It appears Ric Gillespie of TIGHAR (The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery) is becoming a master at sleight of hand. I admire his ability to pull reasons to go back to Nikumaroro Island out of his….hat. The search for the “any idiot artifact” goes on and on and on. Jeff Glickman, a forensic photo analyst with a very impressive resume, has surfaced several times in the past few months with astounding “findings” that have aided TIGHAR’s cause greatly. The first was back in March 2012 when he declared an item in the picture from the Maude-Bevington expedition in October of 1937 could be a landing gear from a Lockheed Electra like Amelia Earhart’s. That little bit of news started the fire at the State Department level with visions of “finding Amelia Earhart’s plane just before the election” dancing in the administrators’ heads.

A freckle cream jar was the next offering which was the talk of the major news networks and just about every blog in the world for weeks. That came on the scene in June 2012 when the furor of the “landing gear” was just beginning to subside. Is anyone starting to detect a pattern here?

Next, in July 2012, TIGHAR’s expedition departed riding the giant publicity wave that should have been named Typhoon Amelia.  However, just as the aviation gods deserted Amelia in 1937, Neptune deserted Ric 75 years later.  He thought he was going to find the intact plane at the bottom of the reef, but father Neptune or maybe Davy Jones refused to cooperate. He publicly admitted they had found nothing, but still had hours of video tape to go through.

Just days before the airing of the August 2012 Discovery Channel’s documentary of the boondoggle (Oops did I say that out loud?), Jeff Glickman made a startling discovery. He ID’ed the “landing gear” with a wheel fender on the expedition’s videotape. He actually located the landing gear from Amelia Earhart’s Electra among the 4000 TONS of debris from the SS Norwich City which loses a couple of tons of man-made iron and steel every year onto the reef.  I am very surprised that Jeff hasn’t found Jimmy Hoffa!

The picture to the left is the “find”.  I realize that it doesn’t look like a landing gear or a wheel fender to us (mere mortals), but Mr. Glickman thinks it “could possibly, maybe is consistent with….” I would conclude if the entire plane was ripped apart by the horrible currents that are said to exist on this reef, that we could expect these results: A 7 or 8 pound aluminum fender would have been carried more than just a few feet away from a landing gear probably weighing over 150 pounds. But what do we know of such things?

The infamous 1937 picture by Eric Bevington was touted as “having all the components of the landing gear of a Lockheed Electra”, according to Ric Gillespie. Mr. Glickman’s photo enhancement dated May 2012 looks less like a landing gear than the original photo. Bevington was a very meticulous record keeper. He wrote in his journal at great length about everything he saw on the island. He even described the mullet and octopi in the hold of the SS Norwich City. His writings abound in detail.  He described the landing on the island, “After breakfast I made an easy landing across the reef and walked across the shallow inner reef lagoon.”  They arrived on the island at dawn on October 13, 1937 and left at 4:45 P.M. on October 15:  a 3 day stay on the island exploring and digging water wells. It would seem logical that the 3 foot high landing gear of an Electra standing up in the surf, or on the dry reef, would have been seen and noted by Mr. Bevington.  One can safely assume that the “landing gear” was either a piece of the SS Norwich City or something natural.  The original photograph does somewhat resemble a native dressed in a long skirt walking bent over in the shallow surf or a cable reel with a boom from the rusting ship.

The freckle cream jar was discovered during Expedition Niku VI in May and June of 2010 along with a bottle believed to be hand lotion. TIGHAR has identified even the manufacturer of the hand lotion and a picture of their very impressive art deco headquarters building can be seen on their website. I guess the hand lotion couldn’t be connected to Amelia, but a freckle cream jar could. Every news article contained pictures of Amelia’s freckled face next to enlarged photos of the jar.

Now we get to the last film of Amelia taking off from Lae, New Guinea. This also was heavily stressed in the Discovery Channel airing of TIGHAR’s expedition. Mr. Glickman feels that something ripped the lower receiving antenna from the aircraft and bent the pitot tubes down by what looks to be a 10 degree angle.  Again, logic wasn’t the order of the day.  TIGHAR concludes that the loss of the antenna is responsible for her not receiving radio calls from the Coast Guard Cutter Itasca: a misstatement on Ric’s part, because she did receive one transmission at 8 A.M. from the Itasca. She stated, “We received your signals, but unable to get a minimum. Please take a bearing on us and answer on 3105 with voice.” And according to their own website, the post loss signals made it quite apparent that she received and answered their calls (something she couldn’t have done, according to TIGHAR, without a receiving antenna). Mr. Glickman claims that the dust clouds (that are visible in the film) show where the antenna separated from the aircraft. But, it was most likely a dirt road across the runway or a pile of ashes that was left over from the brush being burned along the side of the runway. Reasonable minds would conclude that the group of pilots watching the take-off would check what caused the puff if this was an unusual occurrence.  One would think that they would have gone to the spot and recovered the antenna wire for no other reason than they wouldn’t want it to get tangled up in their own gear or props.  If they had found the antenna wire isn’t it also safe to assume that they would have tried to contact Amelia? Also, Mr. Chater, Lae station chief, would have noted it in his report. Think about it.

What Mr. Glickman did discover by analyzing the take-off photos was something he failed to mention in his zeal to dramatize his find.  We feel something did go wrong somewhere between the time they taxied for takeoff and the time the photo that he analyzed was taken.  It is difficult to deny the pitot tubes are bent down at approximately a 10 degree angle.  Logically if the antenna had been ripped off the pitot tubes would also be gone.  Mr. Glickman states that the port (left) tube isn’t attached to anything, but the right one is an anchor for the antenna. A quick look at this picture from the McMahan Photo Art Gallery and Archive to the left will show his statement to be incorrect. The antenna is “V” shaped with the open ends of the “V” attached to the pitot tubes with the closed end attached towards the rear. Now for the logic portion of this discovery; if one pitot tube was bent at a 10 degree angle they would have read differently. The one with the damaged tube would have had a lower airspeed reading than the other.  The result would have been obvious: she would have known there was something wrong with her pitot-static system and landed at Lae to have it checked out. However, if both tubes were bent at a ten degree angle, both airspeed indicators would have read the same and she wouldn’t have readily detected a malfunction.  The effect would have been insidious and would have affected the speed calculations that Noonan was making. He would have used the time between positions to calculate his ground speed and his indicated airspeed to calculate his true airspeed. The difference in the two would have been part of his wind calculations.  If the airspeed indicators were showing 5-10 mph slower than their actual speed, it would have indicated either less of a headwind or a tail wind. Since their ETA’S (estimated times of arrivals) were predicated on ground speed, the problem would have been with the wind direction, thereby telling Noonan how much of a heading correction was necessary to maintain course.  This little fact could help to explain why he used the light at Nauru to erroneously establish his position because his calculations weren’t working out as planned.

Finally, we get down to the Discovery Channel’s program. They also made several mistakes. The statement that she went missing 12 hours after she left Lea is incorrect; in fact it was 20 hours and 16 minutes later when her last transmission was received by the Itasca. They also explained why Bevington’s expedition (3 ½ months after Earhart’s disappearance) didn’t find their bodies: the crabs ate them! TIGHAR demonstrated this by putting a pig on the beach and with time lapse photography; they showed how quickly they would have been devoured. The experiment was good except they forgot to put clothes on the pig!  What difference would that make, you say? The crabs would eat the body, but not the clothes. The clothes should have been left after the crab feast and found later by the Bevington expedition.  Presenting “evidence” like this is one of the reasons a lot of people are in prison who shouldn’t be. Now we come to the latest “find” by Mr. Glickman.  His last contribution about a possible landing gear and wheel fender has a tendency to strain the imagination.  Especially after how it was done, just in time to tout the Discovery Channel program.  I’m afraid this is a stretch for the logical mind because Mr. Glickman hasn’t got the best track record on this case.  I realize that he always states that “it is possible; it is consistent with,,,”  But, let’s face facts, he gives Ric Gillespie possibilities; which Ric parlays into publicity; which keeps the money flowing.  Has it occurred to anyone that if Ric finds evidence that Amelia and Fred landed on Gardner Island, which I think he eventually will, he still must convince a lot of people that they died there. Just because they landed there doesn’t mean they died there.

I believe that TIGHAR started off with the right objective in mind: to prove that Earhart and Noonan landed on Gardner Island (Nikumaroro Island). Once that was proven, they should have followed the evidence to find out what really happened to them after they landed.  Somewhere along the line they formed what I think is an illogical conclusion: they died on the island. Since then they have used all their investigative tools to try and prove that mistaken theory.  The search for evidence to prove that they simply landed on the island and radioed for help for 5 days seems to have fallen by the wayside in favor of finding the aircraft or pieces of it to show the world.

Ric, more power to you and Mr. Glickman both. You are keeping the memory of Amelia Earhart alive and in the public eye.  Many people are becoming acutely aware of your antics with the press. At this end of each expedition, you dramatically inform the public: This is a real find which we need to investigate next year or words to that effect. Your minions have angered many eye witnesses around the world by insinuating that they are liars. Then you attempted to soften the blow by saying they weren’t lying but simply didn’t know what they were talking about.  When you find yourself in a hole, STOP DIGGING! In case you aren’t aware of it, you are in a hole.

I welcome your viewpoint.

Bob Wheeler