THE JOURNAL OF THE INTERNATIONAL GROUP FOR

TIGHAR TRACKS
THE JOURNAL OF THE INTERNATIONAL GROUP FOR HISTORIC AIRCRAFT RECOVERY
August 2006
© TIGHAR 2006
Volume 22 #2
Contents
Finding Amelia............................................ 3
Detective Story.......................................... 14
TIGHAR News Briefs ............................... 21
The Devastator Project .................... 21
… that they might escape the teeth of time and
the hands of mistaken zeal.
– John Aubrey
Stonehenge Manuscripts
1660
Where is Yap? .................................... 21
A Sad Story ........................................ 22
The Enlightenment ........................... 23
On the Cover
About TIGHAR
TIGHAR (pronounced “tiger”) is the acronym for The
International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery,a nonprofit foundation dedicated to promoting responsible
aviation archeology and historic preservation. TIGHAR’s
activities include:
•
Compiling and verifying reports of rare and historic
aircraft surviving in remote areas.
•
Conducting investigations and recovery expeditions in co-operation with museums and collections
worldwide.
•
Serving as a voice for integrity, responsiblity, and
professionalism in the field of aviation historic
preservation.
TIGHAR maintains no collection of its own, nor
does it engage in the restoration or buying and selling
of artifacts.The foundation devotes its resources to the
saving of endangered historic aircraft wherever they
may be found, and to the education of the international
public in the need to preserve the relics of the history
of flight.
TIGHAR Tracks is the official publication of The
International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery. A
subscription to TIGHAR Tracks is included as part of
membership in the foundation (minimum donation
$55.00 per year).The editors welcome contributions of
written material and artwork. Materials should be addressed to: Editors, TIGHAR Tracks, 2812 Fawkes Drive,
Wilmington, DE 19808 USA; telephone (302) 994-4410,
fax (302) 994-7945; email [email protected]. Photographs and artwork will be returned on request.
TIGHAR Tracks p. 2
This photo of Amelia Earhart at the
controls of her Lockheed Model 10E Special was selected by the Naval Institute
Press for the cover of TIGHAR’s forthcoming book, Finding Amelia, the True Story
of the Earhart Disappearance. TIGHAR
Collection.
On the Web
http://www.tighar.org
Board of Directors
Arthur Carty
Richard B. Gifford
Richard E. Gillespie
Thomas F. King, Ph.D.
Peter Paul Luce
Russell E. Matthews
Richard J. Reynolds
John Sawyer, Chairman
Patricia R. Thrasher
Finding Amelia means finding the real Amelia behind the public persona and
understanding the events that led to an empty sky over Howland Island.
Finding Amelia means sailing with the searchers, feeling their frustrations,
and following their failures. Ultimately, finding Amelia means realizing
that there was always more confusion than there was mystery.
— From the introduction to
Finding Amelia: The True Story of the Earhart Disappearance
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T
he manuscript of TIGHAR’s book was completed and submitted
to the Naval Institute Press in March. The editing was completed
in May and we asked the publisher to send a copy of the page
proofs to Professor Mark R. Peattie at Stanford University’s
Hoover Institute for Asia-Pacific Studies. We have great respect
for Professor Peattie as a leading scholar in the field of 20 th
century Pacific history and the author of several important
historical works including Nan’yo – The Rise and Fall of the
Japanese in Micronesia, 1885-1945 (University of Hawaii Press,
1988), and Sunburst – The Rise of Japanese Naval Air Power,
1909-1941 ( Naval Institute Press, 2001). We asked him to read
Finding Amelia and, if he liked it, to write a brief foreword for
the book. His response a few weeks later left us a bit stunned
and humbled.
“I have finished Finding Amelia and thought it superb. It
is first-rate history, carefully researched, tightly organized,
and eloquently written. … You have honored me in asking me to
draft this foreword. My heartiest congratulations on your superb manuscript. I
suspect it of being a classic.”
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Foreword
by Mark R. Peattie, Ph.D.
I
t is difficult to write about a legend. Write too richly, and you merely add to the fable; write
too cynically, and you will be a mere debunker. It is even more difficult when the legend
vanishes into oblivion. Yet, in these pages on the disappearance of Amelia Earhart, one of
America’s most famous aviators, Richard Gillespie has not only avoided these treacherous
shoals but has also produced a narrative of epic scale, for he deals with the greatest elements
of tragedy: human error and its awesome consequences.
Of Earhart herself, Gillespie writes with admirable professional detachment. “Earhart’s
piloting skills,” he tells us, “were average at best, but good looks, genuine courage, a talent for
August 2006 p. 3
writing, and [her husband] George Putnam’s genius for promotion and media manipulation
… made her one of America’s most famous and admired women.”
Yet Earhart is not really Gillespie’s focus. Rather, it is the harrowing account, as far as
anyone can trace it, of her last flight into the vast oblivion of the Pacific. In writing it, Gillespie
has had to deal with three main challenges. First, that there is no incontrovertible physical
evidence as to her fate, and what slender artifacts exist can at best provide the stuff of intelligent conjecture. Second, the most abundant evidence surrounding her disappearance is
electronic—the records of radio telephone and telegraph—and those records have been so
voluminous, at times so contradictory, and on occasion so self-serving by those who sent them,
that the totality of their meaning and import have been not been clear until now. Third, much
heat but little light has been generated by the unfounded assertions, the irrational theories,
and the melodramatic perspectives of several generations of amateur Earhart sleuth/enthusiasts who have had extreme opinions but little fact to buttress them. Like curiosity seekers
at a crime scene, they have merely raised the level of confusion.
Gillespie has brought to his task an array of formidable qualifications to research and write
what will probably be the most detailed and factual account of Amelia Earhart’s disappearance and the massive and failed attempt to find her that we shall ever have. An experienced
general aviation pilot himself, a longtime risk-management specialist and aviation accident
investigator, and a rigorous and determined researcher, he has tracked down numerous
leads in government, business, industry, and aviation circles and has led a number of wellconceived and -organized search expeditions to the Equator and the possible terminus of
Earhart’s flight.
Over the decades, the author’s search has involved him in investigations across a small
range of artifacts—buttons, shoes, pieces of aluminum; in a painstaking study of radio logs
and photographic and cartographic data; and in a growing familiarity with such esoterica
as tidal research and geomorphology. Where the trail has led to a dead end he has had the
courage and good sense to drop it and seek answers elsewhere. But of all Gillespie’s tasks,
none has been more important and more challenging than the collection, sorting out, and
reintegration of the mass of radio communications surrounding the flight and the rescue effort into a comprehensible narrative, an effort that has combined careful and comparative
analysis with the sensitivities of a skilled storyteller to weave a compelling narrative.
And what a narrative it is. Like viewers at a rerun of the old newsreel of the presidential
motorcade entering Dallas on the morning of November 22, 1963, we read with growing dread
of the Earhart departure from Lae, New Guinea, for her destination of Howland Island, a flyspeck on the map of the Pacific, knowing that she and her navigator, Fred Noonan, will never
arrive. Thanks to Gillespie we also know how multiple were the miscalculations (a number
by Earhart herself), the misapprehensions, the faulty equipment, and the faulty information
that set her Lockheed Electra on its fatal trajectory and crippled all attempts to guide the
pilot to a safe landing.
One reflects, too, on the fact that Earhart was six decades too early for access to a vital
electronic system—global positioning—that could have identified for her and those seeking
her where she was in the vastness of the ocean. Throughout the story, the hiss and crackle
of empty airwaves that mark the futile efforts of Earhart and her would-be rescuers to communicate their locations to each other are a threnody of encroaching disaster. From this
account it is also obvious, though not clearly stated, that the end of the crew of the Electra
must have been quite terrible—death by drowning in the wreckage of a sinking aircraft or slow
dehydration and death on the burning shores of a remote and uninhabited atoll hundreds of
miles off their original course.
On other stages and at other times, Ric Gillespie has proposed a detailed and persuasive,
if not conclusive, explanation of what happened to Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan. I myself do not pretend to have strong views about her fate, nor would I argue that Gillespie has
presented the final solution to the mystery of her disappearance. Indeed, in these pages, the
TIGHAR Tracks p. 4
author himself has not made this claim. He has, instead, attempted the most complete and
fact-based history of the Earhart puzzle yet written. Brilliantly, he only hints at an explanation for the Earhart enigma here on the book’s last page, a suggestion left hauntingly in the
air for us to ponder.
As a historian, I think I know good history when I read it. By its display of technological
expertise, by its careful weighing of complex evidence, by its objectivity, and by its humanity,
this is certainly first-rate history.
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The only fault we could find with Prof.
Peattie’s glowing Foreword was that it,
perhaps understandably, focuses on the
author rather than on the TIGHAR research
and financial support that made the book
possible. We therefore made sure that the
Acknowledgments section immediately follows the Foreword and makes it clear to the
reader that the research that went into Finding Amelia was a group effort and whatever
acclaim the book may receive is a reflection
on the entire TIGHAR membership.
While the inside of the book was being
finalized, the outside was being designed.
A picture of Amelia on the cover was a nobrainer, but which picture? Just as the book
makes every effort to portray Earhart as she
really was, we felt strongly that the book’s
cover should show her in the context of the
events described in its pages (rather than,
for example, a helmeted and goggled Amelia
of an earlier time). The publisher wholeheartedly agreed and we settled on a great shot of
AE in the cockpit of the Electra.
With the 300-page book written, edited,
designed and ready to go into production,
we still needed to produce the master for
the Finding Amelia Research Library DVD
that will accompany each copy of the book.
Assembling, scanning and, where necessary, restoring the historical documents
that are linked to the book’s nearly one
thousand footnotes was a task that had
been in process during the year it took to
write the manuscript. When rendered as
Portable Document Format (PDF) files we
had over a gigabyte of material – by far the
most extensive collection of primary source
information on the Earhart disappearance
ever published. A user-friendly interface
designed by Morningstar Interactive (www.
morningstarinteractive.com) allows anyone
with a computer equipped with a DVD drive
(PC or Mac) to quickly and easily check the
citations in the text or browse thousands of
radio messages, letters, telegrams, maps and
logbook entries. As promised, the DVD also
includes a tribute to the 97 members, listed
by name, of the TIGHAR Literary Guild.
Now that the book is in production we
can no longer publish complete draft chapters for TIGHAR member review but we are
pleased to offer a preview of some of the later
chapters and present the finalized Table of
Contents.
3
August 2006 p. 5
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From
Chapter 11
The Search Begins
The First Day
A
n hour and a quarter after the expiration of the noon fuel deadline,
and three hours after Commander Thompson first reported Earhart’s
“non-arrival” at Howland, the Coast Guard’s San Francisco Division
received a terse message from Itasca: “Earhart unreported Howland at
12:00. Believe down shortly after 09:15 A.M. Searching probable area and
will continue.”
Amelia Earhart was officially missing and presumed down. Thompson
now believed that the plane had been in the water for four hours, but, again,
he did not explain his reasoning. He seems to have taken the “one-half hour
gas left” version of the 7:42 message and applied it to the 8:43 “We are on
the line . . .” message to arrive at his estimate that the plane had landed in
the ocean shortly after 9:15.”
Later that afternoon, Commander Thompson received a message
from San Francisco Division: “Possibility plane may attempt use of radio
on water as radio supply was battery and antenna could be used on top
of wing. Putnam and Lockheed state possibility of floating considerable
time excellent and that emergency rubber boat and plenty of emergency
rations carried on plane.”
The message appeared to provide important new information. In fact, it was nothing more
than wishful thinking. Technicians familiar with Earhart’s Electra would later confirm that the
plane could not send radio transmissions if it was afloat on the ocean. The news about a rubber
boat and rations was speculation. No one in the United States, including Putnam, could possibly
have known what emergency gear was aboard the aircraft on the Lae–Howland flight.
About an hour after San Francisco advised that the plane “may attempt use of radio on
water,” Itasca came back with: “Request frequencies Earhart emergency transmitter.” Nobody
had said anything about an emergency transmitter, but San Francisco replied, “Same as main
transmitter. Possibility plane may be able receive Itasca 3105 voice.” The message compounded
Itasca’s misimpressions by seeming to confirm the presence of an emergency radio.
…
In Hawaii, Admiral Murfin was marshaling what few search resources he had. In 1937, Pearl
Harbor was not yet the home of the Pacific Fleet. At Fleet Air Base, however, Patrol Squadron
Six (VP-6) was equipped with the new long-range PBY-1. In theory, one of these aircraft could
make the sixteen-hundred-mile flight from Honolulu to Howland by flying all night and, on arrival in the morning, still have enough fuel to conduct aerial search operations all day. In the
evening, the plane could land and refuel using the gasoline originally intended for Earhart. But
such a flight would involve significant risks.
First of all, the navy air crew would need to find Howland Island at the end of a very long
overwater flight. In other words, they would have to do what Earhart and Noonan had just failed
to do. If they did succeed in locating the island, they could not use the airfield. The PBY-1 was
a flying boat; it would have to land offshore and refuel alongside Itasca. But flying boats were
designed to land and take off in the protected waters of harbors and lagoons. Open-ocean operations in less than ideal sea conditions were extremely hazardous. The aircraft commander, VP-6
squadron leader Lt. Warren Harvey, later described the situation in a letter to his mother:
TIGHAR Tracks p. 6
The flight never had much chance of success because of the distance involved, the total lack
of facilities in that area, and total lack of information as to where to look. My prospects of
cracking up were about 10 to 1 after searching for a little over 10 hours. I would have had to
land down there by sundown in the open sea which had heavy swells with numerous white
caps showing. There is no anchorage available either for a plane or a ship so the Itasca would
have tried to take me in tow for several days until our small tender [USS Swan] could arrive
to hoist me on board. Even the tender would have broken the plane’s hull because the plane
was bigger than the available space.
Admiral Murfin ordered the mission to proceed, but he was careful to hedge his bet. As Lieutenant
Harvey later told his mother: “[M]y orders on leaving here were not to hesitate to return if any adverse conditions were encountered.”
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From
Chapter 14
Voices
The Second Night
W
hile Bellarts was struggling with the off-frequency signal, Paul Yat Lum on Baker Island,
listening on 3105 kilocycles, signaled that he “heard Earhart plane, S4, R7.”4 According to
the 1937 edition of the Radio Amateur’s Handbook, an S4 signal (strength 4 on a scale of
1 to 5) was “good, readable.” An R7 reception (readability 7 on a scale of 1 to 9) was a “good
strong signal, such as copiable through interference.”
The signal received at Baker Island was markedly different from anything that had been
heard so far. On the previous night, stations in and around the search area had reported dashes
and faint, unintelligible voice signals in apparent response to Itasca’s calls to Earhart. Now a
government radio operator in the search area had heard a clear and strong transmission he
unequivocally identified as being from the missing plane.
Who did Paul Lum hear? Itasca, under orders from headquarters, was no longer transmitting on Earhart’s frequencies, so he did not overhear and misunderstand a call from the cutter.
If Lum heard a strong signal at Baker, others in the region should have heard it too—if they
were listening; but mostly they were not. Aboard Itasca, Bellarts was off frequency at the time.
Howland Island was not listening at all. In Hawaii, the Pan American Airways station would not
begin its radio watch on Earhart’s frequency for another ten minutes. The only other station
known to have been monitoring 3105 at that moment was the Coast Guard’s Hawaiian Section.
Operators there were hearing a weak carrier wave but no distinguishable voice.
If Baker Island and the Hawaiian Section were hearing the same transmission, whether
sent from the plane or by a hoaxer, the origin point was almost certainly much closer to Baker
than to Hawaii. A hoaxer could have been aboard a ship, and a ship could be anywhere, but
if the transmission heard at Baker and Honolulu was genuine, the Electra had to be on land,
and the land had to be otherwise uninhabited. Most of the island groups in the Central Pacific
were densely populated. Only the Phoenix group remained largely unsettled. The uninhabited
southwestern islands of the archipelago are 350 miles south of Baker Island and more than
2000 miles from Hawaii. If Earhart’s Electra was on one of those islands, the probability of a
voice transmission from the aircraft being received at Baker Island as a good strong signal
is 99 percent. The chance of the Coast Guard’s Hawaiian Section hearing an understandable
voice message sent from the Phoenix group is only a little better than 2 percent. If the Hawaii
operators heard anything at all, it would probably be only the underlying carrier wave, just
as they reported.
August 2006 p. 7
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From
Chapter 15
Negative Results
The Third Day
O
n Independence Day morning, the American public awoke to the news that Amelia was
out there somewhere calling for help but her signals were dying out. The navy plane had
been forced to turn back, but now a battleship and an aircraft carrier were rushing to her
rescue. It was not drama. It was melodrama.
Truth be told, the press had jumped the gun. The navy had not yet committed to sending
the aircraft carrier and its escort of destroyers. Reporters had found out that USS Lexington
had been ordered to “prepare for a south seas cruise that might last four weeks.” Word had
also leaked that the naval air station at North Island in San Diego was preparing to put “six
squadrons of aircraft” aboard the carrier. There could be no doubt about the ship’s projected
mission.
At noon in Washington, the chief of naval operations did the only thing he could do. He
issued the order to the commander in chief of the U.S. Fleet: “When Lexington Group is in all
respects ready, proceed to assist in search for Earhart plane. Cooperate with Commandant
Fourteenth Naval District, Colorado, and Itasca.”
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From
Chapter 16
Bearings
The Third Night
Two minutes later, Wake resumed its listening watch on 3105 and the operator in charge,
R. M. Hansen, soon heard “a very unsteady voice modulated carrier.” The signal was strong,
strength 5, an unreadable male voice just like the one he had heard the night before. The
signals continued for thirteen minutes, gradually fading to strength 2 before stopping. In his
official summary, written a few days later, Hansen reported that, during that time:
I was able to get an approximate bearing of 144 degrees. In spite of the extreme eccentricity
of this signal during the entire length of the transmission, the splits were definite and pretty
fair. . . . At the time I believed this bearing to be reasonable [sic] accurate and I am still of
that opinion. After I obtained the observed bearing, I advised Midway to listen for the signal
(couldn’t raise Hawaii). He apparently did not hear it. . . . The characteristics of this signal
were identical with those of the signal mentioned as being heard the previous night . . . with
the exception that . . . the complete periods of no signal occurred during shorter intervals. .
. . While no identification call letters were distinguished in either case, I was positive at the
time that this was KHAQQ. At this date, I am still of this opinion.
Hansen’s statement was by far the most confident assertion that a reasonably accurate
bearing had been taken on a signal sent from the missing plane. Like the majority of the other
bearings, a 144 degree line from Wake passes near McKean and Gardner, the southwestern
islands of the Phoenix group.
TIGHAR Tracks p. 8
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From
Chapter 19
The Most Likely Place
Colorado Arrives
That day, Wednesday, July 7, the admiral assured the gentlemen of the press that the answer to the question on everyone’s
mind would soon be answered: “Admiral Orin G. Murfin, directing
the search, said today it should be known by mid-afternoon Monday
whether the round-the-world flier and her navigator are still alive. . . .
[T]he aircraft carrier Lexington should reach the search area Monday
morning. If it used all its planes, it would be able to scout thoroughly
36,000 square miles about the Phoenix Islands in six hours.”
Others felt that the evidence warranted a more exhaustive examination of the islands. “Friends of George Palmer Putnam, Miss
Earhart’s husband, expressed belief there would be grounds for continuing the search another two weeks, even if no further word came
from the lost plane. . . . The five feverish nights of radio manifestations
so convinced observers of Miss Earhart’s safety that they said there
would be justification for searching the southern island area over and
over. . . . Mr. Putnam reiterated his theory that Miss Earhart was on
solid footing somewhere in the Phoenix Islands area.”
Admiral Murfin
Whether Lexington’s sixty-three airplanes and escort of three
destroyers were to spend six hours or two weeks searching for the lost Electra, there was general agreement that the Phoenix group was the place to look. A surviving map from Fourteenth
District Headquarters documents the rationale for Murfin’s remarks and suggests a special focus
on McKean and Gardner islands. The map is physically quite large, measuring three feet by
four and a half feet, and is festooned with hand-drawn lines and notations. It covers the NorthCentral Pacific east to west from Hawaii to the Marianas, but it extends southward only as far
as latitude 2°S – not far enough to show the Phoenix group. Drawn on the map are Earhart’s
route from Lae to Howland and various notations about ship positions. Lines of latitude and
longitude have been added by hand at the bottom of the map, but only two of the eight islands
of the Phoenix group have been plotted: McKean and Gardner. Drawn and labeled are Earhart’s
157–337 degree line of position through Howland, Pan American’s 144 degree bearing from Wake
and 213 degree bearing from Mokapu, and Cipriani’s south-southeast bearing from Howland.
All four lines cross near Gardner Island.
…
On the day the Earhart flight disappeared, before sending Colorado south, Admiral Murfin
had called a meeting of senior officers to review the available information and solicit opinions.
On Lexington’s anchoring at Lahaina six days later, he again convened a conference. At noon,
a patrol plane from Fleet Air Base landed alongside Lexington to take the ship’s commanding
officer, Capt. Leigh Noyes; two officer assistants; and the officer in charge of the Lexington
Group, Capt. J. S. Dowell, to Fourteenth Naval District Headquarters. Captain Dowell returned
to Lahaina late that night aboard one of the destroyers, but Captain Noyes stayed ashore and
continued consultations with Admiral Murfin the next morning, returning to his ship by plane
at 10:30 A.M.
During the meetings at Pearl Harbor, the admiral’s subsequent report stated, “all available
information and studies of the weather and probable location of the Earhart plane were made
August 2006 p. 9
available to the Lexington Group.” The available information is described in a six-page paper
entitled “Discussion as to the Best Area in Which to Conduct Search.” The unsigned, undated
paper was included as part of the “Report of Earhart Search—U.S.S. Lexington, July 1937” later
submitted by Captain Noyes. It appears to have been written after the July 8 conference but
before the Lexington Group reached the search area on the eleventh.
The document represents a major shift in the search for the missing fliers. Before the conference, the navy had identified the islands of the Phoenix group, especially McKean and Gardner,
as the most likely place for the plane to be found. That decision was based on evidence that
emerged during the first few days after the disappearance as Colorado hurried south to join
the search. Itasca had reported that Earhart said she was running on a 157–337 degree line.
As Captain Friedell put it, navigational logic dictated that “to the Air navigator with position
in doubt and flying a land plane it is apparent that the thing to do would be to steer down the
line toward the most probable land.” The Coast Guard and the navy had received what they
believed were genuine radio calls from the missing plane. Numerous amateurs also claimed
to have heard Earhart, and at least some had been checked out and judged to be credible.
Lockheed technicians who were familiar with Earhart’s Electra were adamant that the plane
had to be on land and able to operate the right-hand, generator-equipped engine to be able to
transmit. The most confident bearings taken by Pan American indicated that the signals were
coming from the vicinity of Gardner Island.
TIGHAR Tracks p. 10
Whether the lost fliers were really there or not, the facts on which the navy based the
decision to search the islands were at least accurately presented. Unfortunately, much of the
data used to formulate the Lexington Group’s search plan were not. The analysis of Earhart’s
flight in the “Discussion as to the Best Area in Which to Conduct Search” is based on information selected from Commander Thompson’s contradictory and often distorted descriptions of
Earhart’s in-flight radio transmissions.
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From
Chapter 21
We Will Find Amelia Tomorrow
The Lexington Search
It was July 10, 1937, and Amelia Earhart’s Electra had been missing for eight days. The
navy had been in charge of the entire search for four days, and the Lexington Group’s strategy
had been in place for two days, when Admiral Murfin decided it would be a good idea to get
some basic information about the missing airplane. That morning, he sent a message to his
counterpart at the Eleventh Naval District in California asking him to contact the Lockheed
Aircraft Company in Burbank for the answers to four questions about the aircraft’s capabilities. What was the plane’s total fuel capacity? How far could it fly on 1100 gallons of gas? What
was its economical cruising speed? And what was the maximum distance the plane could fly
at an average fuel consumption of 53 gallons per hour? He explained that his inquiries were
“based on established facts that Earhart plane took off with eleven hundred gallons fuel and
remained in air about twenty and three quarter hours.”
Murfin based his certainty about the plane’s fuel load on a July 5 message sent out by the
Coast Guard’s San Francisco Division: “Lae verified that Earhart took off with 1100 gallons gas.
Estimated flight time 24 to 30 hours.” His “established fact” that the Electra remained in the
air for only twenty and three quarters hours, however, was not a fact at all. It was speculation based on the assumption that the plane ran out of gas about half an hour after the last
in-flight radio transmission heard by Itasca. The 53 gallon per hour figure assumed that the
plane burned through 1100 hundred gallons of fuel in 20.75 hours.
Lockheed answered Murfin’s questions promptly. Earhart’s Electra could hold a total of
1151 gallons of gas. With 1100 gallons aboard, discounting headwinds or tailwinds, it could
cover 3600 miles at its economical cruising speed of 150 miles per hour. But the engineers
and technicians at Lockheed said that 53 gallons per hour was the wrong number. They also
disagreed with the statement that the plane ran out of gas after only 20.75 hours: “Earhart,
to our best belief, in air twenty-four and half hours. Took off with 1100 gallons. Her average
cruising speed should have been 150 miles per hour. Her maximum flight should have been
about 3600 miles in still air. We figure her average economical fuel consumption at 45 gallons
an hour. . . . Base all estimates on fact that plane would average forty-five gallons per hour
fuel consumption and approximately 150 miles per hour ground speed still air.”
Lockheed’s response was inconvenient. Forty-five gallons per hour and twenty-four and
a half hours aloft fit well with the idea that the plane might have reached one of the islands
in the Phoenix group, but the navy’s new search plan was based on the assumption “that the
plane landed shortly after 0855 [on July 2] on the water within 120 miles of Howland Island.”
On Sunday morning, July 11, 1937, three hours after he received Lockheed’s comments, Murfin
ordered Captain Dowell to “take charge [of] all units in search area. Search of Phoenix Group
area considered completed.”
August 2006 p. 11
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From
Chapter 22
Banquo’s Ghost
Explaining Failure
In the picture Warner Thompson painted, his ship’s valiant efforts to meet Earhart’s
unreasonable requests had been defeated by the flier’s own incompetence. In his discussion
of the search, Thompson mounted a full frontal assault on the notion that radio calls had been
sent from the plane after it was down: “Since 10:00 in the morning Itasca had been endeavoring to contact the Earhart plane by repeatedly calling the plane as the Itasca searched the
immediate sector where it thought the plane was down. From this time on the Itasca’s signal
as picked up by other units are steadily reported as possible signals from other sources. A
careful check of the Itasca radio logs shows that in most cases the signals were originated
by Itasca.” The statement is patently untrue. A careful check of Itasca’s radio logs shows that
not one of the purported receptions from the plane corresponds with a transmission by the
cutter. In fact, Itasca’s own radio operators logged more unexplained signals on Earhart’s
frequency—forty-four in all—than any other station.
Over the first several days of the search, information flowed in to Itasca about the suspected distress calls received by the Coast Guard Hawaiian Section, Navy Radio Wailupe, Pan
American, and various amateurs. The cutter, however, shared virtually no information about
what its own radio operators were hearing. After the search, Thompson did not include the
ship’s complete radio logs as part of his report. The few excerpts in “Radio Transcripts—Earhart Flight” appear to be the only representations of the logs seen by anyone other than the
ship’s own officers and radiomen.
Thompson’s report does not reveal that on the night of July 4, the radio operator on
Howland unequivocally reported that he had recently “heard Earhart call Itasca.” In the same
message, the Howland operator passed along the information that “Baker [Island] heard Earhart plane QSA 4 [strength 4 of 5], R7 [readability 7 of 9] last nite at 8:20 P.M.”
Thompson, in fact, specifically denied that such receptions had been reported: “The
Itasca was never convinced that signals were received from Earhart or that the plane was
transmitting. The Itasca with two (2) operators, the Swan, Howland and Baker were closest
to the signals. None of these units heard the apparently faked messages.”
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The book and DVD are scheduled for release in late September and represent a truly
incredible amount of information for the recommended retail price of $28.95. Members of
the Literary Guild will, of course, receive free copies inscribed by the author. If you’re not
yet a member, you can still join the Guild and receive your inscribed copy of Finding Amelia. Otherwise, you can pre-order your copy from the Naval Institute Press at 800.233.8764,
or via either the TIGHAR website (www.tighar.org) or the book’s own website at www.
findingamelia.com. The Finding Amelia website also features excerpts from the book, a
complete table of contents for the DVD, a profile of the author, an updated list of Literary
Guild members, an online discussion group, and much more.
Next year, 2007, will mark the seventieth anniversary of the disappearance of Amelia
Earhart. We want to make Finding Amelia a major part of that commemoration. Widespread
TIGHAR Tracks p. 12
public recognition of the important new information presented in the book could bring
the sponsorship we need to return to Nikumaroro with the team, the time, and technology
we need to find the conclusive physical evidence we’re convinced is there. Please use the
enclosed flyer to join the TIGHAR Literary Guild. Your help in promoting the book will be
just as important as your help in writing it.
TIGHAR · Literary Guild · 2812 Fawkes Drive · Wilmington, DE 19808
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Finding Amelia
Table of Contents
Foreword
Introduction
Chapter 1: An Airport In The Ocean
The American Equatorial Islands
Chapter 2: Kamakaiwi Field
Preparations for the First World Flight Attempt
Chapter 3: Hawaiian Debacle
The Luke Field Accident
Chapter 4: Reversals
Preparations for the Second World Flight Attempt
Chapter 5: Not For Publication
Crossing the South Atlantic
Chapter 6: Stand To Sea
Preparations for the Flight to Howland Island
Chapter 7: The Long Road To Lae
Delays on the Way to New Guinea
Chapter 8: Denmark’s A Prison
Confusion and Frustration in Lae
Chapter 9: Lost
Communications Failure on the Flight to
Howland Island
Chapter 10: Probably Down
The Last In-Flight Radio Messages
Chapter 12: Think it is Plane?
The First Night
Chapter 13: Hoaxes and Hopes
The Second Day
Chapter 14: Voices
The Second Night
Chapter 15: Negative Results
The Third Day
Chapter 16: Bearings
The Third Night
Chapter 17: Betty’s Notebook
The Fourth Day
Chapter 18; 281 North:
The Fourth Night
Chapter 19: The Most Likely Place
Colorado Arrives
Chapter 20: Signs Of Recent Habitation
The Search of the Phoenix Group
Chapter 21: We Will Find Amelia Tomorrow
The Lexington Search
Chapter 22: Banquo’s Ghost
Explaining Failure
Epilogue
Chapter 11: The Search Begins
The First Day
B
August 2006 p. 13
n the course of TIGHAR’s eighteenyear (and counting) investigation of
the Earhart disappearance and our
seven (so far) archaeological expeditions to
Nikumaroro, we have recovered hundreds
of artifacts. Many are small items collected
primarily for the purpose of establishing
context so that we know what sorts of objects are “normal” debris from the years the
island was inhabited (1939 to 1963). Some in
this category were clearly once part of an airplane. We have, for example, recovered several small combs fashioned
from aircraft aluminum.
These were popular items
throughout the region in the
years after WWII, as were fishing lures and decorative inlays
for wood carvings made by cutting sheet aluminum into small
pieces. Because the composition of aircraft aluminum was
the same before, during and after the war,
these small artifacts are of little help except
in documenting that the people who lived
on Nikumaroro made use of sheet aluminum
when they could get it, and that they did so
by cutting it up. All of the airplane-related
artifacts were found in formerly inhabited
areas.
A few larger scraps of aircraft aluminum
have been somewhat more informative.
We’ve been able to match four artifacts to a
particular aircraft type via either a surviving
part number or a distinctive rivet pattern.
In each case, the piece came from a B-24.
The only aircraft that visited Nikumaroro
TIGHAR Tracks p. 14
during the war were PBYs bringing mail and
perishable supplies to the Coat Guard Loran
station. None was lost or even damaged in
those operations but on July 19, 1944, at the
big U.S. base on Canton Island two hundred
miles away, a Liberator crashed on the reef
shortly after takeoff and came to rest in 30
feet of water. The bodies of the five crewmen
were recovered but navy divers judged the
wreck too dangerous to salvage. It seems
reasonable to speculate that, over the years,
as the B-24 wreckage began to break up in
the surf, pieces of aluminum washed ashore.
During the 1950s, people from Nikumaroro
found employment on Canton Island, which
had become an important refueling stop for
trans-pacific airline traffic. It’s not hard to
imagine them bringing useful bits of wreckage home to Nikumaroro.
On December 17, 1943 an Army C-47
crashed and burned on Sydney Island some
two hundred miles east of Nikumaroro. Although pieces of the wreckage were put to
use by the local population, and although
people from Sydney are known to have
settled on Nikumaroro after the war, no debris identifiable as having come from a C-47
has turned up on the island. We don’t know
why. Sydney had an established settlement
and it may be that the airplane wreckage was
considered to be a local asset that should
not be exported. Canton, by contrast, was no
one’s home island. It was just a place to work.
Useful debris found there may have been
unencumbered by issues of ownership.
A few pieces of aircraft debris found on
Nikumaroro seem to offer the possibility
that they might be from the Earhart Electra.
TIGHAR Artifact 2-3-V-2 is a fragment of Plexiglas that matches the thickness, color and
curvature of Lockheed Part Number 40552,
the cabin windows of the Lockheed Model 10
(see TIGHAR Tracks Vol. 12, No. 1, March 31,
1996*). TIGHAR Artifact 2-2-V-1 is a section
of .032 aircraft skin that might have been
part a repaired section of Earhart’s airplane
(see TIGHAR Tracks Vol. 8, No. 3, April 30,
1992 and TIGHAR Tracks Vol. 9, No. 1, January 15, 1993). Coincidence and speculation,
however, do not a smoking gun make.
Another group of aviation artifacts recovered from Nikumaroro appear to have more
potential. Like the others, they were found in
the abandoned village and are clearly scraps
left over from local use of salvaged airplane
parts. They represent at least three and
probably four separate, and fairly complex,
structures which, in their original form, were
virtually identical. No part numbers appear
anywhere on the artifacts, suggesting that
they are civilian rather than military in origin.
The big questions, of course, are what are
they for and where did they come from?
Artifact 2-1-V-18
he first, and most complete, example
was recovered during our very first
expedition to Nikumaroro in 1989.
We discovered Artifact 2-1-V-18 lying on
the ground near the remains of the village
carpenter shop. All we knew at the time was
that it was an odd-looking riveted aluminum
* Back issues of TIGHAR Tracks are available on CDs, five
years per CD, 1985 through 2005. Order on line at www.
tighar.org or by calling 302.994.4410.
structure with a fragment of some kind of
insulating material stuck to one side.
Metallurgists at the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) laboratories in
Washington, DC identified the alloys but
couldn’t tell us what the structure was used
for. They did, however, manage to lose the
insulation fragment. Seniors technicians at a
shop that installs business aircraft interiors
later identified the artifact as a “dado” – a
panel, often insulated, which covers and protects the juncture of the aircraft’s cabin flooring and the fabric-covered interior wall (see
TIGHAR Tracks, Vol. 11, No. 3, September 11,
1995). Military aircraft do not normally feature dados. The only civilian aircraft known
to have been wrecked on Canton Island
was an FAA Constellation that crashed and
burned in 1962. By that time, the settlement
on Nikumaroro was already in the process
of being abandoned.
With no apparent alternative explanation,
we considered whether the dado might have
come from the civilian aircraft we suspected
had been wrecked on Nikumaroro in 1937
– but did Earhart’s Electra even have dados?
We looked closely at all of the available plans and photos but no dados
were apparent. The origin of Artifact
2-1-V-18 joined a growing list of unanswered, and perhaps unanswerable,
questions about objects we had
found on Nikumaroro.
Then, in 2003, TIGHAR’s seventh
expedition to Nikumaroro found two
more “dados” near where we recovered the first one fourteen years
before. These were somewhat longer and
in much worse condition than 2-1-V-18 but
they were, without question, the same type
of component.
A close review of our collection revealed
that another piece of aluminum sheet found
in the same area in 1989, Artifact 2-1-V-2,
matches the alloy type and general dimensions of the “dados.” One unidentified artifact is a curiosity. Four examples of the same
August 2006 p. 15
Artifact 2-7-V-1
Artifact 2-7-V-2
unidentified aircraft component in the same
location is a red flag that something interesting is going on. It was beginning to look like
the area around the old carpenter’s shop
on Nikumaroro was dirty with dados.
Where had they come from? What were
we missing?
Whenever we’re confronted with an
apparently unsolvable puzzle, we back
up and re-examine the supposed facts of
the case. Reviewing our reconstruction of
2-1-V-18, we found a mistake. Rust marks
left by “Tinnerman” fasteners showed that
two holes we had previously identified as
“mounting holes” were, in fact, used for
securing the insulation to the face of the
dado. It seems like a small detail, but it
changed everything. Without mounting
holes, there was no way to attach the dado
to the cabin wall. The only way to affix the
object to anything was via the right angle
flange along the bottom. The holes in the
flange were not rivet holes but were, instead, meant to accommodate screws or,
more probably, nails (as evidenced by pry
marks on the underside of the flange).
TIGHAR Tracks p. 16
ur artifacts were starting to look like
very strange dados. They were apparently sections of a cantilevered, insulated wall six and a half inches tall, nailed to
a wooden surface. The Lockheed Electra, and
a number of other aircraft, had wooden floor
panels, so the nails were easy to explain,
but not attaching the dado to the fuselage
structure made no sense. Such a light-weight,
free-standing wall would be easily damaged.
Was this really the way Lockheed installed
dados? Or maybe these weren’t dados at all.
Electra passenger cabins were well
insulated to reduce engine noise,
but documents show that this feature was omitted from Earhart’s 10E
Special to save weight. If her airplane
had a low insulated wall nailed to
the floor in the cabin, what purpose
might it have served? Logically, an
insulated barrier would be used to
shield something that shouldn’t get hot from
a source a heat. The only sources of heat in
Front
Back
6�/�˝
1�/�˝
16��/��˝
an Electra cabin were the heater ducts that
ran along the floor on each side. Hot air from
cuffs around the engine exhaust manifolds
flowed through the ducts to heat the cabin.
Earhart’s Electra had the standard heater
ducts but it also had fuel tanks installed in
the cabin. Might it have been necessary to
keep direct heat away from the tanks? Might
an insulated wall between the heater ducts
and the fuselage tanks have served that
purpose? Might our “dados” be, in fact, be
components of a system that was unique to
the Lockheed 10E Special?
These were interesting hypotheses but
an untested hypothesis is just speculation.
We needed better information about how
Lockheed Electra cabins were put together.
Restored aircraft might or might not be correct. We needed the most original Electra we
could find. That turned out to be a mostly
intact, rather famous, and all but inaccessible wreck that had gone down on January
5, 1943 in what is today Alaska’s Misty Fjords
Wilderness Area. With the generous help of
the U.S. Forest Service, an experienced and
determined TIGHAR team was able to reach
the site in the summer of 2004. Their efforts
were rewarded with more answers than we
anticipated. (See TIGHAR Tracks Vol. 20, No.
3, December 2004.)
The Electra’s cabin did feature dados,
but they were nothing like the structures
we found on Nikumaroro – much simpler,
not insulated, not attached to the flooring,
Dado
s
esttoion
b
s
A ula
ins
Heater duct
and fastened to the fuselage with screws. A
careful examination of the wreck in Alaska
revealed that this particular Electra had
been modified to carry a small auxiliary fuel
tank in the cabin. Where the tank was close
to the cabin wall, and only in that area, the
heater duct was wrapped in heavy asbestos
matting. This was unexpected, but welcome,
confirmation that fuel tanks installed in an
Electra cabin had to be insulated from the
heater ducts.
We now felt confident that our original
theory that the objects found on Nikumaroro
were dados was incorrect. The new hypothesis that they were heat shields was looking
better. A photo of NR16020 under construction shows the heater ducts in place but no
sign of asbestos matting. The matting might
have been an easy way to insulate one small
tank, but the material is quite heavy. The six
fuselage tanks in Earhart’s 10E Special occupied the entire forward section of the cabin.
The structures we found on Nikumaroro
would be a more involved but much lighter
solution to the problem.
he next step, of course, is to look for
evidence that such highly specialized
structures were installed in NR16020.
If we can confirm that with solid primary
source documentation – engineering drawings, descriptions, or photographs – our
former dados, now putative heat shields,
will become smoking guns. We’re not there
yet, but we have found what appears to be
another clue that we’re on the right track.
The same photo that shows the heater
ducts, but no asbestos, in place just before
the fuselage tanks were installed, also shows
something on the floor beside the ducts (see
next page). Running parallel and immediately
adjacent to the heater duct on the left side
of the cabin is what appears to be a piece of
wooden molding perhaps one inch square in
cross-section. Its precise placement suggests
that it is installed rather than just tossed
down. What is it for? Other Electras don’t
have anything there.
August 2006 p. 17
The tank in the Alaska wreck was mounted
on a wooden frame, but Earhart’s tanks seem
to have rested directly on the floor, held in
place by cradles attached to the flooring and
padded metal straps anchored to the fuselage structure. The wooden strip could be to
brace the fuselage tanks against side-to-side
shifting (the heater ducts are easily dented),
but the photo shows no provision for insulating the tanks from the heater ducts. Was the
photo taken just before heat shields were
nailed to the wooden strip? The Electra’s
flooring was divided into panels that could
be removed to permit access to wiring and
accessories, such as the flap motor, in the
belly. Attaching the insulating barrier to a
wooden strip would be better than nailing
it directly to the floor. That way the whole
assembly could be easily removed as one
piece if one or more floor panels needed to
be taken up.
Unfortunately, once the tanks were installed, photos can’t show what might be
between the tank and the wall. So what’s the
next step? After eighteen years of research
we feel pretty confidant that we have copies
of all of the available photos of the Earhart
airplane under construction. The same is
true of engineering drawings. Lockheed
diagram 42681, dated March 12, 1937, is a
schematic of the fuel system for Earhart’s
Electra. It’s good documentation of how the
plumbing worked but it’s of no help in answering this question. If drawings detailing
TIGHAR Tracks p. 18
the installation of the fuselage tanks exist,
they have not come to light.
capacities and makes no mention of any
measures taken to insulate the fuselage tanks
from the heater ducts. Unless currently unockheed test flew the airplane as
known documents or photographs turn up,
X120260 a few days before delivering
research into how the tanks in NR16020 were
it to Amelia on her birthday, July 24,
shielded seems to have hit a dead end.
1936. Inspection reports show that, during
the test period, the machine featured 13 fuel
hen you hit a dead end, you try an
tanks, 6 in the wings and 7 in the fuselage,
end run. Another possible avenue
with a combined capacity of 1,198 gallons.
of research into this question is the
There were apparently some problems with sister ship to Earhart’s Electra, the only other
the original fuel system because another 10E Special, the “Daily Express.” Although
inspection by the Bureau of Air Commerce today largely forgotten, the “Daily Express” is
just a couple weeks later – August 7, 1936 credited with the first commercial, round-trip
– shows that all of the fuselage tanks had crossing of the North Atlantic. The aircraft
been removed. Why? Were they experiencing had been delivered to millionaire Harold
problems from the heating of the fuselage Vanderbilt as a standard 10E on August 26,
tanks? Was this when they discovered the 1936. On December 10th England’s King Edneed to insulate the tanks from the heater ward VIII abdicated the throne to marry “the
ducts? It seems like there should have been woman I love,” and newspaper magnate WilLockheed memoranda discussing whatever liam Randolph Hearst let it be known that he
problems were encountered and how they would pay handsomely for timely high-qualwere resolved, but if there were, and if they ity photographs of George VI’s coronation
still exist, they have not surfaced. The only to be held the following May. In response,
reference we’ve found is in a letter Earhart’s Wall Street brokers Ben “Sell ’em short”
husband, George Putnam, wrote to the Bu- Smith and Jack Bergen bought Vanderbilt’s
reau of Air Commerce on October 29, 1936. 10E and had Lockheed modify it similarly to
In trying to straighten out a discrepancy in Amelia Earhart’s long-range Electra, although
the aircraft’s license, he wrote, “The tanks in this case the fuel capacity would total a
were out for a very brief time at the Lockheed whopping 1270 gallons. The ship, registered
plant for some adjustment.”
as NR16059, was christened “Daily Express”
The next time the Electra was inspected after a British newspaper owned by Smith’s
was on November 27, 1936, at which time it friend Lord Beaverbrook. The name also carfeatured 6 wing tanks and 6 fuselage tanks ried the implication of daily express service
with a combined total of 1,151 gallons. Mi- across the Atlantic.
nor changes to the plumbing, but not to the
To fly the airplane, Smith persuaded Easttanks or the total capacity, were recorded on ern Airlines boss Eddie Rickenbacker to loan
February 6, 1937 and on March 10, 1937. The the services of his star pilot, Henry T. “Dick”
first world flight attempt began on March 17 Merrill and Jack Lambie.
and ended three days later with the takeoff
The story of the Merrill/Lambie nonstop
accident in Hawaii. The aircraft’s final inspec- flights to and from England in May 1937 is an
tion by the Bureau of Air Commerce was on epic in its own right, with a number of impliMay 19, 1937, the day repairs were completed cations relating to the Earhart/Noonan world
at the Lockheed plant in Burbank and the day flight that left Miami just two weeks later.
before Earhart began her second world flight Our interest for the moment, however, is the
attempt. That inspection report shows no very narrow question of whether there exists
change in the number of fuel tanks or their documentation of how Lockheed addressed
August 2006 p. 19
the heat shield question in modifying the
Daily Express. Perhaps we’ll hit another dead
end, but even if we’re lucky enough to find
documentation that the Daily Express was
equipped with structures just like the ones
we’ve found on Nikumaroro, it won’t bestow
smoking gun status on our artifacts. Along
the way we might also uncover information
that disproves our heat shield hypothesis.
(We are, by far, the leading debunker of our
own theories.) That would be okay too.
If anyone has information that might be
helpful in this investigation, please let us
know. You can write to executive director
Ric Gillespie at
TIGHAR
2812 Fawkes drive
Wilmington, DE 19808
Or email Ric at tigharic@ mac.com
B
After its epic transatlantic flight, the Daily Express was sold to the Soviet Union
and used in the search the lost transpolar aviator Sigismund Levinevski. The
airplane’s ultimate fate is unknown.
TIGHAR Tracks p. 20
TIGHAR News Briefs
The Devastator Project
Funding Goal Met
TIGHAR member response to this year’s
Edward E. and Marie L. Matthews Foundation
two-for-one matching grant was excellent. By
mid-July, TIGHAR members had contributed
more than $42,000 toward the Devastator
Project which was matched by another
$83,000 from the Matthews Foundation. That
money made it possible for us to meet the
considerable costs involved in keeping the
project moving forward.
October Expedition On Track
The Historic Preservation Office of the
Republic of the Marshall Islands has issued
a Contract to Conduct Archaeological Research approving TIGHAR’s request to evaluate Douglas TBD-1 Bu. No. 1515, for recovery.
In 2004, under a similar contract, a TIGHAR
team surveyed all of the World War II aircraft
in the lagoon (see TIGHAR Tracks Vol. 20).
This year’s expedition, currently scheduled
for October, will collect information needed
by the Naval Historical Center (NHC) in Washington, DC to determine whether Bu. No. 1515
is a candidate for recovery, preservation and
eventual exhibition at the National Museum
of Naval Aviation in Pensacola. Dr. Robert
Neyland, head of NHC’s Underwater Archaeology Branch, will accompany the expedition
as U.S. Navy liaison.
A key feature of the planned expedition
will be the retrieval of sample material (aluminum panels that are detached and lying
beside the aircraft). Laboratory tests on the
collected material will help us assess the
Devastator’s current state of preservation.
If the aircraft is judged to be strong enough
to withstand the stresses of recovery, the
sample material will also help us learn how
best to prevent further deterioration after the aircraft is
recovered.
Now that the October expedition has a green light from the government
of the Marshall Islands, the next step is to
get the approval of the U.S. Navy. To do that,
we’ll need to show what we plan to do, exactly how we plan to do it, what tests will be
done on the recovered material, by whom,
and how we plan to pay for it all. TIGHAR
is working closely with the Naval Historical
Center, the Center for Maritime Archaeology
and Conservation (CMAC) at Texas A&M
University and the Naval Aviation Museum
Foundation to craft a detailed research plan
that meets those requirements.
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Where is Yap?
D
on’t feel bad if you don’t know where
Yap is. Google Earth™ doesn’t know
either. Yap is one of the Federated
States of Micronesia in the Caroline Islands,
about 800 miles east of the Philippines.
In June, under a contract awarded to
TIGHAR by the Yap Historic Preservation Office, a four person TIGHAR team conducted
a survey of surviving Japanese aircraft on
the island’s abandoned wartime airfield.
John Clauss, Gary Quigg, Craig Fuller, and
Walt Holm located, identified, photographed,
and assessed the condition of wrecks that
included a Mitsubishi G4M (Allied codename
“Betty”), a Nakajima B5N (“Kate”), a Nakajima
L2D (“Tabby”), and several examples of the
Mitsubishi A6M (“Zeke” or more commonly
“Zero”). Based their field work, TIGHAR’s
August 2006 p. 21
Senior Archaeologist Dr. Tom King is preparing a report that will allow the government
of Yap to make informed decisions about
how to manage these important cultural
resources. We’ll have more about what our
team found on Yap in an upcoming issue of
TIGHAR Tracks.
Craig Fuller (l.) and Gary Quigg document the remains of a
Zero. TIGHAR photo by J. Clauss.
Craig inspects the largely intact tail section of a G4M
“Betty” bomber. TIGHAR photo by J. Clauss.
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A Sad Story
I
n stark contrast to TIGHAR’s work comes
news of an aviation historic preservation catastrophe in Papua New Guinea.
In May, Boeing B-17E 41-2446, widely known
by the regrettable and phoney appellation
“Swamp Ghost,” was cut apart and moved
from its resting place in the Agaiambo Swamp
to the dockyard in Lae. The salvagers, Aero
Archeology LLC, had apparently purchased
a permit to export the aircraft to the United
States from Military Aircraft Restoration
Corporation (MARC). MARC had obtained
the permit several years ago after reportedly
paying $100,000 to PNG museum officials.
Aero Archeology LLC thought they had a
valid permit to recover and export the aircraft. The government of Papua New Guinea
felt otherwise. When the bomber showed up
in Lae, it was impounded pending the results
of an inquiry by the Parliamentary Public
Accounts Committee.
Long-time TIGHAR members may recall
that, in 1985 and 1986, in cooperation with
the Travis Air Force Base Historical Society,
TIGHAR Tracks p. 22
B-17 41-2446 on the dock at Lae, Papua
New Guinea.
we investigated the possibility of recovering
this aircraft for the United States Air Force
Museum collection. TIGHAR’s executive director Ric Gillespie and president Pat Thrasher
traveled to Papua New Guinea and, with
Bruce Hoy, then head of the aviation section
of the National Museum and Art Gallery, did
an on-site evaluation of the aircraft. They also
met with senior PNG parliamentary officials
and the American ambassador about the
permissions that would be necessary before
a recovery could be approved. Ultimately, to
our profound disappointment, the Minister of
Culture and Tourism imposed a moratorium
on all recoveries of WWII relics. We had no
choice but to abandon the project.
Over the years, we came to see the defeat
as a blessing in disguise. The aircraft is so
historically significant that, if recovered, it
should be genuinely conserved rather than
subjected to the wholesale rebuilding that
was, and is still, all too common in the air
museum world. Until the technology, the
techniques and the will exist to save the
airplane rather than destroy it for the sake
of creating a “fully restored” exhibit, we felt
that the bomber was better off right where
it was.
Now it has been cut apart and removed
from the environment that preserved it for
sixty-four years. What Aero Archeology LLC
intended to do with this priceless artifact is
not clear but, like the incredibly well-preserved P-38 that was recovered from under
the ice in Greenland and dubbed “Glacier
Girl,” the B-17 was almost certainly destined
to be converted into a performing replica of
itself as fraudulent as its name. Its export, for
whatever purpose, now seems unlikely. The
government of Papua New Guinea may have
the will, but it does not have the resources,
to do what the Agaiambo Swamp did so well
for so long. It is difficult now to see a fate for
41-2446 that does not involve its destruction
in fairly short order, either from “restorers” if
its export is finally approved, or from vandalism and accelerated corrosion if it remains
in PNG.
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The Enlightenment
T
he good news is that the air museum
world is changing; slowly to be sure,
but changing nonetheless. Among museum professionals and visitors alike, there
is a growing enthusiasm for genuine historic
preservation as opposed to the emphasis on
repair and reconstruction (misnamed “restoration”) that has dominated collections management for fifty years. The best evidence of
this enlightenment is a new book written by
David Morris, Curator of Aircraft at the Fleet
Air Arm Museum in Yeovilton, England.
We first met David Morris in 1990 at
TIGHAR’s “Aircraft To Artifact” conference
of air museum professionals hosted by the
Royal Air Force Museum at Hendon, England.
In 1992, we visited the Fleet Air Arm Museum
at Yeovilton and recognized in David a kindred spirit in the struggle to promote genuine
aviation historic preservation. We’ve kept in
touch ever since.
David’s book, The Time Capsule Fighter,
Corsair KD431, tells the story of an FG-1A
Corsair, British designation “Corsair IV,” that
has been in the Fleet Air Arm Museum collec-
tion since 1963. The undamaged but somewhat tattered airplane was acquired from
a technical school where it had been used
as an instructional airframe. Upon arrival
at the museum the fighter was spruced up,
painted, and placed on exhibit. Sometime in
the early 1970s, a retired Fleet Air Arm pilot
visited the museum and proclaimed Corsair
KD431 to be the very one that he had ferried
home in an epic journey from Ceylon in 1945.
Unfortunately, he was unable to locate his
logbook but he was sure that this was his
aircraft.
In 2000, David Morris began to wonder
whether a closer look at KD431 might provide
clues to its history. What stories lay hidden
beneath the glossy 1963 paint job? Was it possible to perform a genuine restoration – that
is, return the aircraft to a known previous
appearance with the minimal introduction
of new material? The surprising answers are
revealed in the engaging text and excellent
color photos of a book that should on the
shelf of every aviation historic preservation
enthusiast.
3
August 2006 p. 23
The Time Capsule Fighter, Corsair KD431,
is a detective story that captures the essence of why we save old airplanes: not to
dress them up to suit our fantasies, but to
learn from them. The thrill of discovery is
on every page as David and his team, bit by
painstaking bit, uncover the truth about the
airplane and, along the way, dispel many
long-accepted myths about wartime production techniques.
Today, the old girl is once more on exhibit
at the Fleet Air Arm Museum, this time with
her true service record known and proudly
wearing her original, if somewhat faded,
uniform. Visit her if you can, but at least, do
yourself the favor of buying a copy of her
story.
B
From The Time Capsule Fighter, p. 91:
Sometimes the work was
more like archaeology than
aircraft engineering. By studying the witness marks and
paint layers in fine detail it was
possible to determine exactly
what techniques were used
to make the squadron alterations to the roundels in 1945,
and how those techniqes
changed during this particular
job. (FAAM)
The Time Capsule Fighter, Corsair KD431 by David Morris.
Sutton Publishing in association with the Fleet Air Arm Museum, 2006. 191 pages, plus appendices, bibliography, and index. Many full-color photos. ISBN 0-7509-4305-X. Available
from amazon.com and other major booksellers.
TIGHAR Tracks p. 24