ric, 1340 engines have aluminum blocks, cast iron cylinders and cylinder heads and a large cast or forged crankshaft and connecting rods.Over 300 lbs of ferrous metal with a 51" diameter. I have been to geometrics in San Jose and tested their equipment. Those engines have a large and distinctive magnetic signature. Somewhere on Taroa there are 7 crated Zero engines that the Strategic Bombing Survey Team of 1946 buried in a trench. I thought it would be interesting to look for them when I go back out there next year as I have a general idea as to where they are interred. A B-29 would leave a much larger debris field behind, they have a 141' wingspan, four 28 cylinder radials and weighed many thousands of pounds. Not a good comparison. There are several B-29s in the water off the coasts of Saipan, Iwo Jima and Guam that were water ditched during WW2- they are relatively intact. Woody ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 2 Jan 2002 10:19:11 EST Reply-To: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum Sender: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum From: "Richard E. Gillespie" Subject: What should be done MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit From Don Neumann ...'I'm not hearing what you think should be done instead or next that is feasible. I probably read too quickly and missed that. The real important thing is to keep firing away so something foolish is not done or something wise is not over looked. I think there is no shortage of that from Forumites'... Alan, in good nature ********************** Perhaps I'm simply too dull witted to grasp the import of the above comments... however, I believe I have rather _clearly_ & _unambiguously_ suggested that the NEXT step should be a deep-water, _visual_ search of the ocean bottom, off the outer edge of the reef-flat, through the use of a state-of-the-Art, submersible vehicle (possibly like the one that just recently, clearly photographed a gigantic, (20') spider-like squid, almost three miles below the ocean surface). Admittedly, I make _no_ claim of any intimate knowledge of/or expertise in the field of Oceanography, & I haven't the faintest idea how much such a venture would cost (though like all underwater, scientific expeditions, I imagine the cost would be substantially more than any _single_ trip to further explore & excavate Gardner/Nikumaroro Island)... yet it would seem (to me anyway) that such a venture _could_ very well produce the desired result, which I originally thought we were all seeking, _proof_ that the Electra & it's crew did, in fact, reach Gardner/Nikumaroro Island in July 1937. If the Niku hypothsis... that the aircraft _was_ washed-off the outer edge of the reef-flat, by 'normal' tidal & surf/wave-wash action, within the first week from touch-down... is accurate, then at _least_ those two P & W engines _should_ still be sitting there on the ocean bottom, given the depth of the water into which they were plunged... if the engines _are_ found in this manner, the Niku hypothesis is indeed _valid_ & continued, more intensive & extensive archeaologic excavation of the island is completely justified. If the engines are _not_ found on the ocean bottom, you are still left with a _choice_ of continuing the Niku archeaologic project, on the island, in the _belief_ that those engines &/or other aircraft related remains have been 'buried' by over 60+ years of ocean inundation of the island, (no volcanoes on Niku, that I know of) within the vegetation lines of the island... or ... concede that AE/FN &/or the Electra never reached the island. In one of his latest post responses, I believe Ric _did_ accede/concede that such a deep water, visual examination of the ocean bottom, at the outer edge of the reef-flat, was 'feasible'... but cautioned that the cost of such a project might be too high for TIGHAR's budget to finance. ( I trust Ric will promptly correct me, if I've inadverently, misinterpreted his remarks on this subject.) I'm really sorry if I previously failed to make myself sufficiently clear on these points, I promise I'll try to do better next time ! Don N. (In all good nature!) ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 2 Jan 2002 10:23:55 EST Reply-To: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum Sender: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum From: "Richard E. Gillespie" Subject: Amelia Earhart recreation, March of Time, July 8,1937 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Forwarded to the Forum by Ron Bright >I am a senior Earhart researcher for Electra GRoup. We have been trying >for over a year to find someone that has the script or the tape of this >famous broadcast that was heard in Hawii and throughout the United States >on all of the major networks. So far no luck. >It is significant in the Earhart research to compare the script with the >so called post loss messages that may have been a hoax. That broadcast date copy supposedly does not exist - at least in circulation. Since this was a CBS program at that time (it moved to the NBC Blue network later that year), it most likely does not exist in the Library of Congress (and does not show up in their archive lists). Your best bet would be to contact the CBS Radio Archives in New York City. You can get their contact information via the LOC at (202)707-7833 (I don't have it handy). However, don't get your hopes up that CBS would have it. They failed to maintain their archive of non-news material as NBC did. While much of CBS news material remains available, it is mostly through the Milo Ryan Phonoarchive, which now resides at the National Archives. However, since the March of Time was a sponsored program technically non-news, most likely it does not exist at the National Archives. I have done a search of the various vendors who trade and sell radio of the past, and cannot find any who carry that episode. My reference material indicates, as I said, that it does not exist in active circulation, and most likely does not exist at all. If the scripts exist, CBS would be your best starting point. If the show had been on NBC by that time (which it was not), then I know a copy of the script would exist at the LOC. **************************************************************************** From Ric In the absence of a transcript of the show, it might be instructive to see if other March of Time episodes followed a set format and see whether that format ressembles any of the alleged post-loss Earhart transmissions - especially Betty's Notebook. What is the "Electra Group"? ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 2 Jan 2002 10:51:30 EST Reply-To: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum Sender: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum From: "Richard E. Gillespie" Subject: What I did on my Xmas vacation MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit From Ric Everyone who is waiting for their Aerial Tour of Nikumaroro video and everyone who is wondering whether they should order one will be interested to know that, rather than just dub off the silent 23 minutes of footage shot from the helicopter, we decided to produce a real Research Video that traces the history of attempts to map the island and provides explanations during the aerial tour so that you'll know what you're looking at. To do that we needed to expand our computer capabilities here at TIGHAR Central and yours truly needed to scale the learning curve of using the video editing software. It has been something of an adventure, and like most adventures, it has taken longer and cost more than we anticipated. Nonetheless, the summit is in sight and I'm hoping to finish it up this week. Tapes should go out FedEx next week. If this little production is well received it will be the first in a series of "TIGHAR Research Videos". The next in the series will be "The Niku IIII Expedition" and the Aerial Tour video includes a "trailer" for that coming attraction. Maybe we'll throw in a packet of microwavable popcorn. LTM, Ric ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 2 Jan 2002 10:52:47 EST Reply-To: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum Sender: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum From: "Richard E. Gillespie" Subject: Re: Amelia Earhart recreation, March of Time, July 8,1937 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit From Marty Moleski Forwarded to the Forum by Ron Bright > ... Your best bet would be to contact the CBS Radio Archives in New York City. I called them over a year ago. They wouldn't tell me whether they had the tape or not. To get into their archives, I think you have to be a CBS insider. You may also have to pay for play. > I have done a search of the various vendors who trade and sell radio of the > past, and cannot find any who carry that episode. I found a man who said he knows a man who has a tape or maybe even a wax recording. But the man who says he knows the man doesn't respond to my mail or e-mails. I called him once and had a very nice talk with him, but he was a friend of Fred Goerner (spelling?) and may be reluctant to deal with TIGHAR. Contact info: Ronald Staley http://www.quikscrybe.com/catalog.html Quikscrybe 5632 Van Nuys Blvd. Suite #10 Van Nuys, CA 91401 E-Mail: quikscrybe@earthlink.net Tape 020. The March of Time; 7 8 37; "Features Story on Disappearance of Amelia Earhart." 7 15 37; "Second Story on Earhart Disappearance." I keep hoping that someone in California--or someone with the gift of persuasion--will make progress where I couldn't. Marty #2359 ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 3 Jan 2002 09:20:01 EST Reply-To: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum Sender: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum From: "Richard E. Gillespie" Subject: Re: What should be done MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit From Randy Jacobson There's a third possibility of an off-shore search: the plane and/or engine wreckage has been buried by coral debris, and was not found by underwater ROV's. This is quite a real possibility. So what then? ************************************************************************ From Ric Good question. That's one reason we've concentrated on the onshore search for something that would link the castaway(s) conclusively to the Earhart disappearance. The onshore environment is tough but the underwater environment is tougher, and at least onshore we now have a confirmed archaeological site that is producing interesting (one might even say promising) artifacts. *************************************************************************** From Pete Hi Ric! I suggest that for the time being we continue to collect and evaluate information on what is already on hand. Discovering the true identity of the artifacts from Niku IIII, finding the source of the green construction material, assembling the post-loss radio matrix, studying the known movement of NC wreckage to narrow future search areas, etc. Someone's skeleton was found on Niku and examined by Dr. Hoodless, someone brought the sextant box to Niku, someone made the "g" from the coral. I think the "Seven Site" holds many more clues. Searching the ocean bottom sounds great, but for all I know, the artifacts needed to fill the air with gunsmoke are underneath the stern section of NC and sand. LTM Pete #2419 **************************************************************************** From Ric I'm with you Pete. I think there is a great impatience to search someplace new for the Holy Grail that must surely be lurking there rather than slog through the detective work. All this talk about smoking guns (and, I confess, my own longing for an Any Idiot Artifact) has obscured the very real progress we've made toward solving the mystery of the castaway of Gardner Island - which may very well turn out to be the solution of the Earhart mystery. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 3 Jan 2002 09:20:44 EST Reply-To: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum Sender: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum From: "Richard E. Gillespie" Subject: Re: Amelia Earhart recreation, March of Time, July 8,1937 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit From Ron Bright Thanks Marty Moleski for the information about a possible lead to the elusive March of Time broadcast. Hard to believe but noone seems to have it. It supposedly was a heck of a re-creation of the final moments. I shall try your leads. Ron Bright ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 3 Jan 2002 09:50:33 EST Reply-To: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum Sender: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum From: "Richard E. Gillespie" Subject: Re: What should be done MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit From Alan Caldwell No, you're not dull witted at all, Don. I read your suggestions and agree whole heartedly that would be a great next step but when I attached "feasible" to my comment I meant something TIGHAR could do. Certainly it is feasible in terms of the technical possibility but I didn't think it was feasible in terms of ever getting the money to do it. We were just looking at feasible in different definitions. I'm not sure TIGHAR has exhausted other and far less expensive investigations. By that I mean I'm not convinced the plane wasn't smashed up into the "jungle" and over 64 years buried there. I've not been there so maybe the guys who have can assure me that's not possible. Also it seems that if the plane DID land there and washed out to sea there could well be pieces left on the island not yet found. Or maybe already found but not identified. The ocean bottom of Florida has been extensively searched for Flight 19 and the planes have not been found but I think there is no doubt they are there. I'm not an expert or anywhere near one on what wave action and ocean currents could do to the Electra if it was washed out to sea 64 years ago. I suppose it never moved once on the bottom but maybe it ended up a considerable distance away from Niku before being covered to some unknown depth. Others may be able to answer this but my feeling is that the search area might be pretty extensive. Maybe you know about this better than I. Alan ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 3 Jan 2002 09:51:31 EST Reply-To: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum Sender: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum From: "Richard E. Gillespie" Subject: Re: Amelia Earhart recreation, March of Time, July 8,1937 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit From Alan Caldwell Marty, my son is a CBS video news editor in Houston at KHOU. Is this something he might take a crack at finding? Alan ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 3 Jan 2002 09:56:47 EST Reply-To: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum Sender: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum From: "Richard E. Gillespie" Subject: Re: What I did on my Xmas vacation MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit From alan Caldwell Ric, that sounds even better. I'm sure we will all be patient. While I'm emailing I want to thank you and all the members for making this forum and our investigation so phenomenally good. At times we sometimes get a bit touchy with each other but all in all it somehow works out. I think we all generally agree on the direction TIGHAR is going and support the group 100% or nearly so. In particular you have shown a lot of patience with some of our meandering off topic and suggestions of other theories. The latter you shoot down rather quickly sometimes without considering they might have some merit. For example the New Britain "crash" got little support from you yet you never considered the possibility AE, after missing Howland, may have climbed up to 30,000 or so, cut the engines and dead sticked back to New Brit.............. or maybe not. Seriously you have been overly kind to even some of the most preposterous suggestions. Wild ideas sometimes key a thought that might have genuine possibilities. Have a great 2002. Alan *************************************************************************** From Ric Well, the omens are good. The last palindromic year - 1991 - was a very good one for the project. Perhaps this one will be too. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 3 Jan 2002 09:58:45 EST Reply-To: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum Sender: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum From: "Richard E. Gillespie" Subject: CBS Archives MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit ------------------ Ric, regarding the pursuit of archived audio. I have a friend who has been working with some of the old CBS archive in New York. His job is to find classical program material that might be of commercial interest for rerelease. The conditions of much of the archive is deplorable. In one case not at CBS, he explained that historians are trying to locate major pieces of orchestral history that were given away to whomever wanted them. The part of the archive that he works with is now a part of Sony Music because Sony bought this a long time ago. It would seem to me that the first step in trying to find something would be to find out what happened to the category of material. Where was it stored, who was in charge of the library, was it tossed out, given away, transferred to Sony, etc? I know of one entire archive from a popular radio show in Minneapolis (not CBS) that was literally saved out of a dumpster and ended up in the basement of someone who felt it was worth saving. Another note is that playback of some of this old material is not simple. ie Tape that turns to dust on one pass so it needs very special care, or disks that are not standard in any way that need a technical fund to repair or build equipment to replay. Greg ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 4 Jan 2002 09:33:20 EST Reply-To: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum Sender: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum From: "Richard E. Gillespie" Subject: Re: What should be done MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit From Tom King Let me throw in my two cents' worth with Ric and Pete. I'm really rather befuddled by the notion that we ought to charge off and spend lots of money looking someplace more or less new, whether it's deep off the reef or on some other island. We've got quite a lot of data to work with already, and quite a bit of work still to do on land, that will be a lot less expensive, and a lot more likely to yield something, than will diving off the reef looking for stuff that may be long gone or long encrusted in coral. Some things that BADLY need doing, SOON, are: 1. Track down survivors of the colony, notably in Funafuti (where we know there's one guy -- Emily Sikuli's brother -- who may have been in on the bones discovery) and in the Solomons (where there must be people who can tell us about what happened at the Seven Site in the '50s -- a crucial question for interpreting what we've found there. 2. Follow up a variety of leads in Fiji that might lead to the bones recovered in 1940, or to information about them. 3. Further work at the Seven Site -- notably at the two features, naturally found on last day of work there, that now appear most interesting -- the burn feature near where some of the most puzzling artifacts were found, and another about 10 meters away that contained glass and probably other material, but couldn't be examined in any detail at all. 4. Further work in the village, which is after all where all the airplane parts to date have been found. If the plane was ever on the island, even in pieces, it was in a whole lot better shape when the colonists were there to salvage stuff from it than it is now. We know they salvaged and used plane parts. Some of those parts, from the perhaps .05 percent of the village we've looked at closely, look a lot like Electra pieces. There could be whole batteries of smoking guns lurking under the palm fronds and rotting cocos in the village. TK ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 4 Jan 2002 09:34:49 EST Reply-To: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum Sender: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum From: "Richard E. Gillespie" Subject: Vicarious pleasures MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable From Tom King A bit late for holiday giving, but recommended just the same, a CD of music from the Nai'a crew adrift off Nikumaroro is now available from Dan Zafir, one of our video crew on the 2001 expedition. Following is a slightly updated version of a note that Dan sent to other expeditionaries a couple of weeks ago. Having listened to the CD and relived a few starry nights rocking in the trade winds, I got Dan's agreement to make Forumites aware of it. It's the next best thing to being there -- other, perhaps, than Ric's forthcoming aerial epic. Tom King Beautiful Fijian music played aboard the expedition ship Nai'a during Niku 4 is now available on a digitally mastered CD with 16 tracks played by the wonderful trio of Toga, Maika and Mo. Originally, I recorded the music for myself as it would have been hard to resist capturing the soothing quality of this island music performed with such competence by the three guys. They follow in the Fijian tradition of nightly gathering of song, a mix of traditional and current music from Fiji which they seek out and practice to near perfection. I certainly wanted to share this recording and it occurred to me that it could actually generate a modest sum for each of the guys. Although the recording actually belongs to me, the music does not, and I certainly want all the money to go to Toga, Maika and Mo, three members of the ship's crew who were generous enough to let us spend many a night of song together. The recording, mastering and distribution for this CD was done as a contribution. Only 1 dollar of each sale will go to cover expenses for raw materials. Don't miss the opportunity to get a truly unique recording and do good at the same time! "Songs from the Bow" contains 16 (DDD) tracks of great sounding stereo recording captured under the giant night sky at Niku. The CD sells for $15.00 plus $5 for Priority shipping. Since I'll soon be moving to Europe for awhile and Mark Smith (The other half of the video team -- TK) will probably take over for me, so inquiries about exactly where to send checks and how to make them out should be posted to my account at zafir100@hotmail.com Dan ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 4 Jan 2002 09:38:21 EST Reply-To: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum Sender: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum From: "Richard E. Gillespie" Subject: March of Time MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit From Chris Strohmeyer Ric, I'm still waiting for a followup answer from Quikscrybe. Doesn't this first reply imply that the recording exists? It also sounds like a brush-off too. Sort of curious. What do you think? Chris in Petaluma #2511 ----- Original Message ----- From: "Sue Staley" To: "Chris Strohmeyer" Sent: Wednesday, January 02, 2002 2:44 PM Subject: Re: Amelia Earhart Disappearance > Hi: > > I have withdrawn the recording from the list, because of some editing > problems. I have no idea when it shall be re-added. > > thanks for your interest. > > ron *************************************************************************** From Ric Sure sounds like it exists. I can understand "withdrawing it from the list" if "editing problems" make it unacceptable as a sales item, but our interest is research, not nostalgia. Perhaps if you explained that to her ....... ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 4 Jan 2002 09:47:17 EST Reply-To: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum Sender: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum From: "Richard E. Gillespie" Subject: Re: CBS Archives MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit From Mike E. the Radio Historian #2194: Another note is that playback of some >of this old material is not simple. ie Tape that turns to dust on one pass >so it needs very special care, or disks that are not standard in any way >that need a technical fund to repair or build equipment to replay. > This is indeed correct. Many Golden Age radio programs were recorded on 16-inch discs, either aluminum, acetate or even wax. Many were "start inside" rather than the common "start outside" system many of us are familiar with. There were two ways of cutting discs: one was the familiar side-to-side groove that survived till the end of the disc age in the 80s; the other was up-and-down. 16-inch turntables of the type used in commercial radio stations are available used, not exactly cheap, but they can be had. Indeed, most radio stations used 16s rather than 12s because the speed regulation, and mechanical vibration, was much less than on a 12. The tone arm on a 16-inch table is not tied to any kind of mechanical linkage or "changer" so it will track from inside or outside... however, finding a phono-pickup nowdays which will respond to up-and-down grooving is a REAL challenge. Old audio tape is VERY unstable and should be treated with great care. As an aside: older computer disks like 5-1/4s are showing some of the same problems, only sooner. Audio tape, by the way, was invented in Gernamy... used by the Nazis in WW2 to keep people guessing about the exact whereabouts of The Paperhanger, for one thing... only made it to the US in 1946. LTM (who wishes more vintage LPs were available on CD) and 73 Mike E. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 4 Jan 2002 09:53:16 EST Reply-To: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum Sender: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum From: "Richard E. Gillespie" Subject: B-29 ENGINES MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit From Bob Sherman [from Woody .. ] ".. A B-29 would leave a much larger debris field behind, they have ... four 28 cylinder radials ... " Believe the B-29 had 18 cyl. Wright R-3350's The only 28 cyl. engine was the P&W R-4360 In any event, the Titanic iron was greater than the total of all the B-29's built. RC ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 4 Jan 2002 09:53:49 EST Reply-To: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum Sender: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum From: "Richard E. Gillespie" Subject: Re: Amelia Earhart recreation, March of Time, July 8,1937 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit From Marty Moleski > From Alan Caldwell > > Marty, my son is a CBS video news editor in Houston at KHOU. Is this > something he might take a crack at finding? Yes, he is a perfect person to try to open the archives. If he doesn't know how to do it, he should know someone who does. :o) Marty ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 4 Jan 2002 09:57:37 EST Reply-To: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum Sender: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum From: "Richard E. Gillespie" Subject: Palindromes MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit From Stuart > The last palindromic year - 1991 - was a very good > one for the project. Perhaps this one will be too. Let's hope we don't have to wait for the NEXT one to get the final answer! Stuart ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 5 Jan 2002 08:56:03 EST Reply-To: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum Sender: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum From: "Richard E. Gillespie" Subject: Recovering degraded photo images MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit From Anthony Lealand The November " Laser focus world" has an article on the recovery of images from degraded photos. The Work was done at Research Support Instruments Lanham MD, the Naval Research Lab and the Catholic University of America both of Washington DC. The work is described as simple to execute and does not need the original optics as a reference. They give an example of an early sick Hubble photo reconstructed. This could well have application to the photo of the plane in the jungle which is an intriguing is it or isn't it shot. Regards Anthony Lealand New Zealand **************************************************************************** From Ric That photo has a rich history of hi-tech examination. When we first came across it 12 years ago the National Photo Interprestation Center - aka NPIC - (the photo interpretation arm of the CIA) took a crack at it. Then in the mid-1990s Jeff Glickman of Photek applied his skills to it. I think we've probably seen what there is to see. ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 5 Jan 2002 08:59:28 EST Reply-To: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum Sender: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum From: "Richard E. Gillespie" Subject: March of Time MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit From Chris Strohmeyer Ric, this is what I sent 2 days ago with no reply, guess they just don't want to deal with it. I had already told them I was with an organization researching Earhart's disappearance. Chris in Petaluma #2511 ----- Original Message ----- From: "Chris Strohmeyer" To: "Sue Staley" Sent: Wednesday, January 02, 2002 5:03 PM Subject: Re: Amelia Earhart Disappearance > Ron, You were somewhat vague in your reply, does that mean that the actual > recordings exist and are or will be available? Do you have access to them or > know who I might contact to get them?? This is VERY important to us. Thank > you for your help! We would like the recordings in any form. > Chris in Petaluma, Ca. ************************************************************************** From Ric It's very frustrating, I know. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 7 Jan 2002 10:00:54 EST Reply-To: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum Sender: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum From: "Richard E. Gillespie" Subject: Re: Recovering degraded photo images MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit From Tom King > I think we've > probably seen what there is to see. > Maybe, but the technique might be worth applying to some of our other imagery, like the early airphotos. Here's the URL for the article Anthony referred to: http://lfw.pennwellnet.com/Articles/Article_Display.cfm?Section=Archives& Subsection=Display&ARTICLE_ID=126937&KEYWORD=Degraded%20Photos TK *************************************************************************** From Ric I'll look into it. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 7 Jan 2002 10:03:09 EST Reply-To: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum Sender: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum From: "Richard E. Gillespie" Subject: Re: what should be done next MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit From Don Neumann ..'4. Further work in the village, which is after all where all the airplane parts to date have been found. If the plane was ever on the island, even in pieces, it was in a whole lot better shape when the colonists were there to salvage stuff from it than it is now. We know they salvaged and used plane parts. Some of those parts, from the perhaps .05 percent of the village we've looked at closely, look a lot like Electra pieces. There could be whole batteries of smoking guns lurking under the palm fronds and rotting cocos in the village'.... TK ------------------------------ Maybe I've been missing some new findings or interpretations of the original, existing findings... but if my memory is anywhere near accurate, _none_ of the 'parts' definitely identified/certified as having originated from aircraft, have ever been documented ( opposed to 'speculated') as having come from an Electra, let alone THE Electra? I'm not certain what type of 'smoking-guns' might be left to discover on the village site... but I'm sure even Dr. King would agree that the most readily identifiable aircraft parts to have survived intact, after 60+ years, (most capable of establishing clear proof that AE/FN _did_ reach Gardner/Nikumaroro) would be the twin P & W engines... & I think he would also agree, it is highly unlikely such 'artifacts' will ever be found 'lurking' under the palm fronds or cocos of the village! Are these 'artifacts' of a successful landing of the Electra to be found anywhere else on the island?... After several highly successful TIGHAR expeditions, (covering the most obvious areas to be searched) have failed to discover the engines... it would seem (to me anyway) that chances of finding them anywhere else _on_ the island now, would be highly unlikely . Since TIGHAR's _own_ hypothesis has concluded that the Electra was swept off the reef-flat, within a week of initial touchdown, would it not seem likely (logical) that since those engines haven't turned up in any of the most obvious places searched by TIGHAR expeditions _on_ the island... that _visually_ searching the waters of the deep drop-off, at the edge of the reef-flat, would be the next most likely spot to seek recovery of such engines... recovery of which would obviously, instantly validate the entire TIGHAR hypothesis & all the tedious, painstaking archealogical efforts of all the past TIGHAR efforts ? Don Neumann ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 7 Jan 2002 10:04:06 EST Reply-To: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum Sender: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum From: "Richard E. Gillespie" Subject: Re: March of Time MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit From Ron Bright For Chris Stohmeyer, I too called and emailed the scrybe and to date no results. The telephone as ansered by someone who coulld only speak Spanish. I tracking down some sources that Cam Warren came up with on the history of the March of Time broadcasts from 1935 to 1951. You might help by looking at this book: Raymond Fielding, "The March of Time": 1935-51," Oxford Press, 1978. I shall try the others. Ron Bright ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 7 Jan 2002 10:07:40 EST Reply-To: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum Sender: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum From: "Richard E. Gillespie" Subject: Re: Recovering degraded photo images MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit From Jon Watson Hi Ric, But what about the guy in the gorilla suit? Don't I recall correctly that you once said that someone saw a guy in a gorilla suit somewhere in the background? You weren't pulling our ...... naw, you wouldn't do that! ltm jon *************************************************************************** From Ric No joke. That actually happened. If you blow up that photo big enough and hold your mouth just right you can see a guy in a gorilla suit. A couple of stiff drinks also sharpens the enhanced image. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 7 Jan 2002 10:18:16 EST Reply-To: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum Sender: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum From: "Richard E. Gillespie" Subject: Re: B-29 ENGINES MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit From M. Horak Yes, B-29s had 18 cyl. R-3350s. But one was fitted with the R-4360s. See http://www.csd.uwo.ca/~pettypi/elevon/baugher_us/b029-04.html Also, while the R-4360 may have been the only 28 cylinder radial, the Wright Tornado was 42 cylinder liquid cooled radial. A fascinating book about it ("Tornado") has just been released -- see http://www.weakforcepress.com/ I should mention that I only know about such things thanks to my participation in CompuServe's Aviation Forum (Avsig). -mh ************************************************************************** From Ric Impressive as they are, these monster engines are off-topic to our investigation. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 7 Jan 2002 10:19:21 EST Reply-To: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum Sender: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum From: "Richard E. Gillespie" Subject: Re: March of Time MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit From Mike Holt > >From Ron Bright > I too called and emailed the scrybe and to date no results. The telephone as > ansered by someone who coulld only speak Spanish. I tracking down some > sources that Cam Warren came up with on the history of the March of Time > broadcasts from 1935 to 1951. What else was in the broadcast that day? Would it help if whomever is recieving these requests thought that Amelia was not the real objective of the interest? Mike Holt ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 8 Jan 2002 10:50:36 EST Reply-To: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum Sender: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum From: "Richard E. Gillespie" Subject: Re: what should be done next MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit From Tom King For Don Neumann -- Maybe it's just the nitpicky archeologist in me, Don, but I prefer the tedious gathering of little bits of data, guided by a reasonable hypothesis with test implications, eventually reaching a responsible probabilistic conclusion, to going for broke looking for a single smoking gun. It's true that we don't have definitive, absolutely-Electra pieces from the village, but we've also only looked at a tiny portion of the village in the detail necessary to find such pieces. If the villagers were salvaging stuff from the wreck, they were doing so when it was a whole lot less wrecked than it is now, when there were likely to have been a lot more smoking guns lying around. So I think that more work in the village -- which would be a lot less costly, I suspect, than deep diving off the reef -- would be very much worth doing. TK ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 8 Jan 2002 10:52:23 EST Reply-To: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum Sender: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum From: "Richard E. Gillespie" Subject: Re: March of Time MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit From Ron Bright For Chris S. I contacted Fielding but was only an expert in the MOT film history , not radio broadcast. So no need to call Dr. Raymond Fielding. Ron B ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 8 Jan 2002 10:58:08 EST Reply-To: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum Sender: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum From: "Richard E. Gillespie" Subject: Re: March of Time MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit From Ric The following is an excerpt from an email received by Ron Bright and posted here with his permission. It's a rather impressive list of possible sources for old radio shows. If someone on the forum wants to tackle the job of trying to track down a recording or transcript of the Earhart March of Time broadcasts, this list is a real leg up. ***************************************** The best source for such things, a book called RERUNS ON FILE: A GUIDE TO ELECTRONIC MEDIA ARCHIVES (by the same Don Godfrey, 1992) lists five sources for "March of Time" programs. One (the UCLA Film & Television Archive) deals almost exclusively with visual records from 1947 on. Another, the "North American Radio Archives Cassette Lending Library" in Elmwood, OH (216.226.8189), has only a handful of recordings from the 1930s. The "Radio Closet" in Freeport, IL (815.235.3753) is listed as having something from MOT, but is not all that big a collection, and they may be difficult to access, since this is operated out of a private home. Probably the best source is SPERDVAC--The Society to Preserve and Encourage Radio Drama, Variety, and Comedy, POBox 7171, Van Nuys, CA 91409-9712, 213.947.9800. It is a big collection! They also have a number (7000+) of scripts of various programs. The Motion Picture, Broadcasting and Recorded Sound Division of the Library of Congress is another possibility: James Madison Building, 101 Independence Ave., SE, Washington, DC 20540-4690. They now possess the March of Time Stock Film Library, but you want radio rather than TV. Next most likely to have what you want is the National Archives: Motion Picture, Sound and Video Unit, Special Media Archives Division, National Archives and Records Administration, Archives II, 8601 Adelphi Road, College Park, MD 20740-6001, 301.713,6800. (The Archives now also has the Milo Ryan (KIRO-CBS) Collection, mostly from WWII). The Library of American Broadcasting (formerly the Broadcast Pioneers Library) at the University of Maryland has some program material, but this isn't its central focus. 301.405.9160. A good university collection, but not likely to contain all of a given program, is the Radio Archive of the University of Memphis. 901.678.3174; There is an American Archive of Broadcasting in the Thousand Oaks (CA) Library, which has a great deal of material that they are working hard to organize, mostly by name of radio stars (who contributed much of the collection). 905.449.2660. They have an online catalog that can be accessed at Don't overlook, if the foregoing don't have what you need, the Museum of Television and Radio in both New York (212.621.6600) and Beverly Hills (310.786.1000) or the Museum of Broadcast Communications in Chicago (312.629.6000). (I have URLs for these, and others, if you need them--but for a specialized request like yours, I suspect that the telephone will get more action.) Chris Sterling, my co-author of STAY TUNED: A HISTORY OF AMERICAN BROADCASTING, suggested that you may wish to contact Prof. Marvin Bensman at the University of Memphis (see above), whose e-mail address, logically enough, is and Prof. Larry Lichty at Northwestern (). Both of these scholars have all sorts of information rattling around in their minds and their files. You may also wish to look up the names of the producers, directors, actors, etc. on MOT in the new (1998) edition of John Dunning's THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF OLD-TIME RADIO and see if they (or their heirs) have scripts. Much of the material in the older files of CBS was (shame!) dumped into the Staten Island landfill some years ago. The likelihood that the sponsor (Electrolux refrigerators, probably in Stamford, CT for the period October 14, 1936-October 7, 1937--but the surviving vacuum cleaner business recently was sold again) has files shouldn't be completely discounted. (TIME didn't start as a sponsor until late 1938). Even more likely, if the firm still exists (I don't have the energy or the resources to check) would be the Batten, Barton, Durstine and Osborne advertising agency. NOTE: the program moved from CBS to the (NBC) Blue Network in October 1937. FYI, Dunning lists Earhart five times in its index--four to interviews on variety programs before her ill-fated final flight, and one for a 1946 program called "Honored Flights." That's about all I can come up with at the moment, and I hope that you will be able to obtain a copy of the script or a recording from one of the above sources. I don't pretend that this is a complete list of major repositories, but, as Claude Rains said in "Casablanca," they are the "usual suspects." Now for the second question: According to the first FCC Annual Report (1935), the Field Section of the Engineering Department had "jurisdiction over the activities of the 21 field districts and 2 independent monitoring stations; 1 at Grand Island, Nebr., and 1 at Great Lakes, Ill. Five other monitoring stations are operated in conjunction with headquarters offices, at Boston, Baltimore, Atlanta, Los Angeles, and Portland," [The Grand Island station was only closed down a couple of years ago.] In the sixth Annual Report (1940), the FCC reports that, as a national defense measure, "The Commission received $175,000 from Congress with which to relocate six of its seven main monitoring stations. These supplemental sums enabled the Commission to expand its field force and improve its 'listening posts' for more effective surveillance of radio channels." The enormous antennas at these posts enabled the FCC to take very accurate cross bearings on signals of interest (including ship or aircraft distress messages, if learned about early enough). (By the way, Howeth's HISTORY OF COMMUNICATIONS-ELECTRONICS IN THE U.S. NAVY didn't have Earhart's name in its index.) As for the possibility that someone else monitored her transmissions, I urge you to get in touch with the American Radio Relay League (the predominant amateur radio organization). I'd write to David Sumner, the ARRL's Executive Vice President, 225 Main Street, Newington, CT 06111-1494, and let him pass it along to whomever is the resident historian or archivist. Good luck with your project! (And don't forget to have something else lined up when you discover what happened to Amelia Earhart). Mike John Michael Kittross ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 9 Jan 2002 09:43:33 EST Reply-To: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum Sender: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum From: "Richard E. Gillespie" Subject: Going for broke MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit From Chris Kennedy Tom King writes: >I prefer the tedious gathering of little bits of data, guided by a reasonable > hypothesis with test implications, eventually reaching a responsible > probabilistic conclusion, to going for broke looking for a single smoking > gun. Why would an off-reef search be considered "going for broke"? --Chris Kennedy *************************************************************************** From Ric Let me see if I understand what Tom means (he has been preaching this sermon to me for years). We already have sites that are producing interesting artifacts that can be further developed with the expenditure of large amounts of hard labor rather than large quantities of hard cash. If we continue to archeologize (impliedly a new word) the Seven Site and the village, we WILL find more stuff. If a smoking gun turns up, so much the better, but in any event we'll get a clearer picture of what was going on at those sites. An off-reef search is not likely to turn up small pieces of the puzzle. It's the whole enchilada or nothing - and the cost of looking would mean convincing donors to "invest" (in an emotional sense) in the idea that the enchilada is down there. The bigger the investment, the bigger the let down if the hypothesis doesn't test out positively. Look at Mike Kammerer. In September of 2000 he was perfectly content to help fund an archaeological expedition that expected to find some good archaeological results that future expeditions could further investigate, but then the infamous anomaly in the satellite photo raised the possibility, and then the expectation, of a smoking gun discovery. When that didn't happen, Kammerer completely lost faith in the Niku hypothesis and decided that the airplane is on the bottom of the ocean. Go figure. We're really not looking for any further "sponsorship" from Mr. Kammerer anyway but the lesson is clear. Great expectations may get great press, but they also bring great disappointment if they don't pan out. For many, the fact that the hyped anomaly on the reef did not turn out to be Electra wreckage overshadowed the very real success at the Seven Site. The most important thing for this project is that it continue to show progress toward solving the Earhart mystery. We've done that for going-on fourteen years now and it's the only way to maintain and build the credibility that brings the public support that allows us to keep going. Raising and spending big bucks on attempts to find smoking guns at the expense of pursuing the solid leads we have is gambling with our credibility and can be literally "going for broke." LTM, Ric ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 9 Jan 2002 10:10:27 EST Reply-To: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum Sender: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum From: "Richard E. Gillespie" Subject: Eyewitness redux MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit From Alexander I was browsing on the net, like you do, and i found this.... Maybe you have all seen it, maybe not, but i thought i would share it anyway. hope it makes the cut(as in not cut) alexander..... The disappearance of Amelia Earhart during her around-the-world flight attempt in July 1937 is unquestionably one of the greatest mysteries of the 20th century. When Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan, took off from Lae, New Guinea, in her twin-engine Lockheed Electra 10E on the morning of July 2, they planned to land on Howland Island, a tiny speck of land 2,556 miles to the east-northeast. Instead, Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan vanished into legend, myth and more than 60 years of hype and endless speculation. Despite a significant and ever-growing compilation of eyewitness accounts placing Earhart and Noonan on the Japanese-held island of Saipan in the months following their disappearance, the U.S. Navy's official position has never changed: "That at about 2300 [July 3] the plane landed on the sea to the northwest of Howland Island, within 120 miles of the island." The Navy's stance on Earhart's fate is patently false and without merit, as Thomas E. Devine's 1987 book, "EYEWITNESS: The Amelia Earhart Incident" clearly demonstrates. Since the publication of "EYEWITNESS," many other ex-GIs have come forward to testify to their knowledge of Earhart's presence on Saipan prior to the American invasion in June 1944. Their experiences as well as other new information relative to the truth about the Earhart "mystery" are chronicled in our book, "With Our Own Eyes: Eyewitnesses to the Final Days of Amelia Earhart." More than five decades of dedicated labor have brought Devine little more than the bleak realization that the facts surrounding the Earhart mystery will never be officially acknowledged by the U.S. government. His refusal to abandon hope despite overwhelming resistance is testimony to Devine's veracity and the worthiness of his cause. The purpose of this web site is to briefly introduce the facts surrounding the disappearance of Amelia Earhart to anyone interested. This is another sincere attempt to break through the avalanche of misinformation that continues to so effectively bury the truth that, to most Americans, "Amelia Earhart" is nothing more than a line of travel luggage or an outrageous headline in a tabloid newspaper. Alexander G in the uk **************************************************************************** From Ric Devine's 1987 book "Eyewitness: the Amelia Earhart Incident" is basically a chronicle of his unsuccessful attempts to find hard evidence to support his personal recollection of seeing Earhart's plane on Saipan in 1945. Since then, the Japanese Capture Theory that first became popular with Fred Goerner's 1966 bestseller "The Search For Amelia Earhart" has gradually receded from acceptance until now only a few diehards cling to the tale. Anecdotes from GI's who remember seeing Earhart evidence on Saipan are legion and it sounds like Devine has collected and published another batch. If he needs any more I've got a file about three inches thick. It's really pretty interesting because there is a definite formula to the stories: - The finder is always an enlisted man. - He discovers bones, a grave, papers, photos, you-name-it, that prove that Earhart was there and in Japanese custody. - He reports his discovery to an officer. - The officer confiscates the material and swears the GI to silence. - The material is never seen again (music up, fade to black). The one thing that all of these stories have in common is that there is never any hard evidence to support them. But then, as any good conspiracy buff can tell you, absence of evidence is proof of a coverup. LTM, Ric ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 9 Jan 2002 10:16:24 EST Reply-To: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum Sender: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum From: "Richard E. Gillespie" Subject: Re: March of Time MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit From David Kelly Maybe the last line of this email is very important - "Don't forget to have something else lined up....." We know Ric has already found the smoking gun and on his retirement we will all get an email saying he has found EA's electra sitting in his backyard, right next to the white dove, behind the stash of FW 109's found in the concrete bunkers...:) Regards David Kelly ************************************************************************** From Ric That would be AE's Electra and the White Bird. Yes, we're saving them and the FWs in case there is ever a time when we need to raise money. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 9 Jan 2002 10:17:53 EST Reply-To: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum Sender: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum From: "Richard E. Gillespie" Subject: Re: March of Time MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit From Mike E. the Radio Historian #2194: >As for the possibility that someone else monitored her transmissions, I > >urge you to get in touch with the American Radio Relay League (the > >predominant amateur radio organization). I'd write to David Sumner, the > >ARRL's Executive Vice President, 225 Main Street, Newington, CT 06111-1494, > >and let him pass it along to whomever is the resident historian or > >archivist. All I can say is... Good Luck.... I tried querying the ARRL and got next to nowhere. Even though I am a member, and said as much in my queries, the answers I got ignored that fact, and treated me like something of a minor annoyance. All they are going to do is refer you to "QST" Magazine, which many large libraries have in bound voulmes. It is also available on CD-ROM. Been there/done that already. I have personally combed QST page by page, every single page, for the years 1936-37-38 and came up with NOTHING. The League had a somewhat myopic attitude toward entities like Earhart. The bottom line: SHE WAS NOT A HAM OPERATOR; she was using radio for a COMMERCIAL PURPOSE, which to the League was "Anathema" in those days... even though some hams may have been involved with her, QST never printed (and probably never would have printed, anyway) a word about it. And as far as I could tell, the ARRL has no "resident historian" or "archivist." I have been through several other period radio magazines, and come up with nothing we did not already know. I still need to check "Radio" magazine, to which I was given a great link last summer but just have not had the time to pursue it... but I will get there. I believe this publication would be the most promising source. LTM (who reads all the fine print, without rose colored glasses) and 73 Mike E. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 9 Jan 2002 10:37:02 EST Reply-To: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum Sender: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum From: "Richard E. Gillespie" Subject: Re: March of Time MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit From Tom Van Hare Ric -- In this last post talking about the March of Time, I noted the following item: --------- "Even more likely, if the firm still exists (I don't have the energy or the resources to check) would be the Batten, Barton, Durstine and Osborne advertising agency." --------- Ok, as a former CEO of a design firm, I am quite very familiar with this name, though it is not generally spoken that way -- Batten, Barton, Durstine and Osborne is now known and has been known since probably the 1940s as BBDO. The firm is the Agency of Record for many large global firms, such as VISA, Wrigley, Texaco, BT, Bayer, Campbells, Daimler-Chrysler, GE, FedEx, Gillette, Pepsi, Pizza Hut, and many more.... In short, this is VERY BIG LEAGUE. The full contact information is as follows: ------------------------------------------ BBDO Worldwide http://www.bbdo.com/ 1285 Avenue of the Americas New York, NY 10019 United States Phone: 212-459-5000 New Business / Client Information: jerry.roberts@bbdo.com Public / Corporate / Press Relations: adrienne.sarro@bbdo.com Worldwide: elizabeth.wilkinson@bbdo.com Human Resources: jeff.sautter@bbdo.com Note: I would start with Adrienne Sarro, in that being in PR, she might see some potential in the relationship with TIGHAR. The likelihood of BBDO North America having files as old as the 1930s (in audio tape!) is very limited, but you never know. One aspect to consider prior to making a contact would be whether the contact with this HUGE firm (and I mean HUGE, it is one of the largest global ad firms) could be used as a possible new relationship for TIGHAR -- it might be good PR for the firm to sponsor part of the program and a firm of this scale, with this level of activity may well take any good opportunity to get its name out there -- also, you never know what aviation connections there may be in senior management. Just a thought -- my regrets that I don't have time to contact this one myself, so in writing this, I am passing it on to someone else. I would, however, recommend that the contact be made very carefully and with coordination through Ric, in that it may, if managed correctly, have potential involvement in support far beyond just answering the question as to whether the BBDO archives have copies of the old audio tapes. Thomas Van Hare HistoricWings.com ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 9 Jan 2002 10:40:50 EST Reply-To: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum Sender: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum From: "Richard E. Gillespie" Subject: Re: March of Time MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit From Chris in Petaluma Ric, Have you read the comment by the Commandant of the fourteenth Naval District in the U.S. Navy Report of the Search for Amelia Earhart dated July 2-18 1937? page 8, paragraph 5, "The experience in false messages, interference, and confusion on critical frequencies indicates the need for some provision for authoritative control of such frequencies in emergency. Obviously, such realistic radio programs as the March of Time should not be broadcast when they may effect relief measures in progress." Ric, you said that Betty had zero chance of hearing the MOT broadcasts because their format was all wrong. What did you mean? Chris in Petaluma #2511 (Where is everyone on the forum?) *************************************************************************** From Ric I didn't say that Betty had zero chance of HEARING the MoT broadcast. Clearly she could have. But the CONTENT of Betty's notes of what she heard does not seem to fit the format used in March of Time dramatizations. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 9 Jan 2002 11:07:33 EST Reply-To: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum Sender: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum From: "Richard E. Gillespie" Subject: What should be done MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="ISO-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable From Don Neumann From Dr. King:=20 ...'I prefer the tedious gathering of little bits of data, guided by a reasonable=20 hypothesis with test implications, eventually reaching a responsible probabilistic conclusion, to going for broke looking for a single smoking=20 gun'...=20 *******************************=20 Perhaps I could agree with Dr. King _if_ there was no _other_ reasonable, testable hypothesis, that _might_ also reach a responsible, possibly _conclusive_ determination as to the _fact_ that AE/FN's Electra _did_ actually fly to & land upon Gardner/Nikumaroro Island...=20 After all, TIGHAR's own hypothesis includes the scenario that the Electra was swept off the reef-flat, into the deep-water abyss, off the outer edge of the reef-flat... within a week of it's initial touchdown... following a successful, wheels-down landing. =20 Given such an assumption, would it not seem most likely that the Electra's engines, the heaviest 'artifacts' likely to have survived being 'deep-sixed' off the reef's edge... are to be found at the bottom of the ocean, in fairly close proximity to the reef, rather than lying somewhere else _on_ the Island or elsewhere in the middle of the Central Pacific?... And would not finding those engines leave not a single doubt in anyone's mind as to the valid proving of TIGHAR's Gardner/Nikumaroro hypothesis? =20 The technology & the vehicle to perform such a mission exist...=20 In Search of Amelia Earhart=20 Address:http://www.insearchofamelia.com/ Changed:8:58 PM on Saturday, December 15, 2001=20 ... Would it be costly to mount such an expedition?... Indeed it would, however adding-up the cummulative costs of the four TIGHAR expeditions to date, (which, though no doubt successful from an archeological standpoint, have failed the test of TIGHAR's _original_ premise... locating & protecting the integrity of the Electra's remains & of it's crew _on_ Gardner/Nikumaroro Island)... they probably would have approximated the cost of a deep-water, 'visual' search of the waters adjacent to the reef.=20 Since Ric G. has already suggested that the 'deep-water' expeditions that currenty are being scheduled, are looking in the _wrong_ part of the Central Pacific... it's too bad that such an expedition cannot be directed to the _one_ location where the TIGHAR hypothesis insists the Electra _is_ located!=20 ***************************************=20 ...'If the villagers were salvaging=20 stuff from the wreck, they were doing so when it was a whole lot less wrecked=20 than it is now, when there were likely to have been a lot more smoking guns=20 lying around. =A0So I think that more work in the village -- which would be a lot less costly, I suspect, than deep diving off the reef -- would be very much worth doing'...=20 ****************************************=20 While I must concede the point that earlier settlers, island residents, visitors &/or cast-aways, no doubt could & did find & put to practical utilization, far more salvageable items than have turned up to-date... none of the TIGHAR expeditions so far have been able to make any direct connection between the 'artifacts' that have been uncovered & anything that may have originated with or from the Electra or it's crew... raising honest questions as to how many additional, land-locked expeditions (& at what cost) are going to be required to locate those elusive bits & pieces of the Electra or it's crew, that _might_ create a preponderence of probably _inconclusive_ evidence... as already conceded by Dr. King in his opening paragraph ?=20 Don Neumann ************************************************************************* From Ric Why is it that it always seems to be the folks who have never contributed a=20 nickel who are full of advice about how much money we should raise and how w= e=20 should spend it? ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 9 Jan 2002 11:21:48 EST Reply-To: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum Sender: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum From: "Richard E. Gillespie" Subject: ARRL again MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="ISO-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable From Mike E. the Radio Historian #2194: I forgot to mention this, which was interesting, re the ARRL; and the one=20 exception to their "official" replies to me, because it was not really an=20 official communication: A couple of years ago, one of my queries was answered by Zack Lau, ham call=20 W1VT, who is a staffer at ARRL Hqs. Mr. Lau is a descendent of Harry Lau=20 who was the US Army Signal Corps liaison (?) officer on Howland in July 1937= =20 (the US Army Air Corps also sent an officer, a Lieut. Cooper). He directed=20 me to David Lau in Honolulu, a grandson of Harry Lau. I exchanged a couple=20 of e-mails with David, who told me that Yat Fai Lum, the ham operator on=20 Howland at the time, was still alive in Honolulu, but I was never able to=20 contact Mr. Lum... don't know if he is still lucid or not and David was not=20 clear at all about this. I asked a bunch of questions, but the trail went=20 real cold, no answers were ever received. 73 Mike E. **************************************************************************** From Ric "Harry" Lau has sometimes been described as the U.S. Army Signal corps=20 liaison officer on Howland Island but the Itasca Cruise Report (July 24,=20 1937) lists Henry Lau as one of the "Hawaiian personnel employees of=20 Department of Interior." Yat Fai Lum (correct name Yau Fai Lum) was another of the DoI "colonists" on= =20 Howland and is shown in the Cruise Report as "Paul Yat Lum". In 1989 TIGHAR member (and Earhart Project co-founder) Tom Gannon=20 corresponded with Mr. Yau, a fellow HAM (K6GNW and KH6CW), and asked him to= =20 describe his experiences. Here is Mr. Yau's reply. =20 Dear Thomas: A half century is a long time ago to remember things accurately. For memory=20 has faded and time and age has taken its toll. I will try to givea short=20 synopsis of my nine months on Howland Island. Howland Island is a very small island near the equator which is about one=20 mile long and half-a-mile wide. It is flat about 20 feet above sea level. Th= e=20 chief and original inhabitants of the island are thousands of sea birds like= =20 the frigate, booby, marlyn, terns, etc. They build their nests on the sandy=20 ground, lay their eggs, and raise their young. Sailing ships used to stop by= =20 to retrieve guano which is in abundance. There are also thousands of rats=20 that are not afraid of man. There are just a few trees about ten feet tall.=20 But there are an abundance of sea food from fish to squid to lobsters. We=20 killed many sharks for their jaws as trophies and their fins for soup. We worked for the Dept. of Interior, three Hawaiians from Kamehameha School=20 and myself, the radio operator. I had a SW3 radio receiver and a home built=20 transmitter with a 807 in the final. The Zepp antenna hung from the top of=20 the flag pole to a shorter pole 65 feet away. Our electrical sources were=20 borrowed from the army with their hand-cranked generator which put out 400=20 volts, storage batteries together with a generator-charger, and a dynamo. I=20 had special authority from the FCC to operate on 31 meters on the Coast=20 frequency because the ham bands had too much QRM. With only men (four) on the island, we ran around naked all day long and did= =20 not shave for nine months. Every three months the Coast Guard ship Itasca=20 stop by to provide us with provisions and transfer personnel who wish to=20 leave. All food and water in 50-gallon drums were brought in from Honolulu. Pan American Airline was pioneering the Pacific at that time, and we provide= d=20 them with weather reports on the ground and in the upper atmosphere. We=20 rotate every four days to stand watch and take weather readings like=20 barometric pressure, temperature, wind direction and speed, cloud formation,= =20 etc. Once a day we set up the theodolite and inflate a huge balloon. As one=20 person release the balloon, he has his log and pencil ready to log the=20 readings as announced by the other person manning the theodolite. The=20 readings give upper atmosphere wind speed and direction. Once a day all thes= e=20 information were relayed to another ham in Honolulu who telephoned PAA with=20 the figures. About a month prior to D Day when Amelia Earhart was to arrive, the Coast Guard brought and landed heavy equipment of bull dozer, grader,=20 tractor, etc., to build the airfield. It was relatively easy for the land wa= s=20 flat, sandy, with no huge boulders to move or dynamite. One concern was that= =20 if the navigation was not perfect they may miss or overshoot the island.=20 From 30,000 feel up, the island is just a fly speck in the Pacific. Hard to=20 see. The other concern was the thousands of sea birds flying about which may= =20 damage the plane. On the evening of D Day minus 1, I was aboard ship enjoying a good meal and=20 splashing in a hot shower. On Howland we do not have such luxuries. We bathe= =20 in the ocean and cannot use soap. Salt water do not wash soap off our skin.=20 Afterwards I went on deck just in time to witness a loud boom on the island=20 when the army personnel set off a couple of cases of dynamite trying to scar= e=20 the birds away. When the blasts went off, all the birds took flight about 10= 0=20 feet into the air, chirping in fright. The whole island shook and vibrated=20 sending ripples of small waves around the island. After a few minutes, all o= f=20 the birds returned to their nests. The Coast Guard radio personnel brought ashore portable radio equipment,=20 direction finders, etc., and occupied a shack next to the main house. We did= =20 not bother then, so as not to interfere with their duties. In the afternoon=20 as I walked past the shack, I heard one of them say, "They are low on gas."=20= I=20 assume the, were referring to Earhart, but I did not bother to ask. The army personnel built an eight-foot high stand and hoisted a 50-gallon=20 drum of water atop. They attached a shower head and a pull cord to release=20 the water. Tarpaulin surrounded the structure to offer privacy since Amelia=20 will be the only female within miles of the island. This will be her shower=20 room. No hot shower for the temperature was about 90=B0. In the meantime, I was busy giving up my bed for her. It was one of those=20 folding steel bed about 30" wide with a thin mattress on it. I spread a clea= n=20 sheet on it and changed the pillow case. She will have privacy here for this= =20 is a room towards the back of the house where she could sleep without being=20 bothered. When she did not arrive as scheduled, the Coast Guard ship began circling th= e=20 island in expanding circles until out of sight trying to locate her. They=20 came back a few days later empty handed. There were many rumors about her disappearance, all without proof. That the=20 Japanese held her prisoner, the Japanese shot her down, she was spying, and=20 she never left on her last leg to Howland, etc. I was never in radio contact with Earhart, for that was left entirely to the= =20 Coast Guard. My SW3 receiver only had a few coils in the ham bands and two=20 that I wound to receive the Coast Guard frequency on 31 meters and a=20 broadcast coil to receive KGMB in Honolulu. I do not know anything about=20 hearing signals from Earhart after she went down. Sorry to have taken so long to answer your letter. When your letter dated=20 Dec. 17, 1988 was in transit, we left on Dec. 19 to visit our grandchildren=20 in Tennessee. We just got home to find your letter together with a huge pile= =20 of mail awaiting. I am surprise to find so many people researching the same=20 subject at such a late date. I have an appointment with a fella who is comin= g=20 on Jan. 22 to record our conversation on TV. I hope the above information will shed some light in your research. Good luc= k=20 and hope you will come up with all the correct answers. 73. Very truly yours, Yau Fai Lum ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 10 Jan 2002 09:20:54 EST Reply-To: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum Sender: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum From: "Richard E. Gillespie" Subject: Re: Going for broke MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit From Tom King Eloquenly said, Ric, and in fact "archeologize" IS a word that's used from time to time, though it may not yet be in anybody's dictionary. TK ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 10 Jan 2002 09:22:41 EST Reply-To: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum Sender: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum From: "Richard E. Gillespie" Subject: Re: What should be done MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit From Tom King Don -- I think that even if it would be relatively cheap to do a deep water search (and it's my strong impression that it wouldn't be), I think Ric has made an excellent point in his recent post on this subject about the adverse effects of putting (or seeming to put) all one's eggs in a single basket; the example he used of the passionate planelike pixels on the reef was an excellent one. If you don't strike it rich when you go for broke -- well, people think you're broke, whether you really are or not. As for the fact that we haven't yet definitively linked up an artifact from the village with the Earhart plane -- that's hardly surprising, considering that most parts of the plane would not be definitively identifiable as such and that we've never really given the village a thorough search. Most times we've just wandered around there on off-days, and/or when we got discouraged looking anyplace else. Only in 1997 did we really try to give it a look, and then we were able to closely study only two residence sites -- maybe two to four percent of the total. The village is knee-deep in rotting coconut fronds and nuts; you can't just wander through and pick up whatever's there. It would take a serious piece of work to really say we've looked at it, but at least we have the technology. And if we want an engine -- there's always Kanton. Tom King ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 10 Jan 2002 09:32:20 EST Reply-To: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum Sender: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum From: "Richard E. Gillespie" Subject: Re: March of Time MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit From Ron Bright Ric, I note Tom Van Hare's comments about the possibility of finding an audio as the Firm was the ad agency for the MOT. Sounds as if there is fund raising possiblities if you hit the right chords when approaching that firm. In view of that aspect, I suspect you or someone on your staff give the firm a call. ************************************************************************** From Ric A hard lesson I've learned about corporate fund raising is that "cold calling" big firms is a waste of time. Chasing a recording or transcript of the MoT broadcasts is something I have to let you guys do. If somebody in a position of authority at "the Firm" gets turned on about our investigation, that will be the time for me to get involved. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 10 Jan 2002 09:51:42 EST Reply-To: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum Sender: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum From: "Richard E. Gillespie" Subject: Re: ARRL again MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="ISO-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable From Angus Murray Ric, I don't know if you have seen this but there are some interesting points raised re Noonan's drinking, fake logs, incorrect time zones and Thompson's incompetence. It confirms that Lum had no part in any DF effort or radio communication with Earhart. Regards Angus. COURTESY OF JOHN HANCOCK FINANCIAL SERVICES The Earhart Tragedy Old Mystery, New Hypothesis By John P. Riley, Jr. Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan disappeared over the Pacific in 1937 while attempting to fly around the world--and their story continues to intrigue researchers and the public alike. The author details evidence indicating that official actions may have contributed to the mystery. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---- Over the decades since Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan disappeared in the Pacific Ocean on 2 July 1937 while attempting to fly around the world, many authors have focused on the fliers' alleged incompetence as the reason they did not find Howland Island. Earhart, despite having achieved numerous aviation firsts, often is portrayed as unqualified, even though she was the first woman to fly the Atlantic Ocean and the first person of either sex to fly from Hawaii to the mainland of North America. Critics say that Noonan, although without question a top-flight navigator, was a hopeless alcoholic who was either drunk or hung over when most needed. Captain Almon Gray, U.S. Naval Reserve (Retired), who was Assistant Communications Superintendent for Pan American Airways' Pacific Division when he left to go on active duty in 1942, knew Fred Noonan well and flew with him a number of times in the Pan Am Clippers. Gray told me that Noonan always showed up for a flight precisely on time but usually looking a bit hung over. Once aloft he would have some coffee and then do a superb job of navigation. He never drank during a flight. Unknown to many researchers, Noonan held a second class Commercial Radiotelegraph License, which he obtained two years before his death, and he often stood by for the Clippers' radio operators when needed. They worked in CW (continuous wave, i.e., Morse code) exclusively. In contrast with the sniping at the Earhart-Noonan team, Commander Warner K. Thompson, U.S. Coast Guard, commanding the USCGC Itasca (WPG-321)--the vessel waiting at Howland Island to guide her in--has received lavish praise. Consider what the Commandant, 14th Naval District, reported at the time to the Chief of Naval Operations: THOMAS J. RINGERS People flocked to Lae when Amelia Earhart and navigator Fred Noonan passed through. Left to right: L. J. Joubert of Bulolo Gold Dredging, Ltd.; Mrs. Joubert; Mrs. F. C. Jacobs; Earhart; F. C. Jacobs of New Guinea Goldfields, Ltd.; and Noonan. Tommie O'Dea, General Manager of Guinea Airways, took the photograph--one of the last images of the two fliers before they launched for Howland Island. In the background is the aircraft with the direction-finding loop antenna and the stub mast antenna clearly visible aft of the cockpit. "Commander W. K. Thompson, USCG, has been commended by letter to his immediate superior. His intelligent and zealous conduct of the initial phase of the search under most trying conditions deserves especial commendation. His reports, together with the wholehearted cooperation of the Commander, Hawaiian Section, U. S. Coast Guard, were of great assistance to the subsequent conduct of operations by the Navy. The performance of the ITASCA was excellent in all respects throughout the flight and the search. Careful study of all communications and other information pertaining to the flight and the preparations therefor indicate clearly that ITASCA left nothing undone to insure the safe completion of the Earhart flight." Many investigating the disappearance probably took this at face value and directed their attention elsewhere. I saw it as military service politesse, however. Generous letters of commendation are an old tradition in all fighting forces--but they can distort history. A detailed examination of Commander Thompson's performance reveals a different story. Far from acting intelligently and zealously, he must have so embarrassed then-Rear Admiral R. R. Waesche, Commandant of the Coast Guard, and Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau, Jr.--to whom the service then reported--that they thought it best the facts remain undisclosed. With the fliers unavailable to defend themselves, only one side of the story has come to light--until now. Of course, Commander Thompson is not here to defend himself either. If, because of that, my judgment of him seems too harsh, it must be compared with the unrestrained attacks he made on Earhart in his search report. U.S. COAST GUARD Admiral Russell Waesche was the Commandant of the Coast Guard from 1936 to 1945. Stonewalling Shortly after the search for the missing fliers ended, Navy Commander P. V. H. Weems, a highly regarded navigator and navigation instructor, wrote to Rear Admiral Waesche asking for copies of files concerning the disaster. Weems knew Noonan, at least through correspondence, and was motivated to discover what had happened. Following is the terse reply: Weems System of Navigation 30 August, 1937 Annapolis, Maryland Sirs: Reference is made to your letter of August 14, 1937 in which you request the file of messages from the U. S. Coast Guard Cutter ITASCA concerning the loss of the Earhart plane. While realizing the merit of your plans and that the conclusions drawn from a study of the information contained in the dispatches would be of value to flyers [sic], it is believed inadvisable to submit any of the information for study or publication. I regret very much that this decision seems best after a consideration of all factors in the case and that we are unable to comply with your request. Very truly yours, R. R. Waesche Rear Admiral, U. S. Coast Guard, Commandant What led to this decision? The logical conclusion is that the Itasca's message file contained embarrassing information. Apparently what was embarrassing was that Commander Thompson's actions appeared to be factors in the loss of Earhart and Noonan. Admiral Waesche died long ago, but his son later became a flag officer in the Coast Guard and retired in 1971. In correspondence, I found him completely forthright, cooperative, and gracious. When I asked what his father thought happened to Earhart and Noonan, however, he said that his father " . . . never at any time discussed Amelia Earhart." Background ACME Commander Warner K. Thompson, U.S. Coast Guard (inset) commanded the 250-foot U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Itasca (WPG-321) [shown here in the mid-1930s], which had been sent to Howland Island to provide navigational assistance for Earhart and Noonan on the long, over-water leg from Lae, New Guinea. The Itasca was at Howland Island to provide communications, smoke signals, and radio bearings to guide Earhart and Noonan as they approached the small isolated island in the mid-Pacific. I reject as fanciful the many conspiracy and faulty navigation theories involving the loss of the two fliers. Earhart and Noonan attempted to fly from Lae to Howland Island, arrived in the vicinity of the island short of fuel, and went into the sea nearby trying to find it. Things were what they seemed to be. Those who have flown over the sea when the sun is bright and low, with cumulus clouds about, know how difficult it would be to see a tiny island having a highest elevation of only about 15 feet. Looking toward the sun one sees only a blinding, shimmering path of silvery reflected sunlight in an arc about 15=B0 to 20=B0 wide; within that arc nothing can be seen. Elsewher= e, numerous cloud shadows look exactly like islands. The Itasca was making smoke, but it would have been conspicuous only if seen from sea level with a light blue sky in the background. Earhart and Noonan, however, were flying at 1,000 feet and the smoke seen from that perspective would have had an inky, blue-sea background. Color contrast would have been minimal; the odds were against them. Tiny Howland would have been difficult to spot in any case, but none of this would have mattered if the fliers could have received a radio bearing for final guidance. That was not to be. Failure to Provide Timely Radio Beacon Signal The Itasca failed to provide a timely radio beacon signal for the fliers to home on. Her 550-270 kiloHertz (kHz) radio direction finder and 500 kHz beacon transmitter do not appear to have been manned until 0730 ship's time, according to the log kept by Radioman Third Class T. J. O'Hare. The plane by that time would have been nearing Howland and the fliers would have been trying to find the island visually. By 0730, they likely would have given up trying to find the radio beacon, thinking their radio direction finder was not working. Commander Thompson should have had Radioman Third Class O'Hare on watch at least from the time the plane was about 200 miles from destination (i.e., at 0615 ship's time or earlier) and should have been transmitting a beacon signal on 500 kHz--not listening on that frequency. Almost every time "500 KCs [kilocycles]" (kilocycles rather than kiloHertz was the term in use at the time) is mentioned in the logs, one kept by O'Hare and the other by Radioman Third Class W. L. Galten, it is in the context of a request on 3105 kHz that Earhart transmit on 500 kHz so the Itasca could get a bearing--or a simple note such as "LSNIN [listening] 500" or "NIL [nothing] FROM KHAQQ [the aircraft] 500." It seems clear that the Itasca was listening on 500 kHz, not transmitting a steady beacon signal. One cannot do both at the same time. Earhart and Noonan simply could not transmit on 500 kHz. They depended on their radio direction finder and could have taken bearings on the cutter's 500 kHz transmitter if it had been in operation. The fliers needed a continuous beacon signal on that frequency, except during the plane's scheduled transmissions, and there was none. Had there been one, it could have guided them to Howland Island. All involved evidently misunderstood who was to take the bearings, ship or plane, so the cutter's crew listened on 500 kHz when they should have transmitted. But they did neither until the plane was already almost at destination. Failure to Support Radio Direction Finder on Howland On 5 July, Commander Thompson reported in a long message to Coast Guard Headquarters (with copy to San Francisco Division) that "SHIP [ITASCA] MET ALL EARHART REQUESTS WITH EXCEPTION INABILITY TO SECURE EMERGENCY RADIO BEARING ON 3105 KILOCYCLES DUE BRIEF EARHART TRANSMISSIONS AND USE VOICE. . . ." He is on the defensive here and attempting to shift blame squarely to Earhart. The "USE [of] VOICE" would not have prevented bearings being taken. In any case, the cutter's 0756 radio log entry does not bear him out. At that time, Earhart requested bearings and made a series of "long dashes," i.e., unmodulated carrier. She had made several transmissions that were too short to DF (get a direction-finding bearing), but she did not do it this time. Commander Thompson's report does not tell the rest of the story. Richard B. Black, Department of the Interior, and Radioman Second Class Frank Cipriani had brought aboard the Itasca a portable radio direction finder (RDF) that could tune the high frequencies used by Earhart for communications, with the intention of setting it up on Howland Island. For no apparent reason, Commander Thompson at first flatly refused to put Cipriani and his equipment ashore on the island. It could have been because he regarded his ship as responsible for guiding Earhart to Howland and he did not want anyone else to steal his thunder. Black, however, was determined that Cipriani and his RDF equipment would go ashore. Eventually, he prevailed, but Commander Thompson gave only grudging support and sent Cipriani ashore with a battery of inadequate capacity. Despite minimum use, the battery was totally discharged just when it was needed most--when Earhart desperately wanted a bearing taken and was sending those long dashes. But for this, bearings almost certainly could have been taken, although they could not have been sent to the plane because Earhart was not receiving voice transmissions from the Itasca. The bearings could have been a lifesaver during the rescue attempt, however, giving the searchers a better idea of where to look for the downed plane. Flawed search pattern Howland Island was actually about 5.8 nautical miles from its charted position. Commander Thompson visited it on a regular schedule and knew its correct position, but he did not inform Earhart and Noonan of the error when exchanging messages with the two fliers before they departed on the final and fatal flight from Lae, New Guinea. Figure 1 shows a logical search area oriented to the line-of-position and the track of the first search by the Itasca The cutter covered about 32% of the pattern in daylight but wasted 14 hours far to the east. Note the two positions of Howland, one per chart and the other the true position. The search pattern's estimated position at 0930 ship's time on 3 July (it was being set northwest at approximately 2 knots by the current). The Itasca conducted her second search without entering the search pattern once during daylight--24 hours wasted. With quick rescue a matter of life or death after the plane was overdue, Commander Thompson got under way at 1040 ship's time on course 337=B0, which he soon changed to 338=B0 (evidently correcting ship's course for drift, whi= ch he should not have done). At 1400, he headed east for five hours, away from the line-of-position (LOP) where the plane most likely went down. He spent the night of 2-3 July chasing after meteors that he mistook for flares. (See Figure 1.) Instead, he should have searched along the 337=B0/157=B0 LOP reported by Earhart. To define the search area, one would start by drawing the LOP on the chart through both the charted position of Howland Island and then through its true position. [Howland's charted position was 0 degrees 53 minutes N (north), 176=B0 35 minutes W (west)); its true position was 0=B0 4= 8 minutes N, 176=B0 38 minutes W.] Next, one would have to take into account that the LOPs could be in error as much as 10 nautical miles, so the pattern would have to be made 20 nautical miles wider (10 nautical miles on each side). Earhart did not say how far up or down the LOP she was flying. I think a reasonable assumption for the purpose at hand would be 45 nautical miles in each direction from the vicinity of Howland. This top-priority search pattern therefore would be about 24 nautical miles wide--covering the possible LOP error and the ambiguity of the reference point--and 90 nautical miles long. That produces a 2,160-square-mile pattern, shown in Figure 1, which would have been moving northwest with the current at about two knots. The search should have been conducted during daylight hours only. At night, the cutter should have drifted, letting the current take both vessel and pattern in the same direction. The pattern could have been searched in two passes. Steaming at 14 knots (with sunset at 1825 and sunrise at 0615 ship's time), the 13-hour search would have been completed by about 1130 ship's time on 3 July--the morning after the plane disappeared. Commander Thompson searched only about one-third of this area. (Again, see Figure 1). Why he thought that Noonan could wander to a position 100 miles east of the LOP that the fliers reported is hard to imagine. This would have required an error, normal to the LOP, 10 times Noonan's usual maximum error.1 When Earhart reported, "We are on you but can't see you," she was probably no more than 10 miles from the Itasca and Howland. Unable to see the tiny island, it is logical that she would fly up and down the LOP and that is precisely what she told the Itasca she was doing. Why would Commander Thompson look elsewhere? In any event, on the morning of 3 July he was back, drifting off the coast of Howland, waiting for a reply to a message he had sent to the Commander of the 14th Coast Guard District and the USS Swan (AVP-7). The message had asked whether he should load gasoline or depart on further operations. The gas was 1,600 gallons of aviation fuel in 50-gallon drums put on Howland to refuel Earhart's aircraft. He wasted one hour and 31 minutes of precious daylight search time before he received the obvious reply and got under way--again off to the east of the LOP high-probability search area. The cutter's crew failed to consider a two-knot current that was shifting the pattern northwest when the Itasca resumed the search on the morning of 3 July. (See Figure 2). At that very moment, Earhart and Noonan may have been clinging to sinking wreckage 10 or 20 miles away. On 4 July, he sent a message to the Hawaiian Section (with information copies to San Francisco and the 14th Coast Guard District) saying "JUDGE SHE CAME DOWN BETWEEN 337 [degrees] AND 90 [degrees] FROM HOWLAND AND WITHIN 100 MILES." In their 5 July reply, San Francisco belatedly told the Itasca: "OPINION OF TECHNICAL AIDS HERE THAT PLANE WILL BE FOUND ON ORIGINAL LINE OF POSITION. . . ." After two days, the staff had finally realized he was searching in the wrong place and told him so. Open-ocean ditchings are extremely hazardous. Without shoulder harnesses, pilots often pitched forward into the instrument panel. The sea was unusually calm around Howland that morning, however, and she might have ditched successfully. The plane, because of its large empty tanks, would have had about 5,000 pounds of positive buoyancy, but the center of buoyancy was well aft of the heavy engines and the aircraft certainly would have been nose down in the sea. The cockpit soon would have filled with water, forcing the tail higher and making it difficult to get to the rubber raft, water, and emergency gear stored in the tail section. Unless they were able to get into the raft, they could not have coped for long under those conditions. Hours counted--but if they survived the initial crash, probably hurt, they waited in vain. What happened in the first two days of the search was all important. Hours, days, and nights went by with Commander Thompson's ship wandering aimlessly--usually far from the reported line of position. Exaggerated search reports In his 6003-1250 message of 3 July, Thompson claimed to have searched "3,000 square miles." His deck log shows he steamed 268 miles. Therefore, he made the assumption that he could at all times see a plane on the water at a distance of up to 5.6 miles on either side of his course. But the cutter covered only about 124 miles during daylight--and only about 55 of them on or within 10 miles of the LOP. Most of the night he was on random courses far to the east of the LOP search area and could see practically nothing in the darkness--except the meteors that he mistook for flares. A more accurate report would have claimed only 616 square miles searched. He completely misled headquarters. In a later message, Thompson claimed to have "searched 1,500 square miles during the night." This concept of searching is hard to accept. It seems to assume that the downed fliers would still be alert, be able to see the ship's searchlight, and be able to launch flares to attract attention. A partly submerged plane, miles away, could not easily be seen at night, with or without the "vigilant lookouts [and] and powerful searchlights" mentioned in his messages. The Bogus Howland Radio Log For years, many details of the search for the missing fliers were classified. They were declassified finally and released as required under the Freedom of Information Act, but the picture remains obscured today, perhaps unintentionally, by a pea soup fog of disinformation that continues to mislead researchers. It is interesting to speculate on what person(s) may have written one of the strangest documents that survives from that era: the Howland radio log. Today, it is virtually impossible to determine who concocted it; in any event, this record of the DF station on Howland Island is a counterfeit, according to the two men still alive who were on the island at the time and are alleged to have participated in writing it: Yau Fai Lum and Ah Kin Leong (see below). The Itasca's deck logs, radio logs, message traffic and Commander Thompson's Earhart Search Report (of which at least two versions exist), however, all support the fiction of a radio and DF watch on Howland during the Itasca's search for the fliers. If the Howland radio log is bogus, it follows that these other fundamental documents also may be suspect in some details. COURTESY OF THE AUTHOR Radio operator Yau Fai Lum revealed details regarding the direction-finding station on Howland Island and the log of its alleged activities. If this sound like classic "conspiracy theory," remember that all material was classified promptly and researchers like Commander Weems and Paul Mantz were denied access--and access for all researchers continued to be denied for many years. Francis X. Holbrook, who wrote "Amelia Earhart's Last Flight" (Naval Institute Proceedings February 1971, pages 48-55), concluded that he had been led astray and put to considerable trouble by misinformation. Such misinformation did not require a large conspiracy; indeed, a single mischief maker could have been responsible. In the absence of access to factual data, researchers were at the mercy of whatever tidbits of information--or misinformation--that were leaked to them. I put my trust in the following accounts of Lum and Leong, both of whom maintain that the log was cooked. In the mid-1930s, both the United States and Great Britain claimed the Line Islands, which included Jarvis, Baker, and Howland. Thinking they might one day prove to be of strategic value, the United States occupied them in 1935 to reinforce its claim. Four-man civilian teams were landed on each and rotated from time to time; all were trained as weather observers, and each team included one amateur radio operator. They sent daily weather reports to another amateur radio station in Honolulu, which passed them to Pan American Airways, then pioneering trans-Pacific clipper flights. Richard B. Black, Department of the Interior, recruited men in the Hawaiian Islands for the teams; nearly all were Americans of Chinese or Hawaiian descent. Yau Fai Lum operated the amateur radio station on Howland Island in July 1937. Serendipitously, while searching the Radio Call book for a fellow ham operator with whom I had lost contact, I came across the new call letters, name, and address of Yau Fai Lum near where my friend would have been listed. I began a long and interesting correspondence with Lum.2 He told me of that fateful day when they waited in vain for Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan. I was impressed by his almost total recall of details. Lum said he had washed his sheets and aired his bed, the best on the island, so that Amelia could lie down and rest in comfort after her long, exhausting flight. He described the private shower improvised for her--a 50-gallon drum of fresh water with canvas enclosure. When I asked Lum about Cipriani and the high-frequency DF equipment, he replied: "I never met him." "How could you not meet him?" I asked. "Didn't you, Henry Lau, and Ah Kin Leong live with him on that fly-speck island that had only one sleeping shelter and one 15-foot-long tent for a kitchen/dining area? And didn't you report to him and stand radio watches under his direction during the 16 days that the Itasca was at sea searching for Amelia?" I enclosed a copy of the Howland Radio Log, which had numerous entries supposedly made by Lum. He wrote back immediately: The Howland radio log is a " . . . fraud--it is B.S." He never met Cipriani, never stood watches on Amelia's frequency, and never operated a direction finder. He said that two men (presumably Cipriani and Black) came ashore with a direction finder and set it up in a tent. He walked by the tent a few times in the course of his work and heard bits of conversation in passing but did not intrude. He told me several times that he did not want to get in the way of other people when it was not his business to do so. My impression is that he is by nature rather shy. He also pointed out that his name in the log was consistently spelled wrong (as "Yat" Fai Lum) where he supposedly signed off at the end of each watch. Yat is a common Chinese name, but his is "Yau" not "Yat." He added, "I should know how to spell my own name. According to the Howland log," he continued, "other operators were Henry Lau, [call letters] K6GAS, and Ah Kin Leong, K6ODC. But they were not even on the island during the 16-day search. They and Cipriani were on board the Itasca." Henry Lau is dead, but I wrote to Ah Kin Leong, ex-K6ODC. Asked what he knew of all this, he replied on 4 September 1994: "No idea who wrote the false log. I stand no radio watch on Howland Island. Cipriani, Henry Lau and me was on the Coast Guard Cutter Itasca when it left Howland Island looking for Earhart." (According to the Itasca's deck log for 2 July, when it became evident that Earhart was overdue and in trouble, the landing party [no exceptions are mentioned] returned to the cutter, which departed to begin a 16-day search for the missing fliers. It does not say that Cipriani or other radio operators remained ashore. The 18 July deck log entry, however, states that they reboarded from Howland on that date.) On 4 July, the Commander Hawaiian Sector had sent the following message to the Itasca: "HAVE HOWLAND DIRECTION FINDER BE ON STANDBY FOR BEARINGS." Thompson would have been hard put to explain that he could not comply because he had Cipriani on board. So, inserted in the cutter's log dated 4 July, is this message supposedly sent to K6GNW (Lum's call letters) on Howland as follows: "MR. BLACK SEZ CIPRIANI IS IN CONTROL ES TO KEEP CONTINUOUS WATCH ON 3105 ES TAKE BEARINGS USE CHINESE OPS HR IF YOU HAVE TROUBLE HAVING BOYS STAND WATCHES MR. BLACK SEZ TO TELL JIMMY." When I asked Lum about this, he replied: "It is all B.S." Was "HR" a Freudian slip or just a careless error? It means "here," not "there," as intended. If Cipriani really had remained on Howland when the landing party was recalled, it seems logical that such a message would have been sent to NRUI2, the call letters he used with the portable radio equipment that he took ashore along with the portable direction finder. It is very unlikely that such a message would have been sent to K6GNW (Lum's station) instead. Why take the word of Yau Fai Lum and Ah Kin Leong against that of Commander Thompson? For starters, neither has an ax to grind. Lum impresses me as being a highly reliable and completely sincere man. When he returned from Howland Island he acquired a Commercial First Class Radiotelephone license, joined the Honolulu Police Department, and eventually headed its Radio Maintenance Department until he retired. Commander Thompson, on the other hand, had a motive to distort facts. Circumstantial details, such as the misspelling of Lum's name, support Lum's and Leong's statements. The log also incorporates a one-day date error in all entries (a day must be subtracted to get the correct date), and uses a +10 1/2 time zone instead of +11 1/2. It seems quite unlikely that an error of one whole day would persist in a radio log, day after day, if it were kept by four operators as claimed. Surely, at least one of them would have known the correct date. Furthermore, the first page of the bogus log is headed "Radio log ITASCA," at least in the version that I have. That looks like another Freudian slip by someone assigned to the Itasca--or whoever actually wrote the log while on board the Itasca instead of on Howland. Why would Thompson take Cipriani off Howland Island when the cutter departed on the search? He did not want him there in the first place, but he probably was not thinking about Cipriani at all when he ordered the landing party back to the ship. To sound plausible, the log had to be written by a person with detailed knowledge of what was going on at the time, and who was familiar with the usual log details, radio procedure signs, and jargon--i.e. a radio operator. Chief Radioman L. G. Bellarts had died, and I contacted his son to ask what papers and memoirs his father left. Bellarts, I was told, recognized the historical importance of the radio logs and took personal possession of them soon after the plane was lost. He guarded them carefully for years, but eventually sent them to the National Archives. I wrote asking whether the logs they were giving researchers were direct copies of those received from Bellarts, or had they come perhaps from some other source? To date, I have received no reply. I have been unable to locate Frank Cipriani or any close relative. Dwight Long, another Earhart researcher, told me that Cipriani became a civilian radio operator and was lost at sea in a World War II convoy when his ship was torpedoed. COURTESY OF FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT LIBRARY Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau, Jr. (left, with President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1934 )was concerned that release of the official report would smear Amelia Earhart's reputation. A retired officer who signed the Itasca's deck log as "W. I. Swanston, Lt. (j.g.) USCG, Navigator," confirmed being in the ship's company during the search for the fliers but denied having been the navigator, despite clear evidence to the contrary. He was 86 when I contacted him. When I pointed out that he had definitely signed the Itasca's deck log as navigator, I got a rude answer. I asked him a question concerning navigation on board the cutter and he again replied rudely that I did not know anything about navigation. He did not seem to understand the point I was trying to make. He seemed to be in a bad mood. I think that he had long ago forgotten any details concerned with navigation and did not want to be associated in any way with the incident. Clearly revealing high-level concern for embarrassment are the actions taken by then-Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau, Jr. The U. S. Coast Guard, at that time, came under the Treasury Department, and among Morgenthau's papers at the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Library in Hyde Park, New York, is the transcript of a telephone call he made on 13 May 1938 to Malvina Scheider, personal secretary to Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt, the president's wife, in response to a request she had made. (Amelia's mentor, aviator A. Paul Mantz, on 26 April 1938 had contacted Mrs. Roosevelt asking her to intercede for him with the Coast Guard to obtain a copy of " . . . the official report of the ITASCA," [the Itasca Cruise Report, a 19-page document, dated 24 July 1937, written by Commander Thompson and on file at Coast Guard Headquarters]). Only Morgenthau's side of the conversation was included in the following transcript: "If we're going to release this, it's just going to smear the whole reputation of Amelia Earhart." (In the document requested, Commander Thompson had done his utmost to shift the blame from himself to Earhart.) "And we have the report of all those wireless messages and everything else." (This had to refer, in part, to the messages quoted in this article. They are the proverbial smoking gun. Nothing else reveals so clearly Commander Thompson's poor judgment at the time. They had not been released when Morgenthau made his call.) ". . . if we give it to this one man we've got to make it public; we can't let [just] one man see it." By far the most revealing remark is the following: ". . . if the president [FDR] ever heard that somebody questioned that the Navy hadn't made the proper search . . . I mean I think he'd get terribly angry if somebody. . . ." [comment left unfinished]. (FDR, as is well known, was fond of the Navy, but when Morgenthau said "Navy," he probably meant "Coast Guard," the service he headed. Mantz, after all, had requested the Coast Guard Cutter Itasca's documents, not those of the Navy.3) Morgenthau apparently knew beyond any doubt that Commander Thompson's actions were a factor in the loss of the fliers, and that he bungled the subsequent search. Morgenthau was one of the few men who might have had important information on the Earhart incident. On the chance that he might have told his son something about it, I wrote Robert Morgenthau asking if his father had ever discussed it with him; to date I have received no answer. Commander Thompson suffered a coronary thrombosis and died at age 53 on 1 September 1939 in Ketchikan, Alaska, two years and two months after the fliers met their deaths. 1. This would imply that Noonan had accumulated a dead reckoning error of about 100 miles in the process of advancing his line of position in about two hours, which is ridiculous. When Noonan was navigating Pan American Clippers, he wrote to Commander Weems, saying that with his bubble octant he was usually within 10 nautical miles or less of his intended landfalls. (He relied, however, on radio bearings from Pan Am's big ground Adcock arrays for final guidance). 2. An authentic radio old-timer, he described Howland Island and his radio equipment: A National SW-3 receiver, crystal-controlled transmitter, which he made himself, with an 801 in the power amplifier, and a "Zep" antenna--half-wave, end-fed by 600-ohm open-wire feeders. To avoid interference from stations in the amateur bands he got special permission to operate on a Coast Guard frequency. 3. On 5 July 1938, Morgenthau sent a note to Eleanor Roosevelt saying Mantz had been given a copy of the "ITASCA log." Many researchers think that this was a sanitized version of the radio log with everything embarrassing deleted. I have seen a shortened, expurgated version of the Cruise Report (nine instead of the original 19 pages) which may have been made for Mantz. I suspect that this may be what he was given, loosely referred to by Morgenthau as the "ITASCA log." It contained nothing of importance. Mr. Riley, trained as a radar officer at Harvard and MIT during World War II, was on board the USS Colorado (BB-45) for the assault on Tarawa and later served on the staff of Rear Admiral Arthur D. Struble during landings in the Philippines. He spent a career working with radio propagation and antennas for RCA and the Harris Corporation. Fascinated by celestial navigation, he sailed single-handed from San Francisco to Honolulu in 1951, and later sailed from the United States to Monte Carlo. He wrote "A Cuppa Joe," Naval History, August 1998, pp. 18-22. Paul Rafford and Joseph Huie provided invaluable assistance for this article. published July/August 2000 **************************************************************************** From Ric The forum discussed Riley's opinions when the article first appeared in Nava= l=20 History. His allegation that Cipriani's log is "cooked" is hard to accept and is=20 without documentary support. The existing log is a "smoothed" copy, possibl= y=20 explaining the misspelling of Yau's name. Howland was keeping Honolulu time= =20 (Greenwich minus 10 1/2 in those days) even though the Itasca just offshore=20 was using Greenwich minus 11 1/2, so the log is not in error on that score a= s=20 Riley claims. The date is, however, a day off - but that doesn't seem odd t= o=20 anyone who has ever spent much time out there. It's surprisingly difficult=20 to keep track of what day it is and the error in Cipriani's log actually is=20 an argument that he WAS on Howland and removed from the orderliness of=20 shipboard operations. LTM, Ric ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 10 Jan 2002 10:04:46 EST Reply-To: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum Sender: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum From: "Richard E. Gillespie" Subject: Re: Recovering degraded photo images MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit From Craig > Maybe, but the technique might be worth applying to > some of our other > imagery, like the early airphotos. > > Here's the URL for the article Anthony referred to: Sorry to burst anyone's gorilla, but the photo technique they describe is only applicable to photos that have been captured using a particular optical system with a known defect or flaw. This is not applicable in our case. As an example, if you put the lens from your grandmother's reading glasses in front of your camera, and then took a picture of her (and hopefully she'd see you doing this, and not be scared out of her wits by the sudden flash!) the resulting photo would be 'off' or biased by a certain known amount - the amount of your grandmother's lens. To fix the photo, so the thought goes, simply take said photo and apply an effect opposite to that of glasses, and voila you have a more-or-less corrected photo. This will not help us make our photos any sharper, or reveal to us that it was actually Noonan in the picture wearing the gorilla suit. LTGM, (sorry about that sudden flash grandma!) Craig ****************************************************************************Fr om Ric Thanks Craig. That makes sense. The good news is that our resident forensic imaging wizard - Jeff Glickman of Photek in Portland , OR - is developing new enhancement algorithms that he is testing on our satellite image of Niku. He has, so far, been able to bring up significantly more detail than even the one meter "pan sharpened" version of the image and is now "searching" the island for indications of man-made objects. (To give you some idea, the enhanced digital image is something over half a gig in size.) This could take a while, but the results could also be very interesting. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 10 Jan 2002 10:17:44 EST Reply-To: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum Sender: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum From: "Richard E. Gillespie" Subject: Membesr and non-members MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit From Don Neumann From Ric ...'Why is it that it always seems to be the folks who have never contributed a nickel who are full of advice about how much money we should raise and how we should spend it?'... ********************* Maybe that is a question that should be asked of those who _are_ contributing members of TIGHAR... why don't _they_ offer more challenging questions & advice on the issues of how the pursuit of TIGHAR's objectives are being determined & funds are to be raised & allocated ? If our (non-contributors) questions & suggestions are invalid, off-topic, offensive or contrary to the TIGHAR hypothesis... as sole moderator of this site, you are entitled to cut us off at your pleasure... however, as you've often stated yourself on the Forum, it is the free, wide-open, far ranging (within reason) format of this discussion group that makes it unique & that has encouraged an unusually disparate group of individuals, with very wide parameters concerning credentials, talents & interests... to contribute their knowledge & expertise (free of charge) & has (at least for the four years that I have participated) resulted in the development of the most diverse, yet highly focused body of information about the AE/FN mystery available anywhere else... today. While I certainly would not consider myself to be included in such a august group of individuals, with my own meager participation, vastly limited already by my Non-Aviator/Non-Navigator/otherwise non-professional standing, (& I'm certain my own participation on the Forum, would not be greatly missed, if dropped by the Forum, because of my non-member status)... I do believe that the Forum & TIGHAR has benefited far more from such participation by the _other_ non-member participants, than can ever be valued in terms of membership fees or dollar contributions. Don Neumann ************************************************************************** From Ric I somehow missed the fact that TIGHAR members and researchers don't ask challenging questions. My impression has been that, as sycophants go, they're a pretty sorry lot. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 11 Jan 2002 09:50:45 EST Reply-To: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum Sender: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum From: "Richard E. Gillespie" Subject: Tom King's itinerary MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit From Roger Kelley Hi Ric, Do you know if Tom King still intends to make a public appearance and book signing in San Diego this month? If so, would you please publish his itinerary? I would very much like to hear him speak and have him sign my copy of Amelia Earhart's Shoes. LTM, (who loves to camp on the sunny southern California beach in the dead of winter) Roger Kelley #2112CE ************************************************************************* From Ric Tom? ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 11 Jan 2002 10:05:42 EST Reply-To: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum Sender: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum From: "Richard E. Gillespie" Subject: Re: where to look MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit From: Kenton Spading, 1382CE Don N. wrote: ".....none of the TIGHAR expeditions so far have been able to make any direct connection between the 'artifacts' that have been uncovered & anything that may have originated with or from the Electra or it's crew... raising honest questions as to how many additional, land-locked expeditions (& at what cost) are going to be required to locate those elusive bits & pieces of the Electra or it's crew, that might create a preponderence of probably inconclusive evidence... ************** Spading replies: Some very close/tantalizing connections have been between artifacts found in/near the Niku village and Earhart's Electra. I agree that these are not direct any-idiot connections...but they are pretty darn good indicators that there may be more stuff laying around and offer good reasons to conduct additional archaeological work in the village and surrounding area. Two artifacts in particular that were found in/near the village on Niku hold great promise that there is more to be found. In my opinion they are the two best pieces of evidence TIGHAR has found to date. In fact, they are, in my opinion, the only two existing physical pieces of evidence that anyone, anywhere in the world has ever found and been able to at least tentatively link to Earhart and the Electra. I speak of Artifact 2-18 (better known as the Dado) and Artifact 2-3-V-2 (better known as the Plexi). See TIGHAR Tracks Sept. 30, 1996, Vol. 12, No. 2/3 and the web site. The Dado artifact is a type of interior trim assembly commonly used on small cabin-class airplanes. The mounting holes for the Dado are 15 inches apart, which match the spacing of circumferentials, stiffeners etc. in an Electra M10. The LE M10 specs call for a cabin insulation called kapok which was often blue in color. The Dado had a piece of blue kapok-like material attached to it. Probable nail holes in the Dado provide an additional clue that I leave for the reader to discern. Lockheed specs show that the material, curvature and thickness of the Plexi artifact exactly match those specified for the cabin windows in the Electra. Many aspects of Artifact 2-2-V-1 (aircraft skin) are also interesting and deserve attention. 2-2-V-1 is much more paradoxical than the Dado or the Plexi. However, there are aspects of it that are hard to ignore like rivet type, rivet hole spacings, pitch of rivet lines etc. Many of The contradictions that 22V1 presents are softened by the the extensive modifications and repairs to C/N 1015. The same argument that says..."hold on, lets not jump into an underwater search until the 7-site work is finished" could have been applied to the village a few years ago when attention from it was shifted to other areas. My main point here is to illustrate that the land search portion of the project has provided some interesting physical clues. The Dado and the Plexi are pretty darn good. A decison to shift funds away from a search of the village to an underwater search is not a no-brainer. The trail of clues needs to be considered carefully. LTM Kenton Spading ************************************************************************** From Ric Amen. By the way, the nail holes (as opposed to rivet holes) in the right angle flange at the base of the Dado are for nailing the component to the floor of an aircraft. Obviously, that means that the aircraft in which it was installed had a wooden floor - as did NR16020. And despite all the controversy about rivet patterns, I still LOVE ol' 2-2-V-1. Anyone who has spent as much time as we have fondling airplane skin (don't knock it 'til you've tried it) knows that that chunk of aluminum just reeks Lockheed Model 10, and the damage it exhibits is EXACTLY the kind of damage to be expected from an airplane that was ripped apart in the surf. Add to that the fact that it was apparently dredged up out of the beach near the blasted channel by the big storm that hit the island soon after our 1989 trip and you start to wonder how many other shards of torn aluminum were buried in that beach and the beach further north before the storm stripped those beaches clean. LTM, Ric ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 11 Jan 2002 10:12:39 EST Reply-To: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum Sender: The Amelia Earhart Search Forum From: "Richard E. Gillespie" Subject: Re: March of Time MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit From Lee Ric...... I contacted a friend of mine who is involved with the radio archives at the University of Maryland.......and got this reply: "Thank you for the information on the TIGHAR site. It's an impressive site, particularly the material on AE. I didn't know you had such an interest in aviation history. Do you know Fay Gillis Wells? She is in her early 90's and was pioneer female aviator herself, knew AE personally. She was also a pioneer broadcaster and worked with her husband Linton Wells at CBS. Mrs. Wells lives in Alexandria last time I knew." Another friend of mine is going to be having lunch wi