When Flying Saucers Attack!

[Mike Covell]

Wow, sounds fantastic Steve! On our patch too!

Usually a trawl through local studies can churn up a wealth of info on a property from people who have resided in their to deaths and in some cases murders!

I found a news report from the 1940's stating a man had entered a house, armed with an axe and chopped the home owner to pieces! I had the news report, but after several months am still unable to find out which property it was! I bet they have some activity in that place.

This James person just did not take into account how busy we get, and that we have all have a life outside of our "Hobby"!

[Mayerling]

Congradulations Stan!

Hi Stan,

Congradulations on becoming a grandparent. She looks cute, and the inquisitiveness in her eyes suggests she will be a great future Ripperologist.

I have been quiet of late - sorry of that. I did finally finish the Amelia Earhart biography, and even made a comment on the thread here.
Now I am reading a book BREAKING THE BANK, regarding the robbery (in 1828) of the Bank of Australia in Sydney - at that time the largest bank robbery in Australian history. The author is Carol Baxter, who is currently working on a book concerning the career of the Quaker poisoner John Tawell.

As a result of a cold earlier this month I have stuffed ears, and have to see an ear doctor this week. And today, an old cap from one of my teeth fell out. That means a dental visit as well.

My mother is currently celebrating her 80th birthday, so there are plans for that as well.

So I haven't been concentrating much on the board - but intend to again.

Best wishes,

Jeff.

[sdreid]

Thanks Jeff

Happy 4 score to your mother.

Hope the health issues get straightened out soon for you.

The thing about big bank robberies is they need to be converted to current dollars which can be somewhat tough.

Have you seen the Bill Curtis AT&T commercial where he's all excited about finding the internet as he stands unknowingly with Amelia's crashed plane right behind him - pretty funny?

Maybe I've read about John Tawell but the name doesn't sound familiar to me.

I noticed you weren't on lately but figured you were busy.

Best wishes,

[Mayerling]

Hi Stan,

I love the Curtiss commercial. He doesn't notice it says "Amelia" on the side
(her Lockeed plane actually didn't).

I made a comment on the Earhart thread yesterday, but nobody apparently responded. From my reading the Lae to Howland Island portion of a flight was a disaster waiting to be sprung due to mistakes concerning radio and morse code communications. Earhart herself bore much of the responsibility, but the Navy and Coast Guard personnel did too. So did George Putnam, who might have made one or two rapid phone calls before the flight, and put some of the mistakes into the wastebasket, but did not think of doing so.

It's sad to think of her and Noonan in the last minute or so of their lives - not at the hands of the Japanese but in the midst of the deepest part of the Pacific Ocean in a vehicle not designed to float. They were so concerned about weight versus gasoline problems that they ditched the parachutes and the raft they should have had on board (although how long the raft would have worked is another matter).

As for the canard about the spying on Japan, FDR (in his later years) was depressed about the entire matter - he told Eleanor there was no secret agenda for Amelia to spy on Truk Lagoon or other Japanese secret bases (which were hundreds of miles away from the direction of Howland). Apparently Roosevelt (who had become fond of Amelia as a family friend) was hurt when people accused him of sacrificing her on a spying mission.

Noonan's alcoholism has also been unfairly thrown about. He did not go on a final binge before they took off from Lae (he was smart enough to want to be alert on that flight).

Neither Amelia nor Fred knew Morse Code, and (ironically) the one man on Lae they could have taken to Howland who did (a fellow named Balfour) Amelia decided not to take with them because of the old weight problem again. Had he gone he might have sent coherent and heard Morse messages to the Itasca.

A series of disastrous decisions. It reminds me of the mess Robert Falcon Scott made in his 1911-1912 dash to the South Pole.

Best wishes,

Jeff

[sdreid]

Hi Jeff,

Yes, I was pretty sure that Amelia didn't have any nose art on her plane.

That fairly recent TV program I saw made much about Earhart's dodgy radio equipment and her and Noonan's lack of proficiency with it.

There was also the question of whether they were listening on the correct frequency but, after 15,000 miles, you'd think they'd have had that figured out.

Actually, they were having an affair and flew off to Bora Bora to go at it like rabbits.

[Mike Covell]

Came across a book in our local library yesterday entitled "Yorkshire Disasters" which includes a blow by blow account of the loss of the R38 over the Humber.

The disaster claimed the life of British and American personnel and has been widely forgotten. I will be writing a piece for the Local Newspaper to mark its anniversary.

[Mayerling]

Hi Stan and Mike,

The frequency problem was a mess because of Amelia's confusion of communication ideas and electronic bearings.

1) The Lockheed Vega was equipt with a beaming device that could (supposedly) hit the beam's center at Howland. But it was tricky. On one experimental flight and work out with the machine, it's gyroscope broke after two hours of flying. Yet you needed at least 100 hours of practice with it to know how to use it properly, Amelia and Fred thought they understood it after practicing about twenty hours with it.

2) I'm not totally sure about the ranges of frequencies but there were three critical ones that Amelia and Fred barely understood, but that the Coast Guard and Navy equally botched. The Morse frequency was the lowest (I believe) but neither Fred nor Amelia knew Morse Code. The middle range was one that the navy and the coast guard were on, thinking it would be the one Amelia and Fred would be on, and that was fine except that it was not the one they were on. They were on the highest, which Amelia used on previious flights. But those flights did not take her over such an empty area as the two thousand miles stretch from Lae in Samoa to Howland Island. Put another way: earlier on the flight (while over India and Burma) Amelia and Fred were in a monsoon and using that frequency - but they were heard and were hearing people throughout Asia!

As I said it was a mess of mistakes that could not be straightened out in a quick manner.

I wish the truth was Amelia and Fred ran off to Bora Bora together, but both were happily married.

Did you know that the radio that was in the Vega was one Amelia bought from fellow flying enthusiast Harry Richmond (the popular singer of the 1930s who sang "I Love a Parade)?

Mike - the best account I've read about the R-34 crash was in a book by John Toland about the age of the Great Zeppelins. The best known casualty was General Maitland, a flying enthusiast who fequently figured out ways to cut red tape to get a result he wanted. He may have done so in pushing the readying of the R-34 for transfer to the U.S. before it was ready and it's crews trained enough.

Best wishes,

Jeff

[Mike Covell]

I managed to get hold of several newspaper reports from the incident upto the inquests. He admitted to rushing the machine, and during the flight it suffered minor airoframe damage, he still pushed it!

Such a tragic loss of British and American personnel. I even read an eyewitness account were people were jumping off Victoria Pier into the water to save who they could!

[Mike Covell]

Ghosttrackers official website has just notched up 3,000 hits! This is a massive amount in such a short time and I wish to thank everyone who has nipped onto the site and those that have left comments on the guestbook!

The group has gone through a quite patch due to personel issues but is now back and bigger than ever! We have a top location due next weekend, and will be staying out in a tent on location so we can travel back the following day!

There are also some fab locations in the diary which have scheduled for early next year!

We have some top locations here in Hull due, including some with such a rich colourful history I have to nip myself to makesure I am not dreaming!

Were also launching a scheme were other groups can come to one of our investigations and we can go to one of theirs. This ensures that everyone can learn from each other and a network is built up in the UK (maybe oneday further).

Add to that specialist teaching evenings were the Ghosttrackers team will be discussing the paranormal at youth clubs, and community centres. This ensures that people can do it right without messing in things which they do not know!

We are really working hard!

[dougie]

Mike,
Wereyou involved in any way with the "ghost hunters" (I think that was the right title) series that ran on tv for some time? I found some of those programmes pretty good,a few were pretty weak though..but all in all rather interesting.
regards

[Mike Covell]

I know the show and I have spoke with some of the team members online but other than that we have no affiliation with them.

I getting nervous about next weekends location now!
I found several storys regarding the place were people had gone, seen things and dropped down dead!

[Mike Covell]

An old postcard to mark the sad occasion.

[Mayerling]

Hi Mike,

Fascinating postcard. Isn't it curious, despite the fact the R-34 crashed into the Humber before thousands of people, nobody had a camera on them to snap a shot of the disaster? Of course, being 1922, it could not have been a digital or an instamatic, but there were "brownies" at the time (I believe).

Another good source book you should check out is AIRSHIPWRECK which Len Deighton co-wrote. It was published in the late 1970s, and had dozens of stories of zeppelin disasters from 1900 to 1937. And it was well illustrated
too.

There is another zeppelin disaster from Britain that is better remembered today than R-34. It is, of course, the R-101, which crashed on its maiden flight at Beauvais, France in 1930. The death toll in that disaster (44 out of 48 on board) included the Secretary of State for Air (Lord Thomson of Cardington, who pushed the forced scheduled construction and flight of the R-101 for his own reasons), and Sir Sefton Branker of the British Aviation Ministry. R-101 was supposed to be the first of a fleet of zeppelins that were to connect the Empire by long distance flights by air, with zeppelin mooring masts constructed in Egypt and India. Thomson was a Labor M.P. originally, and he got Ramsay MacDonald's frist government to order the construction of the zeppelin in 1924. But the government planned to have it built by a government team. This was to show the "superiority" of state sponsored building programs over private ones. This raised the hackles of the Vickers firm, which had some expertise with building zeppelins but was a private company. So the government got a challenge from Vickers that the latter would build a better zeppelin. They did, six years later, with the
R-100, which flew successfully across the Atlantic to Canada. Thomson and his team of government experts made all sorts of inept decisions about what to put into the R-101. Instead of considering weight properly they tore out the original engines and put in diesel engines (which were heavier) because
("as everybody knows") diesel fuel is more efficient. They put in plush carpets because the Government wanted the zeppelin to be the epitome of luxury travel (doesn't it begin to sound like the Titanic - the R-101 is called "the Titanic of the Air"). Without really serious recalculations regarding lift problems they expanded the middle of the zeppelin, making the R-101 the largest flying machine ever built. And one of the R-100 design team members, Nevil Shute Norway - later the novelist Nevil Shute, saw some of the material that was put as insulation into the zeppelin skin of the R-101 which crumbled when you touched it. He asked if it had been replaced, and was told by a cynical colleague, "They said they replaced it!".

Barely lifting itself from the ground at Cardington, the R-101 did fly to London, picking up more passengers, and then flew on to France. It was supposed to fly to India (Thomson was going to be appointed the new Viceroy at the successful conclusion of the flight), when it got into a storm over Framce, and crashed at Beauvais. There is a marker there in honor of the 44 fatalities.

Nevil Shute's account is found in his autobiography SLIDE-RULE. James Leasor wrote a straightforward account of the debacle called THE MILLIONTH CHANCE (the title based on a really stupid comment by the boastful Thomson that the R-101 was really safe except for the "millionth chance"). But there is an account that should interest you about paranormal activity regarding the R-101 entitled THE AIRMEN WHO WOULD NOT DIE (I forgot the name of the author: it was written in the 1970s). Apparently soon after the disaster a medium began getting messages from the crewmembers (in particular the doomed experts from the Air Ministry) regarding details of mistakes and miscalculations that the new Labor Government was keeping on lid on.

Best wishes,

Jeff

[Mike Covell]

The R101 intrests me as there were numerous seances held after the incident and during several contact was allegedley made with some of the crew!

I have a picture of the R38 wreckage floating on the Humber somewere. I will find scan and post.

[Celesta]

I know the show and I have spoke with some of the team members online but other than that we have no affiliation with them.

I getting nervous about next weekends location now!
I found several storys regarding the place were people had gone, seen things and dropped down dead!

I have not looked at your site since late last week, after I posted the video. Where is the new investigation and why is it such a scary place?