OUR STORY HAS NEVER BEEN TOLD ON THE SILVER SCREEN
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
Earhart crashed at sea? The post loss transmissions disprove this concept.
AMELIA & FRED
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 frequencies- 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 9:31, 9:43,
and 9:54 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.
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 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
“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.
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 subjectof 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 65 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 recognitionof the post loss transmissions as being authentic (particularly the Nauru Islandintercept) 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 wentdown 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.
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 who claims
to have the original photo. The letters are not Japanese. Gradt
said the photo was taken in 1944, and that he received it from
Jose Deloen Aspiros, now deceased, when he visited Saipan in
the late 1970s. The handwriting on the wall was first photographed
in 1944 and was not translated until a woman from Colorado gave
an interpretation of its mystic message. The initials "AE" are
boldly clear. The arrow was interpreted as being one of the signs
of the planet Mars. The "4" represents the planet Jupiter. The six
horizontal lines are the six lines of "I Ching" from the ancient Chinese
Book of Oracles. Within the six lines of I-Ching is the date "72" or
July 2nd the date Earhart disappeared. Whoever put this inscription
on the wall of the Japanese Jail at Garapan knew their astrology and
knew their astrological chart.
A complete interpretation of the inscription appears in
Mike Campbell and Tom Devine’s latest book,
"With Our Own Eyes, Eyewitness to the Final Days
of Amelia Earhart". Because of the sophistication of the
symbols, it could have only been written by Amelia Earhart.
In this inscription, Amelia is praying for action from the planet
Mars and good fortune from Jupiter. She is a "seven" as
there are seven letters in the Earhart name. The number
"seven" has double lines for emphasis. The six unbroken
lines represent the strongest of the Hexagrams of I-Ching.
She is crying out for Mars and Jupiter to come for her in
the hour of need. Mars and Jupiter appear as conjunct
on July 24, 1897, the date Amelia Earhart was born.
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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