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NEWS … Waitt Industries conducted a detailed underwater search for Earhart's Electra in the vicinity of Howland Island. This search combined with the Nauticos search 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 book which claim Earhart crashed and sank at Howland Island.
The Waitt Institute's 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 the base of operations in Pago Pago, American Samoa.
For the real story, read "The Lost Flight of Amelia Earhart" available on this website.
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New findings on the Lost Flight
of Amelia Earhart ...
Ten years of research studying the loss of Amelia Earhart brings a story in novel form that has all the trappings of a book classic and in the future as a feature film, a film classic. It is truly amazing that Navy Intelligence and U.S. and Japanese interests have been able to keep the secrets and the evidence of the Earhart loss suppressed for over 70 years, but it has happened. No she did not crash and sink at sea, no she did not crash at Gardner Island (Nikumaroro), and no she did not come back to America in disguise as Irene Bolam.
“Lost Flight” will take you there... to a very small island in the Pacific... to a lost airplane floundering over open waters... to a story that has never been told on the silver screen or in book form. For those who want the story behind the story with supporting details and evidence that only a published work can provide, this book is a definitive must read on the life and loss of Amelia Earhart.
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| In the book you will see the documentation behind the “Lost Flight” including the e-mails and the testimony of experts such as the late Navy Captain Almon Gray and Pan American Airways radio operator Paul Rafford, two radio experts who set the record straight on the Earhart loss. You'll read several of the letters that were written by CBS radio reporter Fred Goerner who was, we believe, the best of the Earhart researchers. In fact, there is a long list of researchers involved with this mystery, and they all have their individual stories to tell. “Lost Flight” goes further than the typical Amelia Earhart book and refutes the “crashed and sank” theories, the Irene Bolam stories, as well as those theories that Earhart flew south to the Phoenix Islands and perished on a deserted Pacific Island. Soft cover, 352 pages, illustrated, 5.5 x 8.5 inches. $19.95 plus shipping & handling.
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"Whether one is an Earhart fan, a history buff, or just someone who enjoys an amazing story, well-told, this book is highly recommended."
"A novel based on historical evidence plus an enormous anthology of evidence proving she did not die July 2nd 1937. "
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The year is 1937. The day is July 2nd. Lockheed Electra tail number NR 16020 fights its way through towering cumulus in the Central Pacific. Over open water, the oceans are alive with weather pouring in from all directions. It is almost as if a spigot had been released containing tropical rain showers, squalls, and gigantic thunderheads all colliding in the same amount of space along a line tracking through the Pacific. Click on Chapter 1 link to read more . . . .
There is no definite proof - I am talking about tangible evidence here - that Amelia Earhart was indeed in the custody of the Japanese and died in Japanese custody. [However] there is a lot of other evidence that points to that possibility. For example it was the late Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz who became sort of a second father during the last years of his life, who kept my nose to this story. He indicated to me that there were things behind it all that had never been released. Click on Fred Goerner link to read more . . . .
An army truck speeds its way through the port city of Jabor with two prisoners, a white man and a white woman, handcuffed in the rear of the vehicle. It did not attract any attention as it moved swiftly down the streets. As it approached the end of the city limits, it turned and ventured into the depths of the jungle where it stopped and discharged its passengers. Four Japanese soldiers and an officer marched the two Americans down a trail. Out of public sight and away from the protection of the Navy, they are treated roughly. Click on Chapter 9 link to read more . . . .
| Click on this link to read more from Chapter 1 |
| Click on this link to view Fred Goerner's letters |
| Click on this link to read more from Chapter 9 |
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To order with check or money order, send your name, shipping address and payment including Shipping and Handling according to PRICE LIST to:
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Plano, Texas 75086- 4242
Please indicate item LF-707 on your check.
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PRICE LIST
The Lost Flight of Amelia Earhart, $19.95
Domestic (U.S. except Texas) Shipping/Handling, $3.99
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Information for Book Stores:
Please contact PrairieBooks@aol.com or write directly to PrairieBooks,
Box 864242, Plano, Tx. 75086-4242 for copies of the sell sheet for bookstores.
Please include your e-mail address and store information.
ISBN # 978-0-9646007-3-7
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~~ AN EXCITING NOVEL BASED ON RECENT HISTORICAL EVIDENCE
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SPECULATIONS
Spy missions? Impossible, the airplane flew a direct route with no detours.
Roosevelt ordered a search of the Marshall Islands ... true, but the search failed to turn up information and was stopped by
the Japanese.
Did Earhart die on a deserted island in the Pacific? Extensive research has yet to result in any proven Earhart artifacts in the area.
Earhart flew the airplane all the way back to the island of Bougainville and crashed in the jungles ... impossible the airplane would have had to carry an additional 6,000 pounds of fuel.
Earhart flew south to Gardner Island and perished on the sea shore ... the pet story of one major group and no evidence to support any of it except miscellaneous scraps and airplane parts from World War II that have never gained acceptance. In 1937 the Battleship Colorado conducted a major search of the Phoenix Island group with three airplanes launched from its catapults. The search of Gardner Island proved to be the most extensive of the group resulting in no signs of possible inhabitants at that time, although there were visible signs of previous inhabitants on the island at some time.
What is happening on the Island of Saipan today? A historian, Genevieve Cabrera and her husband are pioneering an effort to excavate Garapan Prison in the search for artifacts. Is it true Admiral Chester Nimitz passed information to Fred Goerner that Amelia Earhart had been captured by the Japanese and was executed as a spy ... this is a true statement. Goerner and Nimitz were good friends; however, Goerner vacillated in his later days on where Earhart went down, but he never gave up the idea Earhart and Noonan had been taken to Saipan and were either executed by the Japanese, or, in prison, she died of dysentery.
Fred Noonan was either executed or died a prisoner of the forthcoming war in the Pacific.
Earhart crashed at sea? The post loss transmissions disprove this concept.
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| AMELIA & FRED |
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The typical manner of disposing of the Amelia Earhart affair
is that she "crashed and sank" in the Central Pacific.
However, evidence coming forth challenges that belief. In recent days researchers from around the world have given credence to the notion that the post loss transmissions received from a radio operator at Nauru Island is valid and substantiates claims that Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan, did not crash at sea.
Enroute to Howland Island from Lae, New Guinea, on the last leg of her round-the-world flight, Earhart's voice was evidently heard by a radio operator at Nauru Island, a half way point in the path of the flight. Radio Nauru had been covering Amelia's requencies- 3105 and 6210 Kilocycles (KC)- whenever the station was operating. One of Radio Nauru's native radio operators heard and recognized her voice three times on 6210 KC, at 8:31, 8:43, and 8:54 p.m. of the second day (Howland Time). Nauru informed Radio Bolinas near San Francisco of these receptions with the following message:
SPEECH NOT INTERPRETED OWING TO BAD MODULATION OR
SPEAKER SHOUTING INTO MICROPHONE BUT VOICE SIMILAR
TO THAT EMITTED IN FLIGHT LAST NIGHT WITH EXCEPTION OF
NO HUM OF PLANE IN BACKGROUND.
Following the Earhart loss Radio Bolinas forwarded this message to coast Guard Headquarters in San Francisco, who immediately radioed it to the Cutter Itasca. The Commander of the Itasca included it, without comment, in his official report. There is no reason to doubt that these three broadcasts were authentic and for very good reasons. For one, the radio operator was a professional. He recognized Amelia's voice from the night before, and it was not widely recognized at the time of the receptions that Earhart's Lockheed Electra was in trouble or that it had crashed. The significance of the receptions has lead certain researchers to believe that Earhart's Electra did not crash at sea. The radio system would not operate if it was wet or in the water, particularly salt water. The fact that there was no "hum" of the engines in the background further supports this view since the generator necessary for radio communications was located in the right side radial engine. Thusly, the broadcasts were the last dying moments of the airplane's battery system. The airplane, of necessity, was on dry land, but where on dry land is an unknown, even to this day.
There are theories that abound to the exent that Earhart crashed immediately after radio communications were lost at Howland Island. But the better truth is that radio communications at Howland Island lapsed when Earhart switched frequencies from 3105 KC (night time setting) to 6210 KC (day time setting) . These two frequencies are called harmonic frequencies (one is the double of the other) , and they have the tendency to bleed into each another in the early hours of the morning. Switching to 6210 KC may have doomed the Earhart flight. In the warmimg of the atmosphere in the hot tropical sun, 6210 KC fades into higher frequencies and is not stable. With a flip of the switch Earhart may have set off a spate of rumors of what actually happened at Howland. All of these factors plus the post loss message received by the radio operator at Nauru Island seem to negate the possible success of the Nauticos - Elgen Long deep sea searches. Another factor compounding the Howland Island-lost-at-sea approach is the fact that the winds at Howland were calm when Earhart was reported missing. In fact, the winds were so calm the smoke from the stacks of the Cutter Itasca did not climb into the air. Instead, it settled down on the surface of the ocean and went nowhere ... a very unusual circumstance. A calm wind and a ditching at sea probably would have meant the Lockheed Electra and its passengers could have survived. In addition, the huge empty fuel tanks on board would have caused the airplane to float giving the two missing aviators ample time to climb in a life raft and paddle away. Nothing resembling an aircraft crash was ever found in the Howland area. There were no missing bodies, no floating aircraft parts, no oil, no debris field of any kind. At the time of the loss there was an extensive Naval search consisting of the Battleship Colorado, the Aircraft Carrier Lexington, and three Destroyers, the Lamson, the Cushing, and the Drayton. It was the largest and most extensive search for a downed airplane at sea in the history of aviation.
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If Earhart did not go down at Howland Island
what did happen?
This woman, Josephine Blanco Akiyama, started an uproar in the aviation world when she claimed she saw two American flyers, a man and a woman on the island of Saipan in the year 1937. The descriptions fit Amelia Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan who, in the same year, had been lost under mysterious circumstances. Fred Goerner, a radio reporter for CBS news in San Francisco, picked up the story and tracked it down.
"One day in 1937 Josephine Akiyama had been riding her bicycle down the beach road on Saipan taking lunch to her brother-in-law, Jose Matsumoto, who worked for the Japanese at their secret seaplane base at Tanapag Harbor on the Western shore of the Island. As she neared the gate of the facility, she saw a large, two motored plane fly overhead and disappear in the vicinity of the harbor. A little while later when she reached the beach area, she found a large group of people gathered around the two white persons.
"At first she thought they were both men, but someone told her one was a woman. They were both thin and looked very tired," said Mrs. Akiyama. "The woman had short cut hair like a man, and she was dressed like a man. I think I remember the man had his head hurt in some way. I remembered the year because 1937 was the year I graduated from Japanese school. I was eleven years old."
"I asked her why she was sure they were American flyers. She answered, "That's what the people said and later the Japanese guards said it." The guards, according to Mrs. Akiyama, had taken the pair away, and later there was a rumor they had been executed by the Japanese. Her memory of the plane was hazy. She could remember seeing it in the water by the shoreline, but she could not recall if it was damaged or what happened to it after that day."
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Fred Goerner's book, "The Search for Amelia Earhart"
pioneered a multitude of Amelia Earhart books. Elgen Long's book, "Amelia Earhat The Mystery Solved", caused a lot of attention, but the facts that were presented have not gained acceptance by several parties in the professional aviation community. Television specials have been done on the subject of Amelia Earhart crashing into the sea, and we are very respectful of the Nauticos - Elgen Long contribution to aviation history with their search. However, a crash into the sea dodges the real fact that Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan, did not crash into the sea and may indeed have been captured by the Japanese and executed as spies. There has never been any recovery of airplane parts or human remains of the Earhart flight. Over 70 years from the date of the disappearance, the probability of finding any meaningful evidence is nearly non-existent ... certainly not in 18,000 feet of ocean where the point of impact is a great unknown ... assuming the ocean was the point of impact. With the recognition of the post loss transmissions as being authentic (particularly the Nauru Island intercept) the "crashed and sank" theories of the Earhart disappearance have, more recently, begun to fall by the wayside. In the case of the Earhart flight, the known testimony and sightings point to Saipan and the Marshall Islands. If Amelia Earhart and her navigator Fred Noonan went
down at sea, no one ever saw it or witnessed what happened. Tom Devine is an ex-Army Sergeant Postal Worker from World War II who claims that he saw the Earhart plane. The discovery took place in an airplane hangar on the island of Saipan during World War II. Several others have made that claim including Earskin J. Nabers, the Marine code clerk who received and decoded the messages about the discovery of the plane, the plans to fly it and the plans to destroy it. Both Nabers and Devine claim they saw it destroyed. Arthur Nash, a captain in the Army Air Corps, said he saw "Amelia Earhart's airplane" outside a hanger very early on in the Saipan invasion.
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These mysterious initials were found in a prison cell on the walls of the Japanese Jail, Garapan, Saipan, and were given to Tom Devine by William Grandt of Chicago. The symbols appearing next to the initials are Japanese and are believed to be crudely made lettering for the name “John” and the name “Mary” in Japanese. It was originally thought these letters referred
to astrological and I-Ching symbols, but that has since been questioned by researchers. Today, at Garapan, the initials and the Japanese letters appears to have been written with a Japanese writing brush on the wall of one of the prison cells. The “AE” is not a character in either the Chinese writing or any of the three Japanese writings. Both words, especially "John," was misspelled, and they were written in a writing the Japanese reserve for foreign objects and people. There is evidence in the writing where the author made a mistake and backtracked trying to fix it.
From WWI to WWII the Japanese occupied Saipan and even taught the locals to speak and write Japanese. Those names could have been written by a local prisoner. But that adds other questions. The Japanese were not Christians and would never have those names. Before the Japanese occupied Saipan, Saipan was occupied by the Spanish who converted the locals to Christianity. Those names could have come from the Bible, however it would have been a spanish language Bible. The names would be “Maria” and “Juan,” common names for locals for that time. “Mary” and “John” would not have been used but “Maria” and “Juan” were common names. Perhaps “Maria” and “Juan” are better translations for those characters, and it may have been that two Saipan Christian natives, Maria and Juan, added their names and the initials ‘AE” on the wall of the Old Japanese prison at Saipan in memory of the events that happened there.
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| Picture Courtesy of Eric Johnson |
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| Today, on the island of Saipan, Garapan, the Old Japanese jail is a tourist attraction. There are still natives there on the island who tell the old stories of seeing the white lady with the short haircut who was captured by the Japanese along with her navigator, Fred Noonan. The stories that they tell are that the two flyers were imprisoned by the Japanese at Garapan, and there they both died. Some of the stories are conflicting. For instance, you will hear stories that they were both beheaded by an executioner or that Fred Noonan tired of the food and threw it at the prison guards. In return, he was executed. There are stories that after Noonan was executed, Earhart died of dysentery. There are also stories that they were both executed by the firing squad. The remains have never been found. The missing airplane nor any piece of it has ever been found, and slowly, very slowly the only thing that is left is a legend ... a legend of the lost flight of Amelia Earhart.
The prison in which Earhart was believed to have perished was infamous among the Saipanese as being a place of death. In the days of World War II anyone believed to be a spy was quickly executed. No trial. No one escaped.
On the Island of Saipan today, there is a historian, Genevieve Cabrera, who has been fascinated since childhood by the Amelia Earhart enigma. She believes that the Japanese captured her and secretly brought Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan to Saipan to interrogate them. The Japanese, according to Cabrera, could not take the risk of drawing international attention to the disappearance of such a famous aviator. It would be logical to assume that they would have taken her to Japanese Headquarters. A pair of white strangers was a rare sight in 1937 Saipan. In the days before the attack at Pearl Harbor, the Japanese thought all Americans were spies.
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