Funny and true.

That made me chuckle. Sort of thumbing its nose at the technology? 🙂

Do you mean with every panel line picked out in black, leaking oil? And with every panel painted a slightly different colour to it’s neighbour and with a colour gradation across it? And with random chips of paint missing all over with the bare metal showing? Plus the underside and flanks coated in light brown ‘dust’?

:p

Richard

😀

Baz

The nature of the crash of P7309 (about half a mile from where I am sitting!!) means that nothing that might be turned into cufflinks, or even Coke cans for Malcolm McKay :p is in existence.

Well BUUUURRRRRPPPPPP!!!!!!!! what am I going to do with these empties now? 😮

…..
David Billings
RPM, FF, TGT…

David the more I consider your hypothesis the less sceptical I am becoming – not sold you understand, but it does offer a hypothesis that cannot be dismissed immediately as fanciful. You will also have seen that I am one of those on the TIGHAR forum suggesting that New Britain deserves greater attention than TIGHAR is prepared to acknowledge and I also am not falling for the trap of confusing a P&W engine with a Wright Cyclone.

The TIGHAR hypothesis concerning Nikumaroro still waits to be either proved or disproved and as I have continually said over at that forum, and copped abuse for it, if they don’t find anything clearly from the Earhart Electra this year then they have to bite the bullet and admit there is nothing. I don’t apologise if my questioning is at times a bit hard nosed and direct because that generally is the only way to cut through the verbiage to the nub. I am not really interested in ideals, inspirational silliness about the sacredness of establishing truth etc. etc. that’s for amateurs – I am only interested in the data. Find the data and you find the truth.

You said –

[I]
It would be excellent if more skeletal material was found but again that will only be of use if it can be proven to be the remains of Earhart because Noonan appears to have no known living relatives so DNA or Mitochondrial DNA sampling would be of no use.

Ahah, I know someone who does have Noonan’s DNA, so it would be possible.

That can be read as either that person has Noonan’s DNA in the purely biological sense i.e a physical descendant or descendant of a close relative, or that that person has access to some biological data concerning Noonan’s DNA, so to then state –

Continually, I find that people read….but do not digest….

I did not say that “I” have evidence of Noonan’s DNA. I said I know that someone has it and that TIGHAR knows of that. Whether or not TIGHAR has access to it is TIGHAR’s business and the business of the person who has it. I am certainly not going to discuss the why’s and wherefore’s behind that.

is disingenuous and advances the argument or your claims no further – it only creates a dispute over semantics. I read and quite clearly understood what your first statement implied.

In cases like this stating the obvious is often the only way to get to the truth of the matter. As I see it you have precisely no more evidence than I do as to the existence or otherwise of the New Britain wreck and importantly whether or not it is Earhart and Noonan’s aircraft. You simply have the account of the Australian patrol and the notes on the map. So I’ll risk stating the obvious again until the wreck is found and identified please remember that I like any other person following the conflicting hypotheses is perfectly entitled to question them closely.

You said Academia and qualifications sometimes mean very little in many fields. I agree with that. Well most amateurs generally do and that is why perhaps they find funding so very difficult to find. As for “Misquoted and misread” – I have lost count of the number of times. that hasn’t happened here as far as I can see.

A fair hearing is one in which each side can present and question data.

The veracity of the Veterans has been questioned, both here and by others. I met all of the four survivors of the patrol and I do not doubt the words of any of them, neither would anyone else who met them. I believe it is despicable to question the honesty of men never met and who had no public personna, no fame in the press, none were celebrities and none have any seedy convictions in law.

RPM

No it is not despicable as you claim, it is simply normal process in assessing any claim or witness statement. Is any court despicable because prosecutors and defence lawyers question police and other witnesses – no, because if they didn’t then the jury would not be properly informed as to the veracity of the statements being made against an accused person because they are entitled to a fair trial and the presumption of innocence. All I am doing, as would be any person with appropriate training, is seeking to verify a claim by someone who is using the witness statements to build a case to attract donations from the public to prove the existence or otherwise of the missing aircraft. Whether the witness is a military veteran, a devout priest or a convicted criminal their statements all carry the same weight until proven or otherwise – that is how it works.

I find it interesting that the locals are unaware of the crash site – my own experience of indigenous populations is that they have quite detailed knowledge of their territories and given the somewhat rare occurrence of any aircraft in that part of the world in 1937 I would expect the crash of the Electra to be particularly prominent in their cultural traditions. Of course the abundance of aircraft around in WW2 might have overshadowed that so we must also take that into account.

As I have said there is much of interest in your theory. Obviously what is lacking is positive identification which will only be achieved if the wreck is found, and if it is verified as the Electra rather than another wreck. The fuel figures are interesting but they alone do not narrow the search area in any significant way as they could apply equally to flying to the Gilberts, flying to New Britain or flying up and down on the 157/337 line with an eventual crash or ditching somewhere along that line or indeed even on Gardner Island.

I remain particularly disturbed by the claim that you have evidence available for Noonan’s DNA, which is not available to TIGHAR for undisclosed reasons. I always find such claims to be unconvincing. Some time back on this forum there was a spirited thread regarding the existence of a secret wartime bunker under Rockhampton, the proponent of which refused to reveal any details and basically demanded that their unsubstantiated word be accepted, as you may guess that did not happen and we are yet to see any material evidence to verify that claim from anyone. And a few years ago there was another unsubstantiated claim by someone that the Germans had bought sugar beet farms in eastern England prior to WW2 for the express purpose of laying out secret airfields to aid the landing of troops when Germany went to war against Britain. Again there was a spirited and passionate claim and again there was no evidence ever produced to support the claim. Now regarding the Noonan DNA claim I would be further convinced of its bona fides if this was just more than a take it or leave statement. As I have said it is these sorts of things that seem to split the various theorists into warring camps which isn’t particularly good. If the DNA claim comes back to simple personal issues then I would suggest that those need to be tossed.

The New Britain claim, as I see it, is as possible as any of the other four that I outlined in my previous post. I would like to see it resolved one way or the other.