It matters not what you consider at risk! IF your favourite structure doesn’t already impress English Heritage (and they’re usually not interested in what you think) then you’re on your own.

We need a system that protects those buildings that WE consider important and not that just ticks all the right boxes for some academic. We also need enthusiasts who haven’t already written off what needs to be saved. If you don’t have fellow enthusiasts on your side then forget it.

I would like EH to introduce Grade III Listed Status, which would protect a building from being demolished, but would give the developer more leeway. There is no lottery money for restoring aerodrome buildings, so any sympathetic redevelopment has to be financially viable (profitable), and restoring a building with listed status is rarely profitable, unless the builder is given more leeway.

Without listing them all individually, how many airfields are heritage listed, how many buildings are listed per airport and how many other aviation buildings are listed where the airport is not?

regards

Mark Pilkington

I am surprised no ones linked the wonderful thread and photos from WIX that shows the RAF Museum’s Supermarine Stranier flying boat taking off from a runway after repair?

regards

Mark Pilkington

A reply to an email rejecting the generous offer!

Hi Mark,

Thanks for the email. Sorry about
any miss-communications. If a
person wanted to load viruses
on other sites, I am sure there
would be a better way. That is
no way what we are trying to do.

We have nothing to hide with the
site. And my correct name is Jason,
which is very easy to find out.

If you would like a .jpeg image
that is fine – I can have it converted
to that for you.

At any rate – sorry about all the
hassle and miss-communication.

Take care,

Dave aka – Jason

Regards

Mark Pilkington

Mark, nice to read you work on keeping Pt Cook “alive” the other day…

How’s that Lincoln looking?

Thanks Oscar, its something very much worth working on, but unfortunately its still not finished yet, I assume you were down south for the pilgramage and read a certain little blue book smiles?

I toured the site recently with a Defence representative (its a “secure” site and likely to become more so unfortunately) and many buildings are suffering chronic “rot”!, and some of these are the most historic on the site!

The Lincoln is still in hibernation but parts continue to roll in for it, an item purchased by a collector by remote bid at one of the Hughes Trading Auctions at Kyneton came back home from Texas a few weeks ago as a donation to the project, its going to be a big job, and in some ways parallels Point Cook above, last one left in Australia, in poor condition, but too important not to keep and look after!

Hows that Invader going??

regards

Mark Pilkington

I wonder what a ‘Rolls Royce Avon Jet Fire Engine (ex Canberra bomber)’ is?

Richard

We blow fires out with big jet engines, because prop engines dont blow them out fast enough!

Smiles

Mark Pilkington

“As unreliable as wiki might be? it provides some alternative explanations?”

Mark, all of this has been well-known to Tighar for years. No surprises here. In fact, I think Wiki got most of their material from Tighar’s website.

Yes it appears well known to TIGHAR but it is dismissed as not supporting their hypothesis and replaced with more extraordinary theories?.

How much is known about the shipwreck at Nikumaroro?

On the night of Friday, November 29, 1929 the steamer S.S. Norwich City made an unscheduled stop at Gardner Island. She was under the ownership of the Reardon Smith Line, Captain Daniel Hamer, Master, and about halfway on her run from Melbourne to Honolulu to pick up a cargo bound for Vancouver. With empty holds, the freighter’s 397 foot length was riding high, especially at the bow, and her 53.5 foot beam rolled with the heavy swell. Amidships her 412 H.P. oil-fueled, triple-expansion steam engine was serviced by nine Arab firemen, while topside a crew of four officers and 22 British seamen completed the ship’s company. Her keel had been laid in Hartlepool, England in 1911 and she was registered out of Bideford in 1919 as ship no. 132596, gross tonnage 5,587 on the Mercantile Navy List.

According to the testimony of Henry Lott of Folkestone, England, Second Officer, given at a Naval Court held December 9, 1929, in Apia, Samoa:

The first thing I knew was at 5 past 11 there was a crash and the vessel went up on the reef. I jumped off the settee in my room, went outside, and returned and put on some clothes. I went straight to the bridge for orders.

The Norwich City was making water in two of her six holds so Captain Hamer ordered everyone to gather in the galley and wait for daylight.

After a considerable time I noticed smoke coming from the fiddley. I looked down in No. 3 [hold] and could just see flames down below.

Hamer ordered the lifeboats lowered but the mountainous seas breaking against the stranded ship ripped one boat from its davit and swept the Captain overboard.

By that time the ship was a furnace …. We had the intention of waiting on board till daylight. [Then] she started exploding down below.

Those who could took to the remaining lifeboat but it was no sooner launched than it was capsized by a wave. Lott was swept to the reef, then back to the ship, and finally, around daybreak, found himself on the beach. In all, five British seamen and six Arab firemen were lost. The 24 survivors were rescued five days later by ships which had set out from Samoa when the first SOS was received.

After two rescue ships arrived from Samoa the survivors were forced to move to the “lee side” of the island because the surf was too severe near the wreck for boats to take them off the island. It is not clear from the available accounts just where on the shore the rescue was effected A note sent by Captain Hamer on December 4th to the captain of one of the rescue ships provides an interesting list of the needs of Europeans marooned on Gardner Island for five days, “… Please send as much water as you can as we have none. We have meat but a case of milk would come in useful as would matches, chlorodyne as some of us have diarrhea and any old boots (one pair size tens) and any old hats and tobacco.” For a complete report of and discussion on the wreck of the Norwich City, see Norwich City.

Extensive official British government records confirm the discovery in 1940 of the partial skeleton of a castaway who perished while attempting to survive on Nikumaroro sometime prior to the island’s settlement in 1939. The remains of a fire, dead birds and a turtle were present. With the bones were found a sextant box bearing a stencilled number that is similar to a number written on a sextant box known to have belonged to Fred Noonan, and the remains of a woman’s shoe and a man’s shoe. Also at the site were “corks with brass chains” thought to have been from a small cask which may have come from the Norwich City supply cache. Similarly, a Benedictine bottle found with the remains may have been part of the cache. Although at first suspected of being the remains of Amelia Earhart, that possibility is later discounted by British authorities after a doctor (with no forensic training) pronounces them to be the bones of a short, stocky male. (Records of the Western Pacific High Commission.)

Although, so far, the present location of the bones themselves is not known, evaluation by modern forensic anthropologists of measurements taken in 1941 indicate that the individual who died on Nikumaroro was most likely a white female of northern European extraction who stood approximately 5 feet, 7 inches tall (not a bad description of Amelia Earhart). (Paper prepared by Dr. Karen Ramey Burns, Dr. Richard Jantz, and Dr. Thomas F. King for the annual meeting of the American Anthropological Association in 1998.)

Other bones are said to have been found near the shipwreck by the island’s first settlers in 1939. (Correspondence with Bauro Tikana in Tarawa in 1991; interview with Emily Sikuli in Fiji in 1999; search operation conducted in 1999.)

So we have 11 lost crew from the shipwreck, any of which could account for the hemaphrodite skeleton that was determined via direct inspection to be male, but is identified by more recently by review of that inspections report to be “likely to be female”.

We have 24 survivors remaining on the island for 5 days with some suffering diarrhea who obviously would be depositing fecal matter.

Those survivors relocated from the wreck to a position on the other side of the island, they would have had fires, food and latrines, they requested rescuers to deliver them boots and tobacco, and of course discarded shoes and jars/containers could all be an outcome of that request. The site where the skeleton was discovered had items from the ship, corks, bottles, could the sextant box also be from the ship?

Why wasn’t the Electra found when a British exploratory expedition visited Gardner Island in October 1937, just three months after the Earhart disappearance?

It does seem highly unlikely that the aircraft was not seen, but several factors may have contributed to the fact that it certainly was not recognized for what it was. Contemporaneous written accounts and photos show that the party made their landing on the reef just south of the wreck of the S.S. Norwich City. At that time, the grounded ship was still intact and thus masked from view the northern portion of the reef edge where the aircraft wreckage is said to have been located. In a photo taken during the visit, the material on the reef is visible but not recognizable as aircraft wreckage. There is no reason to suspect that it would appear differently to the eye than to the camera. It should also be noted that the two British Colonial service officers and nineteen Gilbertese delegates who made up the expedition party probably had no knowledge of the Earhart disappearance at the time of their three-day visit to Gardner Island. Their purpose was to assess the island for future settlement and their attention was focused upon determining whether the island’s soil was suitable for agriculture and upon digging wells in search of potable water. On the southeastern side of the island in the same area, where bones were found three years later, they did come across “signs of previous habitation” described as looking as if “someone had bivouacked for the night.”

Yes we have 21 people visiting the island for 3 days in 1937, yet no mention of the fact that by late 1938 10 men were based on the island building wells and by mid 1939 there were 29 residents of the colony, all of whom could have been bivouacking for the night on the southeastern side of the island at any time prior to the discovery of the bones etc.

This is ALL information stored in the archives on the TIGHAR website, so they obviously have access to it, but it is all apparantly discounted and ignored as being ordinary explanations as they contradict or do not support extraordinary explanations.

None of it is addressed in the FAQ’s.

Regards

Mark Pilkington

Unless I am missing something, Mark, I think your assesment of the ‘evidence’ being “very circumstantial” is exceedingly generous on the investigators. (NB – I note you have now edited out that comment!)Otherwise, I think your appraisal of the investigations is pretty spot on .

Andy,

There’s not a lot there, so its hard to miss anything, it is all still “very” circumstantial and my comment just moved location in the edit, although I think I lost the ” ” around very, which is probably worth emphathising as “VERY”.

Hold on to your hat, I dont think you will be digesting it any time soon.

I dont mind donors, or investigators spending their money and time exploring an hypothesis, but its the very long conclusions being drawn prematurely from scant and uncertain findings that concerns me, and obviously many others.

This earlier report of the “turtle finger” discovery is quite interesting to read particularly for its quotes:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20101218/ap_on_re_us/us_search_for_amelia

By SEAN MURPHY, Associated Press Sean Murphy, Associated Press – Sat Dec 18, 12:47 am ET
NORMAN, Okla. – The three bone fragments turned up on a deserted South Pacific island that lay along the course Amelia Earhart was following when she vanished. Nearby were several tantalizing artifacts: some old makeup, some glass bottles and shells that had been cut open.

Now scientists at the University of Oklahoma hope to extract DNA from the tiny bone chips in tests that could prove Earhart died as a castaway after failing in her 1937 quest to become the first woman to fly around the world.

“There’s no guarantee,” said Ric Gillespie, director of the International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery, a group of aviation enthusiasts in Delaware that found the pieces of bone this year while on an expedition to Nikumaroro Island, about 1,800 miles south of Hawaii.

“You only have to say you have a bone that may be human and may be linked to Earhart and people get excited. But it is true that, if they can get DNA, and if they can match it to Amelia Earhart’s DNA, that’s pretty good.”

It could be months before scientists know for sure — and it could turn out the bones are from a turtle. The fragments were found near a hollowed-out turtle shell that might have been used to collect rain water, but there were no other turtle parts nearby.

Earhart’s disappearance on July 2, 1937, remains one of the 20th century’s most enduring mysteries. Did she run out of fuel and crash at sea? Did her Lockheed Electra develop engine trouble? Did she spot the island from the sky and attempt to land on a nearby reef?

“What were her last moments like? What was she doing? What happened?” asked Robin Jensen, an associate professor of communications at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Ind., who has studied Earhart’s writings and speeches.

Since 1989, Gillespie’s group has made 10 trips to the island, trying each time to find clues that might help determine the fate of Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan.

Last spring, volunteers working at what seemed to be an abandoned campsite found one piece of bone that appeared to be from a neck and another unknown fragment dissimilar to bird or fish bones. A third fragment might be from a finger. The largest of the pieces is just over an inch long.

The area was near a site where native work crews found skeletal remains in 1940. Bird and fish carcasses suggested Westerners had prepared meals there.

“This site tells the story of how someone or some people attempted to live as castaways,” Gillespie said Friday in an interview with The Associated Press. “These fish weren’t eaten like Pacific Islanders” eat fish.

Millions of dollars have been spent in failed attempts to learn what happened to Earhart, a Kansas native declared dead by a California court in early 1939.

The official version says Earhart and Noonan ran out of fuel and crashed at sea while flying from Lae, New Guinea, to Howland Island, which had a landing strip and fuel.

Gillespie’s book “Finding Amelia: The True Story of the Earhart Disappearance,” and “Amelia Earhart’s Shoes,” written by four volunteers from the aircraft group, suggest the pair landed on the reef and survived, perhaps for months, on scant food and rainwater.

Gillespie, a pilot, said the aviator would have needed only about 700 feet of unobstructed space to land because her plane would have been traveling only about 55 mph at touchdown.

“It looks like she could have landed successfully on the reef surrounding the island. It’s very flat and smooth,” Gillespie said. “At low tide, it looks like this place is surrounded by a parking lot.”

However, Gillespie said, the plane, even if it landed safely, would have been slowly dragged into the sea by the tides. The waters off the reef are 1,000 to 2,000 feet deep. His group needs $3 million to $5 million for a deep-sea dive.

The island is on the course Earhart planned to follow from Lae, New Guinea, to Howland Island, which had a landing strip and fuel. Over the last seven decades, searches of the remote atoll have been inconclusive.

After the latest find, anthropologists who had previously worked with Gillespie’s group suggested that he send the bones to the University of Oklahoma’s Molecular Anthropology Laboratory, which has experience extracting genetic material from old bones. Gillespie’s group also has a genetic sample from an Earhart female relative for comparison with the bones.

The lab is looking for mitochondrial DNA, which is passed along only through females, so there is no need to have a Noonan sample.

Cecil Lewis, an assistant professor of anthropology at the lab, said the university received a little more than a gram of bone fragments about two weeks ago. If researchers are able to extract DNA and link it to Earhart, a sample would be sent to another lab for verification.

“Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. That’s why we’re trying to downplay a lot of the media attention right now,” Lewis said. “For all we know, this is just a turtle bone, and a lot of people are going to be very disheartened.”

Under the best circumstances, the analysis would take two weeks. If scientists have trouble with the sample, that time frame could stretch into months, Lewis said.

“Ancient DNA is incredibly unpredictable,” he said.

Other material recovered this year also suggested the presence of Westerners at the isolated island site:

• Someone carried shells ashore before cutting them open and slicing out the meat. Islanders cut the meat out at sea.

• Bottles found nearby were melted on the bottom, suggesting they had been put into a fire, possibly to boil water. (A Coast Guard unit on the island during World War II would have had no need to boil water.)

• Bits of makeup were found. The group is checking to see which products Earhart endorsed and whether an inventory lists specific types of makeup carried on her final trip.

• A glass bottle with remnants of lanolin and oil, possibly hand lotion.

In 2007, the group found a piece of a pocket knife but didn’t know whether it was left by the Coast Guard or castaways. This year, it found the shattered remains of the knife, suggesting someone had smashed it to extract the blades. Gillespie speculated a castaway used a blade to make a spear to stab shallow-water fish like those found at the campsite.

Following Earhart’s disappearance, distress signals picked up by distant ships pointed back to the area of Nikumaroro Island, but while pilots passing over saw signs of recent habitation, the island was crossed off the list as having been searched, Gillespie said.

In 1940, a British overseer on the island recovered a partial human skeleton, a woman’s shoe and an empty sextant box at what appeared to be a former campsite, littered with turtle, clamshell and bird remains.

Thinking of Earhart, the overseer sent the items to Fiji, where a British doctor decided they belonged to a stocky European or mixed-blood male, ruling out any Earhart connection.

The bones later vanished, but in 1998, Gillespie’s group located the doctor’s notes in London. Two other forensic specialists reviewed the doctor’s bone measurements and agreed they were more “consistent with” a female of northern European descent, about Earhart’s age and height.

On their own visits to the island, volunteers recovered an aluminum panel that could be from an Electra, another piece of a woman’s shoe and a “cat’s paw” heel dating from the 1930s; another shoe heel, possibly a man’s, and an oddly cut piece of clear Plexiglas.

The sextant box might have been Noonan’s. The woman’s shoe and heel resemble a blucher-style oxford seen in a pre-takeoff photo of Earhart. The plastic shard is the exact thickness and curvature of an Electra’s side window.

The body of evidence is intriguing, but Gillespie insists the team is “constantly agonizing over whether we are being dragged down a path that isn’t right.”

Associated Press Writer Kelly P. Kissel contributed to this report from Oklahoma City

I dont mind donors, or investigators spending their money and time exploring an hypothesis, but its the very long conclusions being drawn prematurely from scant and uncertain findings that concerns me, and obviously many others.

“You only have to say you have a bone that may be human and may be linked to Earhart and people get excited”

Which is why you would not make public statements until some conclusive analysis had been undertaken?

“Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. That’s why we’re trying to downplay a lot of the media attention right now,” Lewis said. “For all we know, this is just a turtle bone, and a lot of people are going to be very disheartened.”

It good that the Forensic Scientest is being circumspect in assessing this “VERY” circumstantial evidence.

So far we have an island that has sound evidence of some people, and turtles, dwelling on it, at least one person, and one turtle, dying on it, a skeleton from a hermaphradite, and flotsam and jetsum that could have washed up from anyone and anywhere, including a woman’s shoe, jar, and wooden box.

But so far, “no smoking gun” or Lockheed 12.

I note now the call is for $3M-$4M to find the wreck that has apparantly been washed off the reef into deep water, I would have expected it to disintegrate and leave a debris field of engine parts, undercarriage and aluminium? and those elements to be able to be located in and around the reef?

You can spend a lot of time and money looking for a needle in a haystack, and never find it, especially if it was never there?

Unfortunately as there is no evidence of any gold bullion or a large snake being located on Nikumaroro Island the TIGHAR theory lacks conclusive evidence, and risks being overtaken in the media by a more “impressive” and “newsworthy” story! smiles

Regards

Mark Pilkington

Might I humbly suggest that AE’s Electra landed neither on Nikumaroro nor New Guinea surf, but on New Britain?

http://www.electranewbritain.com/

As for TIGHAR’s lack of actual aircraft recovery (despite their claim to be the world’s premier organization at doing so) perhaps:

The International Group for Historic Aircraft Research

The New Britain hypothesis is an interesting one, it relies on apparant multiple eye witnesses of a wreck in the jungle during WW2 that appears to be a pre-war wreck, and the existance of a wreck located by those witnesses seems conclusively documented in Australian Army records.

It is apparantly shown that Earhart’s aircraft “could” return to New Britain, but its not clear “why” no radio communication to that effect is undertaken?

The strong clue to links with Earhart is the recording of an engine type and s/n on the surviving Australian Army Map that seems clearly to refer to the engine from Earhart’s aircraft, and is claimed to be transcribed from a tag taken from the engine by the Army patrol, but later passed on to US Army for identification.

The tag has not been located, and its un-clear who, and when the engine details were recorded on the map.

If genuine, they would seem a definite evidence of Earharts aircraft being in New Britain, of course if not genuine then the obvious conclusion is that they are fraudulently planted by someone.

There has been a number of expeditions to try and relocate the wreck using the Army Patrols map, and a B-17 wreck has been located in the general area.

Obviously if a wreck is found as described by the multiple witnesses, but doesnt contain engines corresponding to these notes on the map, it will either leave the mystery aircraft “still to be found”, or raise further questions as to the authenticity and origin of the transcribed numbers from the tag.

At least this hypothesis has an opportunity to find and resolve its wreck?, as it seems one did exist.

Its much harder to prove something (or someone specific) “was” on an island, (or conclusively prove it “wasnt”) if you cant find it, and have no evidence of something “like it” ever being there).

I tend to agree with the comment in an earlier post above, that the mystery will probably be resolved by a surprise or accidental discovery. (but no – not one with gold bullion and a large snake)

Getting back to TIGHAR the renaming of the organisation to Aircraft Research, would in my mind be a very suitable and appropriate change to reflect its ongoing efforts and expertise, and remove the primary source of criticism.

Of course getting back to the original post that started this thread, if the snake and the bullion turn out to be true, along with the aircraft in the sea of PNG is proven to be Earharts, then there is not only a great “Indiana Jones” movie in the offering, but a new puzzle to explain, and two hypothesis’ gazzumped!

(I somehow think the snake and bullion are the least likely hypothesis to be true – but I look forward to the next installment -smiles)

Regards

Mark Pilkington