Amelia Earharts Electra found. No, not by you know who…

Apologies if this isn’t the right place to post this, but I’ve just enjoyed reading Keith O’Brien’s book Fly Girls, which details the pioneering efforts of Earhart and other early female aviators in the US like Louise Thaden and Ruth Nichols, most of whose legacies seem to have been unfairly overshadowed by what happened to Earhart. The book ends with her disappearance, but that’s really only one of a long list of adventures, races and record-setting flights that the women undertook. Well worth a look!

Would you be referring to the Isle of Wight ferry there? Brown and steams as it comes out of Cowes backwards?

Adrian

I think the alleged freckle cream jar is emblematic of TIGHAR’s entire Earhart effort to date – it MUST be a freckle cream jar, because Earhart WAS on Nikumaroro Island, and Earhart DID dislike her freckles. End of discussion.

There’s a phrase for this kind of logic but decorum prevents me from posting it in polite company.

It’s not a landing light glass, it’s an empty skin cream jar.

If TIGHAR would just ask me I’d be happy to sell them a relic that MIGHT have belonged to Earhart, a snip at half a million nicker, what say you?

Art-deco Kodak Duo-620 by gray1720, on Flickr

(it works, too – it seemes appropriate to take it round some airfields so here’s Hatston, Skaebrae, and Twatt – let’s see if the software stars that out!)
https://www.flickr.com/photos/gray1720/albums/72157646839526613

Adrian

The only fact we have so far: This water appears to be just as wet as it was back when Amelia went AWOL: Absent, without leads 😉

But many the people who were “fleeced” don’t seem to mind.
There are still a lot of believers out there.

I can only imagine how keen people will be to part with their hard earned, to pay for other peoples tropical vacations, after the likes of that other bozo fleeced people for millions.

Am I missing something here? The picture seems to show a diver looking into a coral hole in which there is something apparently man-made thanks to some straight lines and blocks of even colour.
How on earth can anyone be sure it’s an aircraft, let alone a Lockheed Twin? A chunk of a fibreglass boat seems just as possible from the photo, and more likely…
Not getting excited yet!

J Boyle – you are correct. Fixed! That’s what I get for late night ruminations.

Yes, I expect you’re right, Consul. But you surely get my point, it’s no more a ‘mystery’ than any other lost aircraft, it’s just an echo of celebrity – sufficient to make money for some people. For me the interest is more ‘what’s that thing they have found’ that ‘where exactly did an Electra fall into the Pacific’, even though it would be an even more interesting answer if it were that thing. Particularly as it would be fun to see the reaction of Tighar-donors.

I have just held my nose and read the Daily Mail article, and wished hadn’t – it actually quotes Gillespie, who talks of the various people, mostly housewives, in the US who claimed to have received signals from the 300-mile range HF set on board on their domestic radios. My favourite part is the ‘artists impression’ of an Electra standing on its undercarriage having landed on a submerged coral reef. I am starting to wonder whether the same ‘artist’ did the pristine panel under the coral.

Digging into the issue of the range of the sets on board, the internet seems full of Gillespie, with sites like the ‘Tech Times’ talking of the Electra ‘disappearing from radars’ (quite a trick mid-Pacific in 1937) and how all the reported transmissions (High level harmonics ‘heard’ by housewives in Florida and Texas when they ‘just happened to turn their sets on at the right time’) had been somehow ‘traced’ to Gardner Island.

The Mail had to resort to this kind of hokum actually put out by a different theorist to fill up this new story (minus the ‘traced back to Gardner’, of course). All we really have is a blobby coral formation that’s the wreck of something. By the project’s own admission it’s a debris trail, so measuring it won’t help much. And a dish that could be part of a landing light. Or a dinner service. That no attempt has been apparently yet been made (at least publicly) to compare it to an actual Electra landing light makes me doubtful.

If anyone from Blue Angel is reading this, here’s a useful link:
https://www.letadlanaplatne.cz/en/fi…-l-10-electra/

..they have one with the original 10E lights. There may even be one or two closer to home. Yes, I am being a tad ironic and cynical, it’s a British thing.

Well as someone has asked elsewhere regarding the wreck then run a tape measure over it. That’ll confirm whether it’s a Lockheed 10 or instead one of its larger descendants. I can’t understand why they didn’t do that in the first place. No need for $200,000 that could have done easily on the first dive seeing as how the wreck was being investigated to see if it was Earhart’s Electra. That’s the problem with most of these claims, they all seem to be more interested in the media 15 seconds of fame rather than the solution to the puzzle.

MFowler…
Did you really mean the USAAF lost a PV-1?
As you know, the Ventura was a Navy aircraft…with a Navy designation (Patrol Vega).

Beermat surely there are far more folk obsessed about finding that answer to the MH370 accident than have ever expressed an interesting in resolving this Earhart mystery?

Don’t get me wrong, In trying to understand what the unusual thing I am looking at here actually is does not mean I am excited about it being that particular aeroplane. In fact I have never understood why it has obsessed so many people more than any other aviation accident.. They messed up, many people have. I am interested to find out what those divers actually found – it’s an intriguing image.

As J Boyle said, I can’t work up any enthusiasm for this yet. There are far too many loose ends that haven’t even been looked at to make a flatly declarative statement that it’s Earhart’s aircraft. The USN lost at least one PV-1 Ventura in the area; the Japanese had their own and license-built copies of several twin-tailed Lockheed products, and we don’t know how many of those may have been lost in that area (the Buka area had numerous Japanese air bases).

The US used a variety of Lockheed twin-tailed craft, including the PV-1 Ventura, PV-2 Harpoon, Hudson, and C-56 Lodestar; there was also the Beech C-45 Expediter. The wreck could be an Australian Hudson or other Lend-Lease twin-tailed Lockheed provided to that ally.

Then there is the small matter of whether Earhart would have had enough gas left to double back that far, after almost making it to Howland Island.

But, as TIGHAR has amply demonstrated, all you need is a “preponderance of evidence” to declare something solved beyond a reasonable doubt.This group says all they need is $200,000 – pocket change compared to the millions of dollars TIGHAR has spent to find, well, nothing.

I wouldn’t get too excited yet. There were a lot of Lockheeds in the area including Japanese aircraft built under license.

It would be great if it was her aircraft, just to see the reaction of a certain group.

Hi all – I can’t find the cockpit photograph, where is it?

The cockpit photo confirms an aircraft. Could it be a Ventura that is known to have crashed near Buka Island, as mentioned by a member on the PPRUNE website.
Ian

Well they seem to have found more than the other lot!