Earhart's Plane Found?!

[Shinpachi]

I have checked the Seikai Maru like follows.

Ref code: B10074880000
@JACAR

Dated July 10, 1937
Regarding the search of (Ms) Earhart

To Consulate General Fukuma in Honolulu
From Foreign Minister Hirota (Tokyo)

"In answer of your question No.174, we are sending the Seikai Maru to the Marshall Islands and the special-service ship Koshu toward the estimated flight route of the Earhart plane but no clues at the moment. They will begin search upon arrived at Jaluit on/around July 12....."

 

[stona]

Occam's razor, reasonably summed up in this simple sentence.

"Among competing hypotheses, the one with the fewest assumptions should be selected."

Both the Marshall Islands hypothesis and TIGHAR's hypothesis most definitely do not fit with this definition. The Marshall Island's hypothesis is simply a mountain of assumption, extrapolation and conjecture.
There are a few minute specks of land out there, and we know Earhart didn't make the one she was heading for, and an awful lot of water.

My hypothesis is that Earhart and Noonan got lost (supported by radio traffic and the fact that they certainly didn't find their objective), ran out of fuel (had to happen sooner or later and she reported "gas is running low") and went into the Pacific Ocean (by far the biggest 'target' out there by orders of magnitude). This also conveniently explains why no trace has ever been found of the aircraft or its crew.

Cheers

Steve

 

[Shinpachi]

Agreed Steve.
My impression is that the aftermath was more emotional than rational though I can understand how her family felt.

B10074880000
@JACAR

Sent on September 7, 1937
Arrived on September 8, 1937

To Foreign Minister Hirota
From Consulate General Shiozaki in San Francisco

"On 7th, Mr Edward E. Brodle visited our office as attony of Mr George Plmer Putnam, (Ms) Earhart's husband, to inquire us if Japanese government would be further cooperative for search of his wife. According to Putnam's own research, there is a tidal current of 20mph near the Howland Island toward the Marshall Islands. Putnam thinks there could be any wreckage of her wife's plane in our Mandate. Mr Brodle said all costs should be owed by Mr Putnam. I promised him to inform his request to our government and, at the same time, advised him to contact with his government for the official request to our government."

 

[Shinpachi]

American warship visits - Again apples and oranges. Your documents are for open visits to open main Island ports not a clandestine over flight of heavily restricted areas and ports

Saipan, Palao, Augaur (?), Yaluit (Jaluit), Truk and Ponape were open ports though requested permission.
Not heavily restricted in 1937 yet.

Ref code: B04122001000

 

[stona]

Occam's razor again.

The problem isn't just suppositions made in many of the more exotic hypotheses to explain the fate of Noonan and Earhart, it is bad science and mis-reading of history to justify the suppositions.

Nikumaroro Island must be THE prime example. It has been frequented constantly and even settled by humans for periods over the last 200 years that we know of, yet every artefact, shoe heel, wooden box, buck knife etc. is attributed to Noonan/Earhart without any consideration of a more likely provenance. This reflects a general trend in so called 'research' which is well illustrated by the History Channel's photo debacle.

Cheers

Steve

 

[Robert Porter]

Occam's razor was also brought up by me earlier in this thread for the same reasons. When the majority of the supporting evidence for any theory is full of speculation or unrepeatable testimony it is more and more unlikely to be the correct answer. Not impossible, just more unlikely. Also the fact that none of the supposed witnesses came forward on either side of this theory considering far worse atrocities on both sides were discovered and investigated is to me a sign the eyewitnesses were not reliable. Or did not exist. Post war a lot of documents were seized and investigated and many prisoners traded information for reduced sentences or other personal gains. And by the 60's US involvement in many rather unsavory activities in war zones began to come to light. Our society by its more open nature does not tolerate secrets for long. If there is even a whiff of controversy investigative journalists begin to feed at the trough of public opinion. More than one public figure even President can attest to that.

 

[Peter Gunn]

MOTIVE

*SNIP*

Here we depart. *SNIP*

Agreed. While your post has some sound reasoning for speculation, not a lot of it is going to hold much water in a court of law.

I concede it's possible that a backwater commander could have acted out of what he thought was best I just don't see it happening here. She was a world famous aviatrix and the Japanese Government was extending all sorts of offers of help in search and rescue. I guess we agree to disagree and that's cool.

Also, as mentioned before, some pretty horrendous war crimes have come to light post war, but not a shred of evidence on this.

 

[vikingBerserker]

Amen.................

 

[FLYBOYJ]

I disagree but grant you your point. The amount of fuel loaded at Lea is a hard fact at 1156 gallons. The Electra's fuel consumption from Oakland to Honolulu in March at 38.97 gph is a hard fact. A hard fact detailed engineering report was prepared by a young Lockheed engineer named Clarence L. ("Kelly") Johnson to provide data for the best takeoff, climb and cruise performance with the very heavily loaded airplane. The maximum speed for the Model 10E Special at Sea Level and maximum takeoff weight was 177 miles per hour (284.9 kilometers per hour), a reduction of 25 miles per hour (40.2 kilometers per hour) over the standard airplane. The maximum range was calculated to be 4,316 miles (6946 kilometers) using 1,151 gallons (4,357 liters) of fuel. Hard fact, Art Kennedy overhauled and calibrated her engines using Pratt & Whitney test equipment after which he gave her 4.5 to 5.5hrs additional flight time after her 20:14 transmission to the Itasca. Now that's not a hard fact but a calculation however Earhart at no time reported a fuel leak and she was well aware of proper mixture settings.

FYI In 1937 Kelly Johnson didn't have a pilot's license!!!!! This is all calculated data and again you have no data concerning what her actual cruising speeds, head or tail winds, and mixture settings were.

Joe as I understand Noonan's DR methods: Cloudy conditions prevent Him from taking a celestial fix that night. At sunrise he has a sun azimuth of 67 degrees True and an LOP of 337-157. He knows his East/west position from the time of sunrise but not his North/South. He draws a 337-157 LOP on his chart and parallel LOP through Howland. Now that it is daylight he can approximate their ground speed and drift and thus determine the time required to fly the distance between his two LOPs. He tells Earhart they will reach his second LOP at 19:00 GMT. To find Howland they must now fly a ladder search North then South then North again the South further and further each time. Eventually she gives up and turns West towards the Gilbert Islands but she is further North than expected and reaches Mili Atoll instead of the Gilberts as was her back-up plan

So right there you contradict your earlier statement and eats up that alleged 5 hour reserve.

Joe, after the crash of the Model 229 the Army cut its order of the YB-17 to just 13 aircraft the first of which flew on 2 Dec 1936. When its brakes fused and it nosed over the Army quickly transferred all Yb-17s to Langley field Virginia to develop safety protocols and heavy bomber techniques. The YB-17A of which there was only one first flew 29 April 1938 so at the time of Earhart's flight the US heavy bomber fleet was 13 YB-17s. Not to mention the the US could not be MILITARILY interested in the Marshalls thus Roosevelt's use of civilians like Astor. I honestly don't think Earhart was trying to spy but was ask to "Keep her eyes open and camera handy"

Mike, if the US so desperately wanted to spy on the Japanese, they had the tools to do it despite the state of the YB-17 fleet in 1937. To think US intelligence would send a woman who didn't even have 1000 hours flying around the world to "Keep her eyes open and camera handy" is ridiculous and on Earhart's behalf I'd say she would have told them she had more important things to worry about!

 

[Shinpachi]

Mike seems to be fond of Kenpeitai. So, I have researched.

The Kenpeitai in 1936
According to the Kenpeitai's statistics issued on June 1 1937 (JACAR ref code C05111066800), 45 foreigners were detained as the suspects of illegal photo shooting on the Japanese military fortresses in 1936. They were all released after interrogation with fine as they excused "Oh, I didn't know !". Cameras and films were confiscated.

UK 12
US 12
China 4
France 7
Germany 4
USSR 2
Dutch 1
Turkey 1
Belgium 1
Swiss 1

Total 45

 

[mikewint]

I had no idea that they were such "nice" guys.
Founded in 1881 as the military police of the modernizing Imperial Japanese Army, they were largely unremarkable until the rise of expansionist Japanese imperialism after World War I. The Kempeitai became a brutal organ of the state, holding jurisdiction over the occupied territories, captured prisoners of war, and subject peoples. The Kempeitai worked as both spies and counterintelligence agents. They used torture and extrajudicial execution to maintain their power over millions of innocent people. When Japan surrendered, many documents were deliberately destroyed by the Kempeitai, so the true scale of their atrocities may never be known.

In 1932, the Kempeitai took complete control of organized prostitution for the military, building military brothels with barracks or tents used to house women who were forced into service. They were imprisoned behind barbed wire and guarded by Japanese or Korean yakuza. Railway cars were also used as mobile brothels. Girls as young as 13 years old were forced into prostitution, with prices varying depending on ethnic origin and whether the clients were commissioned officers, noncommissioned officers, or privates. Japanese women fetched the highest fees, followed by Koreans, Okinawans, Chinese, and Southeast Asians. Caucasian women were also forced into service during the war. It is believed that up to 200,000 women were forced to sexually service up to 3.5 million Japanese soldiers. The women were kept in appalling conditions and received little to no money, despite being promised 800 yen a month for their "service."There are still many questions about Japan's use of comfort women, as there was a great degree of secrecy, as well as destruction of evidence. In 1945, the British Royal Marines captured Kempeitai documents in Taiwan that detailed how the prisoners were to be dealt with in the case of an emergency: Whether they are destroyed individually or in groups, or however it is done, with mass bombing, poisonous smoke, drowning, decapitation, or what . . . it is the aim not to allow the escape of a single one, to annihilate them all and not to leave any traces.


The Kempeitai had kept a presence in Shanghai since the Imperial Japanese Army occupied the city in 1937, and the secret police were headquartered in a building known as Bridge House. Shanghai's foreign presence and intellectual culture saw the rise of resistance publications against the Japanese. The Kempeitai and the collaborationist Reformed Government used a paramilitary organization made up of Chinese criminals called the Huangdao hui (Yellow Way Organization) to commit murders and terrorist actions against anti-Japanese elements in foreign settlements. In one notable incident, Cai Diaotu, editor of an anti-Japanese tabloid, was beheaded, and his head was strung up from a lamppost in front of the French Concession with a placard reading, "Look! Look! The result of anti-Japanese elements."After Japan's entry into World War II, the Kempeitai were turned loose against Shanghai's foreign population, who were arrested on charges of anti-Japanese activity or espionage and transported to Bridge House, where they were imprisoned in steel cages and subjected to beatings and torture. Conditions were awful: "Rats and disease-infested lice were everywhere, and no-one was allowed to bathe or shower, so diseases from dysentery to typhus and leprosy ran rampant."The Kempeitai reserved particular attention for British or American journalists who had reported on Japanese atrocities in China. John B. Powell, the editor of the China Weekly Review, was a typical case of the treatment meted out to prisoners: "When the questioning began, they had to remove all their clothing and kneel before their captors. When their answers failed to satisfy their interrogators, the victims were beaten on the back and legs with four-foot bamboo sticks until blood flowed." Powell was repatriated but died following the amputation of a gangrenous leg, and many other reporters were permanently injured or driven insane by the treatment.In 1942, a number of Allied civilians who were tortured at Bridge House were released as part of a repatriation deal brokered through the Swiss embassy. The journey was made deliberately unpleasant by the Japanese. The internees were placed belowdecks in overcrowded, sweltering conditions as the ship picked up more internees from Yokohama and Hong Kong and then made its slow and grueling journey to the neutral Portuguese port of Lourenco Marques in Mozambique.

After the Japanese occupied the Dutch East Indies, a group of about 200 British servicemen found themselves stuck in Java during the invasion. They took to the hills to fight as a guerrilla resistance force, but they were captured and tortured by the Kempeitai. According to over 60 eyewitnesses testifying at the Hague following the war, these men were tied in pairs, two to each other, facing each other, and stacked, like pigs, in the baskets, lying down and were then forced into 1-meter-long (3 ft) bamboo cages meant to transport pigs. They were then transported via trucks and open rail cars to the coast, in temperatures reaching 38 degrees Celsius (100 °F). The prisoners, already suffering from severe dehydration, were then placed on waiting boats, which sailed off the coast of Surabaya, whereupon the cages were thrown into the ocean. The prisoners were drowned or eaten alive by sharks.

After the Japanese captured Singapore, they renamed the city Syonan ("Light of the South") and set the clocks to Tokyo time. They then initiated a program to clear the city of Chinese whom they considered dangerous or undesirable. Every Chinese male between the ages of 15 and 50 was ordered to report to registration points throughout the island for screening, where they would be closely questioned to determine their loyalties and political inclinations. Those who passed the tests were stamped on their face, arms, or clothing with the word "examined." Those who failed the tests—communists, nationalists, secret society members, English speakers, civil servants, teachers, veterans, and criminals—were taken to holding areas. For many, simply having a decorative tattoo was enough to be branded as a member of an anti-Japanese secret society. For two weeks after the screening, those marked as undesirable were taken to be executed at plantations or coastal areas like Changi beach, Ponggol foreshore, and Tanah Merah Besar beach, where the bodies would be washed out to sea. Methods of execution varied according to the whims of four section commanders. Some were marched into the sea and then machine-gunned, while others were tied together before being shot, bayoneted, or decapitated. At later war crimes trials, the Japanese claimed that there were around 5,000 victims, while local estimates range from 20,000 to 50,000.Following the massacre, the Kempeitai maintained a rule of terror and torture, including a form of punishment in which a victim was forced to ingest water by fire hose and then kicked in the stomach. One administrator, Shinozaki Mamoru, was so horrified by the torture that he issued thousands of "good citizen" and safe passage passes, which were usually intended only for those collaborating with the Japanese. He issued almost 30,000 of them, saving many Chinese lives, much to the fury of the Kempeitai. He is remembered today as "Singapore's Schindler."

The city now known as Kota Kinabalu was founded as Jesselton in 1899 by the British North Borneo Company and served as a way station and source of rubber until it was captured by the Japanese in January 1942 and renamed Api. On October 9, 1943, an uprising of ethnic Chinese and native Suluks assaulted the Japanese Military Administration, attacking Japanese offices, police stations, military hotels, warehouses, and the main wharf. Despite being armed with only a few hunting rifles, spears, and long parang knives, the rebels were able to kill 60–90 Japanese and Taiwanese occupying the city and surrounding towns before retreating into the hills. Two army companies and the Kempeitai were sent to initiate vicious reprisals, which were aimed not just at the rebels, but also the population at large. Hundreds of ethnic Chinese were executed simply for being suspected of aiding or supporting the rebels. They also targeted the Suluk natives on the offshore islands of Sulug, Udar, Dinawan, Mantanani, and Mengalum. The entire male population of the island of Dinawan was annihilated, while the women and children were forcibly moved elsewhere. Similar massacres took place on Suluk and Udar. While the Japanese estimated that only 500 died, others gave a number closer to 3,000, and the treatment of the Suluks in particular has been described by as genocidal.

In October 1943, a group of Anglo-Australian commandos called Special Z infiltrated Singapore harbor using an old fishing boat and folding canoes. They placed limpet mines that sank or disabled seven Japanese vessels, including an oil tanker. They slipped out without being seen, so the Japanese became convinced that the attack had been orchestrated by British guerrillas out of Malaya, acting on information passed to them by civilians and inmates of the Changi prison.On October 10, the Kempeitai raided the prison, conducted a day-long search for evidence, and arrested suspects. Further inspections saw 57 of the internees arrested for involvement with the harbor sabotage, including an Anglican bishop and a former British colonial secretary and information officer. They would spend the next five months crammed together in cells that were always brightly lit without bedding or room to lie down, as well as being subjected to starvation and brutal interrogation. One suspect was executed for supposed connection to the sabotage, while 15 others ultimately died due to Kempeitai torture. During the 1946 trial of those involved in what became known as the Double Tenth incident, British prosecutor Lieutenant Colonel Colin Sleeman described the Japanese mentality of the time: It is with no little diffidence and misgiving that I approach my description of the facts and events in this case. To give an accurate description of the misdeeds of these men, it would be necessary for me to describe actions which plum the very depths of human depravity and degradation. The keynote of the whole of this case can be epitomized by two words—unspeakable horror. Horror stark and naked permeates every corner and angle of this case from beginning to end, devoid of relief or palliation. I have searched, I have searched diligently amongst a vast mass of evidence to discover some redeeming feature, some mitigating factor in the conduct of these men which would elevate the story from the level of pure horror and bestiality and ennoble it, at least upon the plane of tragedy. I confess I have failed.

Guam was the only populated territory of the United States occupied by the Japanese during World War II. Seized in 1941, the island was renamed Omiya Jime (Great Shrine Island), while the capital Agana was renamed Akashi (Red City). The island was initially under the supervision of the Imperial Japanese Navy's Keibitai. The Japanese used vicious methods to try to remove all American influences and force the native Chamorro people to adhere to Japanese social mores and customs, in the hope of making them into pliant citizens of the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere.The Kempeitai took control of the island in 1944, as the war was turning against the Japanese and the American war machine was barreling across the Pacific Ocean. Forced labor for Chamorro men, which had been in place since 1943, was expanded to include women, children, and elders. The Kempeitai were convinced that the pro-American Chamorros were engaging in espionage and sabotage and cracked down harshly on the population. Civilians were raped, shot, or beheaded by the military police as discipline broke down. One man, Jose Lizama Charfauros, bumped into a Japanese patrol while foraging for food and was forced to kneel down before being chopped in the neck with a sword. He was found by friends days later; maggots had entered his wounds and kept him alive by clearing out infection. He survived the war with a massive scar on his neck.

The Kempeitai was placed in charge of the Unit 173 facility in the Manchurian city of Pingfan. Eight villages were razed to allow the construction of the facilities, which included living quarters and facilities for thousands of researchers and medics, as well as Kempeitai barracks, a prison camp, underground labs and bunkers, and a large crematorium to dispose of bodies. The Orwellian expression used to describe the body in charge of facilities and others was "Epidemic Prevention Department." Shiro Ishii was the man in charge, and he introduced his staff to the center by saying, "A doctor's God-given mission is to block and treat disease, but the work on which we are now to embark is the complete opposite of those principles." Prisoners who were sent to the Pingfan facility were usually those who had been earmarked as "incorrigible," "die-hard anti-Japanese," or "of no value or use." The majority were Chinese, but there were also Koreans, White Russians, and later Allied POWs from the United States, the UK, and Australia. The Japanese staff referred to the prisoners as murata ("logs") and referred to the Pingfan facilities as a lumber mill. These facilities used live human subjects to test the effects of biological and chemical weapons, as well as exposure to diseases like bubonic plague, cholera, anthrax, tuberculosis, and typhoid. Live vivisections without anesthetic were also common. One researcher new to the facilities described the process used on a 30-year-old Chinese male: The fellow knew that it was over for him, and so he didn't struggle when they led him into the room and tied him down. But when I picked up the scalpel, that's when he began screaming. I cut him open from the chest to the stomach, and he screamed terribly, and his face was all twisted in agony. He made this unimaginable sound, he was screaming so horribly. But then he finally stopped. This was all in a day's work for the surgeons, but it really left an impression on me because it was my first time. Other facilities supervised by the Kempeitai and the Kwantung Army were present in other parts of China and the rest of Asia. Unit 100 in Changchun developed vaccines for Japanese livestock and biological weapons to decimate Chinese and Soviet livestock, while Unit 8604 in Guangzhou bred rats designed to carry bubonic plague. Other facilities to research malaria and plague were established in Singapore and Thailand, though many records were destroyed before they could be captured by the Allies

 

[wuzak]

Um, that's a lot of words!

Thanks for the history lesson, but that does not shed any light on the theory of Amelia Earhart's disappearance.

fwiw I do believe she went into the ocean. And considering that authorities have not conclusively found MH370 after 3 years of looking, and despite all the modern navigation and tracking equipment available, the hope of finding Earhart's plane must be very slim.

 

[parsifal]

for steve (stona)

On probability, you would have to make some allowance for what they were aiming for....They weren't just making random stabs in the ocean, they were on a north south meridian, and were aiming for some land. It is at least plausible that they reached some land, so the chances of them reaching gardner are higher than the simple area of ocean to area of land comparisons might otherwise suggest.

I don't buy the Japanese capture conspiracy at all. it doesn't add up to me. But the Gardner Is theory does arouse some interest, though its far from proven, and far from even being the most likely contender. most likely they drowned at sea. that scenario far outweighs the other possibilities by a long shot

 

[Shinpachi]

Yes, MH370 is a good example to understand the Earhart mystery.

 

[Peter Gunn]

Um, that's a lot of words!

Thanks for the history lesson, but that does not shed any light on the theory of Amelia Earhart's disappearance.

fwiw I do believe she went into the ocean. And considering that authorities have not conclusively found MH370 after 3 years of looking, and despite all the modern navigation and tracking equipment available, the hope of finding Earhart's plane must be very slim.

^^^ What he said...

No offense but I've seen more than one prosecutor and defense attorney for that matter, use similar type of arguments when they have a weak case. I understand you're laying the groundwork/background for who you contend might have captured the famous pair and how they could have murdered them and covered up the evidence. But even Perry Mason would have a hard time with this, it's all circumstantial at best, there is no concrete evidence for this scenario.

On a side note, I appreciate the use of breaks between paragraphs, MUCH easier to read, and your stuff is always worth reading Mike.

 

[vikingBerserker]

I knew I had read most of that before, a lot of that is Cut-N-Pasted from a Listverse article.

 

[Shinpachi]

Yes, cut-and-pasted, and mixed, to be illogical.

 

[parsifal]

Everyone is entitled to an opinion on this. Remember, nobody has the answers for this....

 

[Shinpachi]

many documents were deliberately destroyed by the Kempeitai

You can find out those many documents at JACAR.
I'm now being excited to read them, especially what they did in China.
Let me introduce them in the future if any chance.

 

[Peter Gunn]

*SNIP*
Let me introduce them in the future if any chance.

Yes please, would be very interested!