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Team Set for a New Search to Find Amelia Earhart Wreckage

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  • #16
    Originally posted by Errata View Post
    If the Japanese either had her or know what happened to her, I might understand why they might not say something right after the war. But why would they still be keeping it a secret?
    Hi Errata, Kensei, Graham, and Abby

    I want you to think about this parallel situation: to this day the Japanese do not fully admit war crimes. Every country in Asia that they dominated until the Allies freed them, and every prisoner of war camp (or situation: i.e. the "Bataan Death March") showed a true callousness towards anybody whom they chose as their enemy. This does not excuse any war crimes committed against the Japanese by Allied forces (like the fire bombing of Tokyo in 1945), but it explains the deep hatred that ran rampant in those years from the anti-Japanese forces. As mentioned before, they deny incidents like the "rape of Nanking" in 1937, an event that was photographed and filmed and reported, and so horrific that some Nazi diplomats were moved to try to assist the Chinese! It's instructive to compare German and Japanese responses to the war. The war of 1941-1945 by Japan against the Allied coalition was supposedly to free Asia of European domination and set up the "Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere". Aside from some puppets, like the state of "Manchuko" in the former Manchuria - under Pu-Yi) most of the "freed states" were treated as slave states. Certainly the Chinese were. The Germans (although there are some right wing German groups who denounce the current government) for the most part accept their responsibility for the atrocities of World War II (which are equally well documented). Of course there are "Holacaust" Deniers, but there are also "Flat Earth" believers too.

    The closest thing to the Japanese refusal to accept responsibility for their crimes is that of Turkey refusing to acknowledge the "Armenian Genocide" of 1915-1922. Most of the world does acknowledge it, but not Turkey.

    Jeff

    Comment


    • #17
      The situation between the USA and Japan in 1937 was officially peaceful, but unofficially tense. The USA didn't like the Japanese incursions into China, nor did they care for increasing Japanese militarism. However, top-level American thinking at the time was that the USA had no real concrete interests in China and felt that the Chinese and Japanese should get on with whatever they wished to do in that part of the world. But in July 1937 China and Japan clashed at the Marco Polo Bridge near Peking and a full-scale war followed. US sympathies were with the Chinese, especially after the Japanese bombed the USS Panay as the ship was evacuating US citizens.

      Regarding the Earhart flight, as I said earlier there was no way that her Lockheed Electra could have overflown anywhere in which the Japanese had any material influence. This was basically a question of track, and fuel-resources.. The planned flight from Lae (New Guinea) to Howland Island (for re-fuelling) was over completely empty ocean. The fuel-capacity of the Electra was sufficient to make a straight-track flight between the two points, but without much safety-margin. Both Earhart and Noonan were confident of their ability to successfully complete the flight prior to their take-off from Lae.

      It should also be emphasised that the round-the-world flight was a completely privately-funded project, the aircraft itself being funded by Pardue university. Had the US Government seriously wished to overfly, and spy on, any area of sea between Lae and Howland Island, it had the means to do so via its long-range flying boats. There was thus no reason why Earhart and Noonan should have been requested to report upon anything they saw which might have been an indication of what the Japanese were up to in the area they overflew.

      As I stated earlier, due to damage to the Electra's R/T equipment on take-off from Lae, Earhart could send but not receive radio communication. Tighar has established that all the various R/T messages transmitted by Earhart do in fact centre upon Gardner Island - check the Tighar website for further details.

      It would seem that the Electra, for reasons thus far unknown, detoured southwards from its track towards Howland Island - not an enormous detour by Pacific Ocean standards, but enough in area which, in 1937, was exceedingly sparsely populated.

      Yes, July 1937 was a critical time with regard to Sino-Japanese-US relations, but I honestly do doubt that the Earhart flight ended in anything but total disaster for the two people on board the Electra, and that neither the Japanese nor the Chinese, in fact no nation other than the USA, knew of the flight until it was reported missing.

      Sorry to rabbit on!

      Graham
      We are suffering from a plethora of surmise, conjecture and hypothesis. - Sherlock Holmes, The Adventure Of Silver Blaze

      Comment


      • #18
        Originally posted by kensei View Post
        I'm no scholar on the case, I've just quickly perused some of the material and apparently it is rather common knowledge amongst the population on Saipan that Amelia died there, with an attitude of "Mystery? What mystery?" Her plane is also said to have been brought there and burned.
        I'm no scholar of the case either, but I believe the Japanese myth (for now I'll call it a myth) included a burial site for both of the bodies and of objects, specifically a blindfold, related to the execution. Exhumation of the supposed grave unearthed the body of a child, and the blindfold was just an ordinary piece of cloth. Legend has it that her blindfold was removed and buried prior to her execution, which runs contrary to the usual way one is executed by keeping the blindfold on.

        I tend to lean towards Gardner Island being the solution to the mystery based on that no other plane reported missing in the area could have been composed of any of the plane parts found on the island except *possibly* Earhart's plane, along with the other artifacts found that definitely belonged to a western female. I also give local legends more credence here than the 'captured by Japan solution' because of the artifacts found which confirm the tales. There are local legends surrounding the couple being seen on Gardner Island and reports of corpses found wearing a particular type of shoe in the same area where pieces of boot nearly identical to Earhart's were later found. But, like all mysteries, there is still a elusive holy grail that awaits to prove or disprove Gardner Island once and for all.


        JM
        Last edited by jmenges; 06-10-2015, 05:37 PM.

        Comment


        • #19
          Folks, I don't suppose that any of the items which suggested ownership by a western woman, have been preserved?

          Comment


          • #20
            Yes they have, Robert. There is a 'Cat's Paw' replacement heal (manufactured in the US in the mid-30s) pieces of a sole and brass eyelet all from a women's size 8 'blucher oxford' shoe of the kind Earhart is seen to be wearing in a photograph taken 10 days before the start of her last flight.

            JM

            Comment


            • #21
              Thanks Jon.

              Comment


              • #22
                Originally posted by Graham View Post
                The situation between the USA and Japan in 1937 was officially peaceful, but unofficially tense. The USA didn't like the Japanese incursions into China, nor did they care for increasing Japanese militarism. However, top-level American thinking at the time was that the USA had no real concrete interests in China and felt that the Chinese and Japanese should get on with whatever they wished to do in that part of the world. But in July 1937 China and Japan clashed at the Marco Polo Bridge near Peking and a full-scale war followed. US sympathies were with the Chinese, especially after the Japanese bombed the USS Panay as the ship was evacuating US citizens.

                Regarding the Earhart flight, as I said earlier there was no way that her Lockheed Electra could have overflown anywhere in which the Japanese had any material influence. This was basically a question of track, and fuel-resources.. The planned flight from Lae (New Guinea) to Howland Island (for re-fuelling) was over completely empty ocean. The fuel-capacity of the Electra was sufficient to make a straight-track flight between the two points, but without much safety-margin. Both Earhart and Noonan were confident of their ability to successfully complete the flight prior to their take-off from Lae.

                It should also be emphasised that the round-the-world flight was a completely privately-funded project, the aircraft itself being funded by Pardue university. Had the US Government seriously wished to overfly, and spy on, any area of sea between Lae and Howland Island, it had the means to do so via its long-range flying boats. There was thus no reason why Earhart and Noonan should have been requested to report upon anything they saw which might have been an indication of what the Japanese were up to in the area they overflew.

                As I stated earlier, due to damage to the Electra's R/T equipment on take-off from Lae, Earhart could send but not receive radio communication. Tighar has established that all the various R/T messages transmitted by Earhart do in fact centre upon Gardner Island - check the Tighar website for further details.

                It would seem that the Electra, for reasons thus far unknown, detoured southwards from its track towards Howland Island - not an enormous detour by Pacific Ocean standards, but enough in area which, in 1937, was exceedingly sparsely populated.

                Yes, July 1937 was a critical time with regard to Sino-Japanese-US relations, but I honestly do doubt that the Earhart flight ended in anything but total disaster for the two people on board the Electra, and that neither the Japanese nor the Chinese, in fact no nation other than the USA, knew of the flight until it was reported missing.

                Sorry to rabbit on!

                Graham
                Hi Graham,

                Thanks for the coherent account of Japanese-American official relations in 1937. Personally I do feel Amelia and Fred drowned when the plane crashed into the Pacific, but of all the various theories only the Japanese prisoner one had any ring of possibility.

                I have long felt that the growth of the problems with Japan gave the Roosevelt Administration an edge in the fight against the isolation block. Not that I buy the "Pearl Harbor was betrayed by F.D.R. to get us into World War II" theory, but I am aware that F.D.R. was considerably interested in Asian affairs as they affected China (he had a rather stupid view of himself as an expert on China affairs because his grandfather Delano happened to be engaged in trade there, and his mother Sara used to tell him stories of their lives in 1880s China). He realized that the isolationists (like all political groups) were not totally unified: those in the western United States were far more leery about Japan than the eastern and mid-western ones, who concentrated on Germany and Europe with the bloodbaths of World War I in their minds. Roosevelt had to watch both areas of Fascist aggressions, but he noted that Japan (due to it's geographic limitations - as opposed to Germany's) was more open to pressures. The series of sanctions against Japan finally led to the war - and forced the isolationists to drop their opposition or be permanently split. Hitler did the rest when he stupidly declared war on the U.S. a few days after Pearl Harbor. He didn't have to.

                Jeff

                Comment


                • #23
                  One of the more puzzling (to me, at least) aspects of Gardner Island (Nikumaroro) is the shortage of tangible evidence left by the various attempts to colonise it. The major attempt was by the British in 1938 who tried to establish a flying-boat station and also a coconut-growing scheme. Both failed. The Americans built a LORAN navigational centre on the island which was active in 1944 and 1945, but virtually nothing remains of this, even though Quonset huts were built alongside the coral-gravel 'streets' that the British had laid down.

                  The only other 'remains' are that of the last rusting bits of the British freighter SS Norwich City which ran aground during a storm in 1929. The survivors were rescued a few weeks later, but by whom I do not know. This was quite a large vessel, yet all that now remains of it are the keel and lumps of the engine. What chance would a lightly-built aircraft have to remain at least partially intact after almost the same passage of time?

                  Lack of drinking water killed all these worthy schemes, and the island was eventually abandoned (by the British) in 1963 and was completely evacuated.

                  Given that none of the above efforts to colonise the place left much in the way of remains, maybe it's not altogether unexpected that the crash-landing of one small aircraft would leave any lasting evidence of either it or its two-person crew.

                  TIGHAR claim to have found a number of artifccts which they say point to the presence of both aircraft and crew-members, but the Smithsonian Institution have said that these claims are groundless. So who's telling the truth here?

                  Graham
                  Last edited by Graham; 06-12-2015, 01:49 PM.
                  We are suffering from a plethora of surmise, conjecture and hypothesis. - Sherlock Holmes, The Adventure Of Silver Blaze

                  Comment


                  • #24
                    Originally posted by Graham View Post
                    The only other 'remains' are that of the last rusting bits of the British freighter SS Norwich City which ran aground during a storm in 1929. The survivors were rescued a few weeks later, but by whom I do not know. This was quite a large vessel, yet all that now remains of it are the keel and lumps of the engine. What chance would a lightly-built aircraft have to remain at least partially intact after almost the same passage of time?
                    The Lockheed Electra was built largely, IIRC, from aluminium and magnesium. Neither metal will last long in seawater.
                    - Ginger

                    Comment


                    • #25
                      For what it is worth, I have read a few websites that called Ric Gillespie (head of TIGHAR) a quack. Gillespie responded that TIGHAR consists of a great many people with impressive credentials in the aviation field.

                      I read Gillespie's book "Finding Amelia" and while the book was very technical and dry he certainly did not seem like a quack.

                      c.d.

                      Comment


                      • #26
                        There were a number of people claiming to have received short wave messages from Amelia when she disappeared and most of them have been dismissed as frauds. In "Finding Amelia" Gillespie recounts the story of a Florida teenager who was listening on her father's short wave. She heard a voice identifying herself as Amelia Earhart. The message was filled with static and faded in and out but the young girl recorded it in a notebook. In the message, Amelia talked about her home in California and a suitcase that was in the closet there. Very strange. As it turns out, Gillespie uncovered a letter written by Amelia to her Mother about a year before her disappearance in which she asked her Mother to destroy the contents of a suitcase that was in her closest should anything ever happen to her.

                        I read the book some time ago so those are the facts that I can recall but don't hold me to them although I think that was the gist of the story.

                        c.d.

                        Comment


                        • #27
                          Originally posted by Graham View Post
                          TIGHAR claim to have found a number of artifccts which they say point to the presence of both aircraft and crew-members, but the Smithsonian Institution have said that these claims are groundless. So who's telling the truth here?

                          Graham
                          About 1997 or so there was an exciting discovery off Florida of the wreckage of several planes that looked like the flying boat planes in the infamous missing Flight 19 case of 1945. The Federal Government, before a really large amount of time had elapsed for something resembling a real investigation, suddenly announced it was not the missing Flight 19 planes. That ended the story. The Feds claimed they were just U.S. Air Force planes that had been junked and dumped there.

                          I was quite surprised at the time that the explanation was given at all AND ACCEPTED!! Certainly a third party examination of the rediscovered wreckage in some detail really was required. Also, although it is not totally unknown for the Feds to sink government owned machinery into the ocean (such as some out-of-date aircraft carriers turned into man made reefs for conservation purposes), I could not figure out why planes that were useless were simply turned over to some junk dealer. As a result I have never totally accepted any comment by the Feds dismissing somebody's discovery of some piece of information or evidence that could clear up a matter of interest like Flight 19, or here Earhart's disappearance.

                          You have to also remember, the U.S. Government spearheaded the attempt to locate Earhart and Noonan with massive sea and air searching (for 1937, in terms of standards) and flopped in finding anything. The matter is still somewhat embarrassing.

                          Jeff

                          Comment


                          • #28
                            In his book "Finding Amelia", Gillespie recounts a number of significant screw ups by the Navy in their search for Earhart. He also states that the Navy was far from thrilled to have to support Earhart feeling that they were doing the work and she was getting the credit and that they had better things to do.

                            Gillespie is also of the opinion that Earhart was an average pilot at best.

                            c.d.

                            Comment


                            • #29
                              If the Electra really did crash-land on Gardner, there wouldn't be much left of it by now even if it hadn't been blown into the sea. Tighar have posted photos of what they claim are aircraft parts, and they may well be. The only find that actually looks like it might have come from an aircraft is an aluminium panel, the rivet-holes in which line up to river-holes on an Electra fuselage. If this is factual, then I would say that Earhart and Noonan did indeed crash-land on Gardner. As c.d. correctly states, an aircraft constructed of mainly aluminium wouldn't last long in salt water; a few ferrous parts might survive longer. Aircraft which crashed into Norwegian fjords have been raised and are in excellent condition because of the pure fresh fjord water in which aluminium alloys do not corrode.

                              Re: Flight 19, I did see some underwater shots claimed to be of a TBM Avenger torpedo-bomber, still in one piece, that was part of Flight 19 and identified by a number or some such device on its fin. Yeah....first off an aircraft that crashes into the sea isn't going to be in one piece on the ocean bed, and secondly for reasons that c.d. states after 70 years there wouldn't be much left of it anyway. At least Tighar claim to be finding aircraft bits rather than a complete machine.

                              Graham
                              We are suffering from a plethora of surmise, conjecture and hypothesis. - Sherlock Holmes, The Adventure Of Silver Blaze

                              Comment


                              • #30
                                The story of the Florida girl hearing Amelia on shortwave radio is what first caught my interest many years ago. Frank Edwards told the story in one of his books, and there just seemed something so haunting about the idea of being lost in the middle of the ocean, and the only person who can hear your cries for help is a little kid half the world away.

                                Young Betty Klenk's notebook is reproduced and transcribed at http://tighar.org/Projects/Earhart/A.../notebook.html . Additionally, the Old Time Radio project has a fascinating page detailing a large number of radio contacts believed to have been made in the four days following her loss. http://www.otrcat.com/amelia-earhart...roadcasts.html . If even half of this is correct, it's an appalling story of incompetence on behalf of the searchers.

                                Also, there's a recorded interview with Betty at http://www.thestory.org/stories/2013...o-transmission
                                - Ginger

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