Graeme beautiful job on the photo unfortunately copy of a copy. Be nice to have the original negative. The slightly different shadings on the horizon may indeed show "something on the water? And the dark shape above Noonan's? left belt?
Robert, that is the exact goal of "Plausible Deniability". Men like Nimitz had a LOT to loose by coming out against official government policy so they drop tidbits and hope someone will take up the cause. As to "what was there to loose" re-read the Swanson quote:
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."
Remember the US was walking a tightrope with Japan still hoping to avoid an all-out war.
Buff (Mark), I am still somewhat skeptical myself but the vast amounts of circumstantial evidence are hard (for me at least) to totally discount. I am also very much aware of FDR's more realistic appraisal of Japanese motives and intent and his use of civilian resources to avoid a military tie-in. Are you aware of FDR's "Astor Spy Ring"?
Vincent Astor's "job" was forwarding civilian gathered intelligence directly to FDR at least as early as 1933. Most early data concerned general conditions in the Caribbean and Panama Canal Zone, but in 1936 Fred Dearing wrote Roosevelt from his post in Peru that Astor planned to cruise off the Pacific coast of Latin America. "I understand that Vincent Astor is going back to the Galapagos Islands again with a few visitors, but I expect he might pick up some scraps of information for you while he is there." Though anxious to have Astor check rumors that Japanese ships were surveying the Galapagos to locate a site for an advanced base, Roosevelt was more concerned to learn what the Japanese were doing on their far distant islands in the South Pacific held since World War I as League of Nations mandates. Conveniently, Astor and Kermit Roosevelt planned a scientific expedition to the Marshall Islands as a cover for other investigations.
Astor made elaborate preparations, including establishment of a recognition code word for the Nourmahal, a 41 foot yacht built for multi-millionaire Astor in 1928 at Krupp Iron Works in Kiel, Germany, to tie in with the United States Navy radio network and a briefing by Director of Naval Intelligence Ralston S. Holmes. "Admiral Holmes (O.N.I.) told me he believed the Japs had a lot of Radio stations in the islands," Astor advised FDR. "I should think that it would be interesting to know their exact location," and "Nourmahal has a Radio Direction Finder."
In early 1938 Astor sent a lengthy report to the president reviewing his voyage with Kermit Roosevelt to the South Pacific. "On my return, I shall of course make a proper report to O.N.I.," he explained. "However in the remote possibility of trouble between now and then, you might consider the following conclusions of mine concerning the Marshall Islands worth forwarding to Naval Operations & O.N.I." In his message to the president, Astor admitted that when the Japanese refused to grant permission to land he had become a bit of a coward and had left the area. However, through intercepted radio messages and interviews with British intelligence people on the nearby Gilbert and Ellice Islands he had gathered some important data. Astor observed that Eniwetok, not Jaluit or Wotje, seemed to be the principal Japanese naval base, since large docks, fuel stores and ships had been observed there for several years. Bikini Atoll, Astor confided, abounded in suspicious activity and was off-limits to local natives. In addition, Roosevelt's man had learned that trucks and tractors worked to clear an air strip on Wotje, while six Japanese submarines lurked in a nearby lagoon. Astor performed one valuable service by correcting the common impression in Washington that Japan had fortified the Marshall Islands, insisting that the concrete platforms on one island comprised floors for warehouses not emplacements for guns. "I feel moderately certain that there are none [forts] in the Marshalls," he wrote FDR. The Japanese protested vehemently to the U.S. State Department, and one Japanese press report indicated that the U.S. Navy had sent "warships" into the Marshalls and was forming a task force for an attack. Astor had caused a storm with Japan, but his mission was unknown in America.
However, the Japanese while ostensibly building "civilian" structures had built them to heavier, thicker, stronger standards making them easily convertible to later military usage. The U.S. had long believed that Japan was violating that treaty in the Mandated Islands, but could not prove it. The U.S. had countered on Midway and Wake Islands through cooperation with Pan American airways by building "civilian" air fields there, and now Earhart would become the civilian reason or cover for building a landing strip on Howland. To further disguise the Howland venture, President Roosevelt diverted funds from the civilian Works Progress Administration, an obfuscation tactic he had used several times before.
So IMHO, Earhart and Noonan surviving the crash would answer many post-crash questions like the radio messages heard by many official and un-official radio operators. Were Earhart and Noonan spies in the traditional sense, No, but collecting "White Intelligence" I think Yes. Would this infuriate the Japanese, IMHO, Yes. The Japanese Kenpeitai answered to no one and their brutality well known. Would the Kenpeitai consider this White Intelligence spying? again I think Yes. Earhart and Noonan were already thought of as dead and under torture who knows what Noonan may have confessed to, so execution was the easy way to make the problem "go away".
Unpopular? You bet, to the extreme. One only has to look through the replies to these postings to see how many members, whom I would have expected more of, have resorted to Adpellatus Illudere posts
Shimpachi - the Independent Republic of the Marshall Islands issued the four stamps in 1987 to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Amelia Earhart's landing at Mili Atoll and pick-up by the Japanese survey ship Koshu in July 1937. To the Marshallese people the disappearance of Amelia Earhart is no mystery or rumor but a stone cold fact.