Without wishing to stir up a fight the tone of the previous few posts seems to nicely sum up one of my concerns about issues like this. Everyone appears to get a little more annoyed as the discussion proceeds. The disappearance of Earhart and Noonan all those years ago is now not an important or particularly pressing matter. At the time it was, but as both would now be dead even if they had survived is simply enough to consign the matter to an interesting historical discussion. As such I cannot see why getting heated can provide any beneficial opinions to the discussion.

I could understand it if anyone involved had reasonably large amounts of money invested in it as a business venture, or if they had their professional reputation hanging upon a particular resolution of the puzzle after being silly enough to have allowed this to hang upon what is now a quite inconsequential issue. Personally as I appear to be consigned to the “Crashed and Sankers” that is sufficient for me as it is by any consideration of the matter the most simple and logical solution.

But if the forthcoming trip by TIGHAR to Nikumaroro turns up some conclusive evidence to prove me wrong then I assure everyone I’ll live with that without any damage to my fragile sense of self. Until then I can only reiterate what I have said on several occasions that replacing one hypothesis that is unproven with another that is unproven is not an answer but just another unanswered question.

If anyone is truly in need of exposure to mind numbing examination of conjectural hypotheses I suggest a visit to the TIGHAR forum. Never in the field of human discourse have so few proven facts been magnified into so many imaginary explanations by so many armchair experts.

If one wants to see the effects of heaping Pelion upon Ossa I suggest a browse through the thread on the ROV video footage or the thread on whether or not Earhart and Noonan carried parachutes on the final leg of the flight. The first is an eyeopener as to the powers of the human imagination while the second is armchair geekdom at its most enlightening.

[I]
…and I reiterate that the “sunline” hypothesis depends on a sunline which MUST cut through Howland Island and the simple fact of the 1912GMT call “…must be on you but cannot see you”, indicates totally and without question that AE & FN only “thought” they were there, they did not know for sure so how can it be said that the sunline of 157-337 cuts through Howland ? The very basis of the Tighar Hypothesis is very shaky.

In view of the flight time put forward by AE of “18 Hours”, if the Electra was “…on you but cannot see you” at 19:12, there is an indication that the Electra was “late” at Howland, if indeed they were there. This indicates a wind strength to slow their groundspeed far above what they were in receipt of as a forecast, albeit, made from Hawaii, not from the local region weathermen.

Indications of “lateness” and broadcasts of “cloudy” and “overcast” raise questions of the impossibility of perfect Navigation, making the 1912GMT call one of the most contentious calls of the whole saga, throwing the sunline hypothesis into question. …

…but as I have said scepticism is a healthy thing but it is not in itself a research methodology because if it becomes too dominant in one’s thinking it simply impedes any scientific and objective analysis. You have simply dismissed the TIGHAR hypothesis not by providing conclusive evidence but by simply providing another hypothesis equally unproven. That doesn’t give an answer it only creates something else which needs an answer.

Firstly, I dismiss the sunline hypothesis as faulty, yes, because of the reasons explained above.

RPM

That is where we must differ – I don’t dismiss it, simply because others at the time didn’t.

I’ve been reading all the various theories for many years myself and they all have one thing in common which is that they have all remained just theories. Not one theory has been demonstrated to be correct. But there has been a lot of name-calling, publicity and book sales but nothing else.

Now if I was asked, after all that I have read, what I would suggest is most likely to have happened, I would say simply that they ran out of fuel and came down in the open ocean, the Electra sank and Earhart and Noonan either together or singularly depending on who was able to get out of the aircraft spent some lonely desperate hours in the water then succumbed to the inevitable and either drowned or were taken by sharks. Or they could not get out of the aircraft and drowned as it sank.

Where this happened exactly is another unknown. If they were lost, which appears to be the case given the last messages then they could have overflown Howland Island and went down somewhere to the east. Equally it could have been somewhere to the west and that is a considerable amount of very deep ocean to search.

All my reading of Earhart’s career as a pilot suggests to me that she was not very strong on navigation and radio techniques but very strong on thinking she was a better pilot than she was. Earhart as the Aviatrix is a creation of some carefully crafted publicity aimed at earning as much money from that persona as possible. But she is not the first person or would she be the last to come unstuck believing one’s own publicity.

Unfortunately for authors and screen writers etc. looking to make money, a story based on a pilot who was a bit second rate with poor radio skills and who drowned in the middle of the Pacific as a result of an awfully mundane thing like getting lost and running out of fuel is not going to cut it with financial backers, publishers and movie producers if it is about “Amelia Earhart Aviatrix”. So over the years we have seen the plethora of theories all slightly glamorous like being a spy or landing on a beach and helping poor injured Fred Noonan ashore where they both die heroically as disease and malnutrition takes it toll. That outcome removes the stigma of the prime cause which is getting lost and running out of fuel coupled with poor radio skills.

Still as I am not an author or screenwriter or a member of the Amelia Earhart Fan Club but just a simple soul I’ll stick with my theory as outlined above. But that is no more proven than any of the others and that is why I am not condemning TIGHAR’s efforts because so far we have yet to see what might be revealed after the next trip. If that trip adds nothing then I think they should give up. But as an archaeologist I am eager to see what their methodology will be and what if anything it turns up.

As I said before I can understand your scepticism, but as I have said scepticism is a healthy thing but it is not in itself a research methodology because if it becomes too dominant in one’s thinking it simply impedes any scientific and objective analysis. You have simply dismissed the TIGHAR hypothesis not by providing conclusive evidence but by simply providing another hypothesis equally unproven. That doesn’t give an answer it only creates something else which needs an answer.

Personally. given the distance of the two end “steps” from the end of the side pieces I don’t think it is a ladder. Whichever way it would stand the bottom “step” is to close the ground and therefore redundant. I suspect it is something structural but out of what I have no idea.

I hope you like them.

Cheers
Santiago

Lovely work your father has done – I hadn’t realised how small the aptly named Shrimp was.

You could go to this site – once you get through all the strange things there might be some info.

http://discaircraft.greyfalcon.us/

If sites like this are to be believed the Nazis were the inventors of everything except the crucial element of how to win a war and to behave like reasonable human beings. But as a side note I still wonder why their napkinwaffe designs, none of which actually worked very well, or at all, still attract such interest. Given the amount of time that even when driven by the Cold War imperatives jet and rocket design took so long to produce reliable products, some people seem to think that the Nazi rough sketches were actually production ready. This willing acceptance of Nazi “brilliance” amazes me. After all these are people who couldn’t even get a Volkswagen into commercial production. As for secret bases in the Antarctic – world dominance is impossible if your balls are frozen off.

All the comments about the national mix in Bomber Command squadrons aside, my cat wants to know if Guy Gibson’s cat was called Sooty. It really is the only part of the Dambusters’ story she’s interested in. 😀

The take-off scene in The Dambusters

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VD9sd8s9V14

and another favourite is the scene where the Spitfires in Canfield’s squadron are overheating while awaiting take-off instructions 🙂

[COLOR=”Blue”]I’ve noticed that with WT660’s original decals, the area of the water-slide transfers is easily discernable from the aluminium paint underneath. I presumed that age had discoloured the shellac or whatever they were made from, having gone a darker golden colour, but I seem to remember Airfix kit transfers in the 1960s were similarly discoloured from new!

In modelling parlance it’s called yellowing. The old carrier films for decals were basically ordinary clear varnish which yellows over time. Nowadays the carrier films are acrylics and are pretty much non yellowing. To get rid of yellowing on a decal sheet simply tape the decal to the inside of a window that faces the sun and leave for a couple of days – that bleaches the yellow out.