For the people here more familiar with the flight than me, I recall the TIGHAR idea always seemed very unlikely because it was so far away from their planned route, and if they first tried to navigate near Howell (?) Island but couldn’t find it, they wouldn’t have had enough fuel to get to Nikimororo.
But what about Mili in the Marshall Islands? Is that one plausible?
Cory El, get a grip.
I’m not debating. I’m not here to argue. I might prop up the Mili thing, because it needs more eyes/ears (you seem to be a good pair).
Enough with TIGHAR; they get all the press (and can we avoid taking remarks literally, as I know they don’t get ALL the press?).
I don’t know how far into Japanese records anyone has dug, or if at all, but I recall reading the Japanese said they didn’t have anything, or that Saipan records were destroyed, or that code names were assigned, etc.
Sorry, I am not here to argue or sell this. I know the forums. This is IMHO. I’m gonna be a little loose, and I am aware of that.
That’s one of the things I was referring to earlier. Nobody has ever seen the alleged excised footage in the Alley film AFAIK. “The Panay Incident-Prelude to Pearl Harbor” by Hamilton Darby Perry, 1969, is a relatively definite US side only account presenting the attack as deliberate. And it has supposed stills from the excised portion of the film, credited to Alley. Problem is, they are obvious fakes, showing a US civilian type biplane with ‘hinormaru’ on the wings, not any of the types the Japanese actually used in the attack.
‘Fake but true’? (ie there really was explosive film footage, Alley no longer had it by the '60’s, he or the author came up with a substitute, etc). It’s possible, but to me indicative of the mentality, reflected in the title of that book but far from limited to it, in which the Panay incident became a precursor ‘sneak attack’, like the Earhart disappearance came to be viewed as a precursor to the (factually) common occurrence of Japanese execution of captured Allied airmen. It calls into question the objectivity of the evaluation of various facts, besides lacking any real facts at all from the Japanese side.
And another photo in that book shows the flag spread out behind Panay’s bridge, at least, as quite small, especially keeping in mind the key bomb hits on Panay were scored by Type 96 Carrier Attack Planes using level bombing from 3000 meters, though Type 94/96 Carrier Bombers (ie divebombers) were also present, and eventually the escorting Type 95 Fighters strafed. I see the photo is also on Navsource, the little square right near the mast.
To its credit that book doesn’t ignore the fact that Panay was with a convoy of merchant vessels. Other accounts tend to de-emphasize this, giving the impression the attackers had a lone vessel to observe and evaluate, and it also bears on the ‘plastered with flags’ claim. There were 5 river tankers, three of them larger than Panay, plus a smaller freighter and 9 junks, sampans etc. The bigger vessels belonged to Standard-Vacuum Oil and were flying US flags (seen in photo’s) but transporting goods/people (mainly S-V Chinese employee evacuees in this case) of a combatant made them arguably legitimate targets. Several of them including the biggest three were also sunk. The JNAF a/c then strafed some of those fleeing the merchant ships (to the opposite bank from Panay survivors), but also strafed an IJA unit coming to see what was happening.
“American Merchant Ships on the Yangtze” by Grover has the best account of the usually forgotten merchant ship aspect of the incident.
As I said, there’s no evidence in the units’ records (which are available) that they realized they were attacking a USN vessel, and at least two members of the attack force explicitly said so long after there was a reason to deny it if true. One of the divebomber pilots, M. Okumiya said it here, that they never made out any identifying markings on the vessels in the large convoy, but did eventually see the Union Jacks on the Royal Navy gunboats Scarab and Cricket they came across the same day: Okumiya signaled his section to abort after only some had dropped their bombs, and the ones dropped missed.
One of the Type 95 Fighter pilots K. Hirada also said so in Ron Werneth’s “Beyond Pearl Harbor”.
But also as I said there’s room for speculation the Army units which called the Navy a/c in against the convoy knew it included a neutral warship. But that’s what it is, speculation.
Sorry I don’t think it’s a question of ‘getting a grip’. Research into the Earhart disappearance which doesn’t bother to look into Japanese sources is rubbish. That would be true even if the theory was the plane crashed on a desert island, which theory would be undermined if somebody found evidence in Japanese sources about seeing the aviators. Not looking in Japanese sources made sense 70-80 yrs ago, not more recently. It’s pretty simple IMO.
There’s very little info in the photograph itself, of course. But if it is in fact a photograph of Earhart and her plane, taken by a Japanese government photographer after July 2 1937, then the circumstances make most other deaths implausible. I suppose “Accidentally killed by the military (and then covered up out of embarrassment)” is actually maybe slightly more plausible. But any other possibility needs to explain why the Japanese didn’t tell the world, or even keep an internal record, that they found the world-famous object of a huge international search-- a search that, according to Wikipedia, the Japanese Navy was part of.
If it’s not Earhart, then, sure, we have no idea what happened to the people in the photograph, but it’s of course then not evidence she survived her last flight.
Was that a broken window that was covered with a metal plate?
After 80 years, is it then ok to go down ‘unlikely’ paths? What’s the recommended time frame there? Also, ‘unlikely’ to you is sometimes ‘quite likely’ to me.
IMHO
I believe Alcoa dated the metal to WWII, as it was stamped with lettering they introduced after 1940.
That’s a TIGHAR find on Nikamororo and unrelated to the Mili landing theory (Mili atol landing has relevance with the new photo)
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Thanks, Philster.
I would like to read some of the “last messages”, bogus or not.
Not conclusive, but compelling enough that I asked my Daddy to DVR it for me.
Well, she would have been on that island without food for awhile…I think you and I both know what it came down to and what happened. Yup. Noonan was quite delicious.
(and for the record, I believe the same thing you do, as a whole, about all of it)
Noonan. Great brunch menu! 
Apparently this part was “an obvious fabrication” too. :dubious:
“As the evacuation of the sinking gunboat commenced, Alley realized he might have to swim for it. Crewman Fon Huffman gave Alley his life jacket, then jumped over the side and began swimming for it. Alley thought better of the situation, stayed with the ship, and ended up leaving Panay aboard the last sampan. A short time later, a small Japanese boat arrived on the scene and sprayed the abandoned hulk with machine-gun fire. It’s crew then boarded Panay briefly, probably in search of code books. Fortunately, they had already been thrown overboard.”
The Earhart story made CNN’s web page this morning.
Let’s finish the point about the film if you’re going to answer in terms of the film. Some new point doesn’t answer the point about the film.
I said the supposedly excised Alley footage has not actually shown up anywhere. Do you know this not to be true?
I said the photo’s between pp 138 and 139 of Perry’s “The Panay Incident”, credited to Alley, purport to show stills from the excised portion of the film but quite obviously, no scare quotes needed, show a type of a/c not used by the JNAF. Is this not true?
I think this faking has implications about credibility and socially allowable bias in perception about Japanese actions ca. 1937 (not entirely irrelevant to the Earhardt case either) in view of in fact often odious Japanese actions at the time (this was during the fall of Nanking) but especially when viewed from after the start of the Pacific War from the US/Anglosphere POV particularly. And it doesn’t relate to random individuals but the same person the ‘let’s change the subject’ point is again quoting, Alley.
But on the let’s change the subject, that account is highly compressed but accurate per other sources. The incident where Huffman gave Alley the life vest is one sentence before but actually quite awhile in time before two Japanese launches, presumably IJA (Perry pg.
127) were heard to fire machine guns by USN sailors in a boat several 100 yards away, assumed to be firing at the abandoned Panay, which they then boarded. But why wouldn’t the local Army units check out what happened with this attack on a convoy of merchant ships in Chinese service? I don’t see how that proves preplanning of an attack on a US warship that was among them any more than the air attack itself does. And again members of JNAF air units long after there was any reason to hide it said they didn’t know or ever realize a neutral warship was present, giving the example of aborting their attack on HMS Scarab and Cricket where they did belatedly realize that to be the case.
Also an interesting episode in between the abandonment and the launches is described in both Perry and Grover, where an IJA unit on shore approached the grounded Standard-Vacuum tankers on the opposite shore from Panay. Perry p. 118 “As soon as the Japanese caught sight of the American flags through the smoke of Mei Ping’s [one of the bigger tankers] deck house fire, they moved with a less menacing air”…“Bonkoski tried to shout an explanation: ‘she’s the Panay an American Navy ship…they sunk her’. The Japanese were still bewildered: ‘If American gunboat, why it shoot?’”. Then two of the Japanese soldiers on the deck of the tanker, waving Japanese flags to identify themselves and call off the Navy planes were themselves killed in a renewed air attack on the tankers.
In fact Perry seemed to realize the local IJA units were not in on a deliberate attack on a US warship, but rather assumed the planes were, the opposite of the typical implication now that it’s pretty clear the IJN planes were not sent to attack a US warship, as in now your implication off Panay.org, that the local IJA eventually sending launches out to the apparently hostile ships the navy planes attacked somehow proves the IJA planned an attack on a US warship. Although again the speculative possibility remains somebody in the IJA chain calling for the navy airstrike on the convoy realized a neutral warship was with that convoy.
All these unlikely conspiracy theories. Everyone knows they were kidnapped and transported in suspended animation to the delta quadrant where their descendants were forced to act as slave labor.
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Was that just after they left Torchwood?
The fella on the left has a distinctive hair line … just like Noonen … but just like a lot of people … weak … the person sitting with the back turned “could be” AE … but could be just about anyone … weak … Lockheed Electra dangling off the stern of a Japanese freighter … not exactly an ancient Japanese custom …
Each point can be individually dismissed, the three together, not so much … I’m going with weak, but stronger than all other evidence put together … it smells like a photo of a smoking gun, if you get my drift …
What I don’t understand is how a photograph wound up in the National Archives without being properly documented; who took it, why did they take it, when was it taken … I think it would be wrong to dismiss this out-of-hand … and I see no harm in taking this evidence seriously … could be AE and might be the best we’ve got …
This does give us new places to dig …