Amelia In The News Again.

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plough:

Yes, given the time on site. What we were doing was orienting where we were and I had Waypoints on my GPS from previous visits and from set points to mark the search ‘squares’. I identified where the search area started and as you probably know, GPS is accurate to around 30 Metres depending in where the Satellites are switched in alignment… as they belong to people beyond my control… in the least.

What we have had to navigate in there have been very accurate SAT pictures which have an Adobe Acrobat base which is tied into Latitude and longitude. So I can look at a SAT pic and run the mouse over the picture and obtain a Lat/Long on the screen which I can log into my hand held GPS as a Waypoint. The system is very accurate. I even have a 1943 Aerial Photo taken by a Lockheed F-4 [P-38] of the area which can produce the Lat/Longs in the same manner. That photo from 1943 taken by the USAAF F-4 PR aircraft was the basis for the 1943 Map which was used by the Australian AIF patrol “A1” in April 1945 and is the map which has the “600 H/P S3H1 C/N 1055” written on it.

The ridgeline we saw of late did not look anything like I remember from 1996 or from 2011 or from 2012…. time and vegetation growth seemed to have gone mad but the GPS was telling me that I was there in the same place where I was in 1996 and 2011 and 2012. So. we were correct to the area and I could recognise the curve in the bulldozer track and the start of the NW line going up the ridgeline. I just needed more time on site. Some areas were done but not enough. before we had to pull out.

The over-riding factor in this last trip was the need to get back over the Mevelo River and to get the funding group on their way… which in a way capped the “T” so to speak.

The vehicles performed splendidly, virtually swam through mud, forded a tough river and got us back but we can’t use vehicles again until more bridges are in place so we are back to “More Funding”, to pay for Helicopter rides which really are very expensive and carry less versus the vehicles. A dilemma if you like.

Regards,

David
RPM, FF, TGT…
www.earhartsearchpng.com

Thank you for the update David; very sorry to hear that you have been thwarted again by forces beyond your control. Having seen the current state of the area, are you still confident of being able to pinpoint the spot where you originally saw the groundwork you suspect to be the the burial site?

PM for you DB…

Hi Dave,
C U R here, just got up to check. Back to sq one again. Bloody good try though. Its there somewhere. Cheers M8,

Bill T.

Searching for the Electra

The date is November 19th 1967, near Kota Belud , Sabah, North Borneo…..

“Confrontation” had ended, but the Royal Air Force and British Army presence remained in Sarawak, Brunei and Sabah just in case anything further was to come out of Indonesia. Malaysia was a fact and had to be protected.

Whirlwind XP358, the Gnome engine dead, descended into a very small clearing on the side of a hill and chopped the trees down on the fringe of the clearing before it hit the ground with an almighty thud. The whirlwind lost its’ tailboom, chopped off in the landing and the rotor blades were left as stubs.

I assessed that if I had not seen the tiny clearing, slightly lower than the helicopter and out at 2 o’clock, 200 yards away, there would have been no other choice but for XP358 to go into very large trees somewhere below us.

Put simply, I most probably would have been killed if we had gone into the bigger trees in the jungle below. From that day onwards I wondered that if that had happened, who would have come looking for me ?

That thought stayed with me and also the thought that there were hundreds of aircrew who were missing and who had never been found. I thought that if ever i got the chance to do something about that, then I would do it.

Fast Forward to 1988

Twenty years later I was working in Papua New Guinea and a company pilot was telling me that he had been to a remote village and the local people told him of a large aircraft on top of a hill above the village that had been seen by some trekkers but which had not been identified.

A few weeks later a team I organised jumped out of a helicopter from a few feet off the ground into a small clearing on a sharp ridgeline at 10,500 feet and after two attempts we were able to locate the reported wreck and identify it as a B-24 Liberator from WWII missing since 1944. It was the Drewelow Crew, 10 men in all. A short time later CILHI went in and recovered the remains and they were buried at Arlington about ten years later after the identification process. There was another one reported near Yalu village outside of LAE, that I went to, but I could find no identification on that one as it had blown up on hitting the top of a 2000 foot hill possibly on approach to Nadzab in bad weather….

Shortly after that, I left PNG for Australia, not expecting to return. I did return in 1992, to work for Air Niugini and remained there for ten years. In 1993, while on leave and back in Australia. my lady friend (now my wife) was reading the Brisbane Courier Mail newspaper. This was an exceptional occurrence as she never, ever, to my knowledge picked up a newspaper. I would buy one and within a day after my reading of it, it would be thrown out. It was close to Christmas, 1993. My lady friend knew of my previous search exploits in PNG and she nudged me and said, “Look at this, this is right up your alley !” What she showed me was a one inch high, two column by-line with a small photo of Earhart in the flapping flying helmet. What it said was: “…it is a possibility that Earhart’s missing Electra aircraft is in Papua New Guinea …”.

So began a 23 year odyssey and for that, I blame my wife.

Plough:

We did try again but failed.

Regrettably, a few circumstances that happened caused us to have to pull out early.

We decided that we would drive down from Kokopo to Wide Bay on what is euphemistically called “The East New Britain Highway”, which in actuality is a very rough track, two vehicle wide in the most part getting down to one vehicle wide in the latter district of where we wanted to go. Satellite pictures told us the roads were there. There would be one main river to ford provided it was low enough for the Toyota Hilux 4WD vehicles we would hire. An alternative ford site was found on the Satellite pictures but would mean a further fording of another river if we used it. We decided to use vehicles this time because I had been told that the road was open for one reason and secondly, we could take as much gear as we wanted in the vehicles and thirdly, about ten years ago a WWII wreck had been found near to the IP River and we decided we would venture the extra 20 kms from our search area to identify that. In the event we were unable to do that.

The funding group had four people who wanted to be there, plus the six of my team, 10 in all. This required three vehicles for people, bags, rations and equipment. The funding group could only stay for 6 days on site and had to be returned to Kokopo to catch flights out. This meant that two vehicles would require to return to Kokopo, one vehicle would be returned to the hire company and one vehicle would then return for a further week on site. We would go back in the remaining two vehicles after a further week on site.

The Hilux will take a lot of punishment but the roads dictated a speed of around 20 kms per hour over the terrible rough tracks and half way into the journey there was a complete washout of the road and it was a sea of mud with ruts 500mm deep as a minimum, but the Hilux coped with that. One main river was crossed (SAMBEI River No. 2) and then the second which we found had been bridged. We had met a local in a Landcruiser who knew a better road and we followed . When we got to the turn-off we were supposed to take we found the track was completely overgrown which then forced us to take the road to the Mevelo river and we had seen from the Satellite pictures that a bridge was being constructed over this quite large river. We had never planned to go to the Mevelo River.

On arrival at the Mevelo all hopes of a bridge to drive over were dashed. Sometime previous, obviously in a time of flood, the supports for the bridge had shifted and the roadway over the bridge had fallen into the river. We were then faced with a decision as to whether to attempt to ford the Mevelo or turn back. Fortunately I had seen a Landcruiser exit the track from the river and sure enough there were the wet tracks from his wheels as he left the ford. Now it was up to the Hilux again. We did successfully ford this river even though one vehicle had water onto the bonnet for a short period. I have great respect for the Hilux. Fording it meant that we would also have to go back over it again to get out and so this river, in particular, changed the whole concept of the operation of the expedition. We had to ford it when it was at the same height or less, the water had been over the wheels and on the bonnet of one of the vehicles during the ford. If it rained and the river rose, we would be stuck on the south side, unable to get back to Kokopo.

We camped on a river bank and prepared to go into the Jungle the next day. Overnight it rained. We went into the bush and climbed up to the ridgeline the next day in the afternoon to locate our search area and found that the bulldozer track I had been on in 1996 and of late in 2012 had almost disappeared and was now a maze of vines, felled trees and tree roots where water pools gathered making the former track completely overgrown and a sea of mud. It rained a little while we were in there. Overnight, from 12 midnight until 3 am there was a tremendous electrical storm, lightning, rolling thunder and lashing rain. We could not go into the jungle for a day as it would be too slippery and dangerous. Instead we cleaned up the camp and rested. We climbed the hill the next day and did sweeps of the ground with the metal detectors and dug up in a few places where the detectors had sounded off. On the Sunday we went in again and searched with the detectors in more areas with no result. It rained heavily again while we were in there.

Meanwhile while we were in the search area one team member was collecting lengths of 125mm round tree branches that would fit into the Hilux Trays of the three Hilux vehicles. It was anticipated that we would need those logs for ballast when we forded the Mevelo and we would need to carry these logs to put down into the ruts of the “mudslide” stretch we had got through when we returned on the way back to Kokopo. We assessed the Mevelo River Ford and it seemed to be slightly lower than before.

In the event, it was decided to end the Expedition and return to Kokopo the Next day, Monday 12th June. This decision was forced on us by the circumstances and was unavoidable. The U.S. Team had to get back on their scheduled day and the vehicles crossing the Mevelo River at the ford were the biggest worry for the entire team. If the road we had intended to use had been open, we could have got out at any time with the vehicles but the road was completely overgrown.

I retrospect, helicopter access is the only way to get into the search area at present and will remain so until the road improves and until bridges over the rivers are built.
Yes, we did need the logs at the mudslide as when we reached it some ruts were 900 mm deep. With the rightside Hilux wheels in the rut filled with logs and the other left side wheels on the center buildup we got through.

So, it is not for the want of trying…… Oh, by the way, June is supposed to be the “drier” month….

Regards,
David Billings
RPM, FF, TGT…
www.electrasearchpng.com

With Raoul Wallenberg now officially deceased how about there being agreement that Earhart is also dead, that there is no chance of finding her alive, and move on…

I can see it now……. you’re getting warmer…… she’s here??….. no, she went to Heaven, but YOU are definitely getting warmer :dev2:

Lets hope David Billings is able to put this nonsense to bed permanently in a couple of weeks.

We are sorry to report that having forgotten to take the dogs food with us, bones were found, but were unfortunately consumed by.. the dogs.

From my experience of the intelligence of Border Collies, they’ll probably locate the Electra data plate in preference to old bone fragments!

It’s holiday time again: and this year there’s conclusive proof tha Tighar has gone to the dogs:

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2017/06/amelia-earhart-island-dogs/

…but in the words of Dr. Evil…”Throw me a bone”

There are plenty of bones; it is more to do with a lack of meat to put on them 😉

If that’s French, then I’m a Dutchman, and I’m not (no disrepect to the Dutch!). I too cannot understand why that is interjected in (very bad) “French”.

I doff my cap to the maître – even though he’s a Cantabrigian (well, I know that’s not exactly geographically true – but it’s less of a mouthful than calling him a Medeshamstedeian) rather than a Dutchman!

‘ I am not being disrespectful in the least. Do not lump me in with the mob in Pennsylvania that used to reside in Delaware….’

I never said you were being disrespectful. When I said ‘many’ that means what it says ‘many’ but by no means ALL
I think the way it has been used as a profit making excuse by some people (again not yourself, and I never mentioned yourself) is disrespectful.
I never had any beef with your personally yet you took my post personally, so sorry.

‘ If you were handed certain information which might possibly solve the world’s biggest aviation mystery’ Do you have this info? If so great, but again it’s just a foundation of theorising. Besides maybe it should just remain a mystery. It’s far more poignant and intriguing.

Dave’s (RPM.FF.TGT…) Website is actually a damn good read. He’s put an enourmous amount of work into the research and paid alot of money out of his own pocket to travel to Papua New Guinea ( multiple trips) to search for the missing Lockheed. I strongly recommend you take a good look at his website.

If that’s French, then I’m a Dutchman, and I’m not (no disrepect to the Dutch!). I too cannot understand why that is interjected in (very bad) “French”.

….. but what I don’t understand is why there was an interjection in French in the middle of a post in English on an English language forum.

Yes, you’re right Southern Air99…

I have spent many visits over 20 years looking for an aircraft on New Britain which I sincerely believe, on the evidence, is the Electra 10E and here you are ‘menrtioning no names’ but saying the plural of the searchers in your :

“…the way many are going about it…” and: “…it is proving to be…arguably disrespectful….”

Since you obviously believe that everyone who is searching should pack up and go home and leave the “disrespectful” task alone despite many people saying to me that the find would bring eternal rest to Earhart and Noonan, I reject what you have said because I am not being disrespectful in the least. Do not lump me in with the mob in Pennsylvania that used to reside in Delaware, I am not them and I have not wasted ten million dollars and then ask for more. I DO make a modest request for donations in my website because I have used my own money but am now retired with no means to replenish what I have spent and do not wish to spend too much more.

Others say that it will never be found. They don’t look for it but say it will never be found ! How can they say that, for it will be found… one day. I ask any of you to answer me this: If you were handed certain information which might possibly solve the world’s biggest aviation mystery, what would you do ? Sit on it or do something about it ?

Disrespectful Moi ! Moi !

RPM, FF, TGT…
www.eatrhartsearchpng.com

I think it’s RPM,FF,TGT replying to my post, at least that’s how I saw it.

Sorry, I’m late to the party. But before I translate – whose rant is that and why is he/she ranting in French? Is it that of RPM,FF,TGT? Is he/she, for some inexplicable reason, translating Southern Air99’s remarks into French? On the face of matters, it seems that an Australian is ranting in French the translation of the post of someone else – in the middle of a post that, otherwise, is in English. Confused? You won’t be …..