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Post by swamprat on Oct 29, 2014 18:09:50 GMT -6
Amelia Earhart plane fragment identifiedBy Rossella Lorenzi Published October 29, 2014
A fragment of Amelia Earhart's lost aircraft has been identified to a high degree of certainty for the first time ever since her plane vanished over the Pacific Ocean on July 2, 1937, in a record attempt to fly around the world at the equator.
New research strongly suggests that a piece of aluminum aircraft debris recovered in 1991 from Nikumaroro, an uninhabited atoll in the southwestern Pacific republic of Kiribati, does belong to Earhart’s twin-engined Lockheed Electra.
Photos: Where Amelia Earhart Plane Fragment Came From: news.discovery.com/history/us-history/where-amelia-earhart-plane-fragment-came-from-photos-141028.htm
The search for Amelia Earhart is about to continue in the pristine waters of a tiny uninhabited island, Nikumaroro, between Hawaii and Australia.
According to researchers at The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery (TIGHAR), which has long been investigating the last, fateful flight taken by Earhart 77 years ago, the aluminum sheet is a patch of metal installed on the Electra during the aviator’s eight-day stay in Miami, which was the fourth stop on her attempt to circumnavigate the globe. The patch replaced a navigational window: A Miami Herald photo shows the Electra departing for San Juan, Puerto Rico on the morning of Tuesday, June 1, 1937 with a shiny patch of metal where the window had been.
“The Miami Patch was an expedient field repair," Ric Gillespie, executive director of TIGHAR, told Discovery News. "Its complex fingerprint of dimensions, proportions, materials and rivet patterns was as unique to Earhart’s Electra as a fingerprint is to an individual."
TIGHAR researchers went to Wichita Air Services in Newton, Kans., and compared the dimensions and features of the Artifact 2-2-V-1, as the metal sheet found on Nikumaroro was called, with the structural components of a Lockheed Electra being restored to airworthy condition.
The rivet pattern and other features on the 19-inch-wide by 23-inch-long Nikumaroro artifact matched the patch and lined up with the structural components of the Lockheed Electra. TIGHAR detailed the finding in a report on its website. Forensic imaging analyses of the photo suggested that the shape and dimension of the object are consistent with the landing gear of a Lockheed Electra.
Moreover, an “anomaly” that might possibly be the wreckage of Amelia Earhart's aircraft emerged from analysis of the sonar imagery captured off Nikumaroro during TIGHAR’s last expedition.
The object rests at a depth of 600 feet at the base of a cliff just offshore where, according to TIGHAR, the Electra was washed into the ocean. An analysis of the anomaly by Ocean Imaging Consultants, Inc. of Honolulu, experts in post-processing sonar data, revealed the anomaly to be the right size and shape to be the fuselage of Earhart’s aircraft.
The new research on Artifact 2-2-V-1 may reinforce the possibility that the anomaly is the rest of the aircraft.
Read More: www.foxnews.com/science/2014/10/29/amelia-earhart-plane-fragment-identified/
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Post by watusimba on Feb 13, 2016 20:23:29 GMT -6
I have been following TIGHAR since the early 2000's, and they pretty much have it pegged that Earhart landed on Niku island. The amazing fact is that, no one really believes them. They have radio messages that have been triangulated to that island after Earhart landed, they found a part of a shoe that Earhart was known to wear, they found an empty bottle of freckle cream of the same brand name that Earhart used, and they even found a sextant box, which was the type that Noonan carried. There is a lot more stuff found, like records of a body being found at a specific site where it looks like castaways had made camp, clamshells that were cut open the way westerners did and not islanders, and then, of course, your piece of aluminum which is about 99% sure to be from Earharts plane. The people at TIGHAR must be pulling their hair out saying, "What more do you need?"
Of course, this kinda sounds like the same thing Bigfoot researchers are saying, isn't it? For without a body, or in the case of Earhart, without a plane, no one is ever going to believe it.
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Post by skywalker on Feb 13, 2016 20:45:28 GMT -6
If the plane really is 600 feet down it should be well preserved. Might be a little bit mangled but should still be identifiable. They just have to figure out a way to get down to it.
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Post by watusimba on Feb 13, 2016 20:54:29 GMT -6
The best way to get down to it is by spending a lot of money! LOL That's not always easy to come by, though. What they need is a Tom Slick type millionaire to finance this stuff, just because they're curious about it. And I always thought that if I won the lottery, besides buying a lot of houses, cars and whiskey, would be to donate a handsome sum of money to TIGHAR so that they can finally get to the bottom of this. And so that goes.
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Post by plutronus on Feb 19, 2016 4:31:29 GMT -6
The best way to get down to it is by spending a lot of money! LOL That's not always easy to come by, though. What they need is a Tom Slick type millionaire to finance this stuff, just because they're curious about it. And I always thought that if I won the lottery, besides buying a lot of houses, cars and whiskey, would be to donate a handsome sum of money to TIGHAR so that they can finally get to the bottom of this. And so that goes. I'd donate money to them now, but they were rude to me, so they can kiss my butt. However, prior to that, I read every page of their website. It is my opinion that they have found AE's final landing. They present the who, why, when, what, and where of Amelia's Around The World Flight. She made so many foolish mistakes. She was the young, unruly wife of a wealthy publisher. The message that flits through my mind about her behavior...dumb as a brick. Why doesn't God give pretty people brains? Because they don't need them!! hah hah hah. Not meaning to make fun of a tragic story, but she flew straight out into the ocean with-out testing her two-way radio on take-off. She did this after bottoming out on the bumpy dirt runway, because she took all of the latest and best radio-direction-finders so she could put in more fuel-cans causing her airplane to be grossly over-weight loaded. A fellow at the airport filmed her take-off on 16mm movie camera, and the movie clearly shows the airplane's shock-absorbers being over-weighted, the plane scrapped on the runway, and in puff of what appears to be 'smoke', ground-off, by sliding on it, her two-way radio's receiver antenna!!! Nine hours later, when she was supposed make contact with a US Destroyer that was moored at an uninhabited island, with refueling cans, and the US Navy's SeaBees, had bull-dozed a makeshift land-strip (her husband being well connected, made these arraingements). The destroyer's radio received her transmissions, but she, having ground off her antenna, could not receive the destroyer's messages, or the information she needed to tune her navigational aid-direction-finder, so that they she could find the destroyer and the landing-strip island. Instead, being 1100 miles off course, she eventually had to land somewhere, and she found what appeared from the air, a long wide beach island, at low tide, the corral reef on which she landed was high and dry. In the evenings, at high tide was in the surf-line, under water. Trust me, its a worthwhile read. TIGHAR's forensic work (although Rick & TIGHAR were not the originator's of the theory that led to finding her landing location, and it seems that they have forgotten to mention that point in their excellent literature), and their discovery process seems to substantially verify the original theory, while their documenting of their discovery processes are just plain simply excellent. The group being mainly Ph.D.s. I recommend to anyone who is interested to see how authentic investigators work, and-or who are interested in the Amelia Earheart story, to expend a few days reading the TIGHAR website. It is a fascinating and scholarly journey. plutronus ps, Rick if you are reading this, I'm still anonymous, I wasn't being tricky.
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Post by watusimba on Feb 21, 2016 19:41:07 GMT -6
I agree with you, Plutronus, the way they have gone about researching this has been top notch. It had to be, or they would not have found as many artifacts as they did. It does appear that they have found the plane on a shelf, but getting to it is the hard part. The reality is that, if they took this case to court and had to prove they found her, there is no jury in the world that wouldn't agree with their findings. The last piece of the puzzle, the aluminum patch, that lines up exactly with the rivet holes, sealed the deal. That's akin to having a DNA sample right there, and this story should have come top rest.
She scrubbed off her antenna on take off, could transmit but not receive, Noonan plotted a course to get her to an island where they could land, which was actually a brilliant piece of navigation on its own, and she landed it on the sand at low tide.
Here's a question for you, and I have thought about this a lot. Why didn't Earhart and/or Noonan wave down the airplane that buzzed the island? Exhaustion? Fatigue? Did they not hear it, or ... did the pilot not really buzz the island? Do you have a take on that, or anyone else out there? And so it goes.
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Post by plutronus on Mar 2, 2016 0:54:41 GMT -6
I agree with you, Plutronus, the way they have gone about researching this has been top notch. It had to be, or they would not have found as many artifacts as they did. It does appear that they have found the plane on a shelf, but getting to it is the hard part. The reality is that, if they took this case to court and had to prove they found her, there is no jury in the world that wouldn't agree with their findings. The last piece of the puzzle, the aluminum patch, that lines up exactly with the rivet holes, sealed the deal. That's akin to having a DNA sample right there, and this story should have come top rest. She scrubbed off her antenna on take off, could transmit but not receive, Noonan plotted a course to get her to an island where they could land, which was actually a brilliant piece of navigation on its own, and she landed it on the sand at low tide. Here's a question for you, and I have thought about this a lot. Why didn't Earhart and/or Noonan wave down the airplane that buzzed the island? Exhaustion? Fatigue? Did they not hear it, or ... did the pilot not really buzz the island? Do you have a take on that, or anyone else out there? And so it goes. Hi watusimba, Well, I thought about that alot, but it occurs to me, that they had both been injured. The teenage gal in Florida listening for the words in songs on her Dad's shortwave radio, heard via radio transmissions from the crashed-landing airplane, 'said' that she could hear Noonan in the background, and that he sounded delirious to her, as though he may have been suffering from heat-stroke or a head injury. It seemed as though he had a cognitive problem due to his speech. But that was only two days after she landed, based upon the fuel timeline. So, my understanding, and this is mainly speculation as there is only scant forensic information about Noonan after the crash-landing, is that he died within a day or two as result of the crash-landing. Then there is the matter of the photograph of the suspected landing-gear sticking out of the water on the corral-reef in the surf-line area. The photo was taken just a few months later. So although the airplane did disintegrate (probably due to storms and also disassembly by the natives who were brought to the island two months later by the US Military), even though her airplane appears to have apparently survived long enough, for Amelia to re-charge the two-way radio batteries which were located under the pilot's chair under the floorboard in the cockpit. The two-way radio, pre-transistor/semi-conductor period, was comprised entirely of vacuum tubes. The batteries (bunches of them wired in series-parallel arrangement, each the appx size of car-batteries), from fully charged state to 'dead' state, eg, needing recharge, was about four hours of radio-usage time, and a six hour recharge time. As I recall the right wing/engine on Amelia's Lockheed Electra, low-wing, 14 passenger, twin-engine airplane, was the engine/generator that needed to be run for hours to be able to re-charge those batteries, although she could also have simply run the engine to use the transmitter while simultaneously charging. The Florida teen, as I recall, heard Amelia's (ionospheric radio 'skipped') SOS 'MayDay' calls, for around five days. So Amelia HAD-TO RUN the right-engine (up out of the water) at least four times. During the last known transmission on her long-wave transmitter, was when Noonan was heard to mention that the ocean was 'coming into the plane' and that he was coaxing Amelia to leave the airplane because of it. Apparently he was fearful of the circumstances. So the airplane was at least partially intact, although it could not take off, because the landing gear was apparently stuck in a corral-reef depression, or at least so goes one posited theory. My point to the above is, well, why didn't the over-flight pilot see the Electra airplane out in the surf-line? It was not fully submerged at high tide in that period. We 'know' this because Amelia started the right-wing engine, and ran it for at least four or five hours everyday for nearly a week!!! If the airplane cockpit/batteries and the two-way radio (which was also located under pilot's chair/floorboards) had been in salt-water, even for a few moments, would have caused permanent failure of the afflicted components, and merely within 1/2 hour due to salt-corrosion. Same is true for the cockpit controls and-or the engine also. In the sea-plane's over-flight pilot's report, he did note that he saw what appeared to be 'native' living-floors, shrubbery(sp?) cleared 'sleeping' areas, etc. Perhaps the pilot had actually seen Amelia's attempts to survive, but she was nowhere in sight. I suspect that she died fairly quickly, having brought no water, or food, or matches on the airplane. She did bring one bottle wine with her however and she had an abundance of fuel!!! The coral reef on which she landed appears from the air to be a wide sandy beach at low tide. At high tide, 4ish pm, it is mostly underwater and the area where the landing gear strut was photographed, is direcly in the surf-line at the time of the day. As Rick postulates (as well as demonstrated by his on-island experiment) it is sadly, likely that the crabs got her. Its fascinating story. plutronus
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Post by swamprat on Mar 9, 2018 11:59:23 GMT -6
Bones discovered on a Pacific island belong to Amelia Earhart, a new forensic analysis showsBy MARWA ELTAGOURI | The Washington Post Published: March 8, 2018
Amelia Earhart's story is revolutionary: She was the first woman to fly alone across the Atlantic Ocean, and might have been the first to fly around the world had her plane not vanished over the Pacific Ocean in 1937.
After decades of mystery surrounding her disappearance, her story might come to a close.
A new scientific study claims that bones found in 1940 on the Pacific Island of Nikumaroro belong to Earhart, despite a forensic analysis of the remains conducted in 1941 that linked the bones to a male. The bones, revisited in the study "Amelia Earhart and the Nikumaroro Bones" by University of Tennessee professor Richard Jantz, were discarded. For decades they have remained an enigma, as some have speculated that Earhart died a castaway on the island after her plane crashed.
The bones were uncovered by a British expedition exploring the island for settlement after they came upon a human skull, according to the study. The expedition's officer ordered a more thorough search of the area, which resulted in the discovery of several other bones and part of what appeared to be a woman's shoe. Other items found included a box made to hold a Brandis Navy Surveying Sextant that had been manufactured around 1918 and a bottle of Benedictine, an herbal liqueur."There was suspicion at the time that the bones could be the remains of Amelia Earhart," Jantaz wrote in the study.
When the 13 bones were shipped to Fiji and studied by Dr. D. W. Hoodless of the Central Medical School the following year, Jantz argues that it is likely that forensic osteology - the study of bones - was still in its early stages, which therefore affected his assessment of which sex the remains belonged to. Jantz, in attempting to compare the lost bones with Earhart's bones, co-developed a computer program that estimated sex and ancestry using skeletal measurements. The program, Fordisc, is commonly used by forensic anthropologists across the globe.
Jantz compared the lengths of the bones to Earhart's measurements, using her height, weight, body build, limb lengths and proportions, based on photographs and information found on her pilot's and driver's licenses. His findings revealed that Earhart's bones were "more similar to the Nikumaroro bones than 99 [percent] of individuals in a large reference sample.""In the case of the Nikumaroro bones, the only documented person to whom they may belong is Amelia Earhart," Jantz wrote in the study.
Earhart's disappearance has long captivated the public, and theories involving her landing on Nikumaroro have emerged in recent years. Retired journalist Mike Campbell, who authored "Amelia Earhart: The Truth at Last," has maintained with others that Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan, were captured in the Marshall Islands by the Japanese, who thought they were American spies. He believes they were tortured and died in custody.
But Ric Gillespie, director of the International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery (TIGHAR) spoke to The Washington Post's Cleve R. Wootson Jr. in 2016 about how he too believes the bones found on Nikumaroro belong to Earhart.
In 1998, the group took Hoodless' measurements of the Nikumaroro bones and analyzed them through a robust anthropological database. They determined the bones belonged to a taller-than-average woman of European descent - perhaps Earhart, who at 5 feet 7 to 5 feet 8, was several inches taller than the average woman.
In 2016, the group brought the measurements to Jeff Glickman, a forensic examiner, who located a photo of Earhart from Lockheed Aircraft Corp. that showed her with her arms exposed. It appeared, based on educated guesses, that Earhart's upper arm bone corresponded with one of the Nikumaroro bones.
Glickman, who is now a member of TIGHAR, told The Washington Post at the time that he understands some might be skeptical about his findings, as they were based 76-year-old medical notes. But the research made clear, he said, that Earhart died on Nikumaroro.
Both Gillespie and Glickman could not be immediately reached by The Post for comment on Jantz's findings.
In June 2017, researchers traveled to Nikumaroro with dogs who had been specially trained to sniff the chemicals left behind by decaying human remains. They thought they might discover a bone, and were especially hopeful when the dogs seemed to detect the scent of human remains beneath a ren tree. But there were no bones.
A week later, the History Channel published a photo suggesting Earhart died in Japan. Based on a photograph unearthed from the National Archives, researchers said Earhart may have been captured by the Japanese after all, as the photo showed Earhart and Noonan, in Jaluit Harbor in the Marshall Islands after their disappearance.
In the photo, according to The Post's Amy B Wang, "a figure with Earhart's haircut and approximate body type sits on the dock, facing away from the camera. . . . Toward the left of the dock is a man they believe is Noonan. On the far right of the photo is a barge with an airplane on it, supposedly Earhart's."
After the History Channel program aired, a Japanese-military-history blogger matched the photo to one first published in a 1935 Japanese travelogue, two years before Earhart and Noonan disappeared.
The History Channel released a statement addressing the discrepancy.
"HISTORY has a team of investigators exploring the latest developments about Amelia Earhart and we will be transparent in our findings," the statement read. "Ultimately, historical accuracy is most important to us and our viewers."
Gillespie still stands by his theory, he told Wootson in 2017 after the photograph's discovery. His group, TIGHAR, has tried to debunk thephoto, and Gillespie still thinks the "overwhelming weight of the evidence" points to Nikumororo.
www.stripes.com/news/pacific/bones-discovered-on-a-pacific-island-belong-to-amelia-earhart-a-new-forensic-analysis-shows-1.515550
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Post by plutronus on Mar 9, 2018 16:50:14 GMT -6
I have been following TIGHAR since the early 2000's, and they pretty much have it pegged that Earhart landed on Niku island. The amazing fact is that, no one really believes them. They have radio messages that have been triangulated to that island after Earhart landed, they found a part of a shoe that Earhart was known to wear, they found an empty bottle of freckle cream of the same brand name that Earhart used, and they even found a sextant box, which was the type that Noonan carried. There is a lot more stuff found, like records of a body being found at a specific site where it looks like castaways had made camp, clamshells that were cut open the way westerners did and not islanders, and then, of course, your piece of aluminum which is about 99% sure to be from Earharts plane. The people at TIGHAR must be pulling their hair out saying, "What more do you need?" Of course, this kinda sounds like the same thing Bigfoot researchers are saying, isn't it? For without a body, or in the case of Earhart, without a plane, no one is ever going to believe it. Late 2003?, I read every page of the TIGHAR website re; Earhart, and I too believe that Ric & his Ph.D. aircraft recovery crew have found Earhart's landing location. Their forensics work is excellent in my opinion. Like you said, they've nailed it and they did it through very careful, thorough hard work. But, interestingly, I've noticed that Gillespie never mentions who put them on the track to the island. Credit where credit is due, is something that they seem to have forgotten. It soils their image a bit in my mind. I tried joining Gillespie's public web-board group back around 2004? However, I tried to join anonymously, as it did not take a rocket-scientist to recognize, even back then, that on the InterNet one really should not use one's birth-name or give away personal data, as, well, the corporations & governments don't give a hoot about walking on folks, and the more info one gives those cretens the more vulnerable one becomes to their greed and power acquistion. So, I tried join anonymously and well they just would not allow me to do so. I wrote them privately and unfortunately, I accidentally used the 'signed' e-mail account where my 'signature' identified me as being a practicing Qabalah Mystic and an Astrologer. Well they just went nuts and they were rude me. Then a year later, they were sending me money requests, to help them fund their island hops. I don't blame them, being 'scientists' after all, they can't help themselves, its how their brains are wired. I've come to believe that some of the most intransitive people on Earth are scientists. Especially Ph.D.s as they are 'experts' in everything that is known, academically. My reason for attempting to join TIGHAR, as I knew of something that they were looking for, as was stated on their website and about which I had a tantalizing peice. I desired to help them. But they would let me unless I revealed my birth name on the 'Net!! How stupid is that? In 1980s, I, manufactured a multi-user business micro-computer. I had occasion to be present at my company's sales presentation at a facility to a potential major manufacturing client located in Burbank California. The street in front of their facility had been a section of the original Burbank runway, and at the other end of the runway had been the Hughes Aircraft and Lockheed facilities. My Mother being a pilot, a contemperary of Earhart; Amelia had been a subject in our home. On display in a glass case in the client corporate headquarter's lobby was an old aircraft battery that was labeled as being the battery model used in the Earhart Electra and is the reason I remembered it. At an early juncture in the history of the client, they had been a battery manufacturer who sold batteries to Lockheed, in Burbank, litterally 5 minute walking distance to where Earhart's plane was integrated. TIGHAR desired the engineering spec's for that battery. The reason they stated they wanted to know about the battery, was to learn how long Earhart and companion were able to operate their transmitter without requiring running the left engine/generator to recharge the batteries and to see how the transmissions received by the teenage girl in Florida correllated. But frankly, due to TIGHAR's rude treatment of me, I just moved on, their loss. In any case that door is closed as I heard that the company that made the Electra battery relocated and then went out of business five or ten years ago. plutronus
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Post by jcurio on Mar 9, 2018 18:10:28 GMT -6
Interesting.
Hope your “radio studies” bring us some current events also.
Sincerely
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