Critique Of TIGHAR By Ex-member/Donor

As 2022 draws to a close, it’s a good time to look back at all of TIGHAR’s many accomplishments in aviation archaeology, aviation history, and historic aviation preservation during the past 12 months:

W don’t know how much TIGHAR spent to accomplish all of the above, since, as usual, they are several years behind on filing their required federal tax forms. At an average cost of $1,212 per day since 2000, though, we can safely assume it’s in the six-figure range.

It’s past time for TIGHAR to get serious about its – poop!

In 2010 Gillespie posted on the TIGHAR forums, “In 2007 we collected what looked like small chunks of brown dirt – but there’s no real dirt at the Seven Site – just coral rubble.  We wondered if it might be dried fecal material (not true coprolite because it’s not fossilized). A lab in Canada extracted DNA but it turned out to be my DNA – contamination from touching it without gloves before we realized what it might be. We still didn;t know whether it was really fecal matter so we referred to it as the “Putative Poop” until just recently when the Molecular Anthropology Laboratories at the University of Oklahoma found a type of bacteria present that is generally only found in feces. So the poop is no longer putative.  It’s poop.  Whether DNA can be extracted remains to be seen.”

No explanation for the three-year time lag.

In 2011 TIGHAR board member Andrew McKenna posted, “We collected “fecal” material during both the 2007 and 2010 expeditions.  The 2007 sample, which was not collected with sterile protocols, had what appeared to be Ric’s DNA in it.  I think it is the 2010 sample that has recently been tested that has the two different human DNA traces in it.  Ric could set me straight on this.

So, the 2007 sample was either Ric’s poop, or contaminated by Ric’s handling it excessively (lots of us handled it not knowing it was going to be tested).  Whether or not the 2010 sample has been matched with Ric’s DNA remains to be seen, but the fact that it has what appears to be the human DNA from two persons is very interesting.  Either we have Ric’s DNA and someone else, or even two unknown persons.  Will be interesting if any of the sequences matched the Earhart family sample we have.”

Again, some talk about various DNA testing protocols but no explanation for why NOTHING has basically been done in the last decade or so.

And now this: https://news.yahoo.com/ancient-dna-reveals-secrets-pompeii-153211890.html  If they can extract and sequence DNA from human bones that were covered with volcanic ash hundreds of years ago, seems like this latest technology can tackle “putative poop” that may only be 80-odd years old.

So why isn’t TIGHAR taking the steps to find out if this probably-poop is from Amelia Earhart, Fred Noonan, or one of the SS Norwich City castaways (where my money is)? Do they not want to know the answer, or are they just hoping (again) someone will do it for free?

Internet provider issues have prompted me to relocate some things, among which is the TIGHAR analysis: https://mffowler.net/tighar_analysis.htm

As 2021 staggers to a close, some might be interested in a look back at The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery’s many accomplishments since the year 2000:

• TIGHAR has spent $8.66 million as of mid-2019 (the last year federal tax info is available);
• It spent $2.41 million of that amount on salaries;
• Virtually all of that $2.41 million went to TIGHAR Executive Director Ric Gillespie and his wife, TIGHAR President Pat Thrasher;
• It has a net fund balance of -$249,000 for the period 2000-2018;
• TIGHAR has spent an average of $1,248 per day to operate since 2000;
• It has never recovered a single complete aircraft/airframe of any type, in more than 36 years;
• It has never recovered a single verified piece of any historic aircraft in more than 36 years;
• It has never completed a single successful “project” or “operation,” as it likes to label its activities;
• The follow-on book for Finding Amelia, The True Story of the Earhart Disappearance, first promised in about 2010, remains unfinished more than a decade later, despite soliciting unknown thousands for dollars for the “Literary Guild II” to help cover costs.
• Et cetera, et cetera …

TIGHAR’s bouncing-ball membership numbers just keep getting … bouncier! Now that we have the 2017 numbers (finally) and 2018, here’s an update (in all cases the ‘volunteer’ line from the IRS forms:

• 2009 – 600
• 2010 – 600
• 2011 – 600
• 2012 – 1,100 No explanation for this 500 member jump.
• 2013 – 1,000
• 2014 – 1,000
• 2015 – 1,000
• 2016 – 1,000
• 2017 – 0  Nope, not making this up. Beyond odd.
• 2018 – 200

At the end of the day, though, the trend seems to be going down. Rather steeply.

Every once in awhile, words come out of Gillespie’s mouth that make you wonder if he realizes what he’s saying, to wit his conclusion during a recent TIGHAR forum discussion about what was or was not heard during Earhart’s alleged post-crash radio calls:

“My point is, if you make enough assumptions and excuses, you can find great significance in any piece of evidence. It’s called confirmation bias.”

Which basically sums up his 30-plus-year quest to “prove” that Earhart landed on a deserted Pacific island. I could start listing his assumptions and excuses about what he calls his Nikumaroro hypothesis “evidence,” but it would take me into next week just to list the first few year’s worth.

It’s been nominally interesting to watch how thought processes evolve on TIGHAR’s closed, member’s only forum. Now there is a great deal of discussion about a wire that was found tangled in the largish piece of aircraft aluminum that Gillespie insists is from Earhart’s aircraft, and which TIGHAR found in 1991 … almost three decades ago, https://tighar.org/smf/index.php/topic,2120.0.html . 

It seems that anytime interest flags in TIGHAR in general or the Earhart Project in particular, something “new” pops up to generate excitement. Even if it is an item or fact or whatever that TIGHAR has had for years and should have run down and categorized/analyzed/reported on at the time.

Just to confirm what I suspected earlier , disconnecting from my VPN has allowed me to access your Tighar analysis again Monty but I still have no access to aviationmystery, I guess from what you said my current Mexican ISP is still not acceptable to that site owner…. such is life!

Hello Andy,  thanks  for your welcome to the forum.  I am sorry to hear that it is only a shadow of its former self.  I can see from your explanation of events just how many former members might have decided to leave.  That is a pity because the more varied the inputs and points of view expressed the  better I feel any discussion forum becomes, especially when trying to resolve a mystery.

I’m afraid my reply to your post is a little tardy but I did write a lengthy tome a few days ago and proceeded to hit the send button only to find a blank form returned with notice that in order to reply I needed to be ‘signed in’!   Duhh…  to be expected I guess…  anyway as I lost what I had written and it was late in the evening I didn’t have the heart to start all over again until now.

I heartily concur with your views on Tighar and its ‘Board of Directors’.  It does  appear to be a well honed cash cow operation to fund a nice lifestyle while  actually achieving very little in the way of aircraft recovery… it’s stated aim!  Many cash strings to tug on of course, the Electra, l’Oiseau Blanc and the aircraft (P38) stuck in the shoreline at a remote spot in UK and not forgetting Glen Miller of course.  To be fair though the volumes of information regarding the whole Earhart episode that TIGHAR has unearthed and recorded on their website is worthy of praise

As my first post stated I am trying to determine just when Alcoa changed their aluminium sheet id stamp from ALC 24ST to ALCLAD 24 S-T in order to disqualify (or not) the Tighar  ‘artifact’ ever having been on Earhart’s aircraft.  When I raised this point in my Tighar post RG rebutted my inference that the ‘D’ on the artifact made it a post 1930’s production and therefore except for time travel it was impossible to have been on the Electra!  His reply asserted that he ‘has no evidence that ALCLAD stamped sheet wasn’t in use in the 1930’s’  and also disputed which stamp was the older of the two!  The onus of responsibility is of course on Gillespie to show ALCLAD 24 S-T WAS in use in the 1930’s or at least before 1937 to be able to claim the artifact was on Earhart’s Electra.

Tom Palshaw as you know presented a very convincing, I think, case for the scrap being from  a C47 which Gillespie tried to obfuscate by bringing into question minute metal thickness differences and rivet placing variations.  All quite plausible considerations during the period of ramped up aircraft production with the advent of the war.   

I enquired of ALCOA for any historical data regarding the date of id stamp change and received the email letter (shown in my last post) back from the ALCOA  librarian advising me to enquire of the ARCONIC library for any such historical data/record.   Covid 19 has unfortunately put an ongoing delay to any such further research but I feel sure others may well have travelled this path before me and drawn a blank so I am not too optimistic, we shall see in due course.  Cheers  DW

Hello Monty,  thank you for your welcome and for enlightening my darkness!  As I have been cut off from aviationmystery for a while I had nothing  to refer to for confirmation but I remembered your name being prominent in many posts on there and figured you might be the owner or at least be able to say if the site is still operational.  I understand now why I cannot access the site but I did for quite some time.   It may be due to the fact that I winter in Baja California (snowbird) and since I started using a VPN that access has been denied.  I will need to try again when I return home to Canada shortly.

By the way your Tighar Analysis is spot on in my view, I read it quite some time ago and still refer to it from time to time.  It’s one of the reasons I started looking for an answer to the Alcoa stamps, I feel sooner or later the artifact will go the  same way as the discarded Sextant Box! We just need documentary evidence of the date of factory stamping change.

For info, I just clicked on your link and got the same access denied message there too…. so I will try again from Canada without a VPN when I return home.

best regards

Dave W

Mr. Williams – first, welcome to the Key Aero forums, such as they are after the infamous  “update” last year.

Second, to clarify, aviationmystery.com is not my baby; I have nothing to do with it. At one point I was an active participant but decided for personal reasons to step away. The reason you keep getting the “403-Forbidden, you don’t have permission to access” error is because the forum owner is very zealous in blocking IP addresses he considers hostile from a spam/malware/virus standpoint. Some people get the same 403-Forbidden error when they search for my TIGHAR analysis, http://myplace.frontier.com/~monty.fowler/tighar_analysis.htm , because my ISP is, well, @*#&^@#$%@#%(*@#^!!!.

I’m not surprised that Gillespie has shredded your posts, and done so in a less-than-friendly manner. He has a business to protect, after all.

P.S. – Key please note, the “insert hyperlink” button isn’t working …

Hi Dave.
Welcome to the forum, which sadly, is barely a shadow of its former self.
There were some “improvements” made by those who operate this forum and 90 +% of the membership left in disgust.
I used to check in daily, now it’s more like monthly or less. I miss the regular, excellent posters. They’re not coming back.

On the subject of Tighar, I, along with the majority who posted here, are convinced that Gillespie is a snake oil salesman.
The “artifact” has been shown to match its rivet pattern to something as mundane as a C-47 wing skin (or the like, I honestly stopped caring). Gillespie has been taking money to continue spouting his foundless theories. Tighar has never recovered a single aircraft. That’s what the “R” is supposed to stand for. I am of the opinion that he will continue under the premise that there is a sucker born every minute.
Earhart has proven to be a huge cash cow and he has yet to finish milking it!

Stay safe

Andy

Hello forum members,

I have just joined the Key Aero membership during this time of self imposed quarantine due to Covid19 and with nothing better to do I figured I would delve a little deeper into the Earhart mystery and TIGHAR!

First a little background:  I am an ex British Military pilot and ex Airlines pilot living in retirement in Canada. I have been shadowing events on the TIGHAR forum for many years and became a member (disputed by Gillespie) before he prevented postings to his forum by non members stating “posting is a privilege afforded to members only”.  You know how that  goes!

Back in 2017 I posted my personal theory on the TIGHAR forum about the ‘281 message’.  It was called “Update..281 My theory, have we been looking in the wrong place?”

It was quickly relegated to the backwaters of the ‘Celestial Choir’ section by Moleski because it went against the Tighar notion that the Electra landed close to the Norwich City shipwreck.  (Btw. correctly pronounced Norrich, it has a silent ‘w’ just like the silent ‘p’ in swimming pool….. get it?)  My post is still languishing there if anyone is interested and I believe my theory is as good as any!

More recently on 14th January 2020 I posted “Joseph McMoneagle’s Remote View of the Electra’s resting place Re-visited” which highlighted several  interesting things and strangely enough McMoneagle’s ‘remote viewing’ of the Electra’s final position which he also marked with a cross on his map is exactly the same place that my 281 theory points to, arrived at by another deduction!   My post is still there on Tighar’s General Discussion board…… but then…. I dared to challenge the veracity of ‘artifact 2-2-V-1 in my latest post, raising the issue of ALCLAD identification stampings in the 1930’s and 40’s.

My post is Reply #2 of the thread dated February 14, 2020  “Re: Inspection of AE’s aircraft for buckling in SE Asia” which was duly ripped apart by RG in no uncertain manner! No surprise there then to this community I suspect.

I have since made enquiries of the present day ALCOA Corporation posing the question of historical factory id markings to which I had a very nice reply from the company librarian (copied below).  This occured just as this Covid19 scare broke out.  The lady librarian informed me that the the company broke into two separate entities back in 2016 and all the historical company information is held by the other half of the original company… ARCONIC to which she pointed me for further enquiries.  So my progress in this regard has come to a temporary halt until the current health crisis abates when I shall see what, if anything, ARCONIC can find regarding just when ALC 24ST became ALCLAD 24-ST.  The date of this change in the factory stamping is crucial to the disqualification (or otherwise) of the TIGHAR artifact being anything to do with the Electra of course.

Until recently I was following similar threads on the website ‘aviationmysteries’ and noted all the findings of period photographs regarding the two types of stamp. Of major interest to me is that there doesn’t appear to be any photographic evidence of ALCLAD 24-ST prior to 1942 or thereabouts.  Gillespie of course tries to muddy the waters by saying “ there is no evidence to say which of the two markings is the older” and throws in font styles and factory plant differences for good measure!  This is not over yet!

Anyway, I would be grateful if any member of this forum can enlighten my darkness regarding the ‘aviationmystery dot com’ website which I am no longer able to access. About a month ago the site started throwing up an error message saying in effect:  Forbidden  You don’t have permission to access / on this server.

Is the site down and am I right in thinking it is Monty’s baby? Are you receiving me Mr. Fowler?  Lol.

Best regards and be safe everone,

Dave Williams (newest member)

=============

Reply from ALCOA re: request for info:

Dear Capt. Williams

Thank you for your query re: ALC vs ALCLAD stamping on vintage aircraft aluminium.

In 2016, Alcoa Inc. separated into two, distinct companies – Alcoa Corp. and Arconic.  The corporate library, relevant records and all downstream products are now the purview of Arconic.  You may wish to place a query with them.

Having said that, I did inherit some research records and I have conducted a search of those records to see if I can help you.  Unfortunately, although there are many records discussing ALCLAD, none of them refer to the identification stamping.  I am sorry that I’ve been unable to help you.

Good luck with your search.

Kind regards,

Kathy Allen

Unfortunately, J Boyle, TIGHAR itself is the only source for its membership numbers. The IRS allows entities to “estimate” the number of volunteers, which is apparently what TIGHAR considers its members. Still, there are some odd variations …

• 2009 – 600
• 2010 – 600
• 2011 – 600
• 2012 – 1,100 No explanation for this 500 member jump.
• 2013 – 1,000
• 2014 – 1,000
• 2015 – 1,000
• 2016 – 1,000
• 2017 – ??? As previously noted, this is now about two years past due.

It would be interesting to learn their membernumbers, if the could be received from a objective source (i.e. Not the group itself).

Yet another of the tragedies of the Key Aero forum re-do is that any posts that have tabular materials or something cut and pasted from a spreadsheet have had those posts turned into gibberish. Which is something I doubt will ever be fixed, and which is something that could have been predicted and easily avoided by Key Aero.

TIGHAR executive director Ric Gillespie said in 2014, “TIGHAR a squeaky-clean 501 c3 public charity.” Which would mean, among other things, that it filed its federally-required tax forms on time. The last one TIGHAR filed was for the 2016-2017 tax year, with a note at the top, “Extended to May 15, 2018.”

We must be on TIGHARtime, because according to my calendar, it is Jan. 2, 2020.

Another curious thing about how TIGHAR does business – its utter inability to file its tax reports in a timely manner. Which would be more understandable if it was a large, multi-million dollar tax-exempt entity like a hospital or a research institution. TIGHAR is a small, one-issue entity with a staff of two. TIGHAR routinely requests the automatic six-month extension available to entities that file the Form 990, but nine months into 2019, we are still waiting for the 2017 tax form, which would cover July 2017 to June 2018 …maybe having at least three different CPAs in the last four years or so has something to do with it.

TIGHAR’s newest quest, finding Glenn Miller’s aircraft, seems eerily similar to its now apparently abandoned quest to find Amelia Earhart’s aircraft, see https://www.msn.com/en-us/music/news/glenn-miller%E2%80%99s-airplane-possibly-found-decades-after-famed-bandleader-vanished-during-wwii/ar-BBSffU9?ocid=sf

Most interesting is one of the final paragraphs, where Gillespie says, “Right now, if you really look at the facts of the case, there really isn’t much doubt at all that the airplane went down in the English Channel .. But we don’t know. With a mystery as popular and iconic as the Miller disappearance, there will always be conspiracy theories and adherence to other theories. Finding the wreckage answers the question finally. You can say ‘There it is. We can now put that to bed. That’s what we’re out to do: replace mystery with documented history.“

Documented history … not the “preponderance of evidence” he says TIGHAR solved the Earhart mystery with. Seems to be quite a difference in terminology between the two statements?

Gillespie never told the members what the financial toll of putting on the Earhart 75 Symposium was, other than saying “… we lost our shirt financially.” No mention of what percentage of the money taken in was used for “operating costs.” The conference website is no longer active, and I can’t remember what the registration fee and other costs were, but as I recall, they were modest.

You can always ask questions…whether you’ll get a legit answer is another matter. 🙂

Oddly, in his comments as posted above, RG doesn’t seem to get the hint…that his ballyhooed meeting “open to everyone” in “easy to get to” D.C. and it only attracts 100 people…