Tighar at it again!

No, wait!  We didn't miss Amelia's plane.  We found a debris field near the island where we've been taking people to for the past 20 years!  Hold on!  Don't leave yet!

During the invasion of Saipan, US Marines found her plane.

I can't fathom why the media keeps buying this story. It's hilarious.

Consider the facts.  These trips to Gardner Isle have resulted in a comb, freckle goop, some turtle bones.  Nothing else. Really? You think that if she had actually been there, there might have been anything else?

There's been a deep sea expedition - millions have been spent on finding - nothing.  Oh wait. A debris field. "Could this be the resting place of Amelia Earhart's Electra?" Oh my!





And how did this come about? A photo dug out of the archives, of what may or may not have been Nessie, or a piece of an aircraft in 1937 in the water.  So the guy who took the photo - he didn't notice it, just happened to catch this landing gear bobbing in the water.  What could it be?

I don't even get the logic of what we're talking about here.  A photo of what may or may not be a landing gear in the water near Gardner? What the heck does that have to do with Earhart's Electra?  It's crazy.  There's not a single shred of any evidence, eyewitness or otherwise that she went anywhere near Gardner.

Wow.  Denial is not a river in Egypt.

and now - for some other details - actual eyewitness reports from people who saw her, saw the plane, and saw what happened to it.  C'mon guys - reporters - get out your pencils.  Do some homework, please!

Over 200 islanders saw her or Fred Noonan after 1937 in and around the Marshall Islands.  These people have been interviewed in books and on film. (Oliver Knaggs, many others, Fred Goerner, etc).

US Marines found her plane on June 18th, 1944 at Aslito airfield.  If you watch the film that's referenced here you will see them speak for themselves on camera.   They decoded the message that said they'd found her plane (and not some look alike plane) they guarded her plane, and they destroyed her plane.

Full stop.

Bob Wallack, US Marine, found her briefcase on Saipan in 44.

They buried it off the runway at Aslito airfield.  They covered it in dirt.  The aluminum has not deteriorated.  It is still there.  The runway hasn't changed. The documentary film "Earhart's Electra" SHOWS WHERE the spot on the runway is.  You want to become the person who found AMELIA EARHART'S AIRPLANE?  Don't go to Gardner.  Don't go undersea.  Take some equipment, get some permits and start digging where these US Marines claim they saw her plane, saw it destroyed on the runway.  It's within a fifty yard radius of the maps in this film. It's still there. Waiting for someone with a shovel. Get to work.

End of story.

Honor her memory properly. Tell the truth.

Have a nice trip, and don't forget to thank me at Oscar time.

UPDATE:

Well, here I am on Saipan and we are digging for AE's Electra.. I got a comment from Tom King, the chief researcher at Tighar about this post... from last August.  It's Feb 19th, I've been on Saipan for three weeks, our crew has been here for six.  I've interviewed 15 different islanders who saw a European woman, or an American flyer, or Amelia Earhart after 1937.  That goes along with the 200 or so that Fred Goerner, Oliver Knaggs, Don Wilson, etc have collected over the years.

Don't get me wrong.  I respect the science behind Tighar's research.  I just don't understand the logic of it.

Here's a reply I wrote to someone who sent me Tom King's report on their research about eyewitness reports on Saipan....

I've been working on the eyewitness accounts for 30 years. What Tom King's report is missing is pretty fundamental - Devine was not the first GI to see the plane.  He may have been the first person to report it (and pretty adamantly as well, reporting to his congressman, calling the media and everyone he could find to do so after the war - not exactly someone out to make a buck from his account).  Devine has details in his account that are factually incorrect, but that doesn't make his entire testimony incorrect. For example, in the official govt record on the reply to Devine's accusations, they claim because he inaccurately identified a fisherman's hut at Susupe, his entire account was suspect. (Special agent Patton's report from 1960)  I find this kind of reverse reasoning silly, and not worth examining.  It's not that Devine saw the plane on Aslito airfield - it's that six other GI's saw the plane.  Devine corroborated a number of details that the other GI's claimed.  So that makes his testimony worth examining. The first people to see the plane at Aslito were Marines on June 19, 1944. I know that detail because the wire operator who decoded the message did so for Col. Clarence M. Wallace on that date.  As he said to me during his interview in Tupelo Mississippi "I remember it as if it was yesterday."  Combined with numerous other corroborated details he gives, I found his testimony, Douglas Bryce's testimony, Andrew Bryce's testimony, Robert Wallack's testimony and many others (as recounted in the second of Devine's book (with M. Campbell) where he solicited accounts from GI's who'd been there) credible and verifiable. I'm here on Saipan interviewing people in their 80's who recall these events. Some are chomorro. Some are American veterans. And I've just found a Japanese man who claims he was here when she was executed.  I'm tracking down his details as we speak. So we are left with - why ignore the eyewitness accounts?  It's not just Devine.  So far we have 12 GI's who claim they saw her Electra here.  Are they all liars?  Are they all besmirching their uniform by making up this fantastic detail that her plane was here?  To me it borders on the ridiculous that people would not follow up on these reports.  The only logical conclusion that I can get from people not following up on the over 200 eyewitness reports (from Georner, the priest's extensive interviews with Matilde Arriola and others, Don Wilson's many people, Oliver Knagg's filmed interviews in Mili, Jaluit, Mike Harris's interviews (always incorrectly ascribed to TC Brennan, who was just accompanying Mike) - the only possible reason people have not followed up on these is "egocentric americanism" - if a person doesn't speak English then their account must be suspect. At least I hope that's the reason and not some more nefarious conspiracy to obfuscate the facts.  I choose not to follow that path, as my experience working with people in the defense dept, homeland security and CIA - (during my research for the film "Salt") is they love to solve a mystery as much as the next fellow. I wish the folks at Tighar the best - I'm here on Saipan (EarhartOnSaipan) with a small crew with determination and a desire to know the truth.  We didn't come here with any preconceived idea about WHY she wound up in Saipan. We came because we wanted to follow the evidence.  We are following up on good reporting done by Fred Goerner, by Oliver Knaggs.  We have numerous eye witness accounts that have never been published as to her presence here on the island, we have numerous eye witness accounts by US soldiers who saw her plane, or came across other evidence she was here, we are currently looking at sites that have never been examined before.  And we'll let you know what we find.

What Really Happened to Amelia Earhart

What Really Happened to Amelia Earhart

Well, there's life in the old girl yet.

I love that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has weighed in on her love for Amelia Earhart.

I think it's fantastic that Ric Gillespie and Tighar.org are going to mount yet another expedition to Gardner Island.  I don't think there's every been anyone with a track record as theirs, that has gotten so many bites at the apple.  In the film business, you make a film and you get no results - you find it harder to make a film.  This is around the 7th or 8th time Tighar is heading off to Gardner to find Amelia Earhart. Go figure.

Let's see. So far they found her shoe. Well, no, turned out to be a man's shoe.  So they said "she was probably wearing men's shoes."  Sorry, wasn't her shoe. They found a piece of plane. They had it analyzed. Not from her plane. ABC financed a few of these trips.  Last year they "found her bones!"  Well, might have been her bones - actually, Ric said in a moment of candor, it's "either hers or a turtles."  The results were "inconclusive."

Oh my God! Now he's got the US State Dept heading off to Gardner isle with him.  I can't believe it. I'm either incredibly jealous (most likely) or incredibly amused.  One of the two. One tiny small bit of detail that they're overlooking.

She was never there.

How do I know that? Well, let's stack up the columns.  On their side, they say the Gardner was on the line that she was traveling when she missed Howland - true - it's about 225 miles SE of Howland.  So far so good.  She could have gone that way.  There's no eyewitnesses to that fact.  And none that saw her or the Electra there after she disappeared.  So that's on the minus side.  On the plus side - tighar.org maintains the most extensive, up to date, excellent site about what happened to AE prior to her disappearance.  I have no qualms with the quality of the sight, and the information there - it's brilliant.

But she didn't go SE to Gardner.

How do I know?  I have read accounts of over 200 eyewitnesses who claim they saw her or Fred Noonan in and around the Marianas after her disappearance.  This is not some theory.  This is not some hair brained notion. These are written and videotaped accounts by islanders who saw they saw her, the Electra, or some version of a white female flyer that looked like her in and around the Marianas. They claim her plane came down in Mili Atoll. (the Queen of the island claimed that along with other folks.)  People discount that she could have made it to Mili - it's 400 miles NW of Howland.  But then why are these islanders saying she landed there, and that the Japanese picked up her plane there?  there's a new theory that proves it possible - it's the time line theory that shows that if Noonan miscalculated the international timeline in his navigation,he would have been 200 miles NW of howland when they were lost.  That means she only had 200 miles to continue on to the Marianas.  Either way - to me, the fact that a number of people saw the plane come down, saw troops arrest her, saw the plane transported - trumps how she got there.  She deserves credit for an amazing feat - landing her Electra on an atoll.  They claim her ship was taken by Japanese barge off the shore and transported to Majuro where it was put aboard a Japanese ship that the US was told was "searching for her" and later that it was far away.  But I have eyewitnesses who place the Koshu Maru in Jaluit - and with the Electra on the back of the ship.  I have an eyewitness who went aboard and saw her and Fred Noonan - attended to their wounds.

Why isn't this well known?

I don't know. Because he's an islander? Because he was half Japanese?  I have no idea. But he isn't the only one.

Then we have the people on Saipan who saw her in her cell on Garapan, we have numerous accounts of her incarceration - and her and Fred's execution a number of years later.  All eyewitnesses.  Then we have the US Marines who found her briefcase in a safe on the island, who then found her plane, the Electra in a hangar on Aslito airfield.  I have 5 of them on film telling their story.  They didn't know each other - and amazingly, they were witnesses to the same events.  And they watched as the US forces destroyed the Electra.

Why?

I have no idea. I don't really care either.  Because I'm not trying to prove anything - I'm just looking at the eyewitness reports and conveying what they say.  I'm sorry it isn't what tighar.org has thought happened to her - it would be infinitely more appealing to imagine her and Fred on a deserted island instead of sitting in a dark cell (where if you go to Garapan prison, they'll give you a tour of their cells - they're still there.)  What happened to her body? It was recovered by a US Navy man who was tasked to find her - he recovered her briefcase, recovered her body (also reported in the Stars and Stripes in 1944 for anyone who's looking), and oversaw the destruction of her plane. I have a positive ID of this man by a US Marine who swore to me "Beyond a shadow of a doubt, that's the man that I saw destroy Amelia Earhart's airplane."  That's a US Marine.  Not a faded photograph of some ship parked off Gardner island that may or may not have some engine part in the background.  My God.  I can't believe I'm still trying to tell this story.

For those of you who think you know this story better than anyone, I'll ask three simple questions.
1. In her book "Last Flight" AE reports of an evening spent with Thai pilots where she reveals to them that she's ignorant of how to work a very important device that's on her plane.  Can you name that device?
2. During World War II, George Putnam was in the Army Air Corps.  He was stationed on an island in the Pacific and he put in for leave for two weeks where he visited an island nearby that might have revealed everything he didn't know about her disappearance.  Can you name either island?
3. According to a Navy mechanic interviewed by two authors, (who later became a California Highway Patrolman) he installed two objects in AE's Electra for gathering information.  It was around the time that she was quoted as saying "Imagine me, being a spy." Can you name the devices?

I've been at this as long as Mr Gillespie.  So I applaud him for gaining the support of the State Dept. But I wish, truly wish, he'd stay open to the possibility, however faint it might be in his mind, that perhaps these stories about her winding up on Saipan might have some truth to them. Because the truth.. will set you free.

Anyways, watch the video. See for yourself.  I worked and was credited on the film "Amelia" as well as Diane Keaton's version - I've done everything in my power to get producers to take a look at the real story - she deserves to have her story told.  She was more of an American hero than we think she was, more than we know - she died in service for her country.  And no one has stood up to salute her for it.