TIGHAR says:- Send money so we can raise money

I did not know that!

One year I found myself in Gander three times. By the end I knew my way around the airport pretty well.

At least I knew where the men’s room was and I found the ice cream stand. I enjoyed my visits.I even bought an airport  commemorative coin with a Bell 47 on it.

I wonder if the group really means lake and not pond. If they are using the local vernacular, they probably should translate it into regular English for clarity, and people would better appreciate their efforts if they are looking in a (big) lake as opposed to a “pond”.

“By: J Boyle – 29th May 2024 at 07:10  – Edited 29th May 2024 at 17:36

At the risk of sounding like a cynic, anyone use amused that they are looking in a pond?

Sounds like a good place to look when you don’t want a rapid, easy or inexpensive outcome.

By their definition, ponds are small, so the chance of an aircraft just happening to hit one raise my suspicions. They’d have to have awfully bad luck for the aircraft to end up in a pond as well as.the difficulties of finding it in the first place.”

In Newfoundland, lakes are often called ‘ponds’. The one next to Gander airport is pretty big and I doubt it’s the largest.

At the risk of sounding like a cynic, anyone use amused that they are looking in a pond?

Sounds like a good place to look when you don’t want a rapid, easy or inexpensive outcome.

By their definition, ponds are small, so the chance of an aircraft just happening to hit one raise my suspicions. They’d have to have awfully bad luck for the aircraft to end up in a pond as well as.the difficulties of finding it in the first place.

And apparently the marine environment in the pond TIGHAR is investigating is quite corrosive, as evidenced by the very degraded metal fragments it has found to date. Which echoes JBoyle’s question – how much of the aircraft, realistically, could be left to find? TIGHAR holding up one corroded fragment of metal and anouncing “The mystery has been solved!” has been repeated so often that it’s now meaningless.

I keep asking the question: aside from the engine, how much of the aircraft would be left to be found?

Being built in 1927, it presumably has a steel tube fuselage (wooden wings?) but with the fabric covering long gone (by rot or by fire), there won’t be much to see or for sensors to pick up.

Masterful overview, Mark. I’ve watched from afar as Gillespie has tried to trash and and all hope that the sonar image found off Howland Island last year is anything but Earhart’s Electra. After all, he has a retirement plan, I mean a book, to push over the finish line.

I took a hard look at Gillespie’s oft touted “preponderance of evidence,” and as you’d expect, once hard questions are asked, the story looks a lot different: https://mffowler.net/amelia_earhart_archaeology_evidence.htm
 

Tighars “Preposterous Evidence” didn’t solve zip in the riddle of what happened to Amelia Earhart.

Oh for the “good old days” when “Over-Eager” Proffessor Eagar claimed “truelly you have solved the Earhart Riddle” are listening to Ric and holding the magic bit of scrap in his hands for 1 hour.

Oh for the “good old days” when “Glickman” was going to use his new photometric image processing to prove that the rivet lines on the magic bit of scrap exactly matched the blurry photo of the Lockheed at Miami?

Oh for the “good old days” when Proffessor Janz declared that the missing skull found (and then lost) on Nikumaroro was more likely to be from Amelia Earhart (as long as you ignored the possibility it could be from one of the 7 missing crewmembers of the shipwreck of the ‘SS Norwich City’ on the same bloody island!)

Oh for the “good old days” when Pan Am Heir and one time Tighar donor Tim Mellon sued Tighar for return of his $1M, for misleading the public and him by them denying that Tighar had found the wreck of the Lockheed on the reef, when he could identify from Tighars “underwater  hi-res video footage” many rocks to be the wings, the fuselage, the instruments, and the bodies (not skeletons!) of Earhart and Noonan?

Oh for the “good old days” when Tom King and Rick Gillespie would point to the empty jar of face cream as evidence that Earhart (who had freckles) had been on the island (as long as you ignore the similar supplies found in the remains of the British Colonies shop on the same bloody island!).

Oh for the “good old days” when Ric claimed to have found the remains of a finger from a human hand, (that turned out to be the bones from the fin of a turtle)

Oh for the “good old days” when Gillespie found a turd in the beach and claimed it was a crap from Earhart or Noonan, but unfortunately it only had his DNA on it from touching it, (instead of the possibility it could be from a US Serviceman from the nearby US Radar station that was on the same bloody island! during WW2.)

Oh for the “good old days” when Gillespie took an “inkspot” from a poor photo print, and “Glickman” turned it into a enlarged photo of the upsidedown wheel and undercarriage of the Lockheed.

Oh for the “good old days” when Robert Ballard led a 2019 expedition to locate Earhart’s Electra or evidence that it landed on Nikumaroro as supposed by the Gardner/Nikumaroro hypothesis. (and found zip, nuthin, not a skerrick!)

After days of searching the deep cliffs supporting the island and the nearby ocean using state of the art equipment and technology, Ballard did not find any evidence of the plane or any associated wreckage of it.

Allison Fundis, Ballard’s Chief Operating Officer of the expedition, stated, “We felt like if her plane was there, we would have found it pretty early in the expedition.” Although Ballard maintains that the plane or significant portions still exist and will eventually be found, TIGHAR argues that the Electra has been “broken up” by the surf and other harsh environmental elements

Step right up folks!

P.T. Barnum said “There’s a sucker born every minute”

Gillespie has been making a living from that for decades.

How is this individual not serving time by now?