Earhart’s last calls: Research suggests dozens heard radioed cries for help | Hacker News Reader

Earhart’s last calls: Research suggests dozens heard radioed cries for help

washingtonpost.com

58 pointswglb14 comments

TIGHAR again. (When there's Earhart news, it's always TIGHAR.)

The problem with TIGHAR's work is (and this paper seems like no exception to me, though I am not an expert in related fields) that it inevitably starts with the conclusion that Earhart crash-landed on Nikumaroro / Gardner Island, and then provides evidence that _could_ be seen to support that pre-determined conclusion. It's backwards from the get-go.

Skeptoid provides a pretty good debunking of TIGHAR's core premise: https://skeptoid.com/episodes/4295

This quote

"We're feeding it to the public in bite-sized chunks."

from a non-paywalled article

https://www.smh.com.au/world/north-america/dozens-heard-amel...

makes it clear that this story is part of a carefully managed PR campaign. Not that that makes it false. But it means we should treat it with extra skepticism.

Well, Gillespie has been working on this for 30+ years. He clearly has an agenda, but "PR campaign" seems harsh. I mean, what's he selling? Movie rights?

TIGHAR are a bunch of swindlers. They've been milking this for years.

The GDPR/paywall is selling a plan like this:

> Premium EU Ad-Free Subscription > No on-site advertising or third-party ad tracking

But attempting to buy it reveals a whole different story:

> By subscribing, you agree to the use by us and our third-party partners of technologies such as cookies to personalize content and perform analytics.

Sad. Even giving them money doesn’t stop those greedy idiots from trying to stalk people.

This is why I stopped subscribing to many subscription services. They still mine and sell my personal data even when I am already giving them my money.

I wonder if that is even legal according to the GDPR. Does anyone know?

It is not, however it's not worse than the other GDPR-walls that let you know you are being tracked but still don't allow you to opt-out (it's funny that they implement GDPR-walls to not be in breach of the GDPR, except their solution is still non-compliant).

What's bad here is that not only is this breaching GDPR, but it's also false advertising. Granted, maybe not in the legal sense (they do tell you you're still tracked on the signup confirmation page & privacy policy), but definitely in the ethical sense. They are a bunch of pricks.

It is legal if they ask for prior comps sent from you and tell you all the uses of the data you give them and you can ask them for a total dump in readable form of the data about you.

What they are doing is not legal as they do not provide a way to opt-out.

I think the best evidence supporting TIGHAR's Nikumaroro/Gardner Island Hypothesis is the sextant case discovered on the island in close proximity to the unidentified skeleton.

We don't know what happened to the sextant case or the skeleton, so they're only know from the original reports from the British colonial authorities at the time.

This is the text of the radio-telegram mentioning the sextant serial numbers:

  Some months ago working party on Gardner discovered
  human skull – this was buried and I only recently heard about it.
  Thorough search has now produced more bones ( including lower jaw )
  part of a shoe a bottle and a sextant box. I would appear that

  (a) Skeleton is possibly that of a woman, b) Shoe was a womans and
  (probably size 10, c) Sextant box has two numbers on it 3500
  (stencilled ) and 1542 – sextant being old fashioned and probably
  (painted over with black enamel.

  Bones look more than four years old to me but there seems to be very
  slight chance that this may be remains of Amelia Earhardt. If United
  States authorities find that above evidence fits into general
  description, perhaps they could supply some dental information as many
  teeth are intact. Am holding latest finds for present but have not
  exhumed skull.

  There is no local indication that this discovery is related to wreck
  of the "Norwich City".

  Gallagher.

The notable thing to me is that the sextant case had two different serial numbers on it.

A scan of the original document can be found here:

https://tighar.org/Projects/Earhart/Archives/Documents/Taraw...

The two serial numbers fairly conclusively identify the sextant as a Brandis sextant that had been surplussed by the U.S. Navy sometime after 1918.

This page has more information about the sextant:

https://tighar.org/Projects/Earhart/Archives/Research/Bullet....

If the sextant post-dates 1918, then it and the associated skeleton are either associated with the 1929 wreck of the Norwich City or they belong to the survivor of some other accident. Given the location of the island where the sextant and skeleton were located, it seems unlikely that they would be associated with the Norwich City.

The only other loss in that time period in that part of the Pacific Ocean is, as I understand it, Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan.

From the Skeptoid link I provided above: "Near the skeleton, Gallagher also found a small wooden box with dovetailed joints, that he determined to be a sextant box. It was delivered to Harold Gatty, founder of Air Pacific, and a good friend of Fred Noonan and familiar with his navigation habits; for example, that he often carried an old-school sextant with him on flights in addition to modern equipment, just to double-check things the way a good navigator should. Regarding Gatty's own expertise, Charles Lindbergh had described him as the "prince of navigators". Another British officer in the area cabled Gatty's findings back to Gallagher:

  Mr. Gatty thinks that the box is an English one of some 
  age and judges that it was used latterly merely as a 
  receptacle. He does not consider that it could in any 
  circumstance have been a sextant box used in modern 
  trans-Pacific aviation.

" https://skeptoid.com/episodes/4295

One reason that we should consider discounting Gatty's conclusion is that we now know stuff that Gatty did not know. Gallagher reports that the sextant box had two different numbers on it and he reports what those numbers were:

3500 and 1542

We do not have documentation for those specific numbers. On the other hand, if you take a look at the second link I posted (https://tighar.org/Projects/Earhart/Archives/Research/Bullet...), you'll see they have an actual picture of a Brandis sextant box with the numbers 3987 and 1542 on it. They have a couple of tables with other sextants that they have identified with similar numbers, including:

  Brandis 3511  N.O. 1585
  Brandis 3527  N.O. 1599
  Brandis 3987  N.O. 1584

That doesn't conclusively identify 3500:1542 as a Brandis sextant with Naval Observatory number 1584, but it does look mighty suspicious.

If that is indeed the case, then the sextant box the islanders discovered definitely dates to 1919 or later, as does the skeleton that was found near it.

Even if we accept this conclusion, it does not constitute certain proof that Earhart landed on the island. It would seem to provide some solid support for the idea though.

If we combine this with other independent lines of evidence (radio reception reports, interviews with people who were on the island in the early 1940s, etc.) you can make a stronger argument.

Paywall

Reply on news.ycombinator.com