Reineck proposes “New Scenerio” in Earhart loss

The work of the late Rollin Reineck, the former Air Force colonel who once navigated B-29s launched from Saipan against the Japanese mainland, is well known to readers of this blog.  Reineck’s authorship of the dreadful Amelia Earhart Survived (2003), his failed attempt to resurrect the long-discredited Irene Bolam-as-Amelia Earhart myth, was a sad day in legitimate Earhart research circles, and some of the clueless who signed on to that delusion remain lost to this day. 

This undated piece by Reineck appeared in the June 1999 issue of the Amelia Earhart Society Newsletters, and based on Bill Prymak’s responding letter, probably was written in April 1999.  It presages Reineck’s awful book, published four years later, but also reveals solid insights into the ways of Washington, D.C., where deceit at the highest levels had been a fact of life long before Earhart’s final flight.

As always, the opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author, and Reineck’s conclusion is especially wrongheaded and disturbing, but this doesn’t mean the rest of his thoughts are equally muddled.  I’ll have more comment at the close of this post, which is presented in its original AES Newsletter format, which I’ve broken up to place complimentary photos to add to the presentation.  This is the first of two parts.

Rollin C. Reineck, circa 1945, served as a B-29 navigator in both the European and Pacific theaters during World War II, earning the Distinguished Flying Cross, Air Medal and Bronze Star.  A true patriot in every sense of the word, Reineck passed away in 2007, but left some very controversial writings about the disappearance of Amelia Earhart.

This photo, circa 1983, is the shallow reef area “near Barre Island Mili Atoll” presented by Vincent V. Loomis in his 1985 book, Amelia Earhart: The Final Story.  Native Marshallese eyewitnesses Lijon and Jororo told to Ralph Middle “sometime before the war [1937] they saw an airplane land on the reef about 200 feet offshore.”  These four small islands are the so-called Endrikens, the nearest about a mile from Barre, where a search team sponsored by Parker Aerospace returned for a five-day search in late January 2015.  Researchers Les Kinney and Dick Spink say the main focus of the search, with high-tech metal detectors and ground penetrating radar, was the second island from the left, and several artifacts were found.  For more, please see “New Mili search uncovers more evidence.“

Amelia Earhart supervises refueling her Lockheed Electra 10E, NR16020, at Caripito, Venezuela, before she and Fred Noonan took off on Leg 7 of their world flight on June 3, 1937.  Amelia then flew her Electra from Caripito to Paramaribo, Nederlands Guiana, a distance of 615 miles (990 kilometers).  She arrived at 12:50 p.m., local time. (Photo unattributed.)

 

Here we note that as early as 1999, and likely much earlier, Reineck was hopelessly hooked on the Weishien-Irene Bolam nonsense, which led him to write arguably the worst Earhart disappearance book of all time, the 2003 fish wrapper Amelia Earhart Survived.  

For those new to this blog or readers who might need refreshing about the Irene Bolam disaster, see Part I of my four-part 2016 exposé, “Irene Bolam and the Decline of the Amelia Earhart Society.“

We also see that neither Reineck nor editor Bill Prymak seemed to be in the mood to spell check this article before it was published and sent to the approximately 80 to 100 AES members who would normally receive the latest newsletter.  I’ll leave it to you to sniff out the misspelled word or words, but I’ll give you a clue — one of the words is very large!  In fact, if this word doesn’t immediately jump out and mug you, you may be among those who still believe Amelia Earhart returned as Irene Bolam.  (End of Part I.)