Read the real story of the Earhart Loss  at                                                 www.AmeliaEarhartBook.com                                                   

Earhart's Final Resting Place Has Not Been Found ... Lost Flight Group disproves Evidence Earhart Perished on Gardner Island (Nikumaroro)... Howland Island Has Been Overstated

         With all due respects to the Discovery Channel and reporter Rossella Lorenzi, nothing new in the Gardner Island searches has produced any credible evidence of the Earhart loss. If there had been any material findings, it would have been on exhibition and touring the United States as the last remains of Amelia Earhart and her airplane. This has never happened. The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery (TIGHAR) and its director, Richard Gillepsie, believes the Earhart airplane crashed at Gardner Island (Nikumaroro), made a forced landing on the island's flat coral reef and was ripped apart by Nikumaroro's strong waves. Thereafter, it was swept out into deep water leaving no visible trace. The reef at Gardner Island is known to be wet and extremely slippery which leaves grave doubts that anything was rescued from inside the airplane or that the occupants of such a crash even survived or made it to shore without being swept over the side of the reef and into deep water. None of the deep sea explorers such as Dr. Bob Ballard (who discovered the Titanic wreckage) or the search group at Nauticos have expressed any interest in exploring the deep waters off Gardner Island. The theory, in fact, is so nebulous it has not attracted any commentary except for an occasional reporter and a collection of TIGHAR die-hards who insist on chasing what amounts to very dubious evidence. The artifacts the TIGHAR group has collected gives reasons for grave doubt as to their authenticity.

The Skull and the Skeleton

                           Read the real story of the Earhart Loss at www.AmeliaEarhartBook.com   
       According to a Discovery Chanel reporter and anthropologist Karen Burns :"The evidence is plentiful -- but not conclusive yet -- to support the hypothesis that Amelia landed and died on the island of Nikumaroro," forensic anthropologist Karen Ramey Burns told Discovery News. The author of a book on Earhart, Burns believes that the strongest of the amassed evidence comes from the report related to the partial skeleton found by Gallagher (British Colonial Service officer Gerald Gallagher).  "The skeleton was found to be consistent in appearance with females of European descent in the United States today, and the stature was consistent with that of Amelia Earhart," said Burns. However, the findings dispute the evidence as being "plentiful" and "amassed." The truth of the matter is the evidence is exceptionally dubious and has never been traced to Amelia Earhart.The bones were shipped to a Dr. D. W. Hoodless in Suva, Fiji, to see if he could make a basic identification. Hoodless had 13 bones to work with, including the skull and some long bones from the legs and arms. His conclusion was that the bones belonged not only to a European, but a European male who was about 5'6" — significantly shorter than Earhart who was 5'9." The documents say nothing about her navigator Fred Noonan. If the bones were thrown out in the trash how did Anthropologist Burns come to the conclusion that the bones were consistent with the size of  a European female? The Hoodless commentary appears to be the most accurate as he had the actual bones there for observation.

        Without the evidence of a Caldwell Luc operation on the skull, the whole matter is closed. Amelia Earhart suffered from a chronic sinsitus condition. Surgeons who did a bilateral Caldwell Luc operation on AE in July 1935 drilled two holes in the upper bone of the skull (maxima) to relieve pressure in her continuing sinus problem. These two holes would still be quite visible. There is no comment in any of the reports offered by  Hoodless that the skull contained evidence of the Caldwell Luc operation. The Western Pacific High Commission (WPHC), headed by Sir Harry Luke, who was also the Governor of Fiji, ordered the examination of the skeletal remains and the other materials by various authorities. Since forensic science has advanced so much in the last sixty years, TIGHAR wanted to test DNA from the skeleton and determine to a high degree of certitude whether or not the bones were those of Amelia Earhart. However, the problem is since Dr. Hoodless had said the bones could not possibly belong to Earhart it is possible that any of these men may have said in effect, “Oh, just get rid of that stuff. I can’t be bothered with it.” Consequently, the bones have disappeared and no one knows of their whereabouts. The box of bones and the box with the shoe parts and corks and the sextants box were just junk they supposed, and they were trashed. If this is what happened in fact took place the evidence is gone. Under such circumstances it would be very hard to build any type of a scientific case that the bones that were found by Gerald Gallagher were the last remain of Amelia Earhart.   In 1960, the late Floyd Kilts, a retired Coast Guardsman, gave an interview to the San Diego, California Tribune. His speculation was based on what he said he had been told by one of the colonists while Kilts was helping dismantle a Loran station on Nikumaroro in 1946.
"A native tried to tell me about it. It seems that in 1938 there were 23 island people, all men, and an Irish magistrate planting coconut trees. They were about through and the native was walking along one end of the island. There in the bush about five feet from the shoreline he saw a skeleton. What attracted him to it was the shoes. Women’s shoes, American, size nine narrow. The magistrate was a young Irishman, who thought of Amelia Earhart right away. He put the bones in a gunnysack and...in a 22-foot, four oared boat started for Suva, Fiji. When only about 24 hours out of Suva, he died. The natives are superstitious, and the next night they threw the gunnysack full of bones overboard."

       Mr. Kilts' contention that Amelia Earhart's skeleton was found in 1938 on Gardner Island comes with no credible evidence and bases his assertions entirely on what "a native" told him. According to Mr. Kilts, this skeleton was found with American-made woman's shoes, size nine narrow. It is hard to believe that a native, who probably never wore a shoe in his life, is going to be able to recognize that a shoe was made in America, that it is a woman's shoe, and that it is a size nine narrow? But Mr. Kilts' story gets even better. It seems that the island's magistrate, a young Irishman, put the bones into a gunnysack and, along with four natives, set off in a 33-foot 4-oared boat for Suva, Fiji. It is hard to believe that they intended to row a distance of some 887 nautical miles on the open ocean. Mr. Kilts then contends that, 24 hours out of Suva, the Irishman died and that the superstitious natives threw the gunnysack full of bones overboard. So much for another "bones" story.

Earhart DNA Research Update

March 1, 2011Cecil M. Lewis, Jr., Ph.D.Molecular Anthropology LaboratoriesUniversity of Oklahoma, Norman, OK

At the request of The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery (TIGHAR), University of Oklahoma re­searchers have been evaluating a bone fragment excavated from an archaeological site on Nikumaroro (formerly Gardner Island). TIGHAR is testing the hypothesis that Amelia Earhart died as a castaway on the uninhabited Pacific atoll. The bone fragment’s structure and the context in which it was found have led TIGHAR to wonder if it might be part of a human finger. TIGHAR also asked OU researchers to evaluate small clumps of material recovered from the same archaeological site to determine whether they might be human fecal matter. At this time the analyses of the TIGHAR samples are inconclusive. We are providing this update in recognition of the high level of public interest in the outcome of this investigation.

The Bone Fragment:  We were not able to retrieve sufficient DNA from the bone sample to be able to provide any definitive statements on the bone’s origin.The bone fragment was very small, approximately one gram of material. Following appropriate ancient DNA pro­tocols, we attempted to extract DNA from .25 grams of the material. We used a real time Polymerase Chain Reac­tion method (real time PCR or rtPCR) to detect human mitochondrial DNA in the extract. Two of these rtPCRs provided a positive result. However, during quality control protocols, we were unable to repeat this result with ad­ditional rtPCRs. This suggests that either 1) the initial detection of human DNA was attributed to a sporadic DNA contamination event, and in reality, there was no usable human DNA preserved in the extract, 2) there was human DNA in the extract, but it was too little, or of too poor of quality, to consistently analyze, 3) DNA in the bone was non-human. A second DNA extraction also failed to provide positive results for human DNA. Because the bone is clearly from an animal, human or otherwise, additional PCRs were used to detect animal DNA more generally. These PCRs provided no positive results. The fact that these PCRs were unsuccessful suggest that either 1) there is no animal DNA in the bone, 2) there was animal DNA in the extract, but it was too little, or of too poor of quality, to reliably analyze, 3) the PCR design was ineffective for targeting the particular animal. Approximately 0.5 grams of bone material remained after our study. For posterity, we have decided to preserve this remaining bone. Genome technologies are developing at a rapid pace. To what extent ancient DNA research will benefit from these developments remains to be seen. Nevertheless, there is reason for optimism that some day in the near future, less destructive, and more sensitive genomic methods will be able to resolve the bone’s origin. For now, the question of whether the bone is human must remain unanswered.              Reference...http://tighar.org/Projects/Earhart/Archives/Research/Bulletins/59_DNAResearch/lewisstatement.pdf
 

 

         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 stenciled number that is similar to a number written on a sextant box known to have belonged to Fred Noonan, Amelia Earhart's navigator. The remains of a woman's shoe and a man's shoe were also found at the site. 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, a wrecked freighter off the coast of Gardner Island. A Benedictine bottle found with the remains may have also been part of the cache. The bones were from one of the lost crewman. The woman's shoe possibly came from an American woman Laxton had an American woman with him on Niku in 1949. The forgotten Sextant box could have been from the drunken navigator of the Norwich City affectionately named Mad Mac McGregor. Some of the "discoveries" have been so comical that, in 1992, the Detroit News ran the above cartoon. TIGHAR, the instigator of these stories, assumes everything is related, and they framed it all in Earhart survival stories. More recently, a TIGHAR research expedition came back with supposedly dried human feces off the beach at Nikumaroro, on the premises that Amelia Earhart left a deposit to dry in the sun oblivious to over 70 years of tropical storms and erosion. They are searching the specimen for Mitochondrial DNA

Amelia Earhart's Shoes

  Read the real story of the Earhart Loss at  www.AmeliaEarhartBook.com   

         P.B. Laxton , a sort of explorer-naturalist, visited Nikumroro  circa 1949 as part of the Phoenix island surveys. He wrote in the "Jo urnal of the Polynesian Society," a South Pacific publication, of his exploration on Nikumaroro. It is a very comprehensive history of Niku begining with the Arundel plantation thru the WW 2 activities. They found a house built by a settler, Jack Kima. Off the southern end of the house  there was the bathroom, lavatory and washbasin. "An American lady who had visted with us earlier when the house had been unoccupied for some time, had proceeded to the lavatory, which is of the "thunder-box" variey, and found it full of dynamite. She later washed in the neat and impressive handbasin..."
        Laxton never identifies the lady but she must have been with the group during the entire period. In the "Journal" he also writes that a Jack Cartland, from West Africa, spent three days in the Spring of 1947on Niku again evaluating the island for settlement. Also a Lands Commissioner from Cartlands staff arrived on Jan 1,1949, also looking for settlement possibilities. These visits by Laxton and his party (unknown how many except for sure his wife), Cartland, and the unnamed Lands Commissioner were all over the island and could account for the provenance of many of Tighars artifacts which they try to link to Amelia. Rouge, compacts, mirrors, shoes, sextant boxes etc could all have come from these people. In sum it is a wonderful history of Gardner Island (Nikumaroro) and the various settlements. He also describes how Maude and his assistant, Bevington, and party, arrived on 13 Oct 1937, and explored the island from top to bottom. They made fires at night to scare away the crabs, etc. They were aware of the possibility AE crashed there later revealed in letters to TIGHAR. They didn't see any signs whatsoever of Amelia or Fred or the Electra. If AE and FN were alive 3 months later, they would have seen those huge bon fires. Amelia Earhart’s shoes, the effort of a book written by the TIGHAR head archaeologist, Tom King, turned out to be the wrong size. Earhart was a very small woman and probably wore a size 6-1/2. The Cat’s Paw heel which was found by Tighar on one of their expeditions came from a size 9-10 shoe. The heel from the shoe that was found buried in the sand on Gardner probably came from one of the women who had lived or visited on the island.

The Sextant Box 

  Read the real story of the Earhart Loss at  www.AmeliaEarhartBook.com  

    The sextant box discovered by Gerald Gallagher in the summer of 1940 on Niku was described as being "old fashioned," and it had the number "3500" stenciled on it and another number 1542. He thought the box had been painted  over with black enamel. The actual sextant was never found. No specific descriptions of the dimension or the internal configurations were provided. Gallagher, thinking they could be linked to Earhart or a castaway, sent the box to Australian aerial navigator Harold Gatty in Fiji. Gatty wrote that the box was "English," old, and "judged that it was used merely as a receptacle" adding he didn't think "it could not in any circumstances have been a sextant box used in trans-Pacific navigation." This conclusion of course would eliminate any kind of aerial navigation sextant used by Noonan, and thus this artifact didn't support an Earhart landing at Nikumaroro.
         But not so fast, Ric Gillespie of TIGHAR wrote in an Oct  2008 Tighar Tracks in a lengthy article he believed that Gatty was in error because he had not taken into account a letter from Noonan to Weems in 1935. In this letter  Noonan wrote that on his Clipper flights he not only carried a Pioneer bubble octant but also a mariner's sextant which was probably a Brandis model as a backup. Ric wrote that Gatty was not aware of this letter leading Gatty to a mistaken evaluation of the Gallagher box. Did Noonan have a modified sextant for aerial use when he left Lae to aid in his navigation? There is reason to believe Earhart's navigator had a Pioneer Bubble octant on loan from the Navy and also the Brandis model. Thus, when Gatty examined the Gallagher box in 1940, he surely would have recognized the rather distinctive handle of the Brandis sextant box and would have recognized any internal modifications or cutouts to allow a bubble device for aerial navigation. There is reason to suspect Gatty accurately described the Gallaher box and did not fail to recognize a sextant box modified for a Brandis bubble type sextant. Supporting the idea that Gatty would have been familiar with this type of equipment, PAA Historian and Gatty biographer,  Dr. Justin Libby wrote that in 1928 Gatty founded a school of navigation in Los Angeles and was "involved in repairing navigation instruments and making air route maps for Pioneer Instrument Company." Gatty, he wrote, also "tinkered with various navigation devices including the development of an air sextant that used a spirit level to provide an artificial horizon." This technique appears to be what explorer Richard Bryd did in 1921 in modifying a standard Brandis mariner sextants. Gatty accurately described the Gallaher box and did not fail to recognize a sextant box modified for a bubble type. His knowledge of Noonan's techniques and his practice of carrying sextants makes it difficult to believe he  was not thinking of the Earhart flight and Noonan's navigation at the time he issued his statement. The old mariner's sextant box found by Gallaher more than likely came from the wrecked English freighter, the Norwich City, who ran aground on a reef off the shores of Nikumaroro in 1929. However, there was also a  PACIFIC AVIATION SURVEY EXPEDITION that was led by E.W.Lee in March 1939 that landed on the island. J. A. Henderson, a part of the expedition who was also considered the "instrument man" and the head of the expedition, reportedly fell and broke his ribs probably carrying equipment ashore. The Sextant was an instrument which should have been Mr. Henderson's responsibility. His evacuation early in the mission would explain an empty Sextant box being found later on Gardner Island without the  Sextant in it. Mad Mac McGregor, as mentioned before, was a Scotsman famous throughout the Pacific who had a colossal capacity for strong drink, may have also been the perpetrator of the Sextant stories. Nonetheless, the Sextant stories are anything but scientific. The available evidence does not lend itself to examination. The actual Sextant is missing and the box, which Mr. Gillespie at TIGHAR does not possess, may have been thrown out in the trash along with the bones and the rest of the "junk" off the beach from Nikumaroro. So much for the case of the Sextant's box.

The Dado, Scrap Aluminum, and Pleixglas

Read the real story of the Earhart Loss at www.AmeliaEarhartBook.com   
      The TIGHAR group takes particular pride in establishing a piece of scrap aluminum, a dado (liner between the floor and the sides of the fuselage of a Lockheed Electra), and a scrap of plexiglas as being parts that came from the Earhart airplane. They seem to fit a Lockheed Electra design. However, the same as the sextant box, none of these items have been traced to the Earhart airplane. There is no way to identify the source of the findings. It is impossible to prove these airplane parts came from Earhart's Electra. There are no serial numbers or other markings on the parts. It is hard to believe that an Electra could crash on a remote Pacific reef, and the local natives only salvaged pieces of floor liner, or scraps of aluminum or one very small piece plexiglas. These few parts would have been impossible to remove unless the airplane was broken up in a crash or it had been sent to a salvage yard. This would seem to suggest that the dados were removed from a section of wreckage rather than from an intact aircraft. Such being the case, the occupants of the airplane would have probably been killed or severely injured if this airplane crashed on a section of reef at Gardner Island as TIGHAR contends. Complicating the problems associated with artifacts at Gardner Island is that local natives may have hauled the foregoing items in from scrap yards in the neighboring islands. The Dados would have been riveted, glued, or installed with metal screws. It is not the type of installation natives of  the Phoenix Islands would have been adept at uninstalling. Not one single piece of aluminum, or floor liners (Dados), or plexiglass that has been found and has been linked to Earhart's Electra. The Electra was a well known airline transport in its day. The Department of Aviation in New Zealand in May 1965 has records of eight Lockheed Electras flying in the area of the Central Pacific. These airplanes either crashed or lost their airworthiness registration certificates. What was left of the airplanes were broken up and sent to scrap yards. Canton Island in the Phoenix Island group and close to Gardner Island had an operating airfield. It became a stopover point for the Navy Air Transport Service flights to Australia and New Zealand as well as a staging point for attacks on the Gilbert Islands held by Japan during World War II  In November 1946, Pan Am resumed service to Australia and New Zealand via Canton with Douglas DC-4 aircraft.  British Commonwealth Pacific Airlines, Australia's first trans-Pacific airline, used the island as a stopover on the way to Hawaii, flying luxurious DC-6Bs on the Sydney to Vancouver BC, Canada route .Quantas took over this service shortly thereafter, after BCPA went out of business. Canadian Pacific Airlines used the island as well.

                         Lockheed test pilot Marshall Headle, Amelia Earhart,  and technical adviser Paul Mantz                                                               In the background is a Lockheed Model 10A sold to Guinea Airways and registered VH-UXI

                                                           The Trec to Gardner Island   

                                  Read the real story of the Earhart Loss at www.AmeliaEarhartBook.com   

     The TIGHAR expeditions to Gardner Island started in September 1989. Some 97 years earlier in May 1892, the island was claimed by England during a call by a British sailing ship. Almost immediately a license was granted to Pacific entrepreneur John T.Arundel for planting coconuts. Twenty nine islanders were settled there and some structures with corrugated iron roofs were constructed; however, because there was no fresh water supply a severe drought caused the project to fail. The island remain uninhabited until 1938. On November 29, 1929, the SS Norwich City, a large British freighter with a crew of thirty-five men ran aground on the reef at the island's northwest corner during a storm. There were at least eight fatalities. The remaining crew camped near collapsed structures from the Arundel project and were rescued after surviving several days on the island. On December1, 1938,  members of the British Pacific Islands Survey Expedition led by E.W. Lee arrived to evaluate the island as a possible location for either seaplane landings or as an airfield. Twenty days later more British officials arrived with 20 Gilbert islanders to settle the atoll. All of this took place within eighteen months after the Earhart disappearance on July 2, 1937.  By June 1939, a few wells had been successfully established and there were 58 islanders on Gardner. During this period of time, there were no reported findings of Earhart artifacts including bones or airplane parts.

     The British colonial officer, Gerald Gallagher, established a headquarters of the Phoenix Islands Settlement Scheme in the village located on the island's western end, on the south side of the largest entrance to the lagoon. Wide coral-gravel streets and a parade ground were laid out and important structures included a thatched administration house, a wood-frame cooperative store, and a radio shack. Gallagher died and was buried on the island in 1941. During World War II from 1944 through 1945 the US Coast Guard operated a navigational Loran station with 25 crewmen on the southeastern tip of Gardner, installing one Quonset hut and some smaller structures. The island's population reached a high of approximately 100 by the mid-1950s. However, by the early 1960s, periodic drought and an unstable freshwater lens had thwarted the struggling colony. Its residents were evacuated to the Solomon Islands by the British in 1963 and by 1965 Gardner was officially uninhabited.

     Today on Gardner Island, what was once a forest is now dense underbrush. Orderly coconut plantations have become jungles. Houses and administrative buildings have come and gone like the people who built them. The wreck of the Norwich City has steadily deteriorated and has scattered wreckage over the reefs. Pacific storms and winds and the hot tropical sun have taken their toll to the point where there is nothing left but piles of "junk" in the sand. 

Where's the Proof?

                           Read the real story of the Earhart Loss at www.AmeliaEarhartBook.com   
     The truth of the matter is there is no proof of Earhart crashing and perishing on Gardner Island. The TIGHAR trips to Nikumaroro have not yielded any results that the research community has been willing to accept. In fact it has turned into some type of a "charade" of  unwarranted claims. However, that doesn't stop TIGHAR from making trips to Gardner Island looking for more evidence, whatever it is they expect to find. If nothing else it helps to keep Amelia Earhart in the news. As long as the Discovery Channel and unknowing reporters can put out press releases, it keeps the pot cooking for those who carry the torch for Gardner Island. Unfortunately, very little of it seems to make any sense. After all has been said and done, without TIGHAR a great deal of information about the Earhart disappearance would not have been available... including the proof that Earhart did not crash at Gardner Island which, if you dig below the surface on the TIGHAR website, it becomes readily apparent such does indeed seem to be the case. Richard Pyle at the Associated Press exclaimed he didn't care what the proof revealed, he wanted the physical evidence of the Earhart loss. That's what makes headlines to his way of thinking. Whether the proof made any sense or not was besides the point. In certain respects the TIGHAR quest for evidence at Gardner Island took a measure of desperation when the group came back with a piece of supposedly hardened human feces off the beach. Evidence? Over seventy years later, the investigation seems to be sliding downhill 
 

Sextant... Never found

Sextant Box... Found but the whereabouts is now unknown (believed to have been thrown out in the trash)

Amelia Earhart's Shoes... The wrong size

Dado (Floor Liners)... Scraps from a Pacific scrapyard

Aluminum Parts... Scraps with no way of identifying the parts as coming from Earhart's Electra

Plexiglass... One scrap from an airplane crash with no way to identify this piece as coming from Earhart' Electra

Bones from a Skeleton... Identity unknown (believed to have been a European male by a Doctor who examined the skeleton; thereafter, the bones were discarded and thrown out in the trash
              

Evidence that Amelia Earhart Crashed and Sank at Howland Island Has Also Been Proven False !!

The Earhart airplane did not crash and sink at Howland Island !!
     Waitt Industries just finished a detailed underwater search for Earhart's Electra in the vicinity of Howland Island. This search combined with the Nauticos search several years proves beyond any question Earhart did not crash in the sea at Howland irrespective of the movie "Amelia" and the two TV specials several years ago. The Waitt Industries search was very thorough and had no budget limitations. This search also negates the Elgen Long book and the Susan Butler which claim Earhart crashed and sank at Howland Island. For the real story of the Earhart loss read "The Lost Flight of Amelia Earhart" available on this website. 

      SAN DIEGO, Jan. 20 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The Waitt Institute for Discovery (http://wid.waittinstitute.org), a non-profit research organization established by Ted Waitt, founder and former Chairman of Gateway, Inc., has launched its new Search for Amelia Web site (http://searchforamelia.org). Created to publish the full results from the Institute's 2009 search for Amelia Earhart's Lockheed Electra, the site is also a gateway for information on Earhart's life and legacy. Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan, disappeared without a trace near Howland Island in the Pacific during Amelia's 1937 attempt to fly around the world.

      The Waitt Institute's recent expedition to find Earhart's plane, known as CATALYST 2, was a collaboration with Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute (HBOI) and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI). The area surveyed was based on extensive research completed by a team of experienced air accident investigators. The initial search area was a 2,500-square-mile box -- an area equivalent to the state of Delaware -- located off the western shores of Howland Island. The Research Report is available on the site. The search area was 1,100 miles, approximately four days travel for HBOI's Research Vessel Seward Johnson, north of our base of operations in Pago Pago, American Samoa.

      The Research Report is available on the site. The search area was 1,100 miles, approximately four days travel for HBOI's Research Vessel Seward Johnson, north of our base of operations in Pago Pago, American Samoa.

      The mission covered 7,000 linear miles of ocean floor, generating a 2,200-square-mile mosaic, at an average depth of 5,200 meters using a pair of cutting-edge REMUS 6000 Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs). The most sophisticated deep-sea search vehicles available today, these AUVs are pre-programmed to operate independently once released from the support ship. When the vehicles reach their planned depth, about three miles beneath the surface, they begin flying over the ocean bottom at an average speed of 3.5 knots using side scan sonar to capture a swath of sonar imagery at least 1,200 meters. The vehicles feature a pencil-beam automatic sonar collision-avoidance system to allow them to operate in rugged underwater terrain. They also have an exceptional degree of navigational accuracy. Once a target is found in the sonar data, the vehicles are then re-programmed to return to the coordinates of the target, do a higher resolution sonar pass deeper and closer to the object, and then a conduct a high resolution photo shoot of the object. Nimble and highly efficient, the Waitt Institute's AUVs are truly revolutionary in the world of underwater search.

      Waitt said, "Our AUVs were able to efficiently search a massive area and then re-acquire, re-image and clearly photograph very small targets including a pipe, a chain, rock formations, a metal drum and even a six-inch-wide cable, well over three miles below the ocean's surface. We've mapped geology no one has ever seen, and we now know far more about what lies beneath the waves in the North Pacific. Waitt said, "Our AUVs were able to efficiently search a massive area and then re-acquire, re-image and clearly photograph very small targets including a pipe, a chain, rock formations, a metal drum and even a six-inch-wide cable, well over three miles below the ocean's surface. We've mapped geology no one has ever seen, and we now know far more about what lies beneath the waves in the North Pacific today than we did yesterday. This work will hopefully not only benefit explorers, but also oceanographers, geologists, biologists and others in the science community."
         Contrary to the Elgen Long book the only thing Waitt Industries found that was recognizable was a pipe and a metal barrel plus assorted rock formations resting on the ocean  floor....

SPECIAL THANKS TO OUR LOST FLIGHT GROUP (LFG) CONTRIBUTORS:
CAROL LINN DOW
Screenwriter Carol Linn Dow started her career as the editor-publisher of a stock market magazine called The Dow Digest. In its day, Dow Digest left a lasting impression on the moguls of Wall Street and was famous for innovative concepts some of which are used, extensively, in today's world of high finance. Tiring of writing stock market stories, Ms. Dow sold the magazine and began studying screenwriting. The subject matter she picked was Amelia Earhart. As a licensed pilot and well acquainted with her own V-tail Beech Bonanza, Carol became fast friends with Amelia Earhart's sister, Muriel Earhart Morrissey. She felt the Amelia Earhart story had all the elements a screenwriter needed to produce a great motion picture. To top it all off, the so-called "experts" on the subject matter were, for the most part, practicing the subtle art of "quackery" (in her opinion) on the ultimate fate of Amelia Earhart. Buoyed by researchers from the Lost Flight Group such as Paul Rafford, Mike Campbell, Ron Bright, Alex Mandel, Lily Gelb, Bill Prymak and others Carol wrote the screenplay for "The Lost Flight of Amelia Earhart."
 

 

 

 

 

 

                      YANKEE CLIPPER
 

PAUL RAFFORD JR.  

                   BERMUDA CLIPPER
The best Earhart radio and electronics researcher, according to screenwriter Carol Dow, is Paul Rafford, Jr.  Rafford was a navigator-radio operator for Pan American World Airways in the 1940s.  It was Paul Rafford's explanation of the loss of radio contact with the Earhart airplane that offered a solution to the Earhart riddle... a complete cessation of radio contact followed by mysterious call messages later that night. Paul's experience in navigating with the World War II Japanese radio station at Jaluit, the Marshall Islands, gave The Lost Flight the final answers to what appears to be the final solution to the disappearance of Amelia Earhart. In the world of electronics as it existed in the 1930s, there was a problem with radio Dynamotors that could blow a fuse from overuse. Rafford himself, flying the Pacific, had experienced the effects and the problems they posed. Quite literally, there is no other explanation for the post-loss broadcasts that were received later that night.  

During his career he flew missions with the Bermuda Clipper and the Yankee Clipper, and three weeks after Pearl Harbor he rushed a General and his staff, plus thirty thousand rounds of ammunition to Calcutta to support the Flying Tigers.  He joined Earhart’s route at San Juan and followed it fairly closely until turning around at Calcutta.  In 1946 he was based in Paris to set up Pan Am’s European communications network, and later teamed up with Pan Am’s Chief Navigator in flight testing all new navigation systems.  In 1963 Rafford was transferred to Cape Canaveral as a Communications Manager in support of the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo Manned Spaceflight Programs at Mission Control.  He retired from Pan Am in 1988 after 48 years of service.
MIKE CAMPBELL

A longtime, award-winning active-duty and civilian Navy journalist, Mike Campbell is currently a public affairs specialist.  Since meeting Thomas E. Devine, author of EYEWITNESS:  The Amelia Earhart Incident (almost 20 years ago) he has worked against impossible odds to expose the continuing U.S. government and media cover-up of the truth in the last great mystery of the 20th century. 

Recently he edited The Atchison Report which is an extensive debunking of the false Amelia Earhart-as-Irene Bolam theory.  In Campbell's second book, The Earhart Travesty: 75 years of U.S. government deceit in the disappearance of Amelia Earhart, the latest research findings and developments are presented including recently discovered new eyewitness testimony, and never before published correspondence from Fred Goerner that reveals the ongoing, institutionalized cover-up at the highest levels of the U.S. military establishment.
RONALD BRIGHT

According to screenwriter Carol Dow, Ron Bright is probably one of the best Earhart researchers she has ever met. He has a limitless library of Earhart facts and figures that is hard to beat from any source.  He is quite literally a walking encyclopedia of Amelia Earhart arguments. 


After two years of graduate study in Criminology at the University of Washington, Seattle, he was employed as a civilian Special Agent of the Office of Naval Intelligence, now known as Naval Criminal Investigative Service.  ONI/NCIS is charged with the investigation of major crimes, counter-intelligence and counter-espionage activities of the Navy and Marine Corp.  Retiring from a supervisory position in 1986, Bright formed the "Group Nine Investigations", a private investigative agency primarily conducting criminal defense investigations for defense attorneys.  In 1999, he began extensive research and investigation into the disappearance of Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan in July 1937 participating in various Earhart Forums, such as Amelia Earhart society, TIGHAR, and finally forming an independent group The Electa Group.  In 2006 he appeared as an "expert" on the National Geographic Special of the disappearance of Earhart,  and has contributed material to several authors, including Michael Campbell of "WITH OUR OWN EYES".

ALEX MANDEL

From across the Atlantic, Alex Mandel of the Ukraine , formerly the Soviet Union , is an avid Amelia Earhart fan. A medical scientist with a Ph.D. in Physics and the author and co-author of several books and articles in the U.S. , the Ukraine , and Russia , Alex Mandel has published proceedings at the Laser Institute of America and the American Association of Aerosol Research. He is an Associate Professor at Odessa Medical State University , Ukraine . Since 1982, Mandel has been collecting and studying available information about the life, career, and disappearance of Amelia Earhart. Cooperating with Ron Bright, Mike Campbell, Pat Gaston (a Kansas City attorney), and Bill Prymak (formerly President of the Amelia Earhart Society), Mandel recently compiled an impressive essay debunking the theory that Amelia Earhart survived World War II and came back to the United States as another person using the name, Irene Bolam.   
The principle proponent and the originator of the Irene Bolam theories was made in a book by Joe Klaas, entitled Amelia Earhart Lives. This book, at one time, was nominated for a Pulitzer prize, but the nomination was withdrawn when the prize committee arrived at the conclusion that the Irene Bolam story might not be true. Another book, entitled Amelia Earhart Survived by Colonel Rollin C. Reineck, USAF Ret., supports the view that Irene Bolam was Amelia Earhart. None of the Earhart family, including Amelia's husband George Putnam, ever accepted Irene Bolam as being Amelia Earhart. They regarded her as just a polite acquaintance. Adding further fuel to the controversy over the Bolam books, Irene Bolam, on public television several years ago, vehemently denied the fact that she was Amelia Earhart.     

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