Amelia Earhart May Have Survived Crash-Landing

[Doctor Strange]

http://www.thedailybeast.com/amelia...vidence-debunks-history-channels-crazy-theory

 

[2jakes]

Looks like both camps are relying on evidence provided by local natives.
One side says they saw her and the other
says "No way Jose".

Interesting.
I need to get the popcorn ready for tonight!

 

[Tiki Tom]

Nice analysis, Big J. As you are The Lounge's man on the ground in Japan, I give your views extra weight. This morning when I woke up (I'm currently on O'ahu) I was greeted by the following debunking of the History Channel's claims. In short, it gives testimony from a crew member of the Japanese ship in question stating that although they were alerted to "be on the lookout", they never encountered Emilia. Also points out why it would be unlikely that they would be mistreated if they were found. All these years later and there is still a lot of spin being applied. Perhaps we will never know.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/amelia...vidence-debunks-history-channels-crazy-theory

 

[Fading Fast]

Amelia Earhart wouldn't remain such a compelling figure nearly 80 years after her (presumed) death if she weren't so attractive and if her bearing and manner didn't so strongly suggest a certain sapphic quality....She was a show-woman, for sure. She came along when both aviation and motion pictures were novel. She had the looks, she had the "presence," she had her finger on the pulse of her time.

Yes, and that's always part of it. Humans are attracted to what humans are attracted to and be it Earhart or Lindbergh, Clara Bow or Lady Gaga, Gable or Clooney or Hemingway, Ruth or Woods (before he imploded) - the look, the image, the attitude aligned to the cultural zeitgeist - combined with the talent - are and always will be part of what takes someone to that upper echelon of fame.

The surface stuff will only take you so far and, quite frequently, talent without the image will get you very far, but put the two together and that's when the special magic happens.

 

[tonyb]

Yes, and that's always part of it. Humans are attracted to what humans are attracted to and be it Earhart or Lindbergh, Clara Bow or Lady Gaga, Gable or Clooney or Hemingway, Ruth or Woods (before he imploded) - the look, the image, the attitude aligned to the cultural zeitgeist - combined with the talent - are and always will be part of what takes someone to that upper echelon of fame.

The surface stuff will only take you so far and, quite frequently, talent without the image will get you very far, but put the two together and that's when the special magic happens.

And of course there's no discounting the role her disappearance plays in her continuing fame. Would we be talking about her had she completed the circumnavigation of the world and gone on to ... what?

Who knows. Maybe she might have distinguished herself in other ways. And maybe she would have gradually fallen out of the popular imagination.

You know that line about Elvis Presley's dying being a brilliant career move? He had turned into something of a caricature by then, and had shown little sign that he had much of anything worth the public's attention to offer anymore, and he hadn't for years. Truly yesterday's news.

 

[Zombie_61]

I set our DVR to record this special so I can watch it, but the skeptic in me thinks it's a little too "convenient" that a single photograph that allegedly shows Earhart, Noonan, and Earhart's airplane would suddenly be discovered so close to the 80th anniversary of her disappearance. And even if they were able to prove with absolute certainty that it is a photo of Earhart and Noonan taken shortly after their disappearance, then what? It still doesn't explain their ultimate fate.

 

[scottyrocks]

I am fully prepared to have this episode go the way of every Bigfoot episode ever aired. Lots and lots of repetitive historic shots, various interviews where the interviewee extrapolates but in actuality says nothing, culminating in no definitive answer at the end.

 

[tonyb]

But it sells soda pop.

 

[tonyb]

I set our DVR to record this special so I can watch it, but the skeptic in me thinks it's a little too "convenient" that a single photograph that allegedly shows Earhart, Noonan, and Earhart's airplane would suddenly be discovered so close to the 80th anniversary of her disappearance. ...

"Convenient" is right.

 

[Zombie_61]

I am fully prepared to have this episode go the way of every Bigfoot episode ever aired. Lots and lots of repetitive historic shots, various interviews where the interviewee extrapolates but in actuality says nothing, culminating in no definitive answer at the end.

This would be my guess as well--at least half of the episode will be dedicated to re-telling Earhart's story with a number of "talking head experts" explaining why and how she was such a phenomenon, and the other half will be those same "experts" (and others thrown in for good measure) discussing the forensic examination of the photograph and whether or not they believe it has any merit.

 

[2jakes]

As long as one can tell the difference between fact and entertainment, no worries.
Conspiracy theories make a terrible belief system.
Mythology makes great entertainment (and always has), it's why we love super heroes.

 

[Bamaboots]

Lady B grew up on Kwajalein and any time something comes up about Amelia or the Marshall Islands, it gets DVR'd. Tried to get her to look at this thread but no go. At least she doesn't watch the Bigfoot stuff.

 

[2jakes]

Lady B grew up on Kwajalein and any time something comes up about Amelia or the Marshall Islands, it gets DVR'd. Tried to get her to look at this thread but no go. At least she doesn't watch the Bigfoot stuff.

My dad was at Kwajalein during the Pacific campaign of WW2.
He hardly spoke about it.
He was a fan of all the Bigfoot and alien stuff on television.
Not sure if he believed it or not, but he enjoyed the theories.
He also enjoyed the Watergate hearings on PBS.
It was something to see a President announce he was resigning
on the air later.

I saw live on tv when Ruby shot Oswald.
Scared the hell out of me what adults were capable of doing.
I was very young at the time sitting up real close to that
fuzzy black and white screen. Mom was in the kitchen.
She didn’t believe me at first when I yelled to her.
“Ma...they just shot a guy!”.
They didn’t have instant replay back then, but that was all
that was on the air for quite a while.
We only had three channels and no remote.
I was the designated channel changer and rabbit-ears
antenna adjuster.

 

[2jakes]

Good thing I recorded and didn’t have to spend two hours.
I’ll just leave it at that.

 

[Big J]

Hi Tom!

Thanks for your kind words.

I'm pretty sure that LizzieMaine would know much more than I do about the 'China lobby' of the era, and it's power and reach, but it was a huge and powerful group that held significant sway well up to the end of the Korean War.

I read the link you posted, and I'm going to take that with a large pinch of salt;
Some Japanese meteorologists? I'm pretty sure that they wouldn't be privy nor witness to Japanese war crimes, and if they were, they are just as likely to deny it. Japan has a consistent, systemic problem with warcrime denial present at every level of society to the present day.

In 1931 Lindbergh was treated well in Tokyo? In 1936 Berlin hosted the Summer Olympics! Doesn't mean a thing.

The article also tries to trick us by appealing to US-centric views of the Pacific War, like this;
'The war in the Pacific didn’t begin with Pearl Harbor. It began on July 7, 1937, five days after Earhart disappeared, when a minor clash between Japanese and Chinese troops near Beijing suddenly turned into all-out war between the two nations.'

This statement gives the impression that Amelia disappeared five (whole!) days before 'the war' 'started'. But this is BS. Japan was already into it's brutal empire building by then;
Boxer Rebelion, Russo-Japanese War, Invasion of Korea, Siberian Intervention, Manchuria, Second Russo-Japanese war... From 1900 Japan had been is a perpetual state of war of aggression with at least one or more of it's neighbors for 37 years by the time Amelia went missing. This fact most certainly did not escape US watchers nor the US China Lobby.

It is disingenuous to say the least of this article to claim that 'the war' hadn't started yet. Which war? Japan was constantly at war.

Also, this gem from the article;
'Just how anxious both the U.S. and Japan were to avoid conflict was revealed by an incident in December 1937. An American gunboat, the USS Panay, that was allowed to patrol the Yangtze River by international agreement, was called in to evacuate staff from the U.S. embassy in Nanking, as well as some international journalists as the Japanese carpet-bombed the city.

The Panay sailed upriver to what the captain thought would be a safe refuge and anchored alongside other boats laden with Chinese refugees.

But a swarm of Japanese bombers attacked all the boats, including thePanay. Two U.S. crewmen and an Italian journalist were killed. The Japanese claimed that the attack was an accident. President Roosevelt was so anxious that the bombing should not lead to calls for retaliation that he censored newsreel footage. The Japanese, alarmed that they might have awakened a sleeping tiger, paid $2.2 million in compensation.'

Please note: 'The Japanese were alarmed that they might have woken a sleeping tiger', they 'paid compensation'. Hmmm, but 'a swarm of Japanese bombers attacked all the boats'.

So the Japanese bombers didn't mind attacking the boats, just not the American ones? Too bad they didn't check first, isn't it. But this fact tells us something about the pervasive attitudes of the Japanese military at that time. If they thought they could get away with it, they did it. The fact that the US ship wasn't sunk, and there were survivors put them in a spot, didn't it.

Japanese military culture didn't become brutal and genocidally racist overnight, it was a culture that was developed and grown over decades of indoctrination. 1937 is the year of the Nanking Massacre where the Japanese killed 50-300,000 Chinese civilians. They didn't just decide to do it on the spur of the moment- it was a deeply ingrained part of Japanese Imperial era military culture.

So, I doubt that Daily Beast article totally, and I pray that Amelia and Noonan starved to death on an atol, rather than dying in brutal Japanese captivity.

 

[Stearmen]

http://www.thedailybeast.com/amelia...vidence-debunks-history-channels-crazy-theory

That is a really great article! I to am tired of TIGHAR, wish they would go away! With more and more companies mapping the ocean floor, her plane will be found. Look at the planes that have been brought up from the Great Lakes and Pacific Islands that are now flying, so her plane is out there.

 

[Stearmen]

I am fully prepared to have this episode go the way of every Bigfoot episode ever aired. Lots and lots of repetitive historic shots, various interviews where the interviewee extrapolates but in actuality says nothing, culminating in no definitive answer at the end.

Once and for all, there is no such thing as Bigfoot! I know, he gets most indignant when I bring up his foot size. He insist he is only a size 9-1/2!

 

[Zombie_61]

...With more and more companies mapping the ocean floor, her plane will be found. Look at the planes that have been brought up from the Great Lakes and Pacific Islands that are now flying, so her plane is out there.

Only if the theory that she ran out of fuel and crash landed in the ocean is actually what happened. But if she and Noonan were captured by the Japanese military as this "newly discovered" photo suggests, it would have been in Japan's best interests to completely destroy the plane so there would be no physical evidence linking Japan to their disappearance.

We're only half-way through the History Channel special, but so far their largely circumstantial evidence and various testimonies seems to support the theory that Japan was involved in their disappearance in some capacity.

 

[MisterCairo]

That is a really great article! I to am tired of TIGHAR, wish they would go away! With more and more companies mapping the ocean floor, her plane will be found. Look at the planes that have been brought up from the Great Lakes and Pacific Islands that are now flying, so her plane is out there.

Just like they've found the much larger Malaysian Flight 370 Boeing 777 during the largest and longest search in flight history???

I will not be betting too much money on that search result! And by too much, I mean any...

 

[2jakes]

All was not in vain.

The group did find Amelia's coke bottle.
It must be worth something to some collectors.