Chimbu Chuckles:
Can't fault your logic Dave - except if she was flying at 10-12k how did she CFIT on ENB - fuel exhaustion is the only thing that occurs to me?
Correct, but it would not be controlled flight. Electra runs out of gas. See, you are thinking CFIT and you are not thinking to fuel exhaustion. I know it is difficult to do, I'm an ex-Flight Engineer but you have to put yourself in the cockpit, in 1937. It was "more" out of control than CFIT. It may have broken up in the air at the aft end as the Lieutenant cannot recall a Tail Section. As the hole in the canopy was small in comparison to a 59 foot wingspan aircraft and there had been some regrowth, obviously it went in steep. The props could not be feathered and on the Electra engines out of gas would hunt between coarse and fine as the oil pressure built up in a windmilling action and then dropped off as they slowed down on reaching coarse. It does not bear thinking about what would happen when they went out of synch. while they were fluctuating "Coarse"-"Fine"-"Coarse" and back again. Putting the pitch levers into "Fine" would be the only recourse but the drag from the windmilling would be enormous. I'd be surprised if it hasn't thrown a prop..... To maintain airspeed the nose would have to be shoved down.
If she was DRing her way back to Rabaul in the dark wouldn't she have been transmitting on HF near constantly, as fuel ran out, thus someone would surely have heard something?
Well, yes, you would think so. But you're not Earhart and her radio procedures were not quite ATC standard... as you've read. You have to say, she wasn't hearing anyone so she might have considered what was the point ?
Accept what you say re the old Priest and his sister.
It's only the old Monsignor and not his Sister Gertrude, she's no problem, she was sane, he wasn't sane in his dotage. Did you know about the flight in a P-51 that he said he had done ? What about Clark Gable trying out the first ejection seat in the U.S from a P-61 ? How about him shaving Earhart's bonce to check for microchips ? You obviously do not have the tape recording of the conversation between Rockin' Rollin Reineck and the Monsignor, you have an edited transcript....not the same. The tape opens up a whole new world on both of them, I assure you.
What are your thoughts on the striking resemblance between 'Irene' and Amelia, both physical and aircraft knowledge/personal contacts/languages spoken etc?
The photographs put out by a wannabee Film Producer based in Las Vegas and "paid for" by Rollin Reineck have been examined closely by a few people who are specialists in the field of "cranium identification" (I'm smiling here....) They have been found to not resemble several features of Earharts, wrinkles, blemishes, eye shape, mouth turn down at the corners etc, etc, etc. The guy that morphed Earhart into Bolam is a guy name Tod Swindell and the name sorta fits....if you get my drift. Personally, I think Irene Bolam "basked" in the sunshine of Earhart's fame to a certain extent and developed a sense of "presence". She was able to widely travel after she won the courtcase against McGraw-Hill books as below.....
Is it just pure BS that 'Irene' existed and looked so much like AE that so many close personal friends wondered?
Going on the evidence that she did work in a Bank in NYC during WWII and based on other little bits of information I would say "yes" it was BS. I blame the two "Yo-Yo's" for the Bolam nonsense, that is: Joe Gervais and Joe Klaas. Gervais has passed away but he did know the truth before he departed but never admitted it. It's PRIDE you know, catches us all out at some stage of our lives but with Gervais it was also mingled with a bit of arrogance in that he was respected by many as a genuine AE researcher and he didn't want to lose that. "Face" some call it. He was a USAF Command Pilot before they asked him to DCM (it is alleged). Klaas is a journalist and with Gervais, wrote an awful book called "Amelia Earhart Lives" which has so many mistakes in it the letters drop through the holes in the pages...... Klaas is a former "Eagle Squadron" member who flew a Spitfire in the Battle of Britain. He was a POW in a Stalag Luft in Deutchsland. I owe him that but not much else for he has muddied the waters (gleefully I might add) for years. Bolam sued McGraw-Hill over the book and the two "Yo-Yo's" stood in the dock wearing brown trousers.....just in case ! She won and was paid a considerable sum which allowed her to live the life she wanted.
Those pictures, if not pure fabrication, are pretty compelling too...don't you think?
No I do not.
Wally Shirra has always struck me as a sane, thoughtful individual and he apparently believed she was alive into the 80s?
That's his opinion.
What about the Marshall Islands commemorative stamps issue in the 70s - Pure BS?
Impoverished islands will do anything to raise capital, even if it is from stamp collectors.... Look at Nauru and the passport fiasco....
As to Jap soldiers etc remaining schtum post WW2 - I don't find that the least bit surprising. If she was held/chose to remain in Japan how many lower ranked Japs that may have had contact with her actually survived the war even if they knew who she was?
May they Schtik (Dutch word) if they do know and won't speak out. In any case, she wasn't there.
As to why someone like her would do such a 'strange' thing - well what about Howard Hughes, Lindberg and Neil Armstrong? Great people are sometimes flawed and do things that seem VERY strange to everyone else.
Howard Hughes had more problems than my dogs fleas. If you'd have been living with Ava Gardner and she walked, wouldn't you be traumatised (?), I know I would. And what about being soooh close to Jane Russell, I mean it would drive you nuts wouldn't it designing bras to keep them under wraps ! THEN he had all those money problems... and PanAm and all ze wimmen....better to lie low and let the Mormons look after it all....
Earhart loved her Mother, she was probably a little ambivalent about George but her family was all-important to her and she would not disappear like that. All these romantic and outlandish tales are what people dream up.
She tried to fly around the world, she failed. As a last ditch effort she tried to save the aircraft, herself and Noonan, she came close but she failed. End of Story.
Eamon De Vallera?
Now I know for sure that you do not have the Audio of the Kelley-Reineck conversation..... There is a passage at the start where the Monsignor is saying that he went to see the Emperor....in Jappan... (bear with me, this is from memory):
NOTE:
You have to read this in a shaky voice.....
"....he was their king, watyamacallit...their God....The Emperor.... He said he would let Brigadier Keane go and .....he would let Amelia go.... It was the time when Eisenhower left all the troops over there...."
At this point Reineck says: "Yuh-yuh-yuh-yuh mean MacEisenhower....or MacArthur...."
"Yes, Mac, Mac, Mac-MacArthur was it, I dunno, whatever, anyway, I brought out Amelia and this guy Eamonn De Valera... he was the 'er Emperor of Ireland...."
"This house at Rumson was built by Queen Victoria and for three years I assisted in the execution...er...the administartion of London....her daughters all stayed here...."
"I went to meet The Spirit of San Louee
(French pronunciation) at Paris, he'd planned to go to Ireland but ended up in Paris and the Cardinal asked me to go as there was no one there to meet him...."
There were
thousands at Paris to meet Lindberg........ and so it goes on.
Chuckles if you believe all that now, you will not believe it when you hear the audio.
email me with your address and when I get back I'll send you the audio (if I can).
Regards,
Dave Billings