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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 a retired public affairs specialist.  Since meeting Thomas E. Devine, author of EYEWITNESS:  The Amelia Earhart Incident, in 1989, his research and writing has been focused on the continuing U.S. government and media cover-up of the truth in the last great mystery of the 20th century. 

In 2005 he edited "The Atchison Report" which is an extensive debunking of the false Amelia Earhart-as-Irene Bolam theory.  In Campbell's second book, Amelia Earhart: The Truth at Last, the latest research findings and developments are presented including recently discovered  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. The Truth at Last is scheduled for publication in spring 2012 by Sunbury Press, of Camp Hill, Penn.
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.