Earhart’s “Disappearing Footprints,” Part IV

Today we rejoin Calvin Pitts for Part IV of his fascinating and instructive analysis of the final flight of Amelia Earhart.

As Part III ended, Amelia had made her decision to turn northwest, not to the Gilberts but to the Marshall Islands, “and Japanese soldiers who may or may not be impressed with the most famous female aviator in the world,” Calvin wrote.  “When she crossed into enemy territory, she apparently lost her charm with the war lords, and eventually her life.”  We continue with Part IV of Calvin’s analysis.

“Amelia Earhart: DISAPPEARING FOOTPRINTS IN THE SKY, Part IV”
By Capt. Calvin Pitts

When we arrived at Area 13, unbeknownst to the casual observer, the entire narrative changed.  Something different, something major happened.

The Itasca crew didn’t know.  In their confusion, according to their log, they kept calling and trying to make contact for two hours.  The radioman calling from Nauru didn’t know.  Balfour from Lae didn’t know.  Tarawa radio didn’t know. Husband George didn’t know.  Hawaii radio didn’t know.  But somebody from somewhere must have known.  Who was it?

First, before we ask questions, we need to look at THE END in order to establish the ending of the so-called “disappearance.”  It has been a mystery to those on the outside, but not to those who studied and embraced the evidence.  Nor was it a mystery to Franklin D. Roosevelt– especially the president..

This, knowing THE END, and only this will enable us to make sense of what was happening during those early moments in Area 13: 2030z, 2100z, 2200z, 2300z, 2400z, or the local morning hours of 9 a.m., 9:30, 10:30, 11:30, noon and thereafter. 

THE END produces, first, three stone pillars: Gen. Alexander A. Vandegrift, Gen. Graves Erskine and Adm. Chester W. Nimitz.  What do such preeminent World War II men of honor have to do with this story, and what do they know that is so critical for what we will learn in the process?  Three quotes will answer for us:

General Alexander A. Vandegrift, 18th commandant of the U.S. Marine Corps, confirmed Amelia Earhart’s death on Saipan in an August 1971 letter to Fred Goerner. Vandegrift wrote that he learned from Marine General Tommy Watson, who commanded the 2nd Marine Division during the assault on Saipan and died in 1966, that “Miss Earhart met her death on Saipan.” (U.S. Marine Corps photo.)

Gen. Vandergrift: “Miss Earhart met her death on Saipan.”  (TAL p.257)  Gen. Erskine: “It was established that Earhart was on Saipan. You’ll have to dig the rest out for yourselves.” (TAL p.260) 

Marine General Graves B. Erskine, deputy commander of the V Amphibious Corps at the Battle of Saipan.  In late 1966, Erskine told Jules Dundes, CBS West Coast vice president, and Dave McElhatton, a KCBS radio newsman, “It was established that Earhart was on Saipan. You’ll have to dig the rest out for yourselves.”

Admiral Nimitz to Fred Goerner: “Earhart and her navigator did go down in the Marshalls and were picked up by the Japanese [and taken to Saipan].” (TAL p. 132).  “You’re onto something that will stagger your imagination.”  (Nimitz to Fred Goerner through Navy Cmdr. John Pillsbury) (TAL p. 178).

Adm. Chester W. Nimitz, Commander in Chief, Pacific Fleet, circa 1942, the last of the Navy’s 5-star admirals. In late March 1965, a week before his meeting with General Wallace M. Greene Jr. at Marine Corps Headquarters in Arlington, Virginia, Nimitz called Goerner in San Francisco. “Now that you’re going to Washington, Fred, I want to tell you Earhart and her navigator did go down in the Marshalls and were picked up by the Japanese,” Goerner claimed Nimitz told him.  The admiral’s revelation appeared to be a monumental breakthrough for the determined newsman, and is known even to many casual observers of the Earhart matter.  “After five years of effort, the former commander of U.S. Naval Forces in the Pacific was telling me it had not been wasted,” Goerner wrote.

Those were Men who had honor, who would not lie;
Men who could stand before a demagogue and damn his treacherous flatteries
without winking!
They were tall men, sun-crowned, who lived above the fog in public duty, and
in private thinking;
For while the rabble, with their thumb-worn creeds, their large professions
and their little deeds, mingled  in selfish strife,
LO! Freedom wept, Wrong ruled the land, and waiting Justice slept.
GOD, give us more Men like these where the times demand
Strong minds, great hearts, true faith, and willing hands;
Men whom the lust for office does not kill;
Men whom the spoils of office cannot buy;
Men who possess opinions and a will; Men who have honor … who will not lie.

— Josiah Gilbert Holland  (modified)

They did not lie.  These were three men, three impeccable sources, three individual answers, none of which were given in the presence of the other, at different times, with the same conclusion: Amelia had been on Saipan.

Earhart and Noonan were not in the Phoenix Islands; they did not die at sea.  Noonan, the best navigator in the world, who had flown the Pacific often with Pan Am, was not lost.  Earhart, prepared to execute the contingency plan so carefully worked out with Gene Vidal, did not turn back to the Gilbert Islands.  Earhart and Noonan were taken to Saipan.

“You’ll have to dig the rest out for yourselves,” Gen. Graves Earskin said.  And professional, competent people have been doing just that for 80 years.

What’s the staggering news here?  One part is this: We know THE END of the story.  Following the silence after Area 13, we have about a five-hour window or less of flying and survival time.  Something unusual happened back in the states while the Electra was being repaired, the truth of which was being played out during those final hours after Amelia’s last official transmission at 2013z.

We know essentially the area in which they were last known to be alive in the Electra.  Later, after the war, and the incredible leadership of three of our top warriors, we know where the doomed pair ended up.  Therefore, if we want to unlock this so-called mystery, we need know not only where they were, but why and how they got there.

Here’s the point of establishing THE END.  We have three pillar posts of evidence that cannot be doubted.  They are anchors to which the end of this story is tied.  But there are those who say this was only a temporary end, that a China scenario followed.  Since there are so few researchers who accept this, we will leave that “conclusion” for another time.  For now, we tie the end of the chain of this story to the Saipan anchor.

From Saipan, we can backtrack 1,700 miles to the Marshall Islands, thanks to several incredible and determined writers and investigators, among them Fred Goerner, Vincent Loomis, Oliver Knaggs, Bill Prymak and others.

The eyewitnesses they found and interviewed are convincing.  The Electra was seen on Mili Atoll, Marshall Islands.  The crew and the plane were taken to the Japanese military headquarters on Jaluit Atoll.  From there, all the evidence we have tells us they were taken by plane to Kwajalein, and then to Saipan by the Japanese.  They were on Saipan, as the three flag officers told Goerner.

To that, we can add that Bill Prymak was one who could see the obvious when others missed it.  Later, we want to visit the content of OVERLOOKING the OBVIOUS.  Prymak observed the following: An eyewitness in the Marshalls described a man-like woman with short hair in pants, and a tall man with blue eyes who had a bandage on his head, who were together.

Yet, over 1,700 miles away on Saipan, in 1937 when travel between the two cultures was limited to small boats, Saipan natives described, during the same time-period, a man-like woman with short hair in pants, and a tall man with blue eyes who had a bandage on his head, who were together.

Copy of the key section of the original log page from Chief Radioman Leo Bellarts of the Itasca showing the entry of the now-famous 2013z / 8:43 a.m. call, “We are on the line 157-337, will repeat message . . .”

Does something not strike us as unusual? From two different cultures, with 1,700 miles of water between them, in only a very short time, native eyewitnesses in the Marshalls and in Saipan are telling the same story.  How was that possible, unless they were both telling the truth?

Did they make up an identical tale without knowing what the other was saying?  Two cultures, many miles apart, in a short time, were describing the same people to interviewers.  Was this a coincidence?  Obviously, not likely.

Where does this evidence leave us?  With the Generals, we have three cornerstones, three reliable pillars, impeccable witnesses, impressive leaders, unassailable warriors separately telling the same truth.  They spoke what they knew, although they did not want to embarrass the government they served, hence were restrained with their words.

What little they said was enough to establish the truth — Earhart had been on Saipan.

That buries the “sink and drown” [crashed and sank] theory.  It also buries the Nikumaroro castaways “hypothesis,” the fake media’s favorite mother load of deception, embraced by the establishment’s Smithsonian, National Geographic and media outlets everywhere.  Without them, the truth would have gained traction much earlier, but it’s the establishment world in which we are forced to live, which makes finding truth in the swamp infinitely more difficult.

Added to those three stellar voices who had no skin in the game were two separate cultures miles apart but saying the same thing — the American lady with short hair and the white man with a white head-bandage had been in the Marshalls and on Saipan at about the same time.

A cornerstone and a foundation, eyewitnesses giving interviewers the same story, which is the evidence upon which this truth is built.  Even scripture says: “Faith is the evidence of things not seen.”  We didn’t see it, but those who saw the evidence — Vandergrift, Erskine, Nimitz, Marshallese eyewitnesses, Saipanese eyewitnesses — gave us the truth to believe, accept and investigate even further.

I.  With a tedious analysis of the records, times, speeds, radio calls and Itasca logs, we tracked the lady and the man to “Area 13” at 2013z.  This is Data Point No. 1.

Amelia Earhart’s Lockheed Electra 10E, NR 16020, over Java, Dutch East Indies, June 1937.

II.  Data Point No. 2.  Switch to the other side, 1,000 and 2,000 miles away.  Three cultures converge, the Marshalls, Saipan and the Americans, where the eyewitnesses and the greatest military leaders provide the END for the same story.

III.  The Gap.  We are then left with a four- to five-hour gap that we must bring together if we wish to change supposition into knowledge, or mystery into history.

The factual and documented information on both sides of the Gap tells us WHAT.  But we still wrestle with the WHY behind the WHAT.  How do we answer the obvious things which have so often been overlooked?

How? By refusing to overlook them any longer.

During the four- to five-hour gap while we search, an amazing thing happens: an awakening.  Consider two data points of that evidence:

(1) The Electra is flying an imaginary “157-337 degree (sun) line,” now merely a heading, at 2013z / 8:43 a.m. “looking” (?) for the Itasca.  At about four hours remaining, they hit “Bingo” fuel.  It’s time to go into action with the contingency plan: “If and when you come to your contingency fuel, turn back to the Gilbert Islands toward friendly people.  Land on a good beach, and they’ll find you.  Tarawa has a radio.  We’ll find a way to get to you.”

Were those their words?  No, but it was their plan that Vidal had designed.  Even Noonan’s sister had said: “Remember to turn back if you can’t find Howland.”

A 160 mph true air speed, plus a 15 or more mph tailwind for four hours would get them to the Gilberts.  But with what heading? “Heading, Fred.  What heading?”

From a 2013z position of about 150 to 200 miles northwest of Howland, they needed a heading of about 260 degrees or less to hit the midpoint of the 500-mile north-south string of the Gilbert Islands.

Amelia Earhart at the controls of her Lockheed 10E Electra before taking off from New Guinea, on July 2, 1937.  She disappeared the next day. (National Archives)

However, based upon the END of the story, where they actually ended up, they needed a heading of some 290 degrees or more.  That would get them to where the evidence said they were, the Marshall Islands, with a free trip to Saipan, courtesy of the Japanese.

Focus on the evidence.  Heading 260 degrees or less to Gilbert’s midpoint.  Heading 290 degrees or more to get to Mili Atoll where they actually landed on a coral beach — 290 degrees versus 260 degrees?

From a position at 2013z, to the Marshalls with a 260 degree heading?  That didn’t happen.  To the Marshalls with a 290 degree heading?  THAT DID HAPPEN, and was no accident.  Once this truth clearly dawned — the heading was not accidental — a missing, critical ingredient was added.

What’s the significance of this ingredient?  Epiphany.  That heading and that destination were intentional.  INTENT.  In that moment after consideration, we knew then what we didn’t know at 2013z, namely, they intended to go somewhere on purpose.  A heading to the Gilberts would not — repeat, NOT — have taken them to the Marshalls.

With intent aforethought:  For eyeball proof, open Google Earth and try it.  They would need a hurricane-force crosswind to blow them from the Gilberts to the Marshalls with a Gilbert heading.  Fortunately for them, but unfortunately for the skeptic, they had a tailwind from the east.

We now have intent, the first moment of realization.  They not only went to the Marshalls, they intended to.  Something was driving them.

(2) Ironically, shortly after that epiphany, we read a comment by researcher Bill Prymak.  It went something like this: “Why was AE so casual and so scarce with her radio calls?  If it had been me in such an emergency, desperately trying to make contact and find Howland, I would not have waited :30, :45, 1 hour, 2:30 hours between calls.  I would have been all over that radio:

Itasca, this is AE. Please answer.  How do I home in on your frequency?  I’ll hold the switch down for a full minute.  No more occasional calls.  Help me out . . . now.  Are you there?  I’ll stay on 3105 while you broadcast now on 3105, then 6210, then 7500, then 500.  I’ll also listen to Morse code.  Fred will understand your message, or key A.A.A. repeatedly, then key N.N.N.  That will let me know you’re hearing me.  Forget protocol.  Talk to me.  This is getting desperate.”

Not even one MAY-DAY CALL.  Why so casual?  No declaration of an emergency.  Why so incredibly stingy with words?  At 2:45 am?  OK.  But at 8:00 a.m.?  May-Day,  MAY-DAY!

2:45 a.m. – “??” unreadable (1 hour difference)

3:45 a.m. – “will listen” (2:30 hour difference)

6:15 am. – wants bearing – “about 200 miles out” (:30 difference)

6:45 a.m. – “take bearing – about 100 miles out” (almost 1 hour difference)

7:42 a.m. – “on you, can’t see you” (:16 difference)

7:58 a.m. – “circling (?), can’t hear you” (:02 difference)

8:00 a.m. – “received signals, take bearing” (:43 difference)

8:43 a.m. – “on line 157-337, will repeat” — S.I.L.E.N.C.E.

Amelia at the controls of her Lockheed Model 10E Electra, circa 1936.  (Photo by Rudy Arnold.)

Not one call, not one, indicated an emergency.  Perhaps the tone of her voice was tense, or even indicated “panic,” as Bellarts later stated, but not one hint of an emergency.  Much too casual.  Words cost nothing.  What does the silence tell us?

If she doesn’t find Howland, it’s back to the Gilberts and the abandoning of the Electra on a beach.  Amelia knows that.  Consistently, she made very brief calls which lasted mere seconds, then she was silent for long periods.  What is that telling us?  That it is not normal behavior in an emergency.  It is much too casual for a person facing fuel exhaustion and death.  It is not rational.

Strangely, it may be telling us that she has no intention of landing here.  If not, why?  Don’t know yet, but how did Bill see that?  Because if she wanted to land, there would have been desperation.  She was cool and casual because she had another place in mind.

Amelia’s sister, Muriel Earhart Morrissey, said afterward: “Amelia had no intention of landing at Howland.  It was a distraction.” (Amelia, My Courageous Sister (1987);  “Amelia Earhart: What Really Happened to Her?” (D.A. Chadwick’s Blog).

Paul Rafford Jr., in his book, Amelia Earhart’s Radio, tells us: “Bill Galten also told me that although Earhart might have been able to land on Howland, he didn’t see how she could take off.  His reason was the same as that offered by Itasca’s Chief Radioman Leo Bellarts, who told Fred Goerner that he felt that if she could land, she could not have been able to take off again.”  So here are two of the original radio crew on Itasca agreeing about the serious dangers Howland posed to the Earhart Electra and its crew.  We then did some investigation of our own.

These are only two of the many items which come under the category of OVERLOOKING THE OBVIOUS.  The latest is THE HOWLAND RUNWAY scenario.  When exploring the details and a comparison with the Lae takeoff, was the Howland runway even safe from which to take off in an Electra with a heavy load of fuel?  Based upon details which we have been able to uncover, the answer may be obvious.  She’ll know once she begins the takeoff, but then it will too late. 

Let’s do some reasoning here.  When Amelia took off at Lae, she had 3,000 feet of dirt runway.  At the end, there was a 25-foot cliff dropping off to the Huon Gulf.  The Electra’s takeoff run for about 2,900 feet broke ground, sank slightly, then more or less leveled, then at the end where the cliff dropped off, it descended about 20 feet toward the water where the props were creating an observed spray from the ocean.

That reality is in Amelia’s mind.  She sees a picture.  It is now behind her, but an even bigger challenge awaits her at Howland.  How long is that coral-gravel runway?  The flat part of the Island is 1.5 miles long by one-half-mile wide.  If the longer N/S runway is just half that, since it is on the east side, rather than in the elongated middle, then we have about 4,000 feet, as later measured, but which the workers already knew.

There is also a gravel E/W runway about 2,400 feet at the south end of the N/S runway for the prevailing daily east winds.  We now have a match waiting for some gasoline.  Lae’s runway was hard dirt.  Howland’s is crushed coral recently plowed and graded, and looser than hard dirt.  Lea’s temperature was less than 85 degrees.  Howland’s is often 100 degrees or more.

Lae’s had a safety net of a 25-foot drop to the Gulf beyond the cliff at the end of the runway.  Howland at sea level has mere inches for descent after takeoff from sand’s edge to the water.  Unlike Lae, at Howland, there is no safety net.

Going through the mind of any pilot facing this would be: Under these conditions, with these differences, can a takeoff with a load of fuel be made successfully at Howland?  It was successful at Lae apparently because of the “safety net” of clear space underneath beyond the cliff.  Amelia, like any pilot, might wonder.

From the log of the runway workers on Howland: A message from Lt. Cooper to Earhart and Putnam, June 25, 1937:  “All three distances given in this message indicated shorter distances for the runways than in the previous summary.  Clearly, something has changed in the assessment of the field.  The purpose of the ‘markers’ is apparently to aid Earhart in landing the plane on the best portions of the three runways.  It seems to me that the E/W runway was judged to have 2250′ available for landing but 2750′ for takeoff. ‘Good approaches . . . now marked.”  Runway distances between markers as follows: (?? How long ??) ‘N/S 4200’ * NE/SW 2600’ * E/W 2250’.”

Nor has she forgotten the ground loop at Honolulu under much better conditions.  If a wheel of the Electra were to hit a soft spot, and veer slightly as it did in Honolulu, will she follow her habit of trying to maintain directional control with the throttles rather than the rudders?  Honolulu all over again, just waiting.

If, when the plane breaks ground at Howland, but settles 20 feet as at Lae, there will be a ditching in the water with gear down, not a pretty thought.  If density altitude were to work against her due to hotter temperature, what then?  If even one of those 10,000 gooney birds were to get in the way of a prop on takeoff, hello water.  The “WHAT IF’S” are endless.

Nearing Howland, Amelia may be thinking that the chances of taking off are not so good. Turn back to the Gilberts?  There are many smooth sandy beaches there for a safe landing, but once on the soft sand, how will the Electra get airborne again?

Then there’s the option of the Marshalls.  The inner debate continues, and a major decision is looming.  What to do?  How long is the runway?  How safe is it?

With an East wind of 15 to 20 mph, this is obviously a crosswind which is not acceptable for a heavy plane on such a runway.  Even the men on the ground who prepared it had recorded, in essence, in their log — impossible to take off on N/S runway with that crosswind.  And the E/W runway is too short; at 2,250 feet between markers, plus the narrow 300-foot addition, plus the flagged off 200 feet, a total of 2,750 feet is available for takeoff.

Before we awaken Amelia from her intense concentration, let’s slip in another bit of “obvious” factual history which has often been overlooked.  It concerns FDR himself and the government, especially Naval records generated by the former secretary of the Navy.

First, we have the official Navy-Coast Guard reports of their searches for the Earhart Electra that lasted from July 2 to July 19, and were filed beginning July 20. (see TAL pages 53-57).  We also have information on file as “Report of Amelia Earhart as Prisoner in Marshall Islands,” dated Jan. 7, 1939.  (Reference: Records of the Office of the Chief of Naval Operations, Record Group 38, Entry 81, General Correspondence, 1929-1942, File A4-3/Earhart, Box No. 70). (See above image of the top of page 1 of this report.)  This unclassified document has long been available to Earhart researchers through a simple request. 

This, and additional information shows that as early as 1.5 years after the disappearance,  Jan. 7, 1939, it was reported under then-classified documents that “Earhart was a prisoner in the Marshall Islands.”  Since the U.S. had already broken the Japanese Code, it is more than mere speculation that FDR and Co. knew that Amelia and Fred were in Japanese hands.

(Editor’s note: Here Calvin is referring to the strange, little-known “Bottle Message” found near Bordeaux, France on Oct. 30, 1938 by a 37-year-old French woman.  The message’s unidentified writer stated, in part: “I have been a prisoner at Jaluit (Marshalls) by the Japanese; in the prison there, I have seen Amelia Earhart (aviatrix) and in another cell her mechanic [sic], a man, as well as several other European prisoners; held on charges of alleged spying on large fortifications erected on the atoll.”  I have not yet written about this message on the Truth at Last Blog for several reasons, but others have attempted to verify its provenance, without success.  See * below for more on this.)

The classified proof in Navy files was declassified in 1967 and has been available to the public since then.  Anyone can read it.  Possessing a personal copy, one can show that the government knew the whereabouts of Amelia and Fred at least as early as 1939 or before. (Later, we’ll raise the issue of knowledge through having broken the Japanese code.)

That being the case, something so totally “obvious” to government authorities in 1939, and then obvious to the public through researchers in 1967, has lain hidden under a pile of dust while speculators and get-rich charlatans have invented stories about dying at sea or crashing on an uninhabited island leaving a size 9 piece of shoe as proof that a size 6 lady named Earhart had worn it.  Such is a crime against the history of humanity.

While the obvious lies at our feet, we applaud phony pictures of a ship at Jaluit in 1937 under a Smithsonian caption of “Earhart and Noonan,” but which was proven to be false. And we support establishment money being spent to divert the public’s attention to a fake story on a Phoenix Island while we allow the government to keep promoting those distractions.  This is the typical disinformation-distraction ploy.  Although the establishment can distract from the truth, it cannot change it.

Something is obviously wrong with this picture.  The public is more tolerant than they are observant.  We cry “mystery” while holding the file of facts in our hands.

Time: 2013z / 8:43 a.m.:
Amelia awakens from her decision-dilemma.  To the Itasca: “We’re on a line 157-337 degrees . . . Will repeat this message.”  To Fred Noonan she may have said: “I’ve thought about the Howland runway compared to what we faced at Lae.  It’s too dangerous.  The Gilberts are out.  Not going to sacrifice this plane.  We’re going to the Marshalls.  Give me a heading, and there’s no time to discuss it.  If we land here, I probably won’t be able to get airborne again.  Heading, please.”  (End of “Amelia Earhart: DISAPPEARING FOOTPRINTS IN THE SKY,” Part IV.)

Next up will be the Conclusion of Calvin Pitts’ “Amelia Earhart: DISAPPEARING FOOTPRINTS IN THE SKY.”  Your comments are welcome. 

* (Editor’s note continued: Far more revealing among the Navy documents declassified in 1967 is the notorious 1960 Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI) Report (below), ostensibly undertaken to investigate Thomas E. Devine’s 1960 statements to ONI Special Agent Thomas M. Blake in October 1960.  Devine, at home in West Haven, Conn., having seen the reports of Fred Goerner’s first Saipan visit, decided to tell the ONI about his 1945 experience on Saipan with the unidentified Okinawan woman who showed him the gravesite of a “white man and woman who had come from the sky,“ before the war.  Devine believed this site was the common grave of Earhart and Noonan.

The ONI found nothing to support Devine’s gravesite claims, which wasn’t surprising, but its unstated goal was to discredit all information that placed Earhart and Noonan on Saipan.  In this it actually failed miserably, though no one in the media has ever even alluded to the document’s existence, and it remains completely unknown to the general public despite its declassification.  The story of the ONI Report in itself is another amazing travesty in the saga of the Earhart disappearance, in that it virtually establishes the Marshalls landing and Saipan presence of the fliers while attempting to debunk both ideas.  For an extended discussion of this obscure but vastly important document, see pages 95-100 in Truth at Last.