The Down Range Forum
Member Section => Down Range Cafe => Topic started by: PegLeg45 on June 05, 2012, 03:20:16 PM
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For those so inclined (such as myself) to study noted historical 'mysteries'..... I submit the following info for perusal:
Amelia Earhart mystery solved: she died on a Pacific island
Amelia Earhart lived with navigator Fred Noonan for days or longer on a Pacific island, ending the theory that she simply vanished, new evidence suggests.
The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery, the group investigating the disappearance, said Friday that new evidence of SOS signals and artifacts had been found on the island.
The group presented the new evidence Friday at a three-day conference that presented new research about Earhart's expedition across the globe.
The researchers says that previously dismissed distress signals may have actually been real, reported the Christian Science Monitor, and that Earhart and her partner's location could be traced to a tiny Pacific "atoll."
The atoll was known then as Gardner Island but is now called Nikumaroro Island. Earhart's plane is thought to have landed on the tiny Pacific reef but later been washed away by a rising tide.
According to UPI, Earhart apparently sent out 57 signals for help, most of which were previously dismissed as bogus.
Discovery reported that further evidence of Earhart's demise on the tiny strip of land was the discovery of a cosmetic jar of anti-freckle cream.
The jar was found on the island and it is well-known that Earhart had freckles that she detested.
It was previously believed that Earhart has simply "vanished" on July 2, 1937 while she made her way around the world.
http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/science/120603/amelia-earhart-mystery-solved-she-died-pacific-island
EARHART'S ANTI-FRECKLE CREAM JAR POSSIBLY FOUND
The jar was found on a remote island where Amelia Earhart may have lived as a castaway.
A small cosmetic jar offers more circumstantial evidence that the legendary aviator, Amelia Earhart, died on an uninhabited island in the southwestern Pacific republic of Kiribati.
Found broken in five pieces, the ointment pot was collected on Nikumaroro Island by researchers of The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery (TIGHAR), which has long been investigating the last, fateful flight taken by Earhart 75 years ago.
When reassembled, the glass fragments make up a nearly complete jar identical in shape to the ones used by Dr. C. H Berry's Freckle Ointment. The ointment was marketed in the early 20th century as a concoction guaranteed to make freckles fade.
"It's well documented Amelia had freckles and disliked having them," Joe Cerniglia, the TIGHAR researcher who spotted the freckle ointment as a possible match, told Discovery News.
PHOTOS: Jars Hint at Amelia Earhart Castaway Presence
The jar fragments were found together with other artifacts during TIGHAR's nine archaeological expeditions to the tiny coral atoll believed to be Earhart's final resting place.
Analysis of the recovered artifacts will be presented at a three-day conference in Arlington, Va. A new study of post loss radio signals and the latest forensic analysis of a photograph believed to show the landing gear of Earhart's aircraft on Nikumaroro reef three months after her disappearance, will be also discussed.
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According to Gillespie, the possibility that Earhart and navigator Fred Noonan might have made an emergency landing on Nikumaroro's flat coral reef, some 300 miles southeast of their target destination, is supported by a number of artifacts which, combined with archival research, strongly point to a castaway presence on the remote island.
"Broken shards from several glass containers have been recovered from the Seven Site, the archaeological site on the southeast end of Nikumaroro that fits the description of where the partial skeleton of a castaway was discovered in 1940," Gillespie told Discovery News.
Found with the skeletal remains at that time were part of a man's shoe, part of a woman's shoe, a box that had once contained a sextant, remnants of a fire, bird bones and turtle bones -- all suggesting that the site had been the castaways' camp.
"Unfortunately, the bones and artifacts found in 1940 were subsequently lost," said Gillespie.
Like most archaeological sites, the Seven Site has yielded evidence of activity from several different periods in the island's history and not all of the glass recovered from the site is attributable to the castaway.
"For example, the top of a war-time Coke bottle and pieces of what was probably a large salt shaker of a style used by the U.S. military are almost certainly relics of one or more U.S. Coast Guard target shooting forays," Gillespie said.
Much of the glass, however, appears to be associated with a castaway presence.
Two of the bottles, both dating from the 1930s, were found in what had been a small campfire.
"The bottoms of both bottles are melted but the upper portions, although shattered, are not heat-damaged -- implying that the bottles once stood upright in the fire. A length of wire found in the same spot has been twisted in such a way as to serve as a handle for holding a bottleneck," said Gillespie.
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"It seems reasonable to speculate that the bottles were used by the castaway to boil collected water to make it safe for drinking," he added.
Some of the recovered items contained products generally used only by women.
Laboratory analysis of remnants of the contents in a three-ounce bottle show a close match to Campana Italian Balm, a hand lotion made in Batavia, Ill. that was popular among American women in the 1930s.
However, the most intriguing of the Seven Site bottles appears to be the small cosmetic jar.
"The problem we have in precisely identifying the jar is that all the examples we have found come in opaque white glass. The artifact jar is clear glass," said Cerniglia.
So far, the researchers have not been able to match the exact size of the artifact jar to a known jar of Dr. Berry's product.
"The reassembled artifact jar does, however, fit nicely in a box in which freckle cream was marketed. The known Dr. Berry jars do not. So we know there was a jar of Dr. Berry's Freckle Ointment of the same size as the artifact jar, but we don't know whether it was clear glass," Gillespie said.
More important than the exact contents of the jar, is the fact that four of the broken pieces of the ointment pot were found together. The fifth piece was discovered about 65 feet away near the bones of a turtle.
According to Gillespie, that piece of glass shows evidence of secondary use as a cutting or slicing tool.
"The bottles and other artifacts we have found at the Seven Site tell a fascinating, but still incomplete, story of ingenuity, survival, and, ultimately, tragedy. Whether it is Amelia Earhart's story remains to be seen," Gillespie said.
http://news.discovery.com/history/amelia-earhart-freckle-creme-jar-120530.html
Amelia Earhart Distress Call Details Emerge
New details about the last moments of legendary aviator Amelia Earhart’s fateful voyage to fly around the world at the equator have emerged, adding to the evidence that she didn’t just vanish off the face of the Earth.
Dozens of radio signals that were previously dismissed have been found to be credible transmissions from the famed pilot just after her Lockheed Model 10E “Electra“ went down on July 2, 1937, according to a new study.
It has been generally accepted that Earhart’s plane simply ran out of fuel and crashed in the Pacific as she searched for Howland Island, the final refueling stop before flying on to Honolulu and then California.
The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery (TIGHAR), the group planning an expedition to search for the lost crash site and final resting place of Earhart and her navigator Fred Noonan, said the radio transmissions entered the air waves just hours after Earhart sent out her last in-flight message.
TIGHAR presented their findings during a three-day conference last week in Arlington, Virginia. Among the discoveries: a small broken cosmetic jar found on an uninhabited island in the southwestern Pacific republic of Kiribati, which the group believes proves where Amelia Earhart’s plane went down nearly 75 years ago.
The cosmetic jar, when reassembled, looks eerily similar to that of Dr. C H Berry’s Freckle Ointment. The ointment was marketed in the early 20th century as a concoction guaranteed to make freckles fade.
“It’s well documented Amelia had freckles and disliked having them,” said Joe Cerniglia, the TIGHAR researcher who spotted the freckle ointment as a possible match. The ointment jar was found along with several other artifacts during TIGHAR’s nine expeditions made to the uninhabited island in the Pacific.
TIGHAR is now about to begin a high-tech underwater search for parts of the plane in July, marking the 75th anniversary of Earhart’s disappearance.
“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 US Coast Guard and Navy search,” Ric Gillespie, executive director of TIGHAR, told Discovery News.
“When the search failed, all of the reported post-loss radio signals were categorically dismissed as bogus and have been largely ignored ever since,” he added.
Now, using a series of tools, models, and other high-tech equipment, TIGHAR was able to examine the 120 known reports of radio signals suspected to have been sent from Earhart’s plane within hours after the crash on July 2, 1937 through July 18, 1937, when the official search ended. The examinations conclude that 57 of the 120 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,” said Gillespie.
During her scheduled approach of Howland Island at 07:42 a.m. local time on July 2, 1937, Earhart called the Coast Guard cutter Itasca, stationed at Howland for flight support.
“We must be on you, but cannot see you — but gas is running low. Have been unable to reach you by radio. We are flying at 1,000 feet,” said Earhart.
Her final in-flight message came one hour later at 08:43 a.m.
“We are on the line 157 337. We will repeat this message. We will repeat this on 6210 kilocycles. Wait,” she said.
TIGHAR said the numbers 157 and 337 refer to compass headings and describe a navigational line that passed not only Howland Island, but also Gardner Island, now called Nikumaroro. This uninhabited island is where TIGHAR believes Earhart and Noonan landed after running out of fuel, and where they died as castaways.
TIGHRA theorizes that Earhart made several days of radio transmissions before the plane washed over the reef and disappeared before searchers flew over the area.
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more at link:
http://www.redorbit.com/news/science/1112547567/amelia-earhart-distress-call-details-emerge/
http://www.earhartsearch75.com/index.html
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Very interesting thanks for tracking this down
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Very interesting thanks for tracking this down
+1
Good find Peg!
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It would be nice if they could find enough of the plane to make a positive ID and put the mystery to rest for good.
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It would be nice if they could find enough of the plane to make a positive ID and put the mystery to rest for good.
+1
But we Americans do love a good 'disappearance mystery'......... ;D ;D
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+1
But we Americans do love a good 'disappearance mystery'......... ;D ;D
Judge Crater ;D
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More info and findings.
According to the article, there will be a special on the Discovery Channel Sunday night.
Earhart expedition team says video possibly shows plane debris
A team of researchers trying to solve the mystery of aviator Amelia Earhart's 1937 disappearance said on Friday that underwater video from a Pacific island has revealed a field of man-made debris that could be remnants of her plane.
The footage was collected in July by The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery (TIGHAR) during a $2.2 million expedition to Nikumaroro in the Republic of Kiribati.
Unsolved questions about Earhart's fate have long heightened her legendary status as a pioneering aviator, and TIGHAR's voyage to seek clues in her disappearance gained interest far beyond the shores of the remote island where the team searched.
The search was plagued by technical issues in what researchers described as challenging ocean conditions off the Nikumaroro reef, where they believe Earhart's plane landed and was then swept away into the sea.
TIGHAR Director Ric Gillespie said that once his team experienced the harsh conditions, they knew they would not find a "nice intact airplane." He added the local environment is "very severe" because the ocean "tears things up and tries to bury" them.
The TIGHAR team returned to Honolulu, which is 1,800 miles northeast of Nikumaroro, with no wreckage found. But the researchers said they took hours of underwater video, which they could not view while in Nikumaroro.
TIGHAR said on Friday that one segment of the video shows a field of man-made debris that the group maintains could have come from Earhart's plane.
Gillespie could not give a size of the man-made objects shown in the video, saying there was nothing in the images with which to compare them for scale.
http://news.yahoo.com/earhart-expedition-team-says-video-possibly-shows-plane-040327186.html
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Bones would be nice. If she died alone as a castaway there would be no "grave"...just remains. Piece if the plane would help also.
Thanks Peg. A little further along the path of a true mystery.
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EDIT: Spoiler alert! ;D
Nope just a big rock and the keel of a known wreck. Got the AUV stuck a couple of times and sent the 'bot to get it out.
Best quote, "geez <guy piloting the 'bot> you could park a fish" after he found the AUV the second time wedged in some rocks. One cool part was the time lapse video of crabs on a pig's carcass.
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Years ago when I was a kid, I had heard about Earhart and asked my mom about her. Mom told me that, at the time of her disappearance, many folks thought she was working as a spy for the U.S., and that she had been shot down by the Japanese and that the search for her was minimal to avoid uncovering evidence she was working as a spy.
She went missing in 1937, several years before we entered the war.
For more on this, go here:
http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Was_Amelia_Earhart_a_spy_for_the_us_government
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While there are conflicting stories as to whether or not AE was specifically tasked by Naval intelligence, (the US had no independent national intelligence agency prior to the formation of the OSS ) the answer to that question may have nothing at all to do with her disappearance.
The Pacific Ocean is very big, and very empty. 1930's navigational tools were primarily a map, compass, and watch.
It would have been very easy for even a highly skilled navigator to miss a small island in a very large ocean.
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EDIT: Spoiler alert! ;D
Nope just a big rock and the keel of a known wreck. Got the AUV stuck a couple of times and sent the 'bot to get it out.
Best quote, "geez <guy piloting the 'bot> you could park a fish" after he found the AUV the second time wedged in some rocks. One cool part was the time lapse video of crabs on a pig's carcass.
Was pretty much a let-down..... some cool tech-geek stuff......... but a let-down, based on the build-up over the summer. :(
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Was pretty much a let-down..... some cool tech-geek stuff......... but a let-down, based on the build-up over the summer. :(
+1
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It would be nice if they could find enough of the plane to make a positive ID and put the mystery to rest for good.
Might be close.......
Another piece of the puzzle from TIGHAR:
http://www.oregonlive.com/today/index.ssf/2014/10/new_evidence_strengthens_theor.html
FTA:
Discovery.com reports that The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery (TIGHAR) has determined with a "high degree of certainty" that aluminum debris found 25 years ago on Nikumaroro, an uninhabited Pacific atoll, belongs to Earhart's Lockheed Electra plane.
The group, which has been investigating Earhart's final flight for years, says the debris is an aluminum patch that replaced a window. It was installed on the plane during Earhart's Miami stopover in late May, 1937. Earhart and Noonan vanished over the Pacific on July 2 of that year.
Ric Gillespie, executive director of TIGHAR, told Discovery.com that "the Miami patch was an expedient field repair. Its complex fingerprint of dimensions, proportions, materials and rivet patterns was as unique to Earhart's Electra as a fingerprint is to an individual."
So what does this mean? Gillespie believes it is strong evidence that Earhart and Noonan did not crash into the ocean, that instead they made a forced landing on Nikumaroro's coral reef. U.S. Navy aircraft searching for the fliers in the week after the Lockheed Electra disappeared did fly over or near Nikumaroro but did not spot anyone. Chances are, TIGHAR says, Earhart and Noonan eventually died of exposure and starvation.
More cool info:
http://tighar.org/Projects/Earhart/Archives/Research/Bulletins/73_StepbyStep/73_Step_by_Step.html
http://news.discovery.com/history/us-history/aluminum-fragment-appears-to-belong-to-earharts-plane-141028.htm
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And the saga continues....... :D
Not related to the disappearance, but a new film shot in 1937.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2016/11/01/new-evidence-could-prove-amelia-earhart-died-castaway/93103232/
More articles from this week:
http://www.news.com.au/travel/world-travel/pacific/new-discovery-could-solve-mystery-surrounding-amelia-earhart/news-story/be9eccbfd8f000b2d8ed6ab9ccd14f92
Earhart Project Research Bulletin #78
October 22, 2016
NEW DISCOVERY
Comparing Earhart to the Bones on Nikumaroro
https://tighar.org/Projects/Earhart/Archives/Research/Bulletins/78_EarhartArms/78_EarhartArms.html
https://tighar.org/Projects/Earhart/Archives/Research/Bulletins/78_EarhartArms/AE-Arm-FINAL.pdf
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Interesting history on the island on Wiki. If she was there if she'd held out another few months there was a work party there. Strange they found nothing....
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The Pacific Ocean is very big, and very empty. 1930's navigational tools were primarily a map, compass, and watch.
It would have been very easy for even a highly skilled navigator to miss a small island in a very large ocean.
As recently as the late '60s, navigation in that part of the world was exceptionally difficult. In the late '60s, one of our Navy ships rammed a reef at flank speed because the navigator thought he was somewhere else and thought the breaking waves were caused by a tsunami. Proper procedure when encountering a tsunami was to attack it from a perpendicular entry at top speed.
Charts were not always that accurate and navigational tools were limited to sextant, LORAN-C, Omega, and dead reckoning.
Accuracy of LORAN diminished to the point of non-existence with distance from the master/slave stations.
Omega was a low frequency device that was technically international and provided good replication. In other words, it would tell you that you were in the same place whenever you were in that place--but it wasn't necessarily where you actually were. It was common on submarines bacause the ultra low frequency radio waves could actually penetrate the water allowing the sub to get a position fix without surfacing. It was also commonly used on long distance flights. But it was commissioned in 1971 and didn't exist when AE was flying.
Navigating with a sextant could provide reasonably good fixes a couple of times in a 24 hour period, but was dependent on sea state and cloud coverage--and you can get pretty lost between fixes. If it was bad overcast, you couldn't even get a local apparent noon sighting to give you a longitude. Shooting the stars at night would give you a proper fix, but was also limited by cloud cover and sea state. Pilots also used sextants when traversing long distances. Another factor leading to inaccuracy; it was easy to mess up the math when doing sight reductions from the tables. That may be what happened to AE.
Dead reckoning is simply plotting your observed compass/gyro course using time and speed to find distance. Navigators try to account for set and drift (the effect of wind and currents on true course) but that's pretty much a by-guess-and-by-gosh sort of factor.
It wasn't until the mid-'70s that Sat-Nav came into being. It had accuracy to within 9 meters, but required one of the satellites to be at the proper angle to get a fix. The satellites formed a birdcage surrounding the earth, but there were initially only 7 of them, so there were holes in coverage. They were in a polar orbit, and it could be as much a 13 hours or more between satellite fixes when your ship was near the equator.
Of course, everything changed in the mid to late '70s when GPS was introduced. Military units can provide one meter accuracy in lat,lon,altitude at MACH One. When stationary, accuracy is increased to centimeters.
It's all a definitely interesting mystery.
Crusader Rabbit
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Amelia Earhart's demise has always been number three in my "Top Three History's Mysteries" I guess. We all know WHAT happened, just the idea of WHERE is the mystery part.
My number one has always been Oak Island....after reading a reprint of an original Reader's Digest story in my youth, I became hooked for life and delight in the History Channel show.
Number two is Flight 19.
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And today in "thread revival" news: 8)
This Sunday evening History Channel is airing a special on new Earhart info.
http://www.history.com/news/does-this-photo-show-amelia-earhart-after-her-plane-disappeared
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LOL, I saw that on my news feed as I was logging in.
Thinking about it, I'm surprised the media aren't blaming Trump .
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it's Bush's fault and we're all racists.
Thanks for the History channel tip. Will queue that one up
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LOL, I saw that on my news feed as I was logging in.
Thinking about it, I'm surprised the media aren't blaming Trump .
Yep.... I was thinking that myself (as I was logging in just now) and you beat me posting it. ;D
Trump as PotUS is giving ol' Bush a break from the "retro-crosshairs" ;D
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Was Amelia Earhart held and executed at a prison on Saipan after her plane crashed in the South Pacific during her 1937 trip around the world? The Pacific Daily News reports a man's recollections of a conversation with his uncle lend credence to the theory recently put forward by a History Channel special.
http://www.foxnews.com/science/2017/11/27/man-says-uncles-tale-sheds-light-on-amelia-earharts-bleak-fate.html
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They seem to keep the mystery rolling along. ;D
http://www.foxnews.com/science/2018/03/07/amelia-earhart-mystery-solved-scientist-99-percent-sure-bones-found-belong-to-aviator.html
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Yea but they lost the bones!
Maybe they’re with the Splended Splinters head!
:)
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Yea but they lost the bones!
Maybe they’re with the Splended Splinters head!
:)
They're with Killary's lost emails. 8) 8) 8) 8)
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They're with Killary's lost emails. 8) 8) 8) 8)
Weiner’s got em...
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Weiner’s got em...
Weiners don't have bones.
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Weiners don't have bones.
No. No. I won't go there. I won't ask the question
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No. No. I won't go there. I won't ask the question
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:D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D
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More new info and possibilities to keep the mystery alive and well.....
https://www.ign.com/articles/amelia-earhart-plane-wreckage-pacific-potentially-discovered
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I just saw something a couple days ago where they said they thought she crashed on a different island and was eaten by coconut crabs. Their claws are strong enough to crack open coconuts, so a wounded pilot would be a piece of cake.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dXJmE5yANe8