Peter Gunn
Master Sergeant
AHA! Caught you you insidious disinformation specialist! EVERYONE knows that Bob Hope and Bing Crosby did the "On the Road to ..." movies!!!
Sooooo, you're part of the cover up then eh?
Earhart's Plane Found?!
- Thread starter FLYBOYJ
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AHA! Caught you you insidious disinformation specialist! EVERYONE knows that Bob Hope and Bing Crosby did the "On the Road to ..." movies!!!
Sooooo, you're part of the cover up then eh?
vikingBerserker
Lieutenant General
The alleged plane looks like it has a single tail instead of a double.
Airframes
Benevolens Magister
Ah, but Fred and Ginger were to make a guest appearance in this movie, "Er heart is broken, dancing on the road" !
I'm certainly still not convinced...
Robert Porter
Senior Master Sergeant
Nope, not at all convinced. The book mentioned has been at least partially discredited right here in the forum. The logs the author claimed as proof obviously were not as she said. On and on, the pictures prove nothing and as a software developer I am very familiar with and have access to facial recognition (we used it in a project that identified drivers in traffic cams). Those pictures would be rejected as unusable by any version of facial recognition I am aware of. And I doubt very much the author or her sources had access to any more capable version than I do.
Lastly I agree with above. There is no conceivable motive for Japan to have done anything other than shout to the world if they had actually found the fliers either dead or alive.
Lastly I agree with above. There is no conceivable motive for Japan to have done anything other than shout to the world if they had actually found the fliers either dead or alive.
mikewint
Captain
While living in Los Angeles in 1923, Earhart worked in a photography studio; she and a friend later briefly operated their own photography business. This interest endured; Earhart took a number of photographs of clouds and ships that passed below as the Friendship crossed the Atlantic in 1928 and she continued to take pictures of the people and places she visited. These pictures from 1937, along with diary entries that she was writing for the book about her flight, were mailed back to Putnam in the United States.
Author Randall Brink interviewed a Lockheed technician, who told him: "I recall that I was directed to cut two 16-to-18-inch-diameter holes for the cameras, which were to be mounted in the lower aft fuselage bay and would be electrically operated." These cameras, Mr. Brink says, were placed there to take pictures of Japan's military buildup in the islands.
Japan seized the islands from the Germans during World War I (1914). The League of Nations awarded a mandate to the Japanese after the War under the authority of Article 22 of the League of Nations Charter. The Japanese set up their administration at Jaluit which had been the German administrative center. The Marshalls were referred to as the Eastern Mandates. The Japanese after World War I settled about 1,000 Japanese civilians on the Marshalls in addition to military personnel. As Japan began to move toward war (late-1930s), they began to militarize the islands with the idea of expansionism south and toward other islands in Oceania. This was a violation of the League of Nations Mandate under which the islands had been administered, but Japan had withdrawn from the League (1934). The Japanese had, however, on at least one of the islands in the major atoll group built airstrips for military aircraft.
Very soon after seizing the islands in 1914, Japan placed serious restrictions on visits there by ships of other nations. Concern on the part of Britain and the U.S. over this development – both because it restricted trade by their merchants and because it could permit the Japanese to fortify the islands in secret – may have led the U.S. to instigate a diplomatic conflict over a cable relay station on Yap in 1921. In settling its dispute with the U.S. over this station Japan in 1922 agreed to unrestricted access to Micronesian territorial waters by U.S. commercial vessels, and to the extension of an existing free trade agreement, the Treaty of Commerce and Navigation, to the mandated islands. However, Port visits could be carried out only in accordance with complex regulations, so complex and restrictive, that they had the effect of excluding foreign shipping. These regulations and their implementation served to keep other nations in the dark about just what the Empire was up to in its mandated islands. The result was suspicion on the part of nations like the U.S., which initiated intelligence operations to find out what was going on. Between 1915 and 1922, most intelligence work involved interviewing people who had traveled to or through the islands for commercial or other reasons. The period from 1922 through 1929 saw the active if not always very effective use of spies operating under cover of commercial and scientific activities. The third, during the 1930s and 1940-41, emphasized monitoring radio transmissions, censoring mails, the continuing use of agents and aerial overflights.
Two major questions have been raised: First, would the U.S. have had any reason to organize such a spy mission, and second, would the Japanese, had they discovered it, have had any reason to keep the matter secret and execute the spies?
By 1937 the Imperial Japanese Navy was calling the shots in Micronesia and initiated construction of major improvements in air, sea and land facilities. Sea-plane facilities had already been built for the Nan'yõ-Cho (South Seas Government) in the late 1930s on several islands of the former Mandated Territory and between 1935 and 1937 the Japanese government spent almost 1,000,000 Yen on further construction of air facilities. In the Marshall Islands, known seaplane bases with shore facilities were located on Wotje, Wotje Atoll; Ebeye, Kwajalein Atoll; Jabwor, Jaluit Atoll; Djarrit, Majuro Atoll; and Engebi, Enewetak Atoll. Suspected seaplane facilities or temporary seaplane bases may have existed on Rongelap, Mile and Bokak. Certainly the U.S. was suspicious of Japanese intentions in the islands, and its suspicions had to be heightened by Japan's withdrawal from the League of Nations and its abrogation of the naval treaties. Certainly, too, the U.S. was actively involved in gathering intelligence about what the Japanese were doing in the mandate.
Under these circumstances it is not unreasonable to think that U.S. intelligence would have been interested in having someone fly over key islands in the mandate. Before and during World War II, Truk Lagoon was Japan's main base in the South Pacific theatre, a heavily fortified base for Japanese operations against Allied forces in New Guinea and the Solomon Islands, serving as the forward anchorage for the Japanese Imperial Fleet.
In 1937, U.S. intelligence would have been extremely interested in the status of this naval base, once known to Allied forces as Japan's "Gibraltar of the Pacific," and Amelia might have been asked to observe and possibly even take some photos. If the Electra had turned NE from New Guinea it would have arrived over Truk at about 7 p.m. local time, with plenty of daylight left. Now I fully understand that we have no proof that Amelia attempted to perform such a mission, but her actions during the final flight suggest something very strange was afoot, and she had two meetings with top U.S. officials during April 1937, according to Margot DeCarie, her personal secretary.
So after leaving New Guinea, Amelia could have turned NE aiming for Truk, overfly Truk and the rest of that island group and the turn SE to aim for Howland. Earhart's final in-flight radio message occurred at 08:43: "We are on the line 157-337. We will repeat this message. We will repeat this on 6210 kilocycles. Wait," she said. 157/337 is a compass heading from the north to the south and would intersect a line drawn straight East from Truk. So after flying East from Truk, Earhart could then turn South along this heading to hit Howland.
Now before you all jump in here, once again I do understand that there is an alternative explanation: Noonan, unable to take celestial bearings during the night due to cloudy conditions would have used the time of sunrise to determine his East-West position. The sun rises in a slightly different direction every day, and it climbs at an angle so the direction is constantly shifting. That morning it came up at 67 degrees, and because a Line of Position is always at a right angle to the observed celestial body, the line to be derived from the rising sun was 157/337. By noting the time that the sun came up, Amelia's navigator, Fred Noonan, could draw a 157/337 line on his map and know that they were somewhere on that line. He can then draw a 157/337 line that passes through Howland. The distance between those two parallel lines tells then how far they have to fly East to hit the second 157/337 line. The problem is now that they have no way of knowing their North or South distance from Howland. They now have to visually sight Howland. At the time an Excellent navigator would get +/- 5 miles from their destinations by this DR method and +/- 10 miles was an acceptable error. However this included being able to take bearings during the flight to correct for North/South drift.
One can only guess what Earhart might have seen/photographed over Truk. Had Amelia Earhart flown over any of the Marianas or Carolines ... she would have seen only the same sort of facilities available to Pan-American Airways at its new commercial base at Guam; had she flown over the Marshalls ... she might have seen Japanese warships at Jaluit Atoll and possibly the construction of new facilities such as the new Japanese airbase on Taroa Island
But of course, what Earhart and Noonan actually saw or could have seen, whether they were or were not spies is not really relevant. No one who has worked in a bureaucracy can have much trouble imagining a situation in which someone makes a stupid mistake – a local military official or police official overreacts to the crash landing of what he thinks is a spy plane – and things spiral out of control, to the point at which there is nothing to do but execute the supposed spies and hide the evidence that it ever happened to "save face" and remember that by this point in time the Japanese military, even lower ranking officers were making the decisions not Tokyo.
Again I point out the Shenyang/Mukden incident that triggered the Japanese invasion of Manchuria. Three Colonels and a Major, Colonel Seishirō Itagaki, Lieutenant Colonel Kanji Ishiwara, Colonel Kenji Doihara, and Major Takayoshi Tanaka had laid complete plans for the incident by May 31, 1931.
At Dalian in the Kwantung Leased Territory, Commander-in-Chief of the Kwantung Army General Shigeru Honjō was at first appalled that the invasion plan was enacted without his permission, but he was eventually convinced by Ishiwara to give his approval after the fact.
The Japanese invasion of China itself was triggered by a Japanese private. When a Japanese soldier, Private Shimura Kikujiro, failed to return to his post, Chinese regimental commander Ji Xingwen (219th Regiment, 37th Division, 29th Route Army) received a message from the Japanese demanding permission to enter Wanping to search for the missing soldier. The Chinese refused. And, although Private Shimura returned to his unit, by this point both sides were mobilizing, with the Japanese deploying reinforcements and surrounding Wanping. A Truce was eventually negotiated but again a Japanese Garrison Infantry Brigade commander General Masakazu Kawabe rejected the truce and, against his superiors' orders, continued to shell Wanping for the next three hours, until prevailed upon to cease and to move his forces to the northeast.
The question of whether Earhart and Noonan ditched in the sea and sank or made a landing is also open to question.
Transmissions from Earhart's Electra (NR16020) were possible on three primary frequencies: 3105 kHz, 6210 kHz and 500 kHz. For the latter, however, there were no reported post loss signals.
On her world flight, Earhart transmitted on 3105 kHz at night, and 6210 kHz during daylight, using her 50-watt WE-13C transmitter.
The Itasca transmitted on 3105 kHz, but did not have voice capability on 6210 kHz.
Under favorable propagation conditions, it was possible for aircraft operating on the U.S. West Coast at night to be heard on 3105 kHz in the central Pacific. In fact, the Itasca reported hearing such signals on one occasion. TIGHAR built a detailed catalog and analysis of all the reported post-loss radio signals, and selected the credible ones based on those frequencies. Amelia Earhart did not simply vanish on July 2, 1937. Radio distress calls believed to have been sent from the missing plane dominated the headlines and drove much of the U.S. Coast Guard and Navy search. When the search failed, all of the reported post-loss radio signals were categorically dismissed as bogus.
Using digitized information management systems, antenna modeling software, and radio wave propagation analysis programs, TIGHAR re-examined all the 120 known reports of radio signals suspected or alleged to have been sent from the Earhart aircraft after local noon on July 2, 1937 through July 18, 1937, when the official search ended. They concluded that 57 out of the 120 reported signals are credible.
The results of the study suggest that the aircraft was on land and on its wheels for several days following the disappearance since a plane under water could not transmit. Since these were open broadcasts they certainly could have been heard by the Japanese who then located and captured the pair.
Author Randall Brink interviewed a Lockheed technician, who told him: "I recall that I was directed to cut two 16-to-18-inch-diameter holes for the cameras, which were to be mounted in the lower aft fuselage bay and would be electrically operated." These cameras, Mr. Brink says, were placed there to take pictures of Japan's military buildup in the islands.
Japan seized the islands from the Germans during World War I (1914). The League of Nations awarded a mandate to the Japanese after the War under the authority of Article 22 of the League of Nations Charter. The Japanese set up their administration at Jaluit which had been the German administrative center. The Marshalls were referred to as the Eastern Mandates. The Japanese after World War I settled about 1,000 Japanese civilians on the Marshalls in addition to military personnel. As Japan began to move toward war (late-1930s), they began to militarize the islands with the idea of expansionism south and toward other islands in Oceania. This was a violation of the League of Nations Mandate under which the islands had been administered, but Japan had withdrawn from the League (1934). The Japanese had, however, on at least one of the islands in the major atoll group built airstrips for military aircraft.
Very soon after seizing the islands in 1914, Japan placed serious restrictions on visits there by ships of other nations. Concern on the part of Britain and the U.S. over this development – both because it restricted trade by their merchants and because it could permit the Japanese to fortify the islands in secret – may have led the U.S. to instigate a diplomatic conflict over a cable relay station on Yap in 1921. In settling its dispute with the U.S. over this station Japan in 1922 agreed to unrestricted access to Micronesian territorial waters by U.S. commercial vessels, and to the extension of an existing free trade agreement, the Treaty of Commerce and Navigation, to the mandated islands. However, Port visits could be carried out only in accordance with complex regulations, so complex and restrictive, that they had the effect of excluding foreign shipping. These regulations and their implementation served to keep other nations in the dark about just what the Empire was up to in its mandated islands. The result was suspicion on the part of nations like the U.S., which initiated intelligence operations to find out what was going on. Between 1915 and 1922, most intelligence work involved interviewing people who had traveled to or through the islands for commercial or other reasons. The period from 1922 through 1929 saw the active if not always very effective use of spies operating under cover of commercial and scientific activities. The third, during the 1930s and 1940-41, emphasized monitoring radio transmissions, censoring mails, the continuing use of agents and aerial overflights.
Two major questions have been raised: First, would the U.S. have had any reason to organize such a spy mission, and second, would the Japanese, had they discovered it, have had any reason to keep the matter secret and execute the spies?
By 1937 the Imperial Japanese Navy was calling the shots in Micronesia and initiated construction of major improvements in air, sea and land facilities. Sea-plane facilities had already been built for the Nan'yõ-Cho (South Seas Government) in the late 1930s on several islands of the former Mandated Territory and between 1935 and 1937 the Japanese government spent almost 1,000,000 Yen on further construction of air facilities. In the Marshall Islands, known seaplane bases with shore facilities were located on Wotje, Wotje Atoll; Ebeye, Kwajalein Atoll; Jabwor, Jaluit Atoll; Djarrit, Majuro Atoll; and Engebi, Enewetak Atoll. Suspected seaplane facilities or temporary seaplane bases may have existed on Rongelap, Mile and Bokak. Certainly the U.S. was suspicious of Japanese intentions in the islands, and its suspicions had to be heightened by Japan's withdrawal from the League of Nations and its abrogation of the naval treaties. Certainly, too, the U.S. was actively involved in gathering intelligence about what the Japanese were doing in the mandate.
Under these circumstances it is not unreasonable to think that U.S. intelligence would have been interested in having someone fly over key islands in the mandate. Before and during World War II, Truk Lagoon was Japan's main base in the South Pacific theatre, a heavily fortified base for Japanese operations against Allied forces in New Guinea and the Solomon Islands, serving as the forward anchorage for the Japanese Imperial Fleet.
In 1937, U.S. intelligence would have been extremely interested in the status of this naval base, once known to Allied forces as Japan's "Gibraltar of the Pacific," and Amelia might have been asked to observe and possibly even take some photos. If the Electra had turned NE from New Guinea it would have arrived over Truk at about 7 p.m. local time, with plenty of daylight left. Now I fully understand that we have no proof that Amelia attempted to perform such a mission, but her actions during the final flight suggest something very strange was afoot, and she had two meetings with top U.S. officials during April 1937, according to Margot DeCarie, her personal secretary.
So after leaving New Guinea, Amelia could have turned NE aiming for Truk, overfly Truk and the rest of that island group and the turn SE to aim for Howland. Earhart's final in-flight radio message occurred at 08:43: "We are on the line 157-337. We will repeat this message. We will repeat this on 6210 kilocycles. Wait," she said. 157/337 is a compass heading from the north to the south and would intersect a line drawn straight East from Truk. So after flying East from Truk, Earhart could then turn South along this heading to hit Howland.
Now before you all jump in here, once again I do understand that there is an alternative explanation: Noonan, unable to take celestial bearings during the night due to cloudy conditions would have used the time of sunrise to determine his East-West position. The sun rises in a slightly different direction every day, and it climbs at an angle so the direction is constantly shifting. That morning it came up at 67 degrees, and because a Line of Position is always at a right angle to the observed celestial body, the line to be derived from the rising sun was 157/337. By noting the time that the sun came up, Amelia's navigator, Fred Noonan, could draw a 157/337 line on his map and know that they were somewhere on that line. He can then draw a 157/337 line that passes through Howland. The distance between those two parallel lines tells then how far they have to fly East to hit the second 157/337 line. The problem is now that they have no way of knowing their North or South distance from Howland. They now have to visually sight Howland. At the time an Excellent navigator would get +/- 5 miles from their destinations by this DR method and +/- 10 miles was an acceptable error. However this included being able to take bearings during the flight to correct for North/South drift.
One can only guess what Earhart might have seen/photographed over Truk. Had Amelia Earhart flown over any of the Marianas or Carolines ... she would have seen only the same sort of facilities available to Pan-American Airways at its new commercial base at Guam; had she flown over the Marshalls ... she might have seen Japanese warships at Jaluit Atoll and possibly the construction of new facilities such as the new Japanese airbase on Taroa Island
But of course, what Earhart and Noonan actually saw or could have seen, whether they were or were not spies is not really relevant. No one who has worked in a bureaucracy can have much trouble imagining a situation in which someone makes a stupid mistake – a local military official or police official overreacts to the crash landing of what he thinks is a spy plane – and things spiral out of control, to the point at which there is nothing to do but execute the supposed spies and hide the evidence that it ever happened to "save face" and remember that by this point in time the Japanese military, even lower ranking officers were making the decisions not Tokyo.
Again I point out the Shenyang/Mukden incident that triggered the Japanese invasion of Manchuria. Three Colonels and a Major, Colonel Seishirō Itagaki, Lieutenant Colonel Kanji Ishiwara, Colonel Kenji Doihara, and Major Takayoshi Tanaka had laid complete plans for the incident by May 31, 1931.
At Dalian in the Kwantung Leased Territory, Commander-in-Chief of the Kwantung Army General Shigeru Honjō was at first appalled that the invasion plan was enacted without his permission, but he was eventually convinced by Ishiwara to give his approval after the fact.
The Japanese invasion of China itself was triggered by a Japanese private. When a Japanese soldier, Private Shimura Kikujiro, failed to return to his post, Chinese regimental commander Ji Xingwen (219th Regiment, 37th Division, 29th Route Army) received a message from the Japanese demanding permission to enter Wanping to search for the missing soldier. The Chinese refused. And, although Private Shimura returned to his unit, by this point both sides were mobilizing, with the Japanese deploying reinforcements and surrounding Wanping. A Truce was eventually negotiated but again a Japanese Garrison Infantry Brigade commander General Masakazu Kawabe rejected the truce and, against his superiors' orders, continued to shell Wanping for the next three hours, until prevailed upon to cease and to move his forces to the northeast.
The question of whether Earhart and Noonan ditched in the sea and sank or made a landing is also open to question.
Transmissions from Earhart's Electra (NR16020) were possible on three primary frequencies: 3105 kHz, 6210 kHz and 500 kHz. For the latter, however, there were no reported post loss signals.
On her world flight, Earhart transmitted on 3105 kHz at night, and 6210 kHz during daylight, using her 50-watt WE-13C transmitter.
The Itasca transmitted on 3105 kHz, but did not have voice capability on 6210 kHz.
Under favorable propagation conditions, it was possible for aircraft operating on the U.S. West Coast at night to be heard on 3105 kHz in the central Pacific. In fact, the Itasca reported hearing such signals on one occasion. TIGHAR built a detailed catalog and analysis of all the reported post-loss radio signals, and selected the credible ones based on those frequencies. Amelia Earhart did not simply vanish on July 2, 1937. Radio distress calls believed to have been sent from the missing plane dominated the headlines and drove much of the U.S. Coast Guard and Navy search. When the search failed, all of the reported post-loss radio signals were categorically dismissed as bogus.
Using digitized information management systems, antenna modeling software, and radio wave propagation analysis programs, TIGHAR re-examined all the 120 known reports of radio signals suspected or alleged to have been sent from the Earhart aircraft after local noon on July 2, 1937 through July 18, 1937, when the official search ended. They concluded that 57 out of the 120 reported signals are credible.
The results of the study suggest that the aircraft was on land and on its wheels for several days following the disappearance since a plane under water could not transmit. Since these were open broadcasts they certainly could have been heard by the Japanese who then located and captured the pair.
I'm not an expert, but I'm surprised that none of the so called photo-analysts noticed that there is something very odd going on with the horizon as indicated by my arrows.
Also half of 'Noonan' seems to be missing. This whole area looks to have been doctored to me, and not even very well.
I'm calling this a fake and wonder whether some people just see what they want to believe, or what those paying them wnat them to see.
Cheers
Steve
Also half of 'Noonan' seems to be missing. This whole area looks to have been doctored to me, and not even very well.
I'm calling this a fake and wonder whether some people just see what they want to believe, or what those paying them wnat them to see.
Cheers
Steve
buffnut453
Captain
Mike,
There needs to be a consistent timeline for these spying ideas to work. According to the well-regarded Pacific Wrecks website, Taroa airfield wasn't started until 1939. Similarly, Truk wasn't fortified until 1940 as described here. Even after the start of WW2, Truk was little more than a deep lagoon with no piers or facilities for permanent ship repairs (all supplies for ships visiting Truk had to be taken out by lighter until well into WW2). There was precious little for Earhart and Noonan to see and certainly nothing that merited their murder in 1937.
Even if they were conducting aerial reconnaissance on behalf of the US Government, wouldn't it have been in Japan's best interest to highlight that fact? If Japan went to the trouble of sending a vessel to rescue the two aviators, and that mission succeeded in recovering the aircraft wreckage, wouldn't that have been a stupendous political coup to show the world the reconnaissance installation? Notwithstanding the potential for low-ranking Japanese officers to foment unrest, surely it would be in the best interests of those Japanese officers to embarrass the US Government by revealing the Noonan/Earhart flight as hostile?
As to the radio transmissions, if the US Government thought there was any chance that these 2 airborne spies were still alive, wouldn't they move heaven and earth to rescue them and the film from the cameras allegedly installed in the aircraft? Investigations were made at the time and all transmissions were found to be unrelated to the Earhart/Noonan flight. Why would the Government do that if there was a risk that their clandestine mission would be compromised by the Japanese?
Sorry but none of this makes any sense to me. Given the widespread nature of the islands, in order to do a proper reconnaissance would require Earhart and Noonan to fly around all the islands, unless they were focusing on one in particular...but which one? As noted, Truk was just a deep lagoon. Tarao and Mili airfields and the Ebaye seaplane base weren't started until years later so what, exactly, was there to be seen in 1937?
The romantic in me would really like some aspect of this story to be true but the evidence just doesn't match up. None of it makes coherent sense, I'm afraid.
There needs to be a consistent timeline for these spying ideas to work. According to the well-regarded Pacific Wrecks website, Taroa airfield wasn't started until 1939. Similarly, Truk wasn't fortified until 1940 as described here. Even after the start of WW2, Truk was little more than a deep lagoon with no piers or facilities for permanent ship repairs (all supplies for ships visiting Truk had to be taken out by lighter until well into WW2). There was precious little for Earhart and Noonan to see and certainly nothing that merited their murder in 1937.
Even if they were conducting aerial reconnaissance on behalf of the US Government, wouldn't it have been in Japan's best interest to highlight that fact? If Japan went to the trouble of sending a vessel to rescue the two aviators, and that mission succeeded in recovering the aircraft wreckage, wouldn't that have been a stupendous political coup to show the world the reconnaissance installation? Notwithstanding the potential for low-ranking Japanese officers to foment unrest, surely it would be in the best interests of those Japanese officers to embarrass the US Government by revealing the Noonan/Earhart flight as hostile?
As to the radio transmissions, if the US Government thought there was any chance that these 2 airborne spies were still alive, wouldn't they move heaven and earth to rescue them and the film from the cameras allegedly installed in the aircraft? Investigations were made at the time and all transmissions were found to be unrelated to the Earhart/Noonan flight. Why would the Government do that if there was a risk that their clandestine mission would be compromised by the Japanese?
Sorry but none of this makes any sense to me. Given the widespread nature of the islands, in order to do a proper reconnaissance would require Earhart and Noonan to fly around all the islands, unless they were focusing on one in particular...but which one? As noted, Truk was just a deep lagoon. Tarao and Mili airfields and the Ebaye seaplane base weren't started until years later so what, exactly, was there to be seen in 1937?
The romantic in me would really like some aspect of this story to be true but the evidence just doesn't match up. None of it makes coherent sense, I'm afraid.
mikewint
Captain
Steve, got to admit I never noticed that before. The Noonan figure seems to be with his right arm/hand holding onto a pole/post/board with a notice/sign attached but I see now that his lower waist and upper waist don't seem to match and that's in that non-matching horizon part of the photo. I went to a number of web site featuring that photo and found this on one of them: an old, cracked photograph found in the National Archives, showing a group of people on a dock in the Marshall Islands. Among the figures: two people who just might be Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan.
so possibly a defect in the photo? We are working with a copy of a copy...
so possibly a defect in the photo? We are working with a copy of a copy...
mikewint
Captain
Buff, I've got to disagree with you in part. My post is long but I think I've already covered your objections
I think that you are asking these officials to make decisions on an international scale, way above their pay grade. So a short sighted official (in such a back-water post he may not have even known of Earhart's flight or even recognized her) suddenly has a foreign plane land and begin broadcasting. He has two "White-Devils in hand with a plane that had over flown forbidden air space and they had a camera. The scenario screams spies and he reacts accordingly.
Being cautious he lets them think that they and their plane are on their way to rescue until the arrive on Siapan where their true status as prisoners becomes apparent and they are put in prison. By the time higher level authorities are made aware of what has transpired Earhart & Noonan have been in prison, ill treated as befits spies and tortured to admit their guilt.
As has happened in the past, lower ranking Japanese have presented their superiors with a fait accompli and the "save face" cover up begins
I think that you are asking these officials to make decisions on an international scale, way above their pay grade. So a short sighted official (in such a back-water post he may not have even known of Earhart's flight or even recognized her) suddenly has a foreign plane land and begin broadcasting. He has two "White-Devils in hand with a plane that had over flown forbidden air space and they had a camera. The scenario screams spies and he reacts accordingly.
Being cautious he lets them think that they and their plane are on their way to rescue until the arrive on Siapan where their true status as prisoners becomes apparent and they are put in prison. By the time higher level authorities are made aware of what has transpired Earhart & Noonan have been in prison, ill treated as befits spies and tortured to admit their guilt.
As has happened in the past, lower ranking Japanese have presented their superiors with a fait accompli and the "save face" cover up begins
mikewint
Captain
Steve, you've made a valid observation but I have several old photos taken by my grandfather in which the emulsion is beginning to wrinkle and crack.
So I can't say that it hasn't been Photoshopped but for a national broadcast on TV one would expect better work
So I can't say that it hasn't been Photoshopped but for a national broadcast on TV one would expect better work
Not here, not always. Producers need to sell their programmes and let's just say editorial standards aren't what they were. There are more channels and a lot more hours to fill these days
Robert Porter
Senior Master Sergeant
If the photo exists in the national archives, misfiled or not, upon its retrieval by the authors it would have been cataloged and a highly accurate scan/reproduction would be available at the national archives site. So it should be fairly easy to determine the condition of the photo at the time the authors "discovered" it in their research. They obviously claim to have reproduced the photo themselves as they published a reproduction. It just seems pretty sketchy and very typical of conspiracy theory nutjobs with an axe to grind, as one of the authors clearly had.
mikewint
Captain
Robert, the veracity of that particular photograph really has nothing to do with the Earhart/Noonan Japanese prisoner scenario. It has bee bandied about for years
Goerner mentions the statement Nimitz made to him on the phone in late March 1965: "Now that you're going to Washington, Fred, I want to tell you that Earhart and her navigator did go down in the Marshalls and were picked up by the Japanese."
Later Admiral Nimitz became vitally interested in the Earhart questions, providing suggestions for further research and attempting to help with access to classified information. Before his death in 1966, Nimitz advised, "Never give up. You are on to something that will stagger your imagination."
Gen. Graves B. Erskine, USMC (Ret.) one of the U.S. Marine Corps' most distinguished officers told CBS in a 1966 private interview, "We did learn that Earhart was on Saipan and that she died there."
Gen. Alexander A. Vandegrift, USMC (Ret.), who commanded the US Marine Corps during the later stages of WW II the Pacific stated on August 10, 1971, "It was substantiated that Miss Earhart met her death on Saipan. The information was given to me directly by General Thomas Watson, who commanded the 2nd U.S. Marine Corps Division during the assault on Saipan in 1944."
President Franklin D. Roosevelt personally interested himself in the flight, directing the War, Navy, Army and State Departments to cooperate. Enthusiasm was not unanimous. One high-ranking Navy officer wrote in longhand on the margin of the directive, "Why are we doing this? There isn't that much to gain, and it'll excite the Japs."
U.S. Congressman William I. Sirovich one day dropped by to see his friend Claude A. Swanson, who was secretary of the U.S. Navy. Sirovich, curious about the seeming mystery surrounding the Earhart disappearance, asked Swanson for his feelings about the matter.
"This is a powder keg," replied Swanson. "Any public discussion of it will cause an explosion. I'm not the only one in this department who feels that she saw activities which she could not have described later and remained alive. To speculate about this publicly probably would sever our diplomatic relations with Japan and lead to something worse."
In 1944 on Majuro Atoll during the invasion of the Marshall Islands, Vice Adm. Edgar A. Cruise learned from a native interpreter named Michael Madison that an American man and woman flyers had been picked up and brought into the Marshalls in 1937.
At almost the same time, Eugene F. Bogan, serving as a senior military government officer at Majuro (Bogan is now one of America's leading tax attorneys in Washington, D.C.) interviewed a Marshallese native named Elieu Jibambam, who told the same story.
Major Rick Spooner, USMC retired, was there when Marines found a photo album in a military home on Saipan, and how his fellow Marines described it as a book filled with photos of Earhart and Noonan and other "white people." He believes the book came from the Electra. He also observed that the book was taken by Wallace Green, USMC, who turned it over to military intelligence.
Goerner mentions the statement Nimitz made to him on the phone in late March 1965: "Now that you're going to Washington, Fred, I want to tell you that Earhart and her navigator did go down in the Marshalls and were picked up by the Japanese."
Later Admiral Nimitz became vitally interested in the Earhart questions, providing suggestions for further research and attempting to help with access to classified information. Before his death in 1966, Nimitz advised, "Never give up. You are on to something that will stagger your imagination."
Gen. Graves B. Erskine, USMC (Ret.) one of the U.S. Marine Corps' most distinguished officers told CBS in a 1966 private interview, "We did learn that Earhart was on Saipan and that she died there."
Gen. Alexander A. Vandegrift, USMC (Ret.), who commanded the US Marine Corps during the later stages of WW II the Pacific stated on August 10, 1971, "It was substantiated that Miss Earhart met her death on Saipan. The information was given to me directly by General Thomas Watson, who commanded the 2nd U.S. Marine Corps Division during the assault on Saipan in 1944."
President Franklin D. Roosevelt personally interested himself in the flight, directing the War, Navy, Army and State Departments to cooperate. Enthusiasm was not unanimous. One high-ranking Navy officer wrote in longhand on the margin of the directive, "Why are we doing this? There isn't that much to gain, and it'll excite the Japs."
U.S. Congressman William I. Sirovich one day dropped by to see his friend Claude A. Swanson, who was secretary of the U.S. Navy. Sirovich, curious about the seeming mystery surrounding the Earhart disappearance, asked Swanson for his feelings about the matter.
"This is a powder keg," replied Swanson. "Any public discussion of it will cause an explosion. I'm not the only one in this department who feels that she saw activities which she could not have described later and remained alive. To speculate about this publicly probably would sever our diplomatic relations with Japan and lead to something worse."
In 1944 on Majuro Atoll during the invasion of the Marshall Islands, Vice Adm. Edgar A. Cruise learned from a native interpreter named Michael Madison that an American man and woman flyers had been picked up and brought into the Marshalls in 1937.
At almost the same time, Eugene F. Bogan, serving as a senior military government officer at Majuro (Bogan is now one of America's leading tax attorneys in Washington, D.C.) interviewed a Marshallese native named Elieu Jibambam, who told the same story.
Major Rick Spooner, USMC retired, was there when Marines found a photo album in a military home on Saipan, and how his fellow Marines described it as a book filled with photos of Earhart and Noonan and other "white people." He believes the book came from the Electra. He also observed that the book was taken by Wallace Green, USMC, who turned it over to military intelligence.
fubar57
General
That is an awful lot of people who seem to know the "truth" and still have this remain a mystery
mikewint
Captain
Personally I think it stems from the fear of becoming the "White Crow". So all are verbal, you know "plausible deniability"
Whistle Blowers seldom get parades
Whistle Blowers seldom get parades
buffnut453
Captain
You would have a valid point if the captain of the recovery vessel (or some other official) decided, on the spot, to execute Earhart and Noonan before leaving the crash site. However, the longer the 2 are held and they further they get from the crash site, the less likely your "rogue junior official" theory becomes. The Japanese vessel must have received radio orders to proceed to the crash site. It's therefore entirely reasonable that it would report back on what it found as a matter of urgency. If it reported back to higher HQ that the 2 fliers had been rescued with the aircraft wreckage, and that the latter had evidence that they had been conducting a reconnaissance mission, I think it highly likely that higher HQ would have provided direction for how to handle the situation...and dragging them away from the island, then letting them loose in the harbor at Jaluit, only to imprison them back on board before executing them stretches credibility too far. If Tokyo had unimpeachable evidence of US intelligence gathering over Japanese mandated islands, they surely would flout that evidence to the world rather than bury it. And if it was a rogue official, that would more likely happen sooner rather than later. The longer Earhart and Noonan survive, the greater the likelihood that someone would see them (particularly if they let them off the boat at Jaluit), and the greater the chance that executing them would backfire.
buffnut453
Captain
And this all brings us back to the fundamental assumption that Earhart and Noonan saw SOMETHING...but nobody can tell us what it was and the only "evidence" is some name-dropping quotes that, with one possible exception, are entirely unprovable. Even then, people's memories are fallible. They can mistake the timing of things, insert activities that never really happened etc...but we're supposed to take all this at face value?
The Marshalls only really started being developed as military bases in 1940 so Earhart and Noonan didn't see that activity. Any sorties by IJN vessels would be, by their very nature, transitory in nature so the intelligence provided would be highly perishable. What was going on in that part of the Pacific in 1937 that was so important?
What secret could they have discovered that was so significant it would break US-Japanese relations 25 years after the fact...oh, and after those nations had waged a 4-year war that killed hundreds of thousands of people and ended with the only operational use of nuclear weapons? After all that, we're supposed to believe that Earhart and Noonan saw something worse than all that?
Sorry but I can't think of ANYTHING that important happening in that part of the world in 1937. Oh, yeah...that right. It's because it's a secret! Gimme a break!!
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