The "freckle cream" jar...
VH-XXX
Oh Yes.... the "Freckle Cream" Jar....
Then there are: the bits of plexiglass, the size 10 shoe, the "Cats-Paw" heel, the metal box with a Consolidated Part No. on it, the ragged piece of aluminium with rivet holes in it, the jack-knife blade, the cigarette lighter, the so-named: "dado", the bronze bushes found in the old Carpenter's hut, the shard of human bone (or is it a shard of turtle bone ?), the piece of coprolite, the broken mirror and some pieces of something resembling face "rouge".
All circumstantial bits and pieces none of which can be said to have belonged to an Electra, a Pratt & Whitney S3H1 Wasp or to Earhart and Noonan.
Before TIGHAR got there to Nikumaroro and when it was named Gardner Island, there were the bones found there in 1940, examined by a British Doctor named Hoodless on Fiji and then said to be of a mixed-race male, 5 feet 6 inches tall. TIGHAR puts the measurements made by Dr. Hoodless, through a computer, the new result being that the bones belong to a Nordic female, five feet nine inches tall.... now who would that be ?
TIGHAR completely dismisses the thought and will not purposely mention, that 11 souls from the S.S. Norwich City were lost in 1929 when that ship ran aground on the reef there in atrocious weather and only four bodies were buried in the coral of the island. A later Survey Team visited the island in 1938 and recorded the beach as being littered with human bones.
Aircraft were lost in the Phoenix Group during WWII on Canton Island and on Sydney Island. Of those lost, one at least was a Consolidated Liberator B-24. If anyone has seen photographs of wrecks left on Pacific Islands, it will be realised that local people are metals hungry and will chop out pieces and utilise them for all sorts of things.
During WWII a LORAN Station was operating on Gardner Island and in attendance were some 20-odd U.S. Coast Guardsmen. They used the island for walks, had target practice sessions with the weapons they had and probably had BBQ's by the beaches with the fresh food flown in by Catalina aircraft landing and taking off at the lagoon. "Bored out of their brains", they would find anything different to do rather than stay in their accommodation building when not on duty. It was exactly the same for me when I was stationed on Labuan Island in 1960. I too used to go exploring that island, in many places which still had copious relics from WWII still there.
Who is to say the supposed "Freckle Cream" jar (incidentally, which is not yet proven as a "Dr. Berry's Freckle Cream" jar....) did not belong to one of those US Coast Guardsmen stationed on the island.... do men not get freckles ?
The now named Nikumaroro Island has been contaminated with European presence for well nigh nine decades and inter-island traffic by the local people would have brought items from the other islands as well.
TIGHAR has done good research on "what" they have found, but so far, none of it is related to the ill-fated Earhart and Noonan flight.
David Billings
www.earhartsearchpng.com
Last edited by David Billings; 5th Feb 2018 at 11:16.