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When Hollywood Ruled The Skies - Volumes 1 through 4 by Bruce Oriss


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PostPosted: Thu Jul 25, 2019 1:35 pm 
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Dan Jones wrote:
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She ran out of gas (probably flying in circles at about a thousand feet) and kept flying until her fuel was completely exhausted, then deadsticked it into the water, blew it, and the wreckage quickly sank. I'll bet all of you a cold, Oshkosh beer that if Ballard finds it the props aren't even feathered and the two of them are still in it.


I think this explanation is spot-on. Earhart's last message heard from the Itasca said that they were on the "157/337" line and were changing to another frequency. Elgen Long, who has studied the "crashed and sank" hypothesis, believed they ran out of gas immediately after sending that message, and were thus too busy to put out another call on the new frequemcy. That places a pretty precise time for the splash, but direction and distance are unknown.

It seems that everyone is expecting there to be an intact Electra - two engines, two wings, a tail - 5.5 km (18.000 feet) down. I think it quite likely that the aircraft is disarticulated on the bottom. To begin, Earhart was not as experienced a pilot as commonly thought, and dead-sticking the airplane down from 1000' is not so easy, especially as fatigued as she must have been. The Lockheed 10 was not as ruggedly built as military aircraft, and sinking is a complex process; just take a look at what happened to the back half of the Titanic. One or another of the previous searches could have gone right over the site and not seen it.

Personal effects of Earhart and Noonan would likely still be in the cabin, if that remains intact (and again I strongly think that would not be so). I would think that they were killed on impact, or quickly drowned within the cabin, but nothing would remain of the bodies. Deep sea scavengers (worms, mostly) are pretty thorough.

Noonan, by the way, was in the back part of the cabin, not in the front near Earhart; they had to pass messages back and forth. Thus there was only one pair of eyes looking forward, directly towards a rising sun, with patchy clouds the shadows of which might be hard to distinguish from a small island. Without the direction-finding gear working - another story - they had little realistic chance of actually reaching the destination.

The location of the island on Noonan's map was a little off, so if the navigation was perfect they may still have missed the island. Elgen Long says that Earhart and the Itasca were working from different time zones - one-half hour off with respect to each other - with the two sending and receiving on half-hour intervals. With the time-zone difference, they would have been sending messages at the same time. However, it seems that even with that some messages would be getting through, and Earhart was apparently not receiving anything, so a problem in her radio receiver might be the best explanation.

I wish Ballard good luck, but the Titanic or Bismark are much bigger targets than an engine or fair-sized piece of a wing.


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PostPosted: Thu Jul 25, 2019 7:44 pm 
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menards wrote:
Dan Jones wrote:
I'd just about bet the farm that she's somewhere within a hundred miles of Howland, in any direction. If she had the gas to fly 350 miles down to the Phoenix Islands then she certainly had time to be transmitting that information in the blind, over and over again instead of there just being... silence. She ran out of gas (probably flying in circles at about a thousand feet) and kept flying until her fuel was completely exhausted, then deadsticked it into the water, blew it, and the wreckage quickly sank. I'll bet all of you a cold, Oshkosh beer that if Ballard finds it the props aren't even feathered and the two of them are still in it.


I think you're spot on here. Howland was pushing the max range of the electra She was close, but with no way to communicate with the Itasca, and flying at 1,000 ft with scattered clouds, she was helpless.

Now factor in that her water ditching skills were un-polished, at best. If the plane broke apart upon landing, it would have quickly sank. I dont think that its outside of the realm of possibly that pieces of the electra washed up on Gardner Island years later, (like we have seen with MH370) but i think its unlikely that they flew the extra 350 miles to get there. Their fuel ran out shortly after the 8:43AM transmission they were flying the 157/337 line...


From everything I’ve read about Earhart and the “mystery” surrounding her disappearance, albeit many years ago, I would have to agree her piloting skills were at best, mediocre. She was pushed beyond her skill set by her publisher-husband to her ultimate death. Ballard will find nothing of the Electra because he’ll be looking in the wrong place as stated above.

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PostPosted: Fri Jul 26, 2019 5:11 pm 
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There has been some remarkably careless reading of the extensive National Geographic press release publicly available (assuming that anybody has bothered to read it). Ballard is not "going to Howland Island," and he is not initiating a new search. He is going to Nikumaroro and only Nikumaroro, leaving Fiji on 6 August as I remember, arriving on 10 August, and he is going there solely and specifically because of Tighar's work over the last 31 years. He has essentially accepted Tighar's findings as evidence that this was where Earhart landed, not that she "circled over the ocean until she ran out of fuel" or any other such hypothesis.

I fully understand that saying this is like convincing a Trump supporter to vote for Ocasio-Cortez, but in the interests of accuracy, it needs to be said. This expedition is being carried out by Ballard with the sponsorship of the national Geographic Society and the support of Tighar. You may not like it, but that is what is happening. Ballard plans to concentrate on the large reef flat at the western end of the island, where Tighar surmises that Earhart landed. Not on the reef flat itself, which is dry at low tide (okay, wet but below tide level) and hardly needs a submersible to examine it, but on the steeply declining "cliff" that descends deep into the Pacific at a steep angle and where Tighar has theorized the Electra washed over into deep water through tidal action. The wreck has very likely gone deep enough that only a sophisticated deepwater submersible could possibly find it.

This is not my first rodeo. I have been writing about the Earhart search since before some of you were born, for both Air & Space Smithsonian and Aviation History Magazines. In fact I'm collecting some of your sillier posts for use in my next Earhart article, so keep 'em coming.


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PostPosted: Fri Jul 26, 2019 5:34 pm 
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My careless (but "remarkably careless"?) reading to not place my presentation in the context of Gardiner Island; I was reacting to the immediately previous message from Tom Jones, which was in the context of "crashed and sank."

Ballard is at least something of a scientist. I am afraid, however, that he has now gone over to the "dark side" of chasing money and media. If he was serious about hunting for Earhart I think he would be looking closer to Howland.

Perhaps his work at Gardiner will eliminate (or confirm) that hypothesis, though I think Gillespie will be seeing Electra fragments in every shadow, no matter what the rivet spacing. But then perhaps we can get back to the serious search.


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PostPosted: Fri Jul 26, 2019 5:48 pm 
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I fully understand that saying this is like convincing a Trump supporter to vote for Ocasio-Cortez

Wait a minute!! now you've confused me. are you saying that a MAGA cap has been found on Nikumaroro Island that may have belonged to Earhart? Or did you mean Ballard is conducting his search for Earhart off Ocasio-Cortez Island? I'm not understanding your post.

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PostPosted: Fri Jul 26, 2019 5:52 pm 
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Feathering Props - NOT.....

Dan Jones wrote:
I'd just about bet the farm that she's somewhere within a hundred miles of Howland, in any direction. If she had the gas to fly 350 miles down to the Phoenix Islands then she certainly had time to be transmitting that information in the blind, over and over again instead of there just being... silence. She ran out of gas (probably flying in circles at about a thousand feet) and kept flying until her fuel was completely exhausted, then deadsticked it into the water, blew it, and the wreckage quickly sank. I'll bet all of you a cold, Oshkosh beer that if Ballard finds it the props aren't even feathered and the two of them are still in it.


Constant speeding Hamilton Standard props - Yes; but they could not be feathered. Feathering props were an 'after-market' Modification to Electra's (a la Linda Finch 10E - which was a 10A originally, now in the San Diego Museum with Cigar tube shaped nicely chromed pitch change domes at the hub).

David Billings
http://www.earhartsearchpng.com


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PostPosted: Fri Jul 26, 2019 6:50 pm 
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This is not my first rodeo. I have been writing about the Earhart search since before some of you were born, for both Air & Space Smithsonian and Aviation History Magazines. In fact I'm collecting some of your sillier posts for use in my next Earhart article, so keep 'em coming.


Tighar has been claiming they have solved the mystery since before some of the people on this forum were born and still no proof. You should grab some quotes from the Key forum in the UK while you are at it, especially those regarding the bogus Bevington blob. :D

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PostPosted: Fri Jul 26, 2019 7:38 pm 
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Shocking prediction!

THEY WILL FIND NOTHING!

Resume speculation or being a expert. Whatever.


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PostPosted: Fri Jul 26, 2019 7:44 pm 
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Stephan

Okay, RG is right. A latter day Columbus proving himself right in the face of scoffers.
So do you...and Ballard...buy the rest of his methodology (some would use a different term)?

Buying this part of RG's spiel doesn't excuse the other nonsense he's been peddling for years. (Rather like today's political scene, if you buy any part of a politician's stance, you have to defend all of it).

-The character assassination of the doctor for having the nerve to say it wasn't AE. RG disagreed despite not being an MD or having examined the bones in person...unlike the doctor.
-"Batty's notebook" which has never been made available for outside research.
-The infamous patch...which had taken on a new life in the group's pantheon of "proof"..despite legitimate concerns over content and markings. If course it HAD to come from the Lockheed, as no other aircraft have ever visited that part of the Pacific.
-Assuming the shard of glass is from a freckle cream jar, even though the company apparently didn't use a jar of that size/color, THEN assuming AE used the cream.I
-finding show parts which MUST have come from AE, ignoring all the other people who are known to have spent time in the island. And when the shoes are shown to be too large, the answer is.." they were Fred's".
they seem to hang their case on a lot of assumptions. I'm no Harvard graduate, but I don't think that's accepted scientific methodology.
-I think he also puts a lot of stock on post fuel exhaustion radio transmissions which apparently require a dry running engine.

Again, I don't have a huge issue with the Gardner Island theory, but buying it almost forces one to subscribe to the rest of RG's nonsense.

And that's not even mentioning the Miller search (looking for a wood and fabric aircraft after 75 years in salt water), which certainly smells more like an excuse for fund raising rather than an honest search with the expectation of finding anything.
In short, would you buy a used car from the guy?

BTW...Will you still be writing about TIGHAR for the magazines you mention?
I think your 30 year membership and comments here might call your objectivity into question. And since you follow politics, we know you wouldn't want THAT to happen or be accused of biased reporting. :)

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Last edited by JohnB on Sat Jul 27, 2019 5:21 pm, edited 4 times in total.

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PostPosted: Fri Jul 26, 2019 8:35 pm 
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I don't know why anyone needs to draw conclusions before the expedition is over. Either he'll find something, or he won't. We can draw conclusions when that happens. Anything before that isn't worth getting all hyped up about.

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PostPosted: Sat Jul 27, 2019 10:48 am 
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David Billings wrote:
Feathering Props - NOT.....

Dan Jones wrote:
I'd just about bet the farm that she's somewhere within a hundred miles of Howland, in any direction. If she had the gas to fly 350 miles down to the Phoenix Islands then she certainly had time to be transmitting that information in the blind, over and over again instead of there just being... silence. She ran out of gas (probably flying in circles at about a thousand feet) and kept flying until her fuel was completely exhausted, then deadsticked it into the water, blew it, and the wreckage quickly sank. I'll bet all of you a cold, Oshkosh beer that if Ballard finds it the props aren't even feathered and the two of them are still in it.


Constant speeding Hamilton Standard props - Yes; but they could not be feathered. Feathering props were an 'after-market' Modification to Electra's (a la Linda Finch 10E - which was a 10A originally, now in the San Diego Museum with Cigar tube shaped nicely chromed pitch change domes at the hub).

David Billings
http://www.earhartsearchpng.com


That's interesting David, thanks. I didn't know that, I just assumed that they were feathering props. (The props on my Electra not only feather but reverse, too!) :lol:

I hope Ballard finds it on Gardner Island/Nikumaroro because the odds of him finding it out "somewhere" in the open ocean are very long, though personally I really doubt it's there. But he is probably the very best guy in the world to answer that question, so I impatiently await his findings.

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PostPosted: Sat Jul 27, 2019 1:01 pm 
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Is RG going with Ballard on the search?


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PostPosted: Sat Jul 27, 2019 3:09 pm 
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No. Ric would have told if he was.


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PostPosted: Sat Jul 27, 2019 5:16 pm 
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Stephan Wilkinson wrote:
No. Ric would have told if he was.


Not even as comic relief?

Seriously, I'd love to know the relationship between Ballard and the group.
So Ballard thinks the photo might be the proverbial "smoking gun".
But does that mean he's wedded to the rest of the group's statements about what they say they've found on the island?

We'll probably never know because of a desire to present a happy camper united front, where any dissection might cause hurt feelings or a scuttled TV deal (and resulting loss of income).

Stephan, using your journalist credentials, that would be a question worth asking Ballard, and would be an interesting piece in any future story you write.

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PostPosted: Mon Jul 29, 2019 11:30 pm 
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Taking a Dog Team to Nikumaroro

Maybe the dogs they are taking to Nikumaroro are Pointers.


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