SLEEP TIGHT AMILA - Earhart's Last Flight

 

I find the mystery tragically familiar. It was after midnight Greenwich Mean Time, Tuesday, 2  July 1937, when the Lockheed Electra lifted off the grass airfield twelve time zones east of Greenwich, in the center of the village of Lae, Papua New Guinea, before climbing eastward out over the Solomon Sea.

The machine was state of the art, the best available design, with years of dependable service behind it. It carried fuel enough for it's intended 2,000 mile flight. Both the pilot, Amila Earhart,   and the navigator,  Fred Noonan,  were well trained and experienced. And for most of it's time in the air the flight was routine, on course and on time.  And then, suddenly, the plane and pilot were gone.

Vanished. Poof! As if with the wave of a magician's hand. And in retrospect the search was not as extensive and exhaustive as it originally seemed. Almost eighty years later we still don't know what happened to the most famous woman of her time, Amelia Earhart.

Five hours after take off the thirty year old aviatrix reported back to Lea, via her 50 watt transmitter, that she was crossing 150 degrees east longitude, and 7 degrees south of the equator at 10,000 feet. The Electra's estimated ground speed was 140 knots (160 mph), the air temperature was 90 degrees Fahrenheit and visibility limited only by the humidity. She signed off with her call sign, KHAQQ. Three hours later, in the dark and right on time, Earhart's Electra flew over the United States Navy tug, Ontario. But it was here that things started to go wrong.

The tug was right where it was supposed to be, at 165 degrees 20 minutes east, and 2 degrees 59 minutes south, approximately the half way point for this leg of Earhart's round the world flight. The seas were calm, and the U.S.S. Ontario reported visibility of at least 40 miles and cloud cover of only 20 - 40%.  

But Amelia was expecting the Ontario to broadcast the letter “N” in Morse code (dash -dot) on 400 kilocycles, for five minutes, beginning ten minutes after the hour. However the Ontario was instead broadcasting the letter” A” (dot-dash), every hour on the half hour, at 7500 kilocycles. They never actually contacted each other, but at 0800 GMT, Amelia reported with confidence back to New Guinea, that she was at 12,000 feet, on time and on course.

Despite the miscue, we know Amelia and her navigator, Fred Noonan, were on time and close to being on course because they overflew the tramp steamer Mytlebank, about a hundred miles northeast of the Ontario. 

The third mate on the Mytelbank (above) heard an plane to his starboard, at just about the same time the ship's radio operator heard Amelia broadcast, “Ship in sight, ahead”. That near encounter, ten hours out of New Guinea, had Earhart and Noonan flying into the rising sun of 2 July, 1937, well over half way toward their destination across the international date line, where it was just Tuesday morning on tiny Howland Island.

It was a curious target. The kidney shaped coral atoll was just a mile long and about a half mile wide. It's highest point was just nine feet above the surf. To spot it from the air, you had to practically be parked on its crushed coral runway.  But it was United States territory, its bird droppings had been mined by American nitrate companies since the middle of the 19th century. 

Howland was occupied in three month rotations by four students of an Hawaiian boys school, and they called their tiny collection of huts Itasca-town, after the 250 foot long U.S. Coast Guard cutter Itasca which supplied the outpost. 

And it was the Itasca (above), anchored just outside the western reef, and commanded by Captain Walter Thompson, that was supposed use it's two hundred foot mast to make radio contact and guide Earhart's plane to a safe landing.

The sun rose over Howland Island at 17:15 GMT. Forty-five minutes later, with Amelia reporting she was within 100 miles of the Itasca (above). Radioman third class William Galten heard Amelia' asking, “Please take bearings on us and report in half an hour."  

It was a simple request, but Galten would be unable to comply, because the Itasca's CGR-321 transmitters (above) did not have any directional capability or meters on 3105 frequency to indicate her signal strength.

Rather, Galten estimated the Electra's distance based on the volume of Amelia's voice, which Galten labeled as a four out of a possible five. She was close, he figured, but it was purely a subjective measurement. To get direction to her signal and thus a better distance, required the use of a separate unit on the Itasca's bridge, operated by radio man third class George Thompson. But Thompson found Amelia's broadcasts were too short to give him a fix.  At its core, the problem was not merely technical, but generational.

The established military and shipping industry, traveling at ten to twenty miles an hour, still relied on Morse code, because it provided longer range at lower power (and lower frequencies). But aviators, like Earhart, traveling at over a hundred miles an hour, preferred the shorter range of higher frequency voice communications. This mismatch manifested itself when Galten was forced to tell Amelia, “Cannot take bearing on 3105 (kilocycles)...Please send on 500 (kilocycles) or do you wish take bearing on us?” 

At 18:58 GMT Amelia asked Itasca (above) to send signals at 500, but three minutes later radioed, “We received your signals but unable to get a minimum. Please take bearing on us and answer 3105 with voice.” But he had just told her, he could not do that!

Nothing was working, and panic began to mount on board the Itasca. Forty minutes later Earhart was reduced to telling Galten, “We are on the line 157, 337. Will repeat this message on 6210”. Now she was introducing a third, even higher frequency, on which the Itasca equipment could receive but not broadcast voice. The frustration was palpable. One five seven and three three seven were north, south compass headings, and both passed directly over Howland Island. Amelia seemed so close and yet out of reach.

Captain Thompson (above) felt the urge to do something, to move. At 22:10 GMT, when Thompson figured Amelia's fuel would have run out, Itasca raised anchor and made steam toward the north and west, where Thompson thought there was enough cloud cover which might have hidden Howland Island from Amelia's eyes. But after three fruitless days, he switched his search to the north and east of Howland Island. 

When that also failed, the USS Colorado (above) was ordered to take over the search.

Quickly joined by biplanes from the aircraft carrier CV-2, U.S.S. Lexington (above), and even two Japanese ships, the searchers spent 19 days covering some 94,800 square miles in a surface search, and another 167,481 square miles by air.

It was not until a week after Amelia disappeared that a search plane from the Colorado, piloted by Lt. John Lambrecht, flew over a small island on the 157 line, 360 miles south east of Howland (above). The pilot reported, “signs of recent habitation were clearly visible” despite the island having been reported as uninhabited for forty years. However “repeated circling...failed to elicit any answering wave...” That tiny oasis was named Gardner Island, and no one inspected it on foot for another 30 months.

After 19 days, and $4 million (64 million in today's dollars), the search was called off. Amelia Earhart was legally declared dead on 5 January, 1939.  And on December 20th of that same year, 20 Gilbertese natives were landed on Gardner Island, for the same reason the Hawaiian students had occupied Howling - to establish a legal international claim.

It was the British government's last attempt at empire expansion, and was headed by colonial officer Gerald Gallagher. The next year (1940) Gallagher reported finding 13 human bones, a partial skeleton (above) “possibly that of a woman," and “an old-fashioned sextant box” on the island's southeast corner.  

Back in Britain, Nazi planes were bombing London, and the report was given little thought. The bones were shipped off to colonial offices on Fiji, where they were given a cursory examination by Doctor D.W. Hoodless, the 50 year old Principle of the Fiji School of Medicine.  He judged them to be those of a short, stocky European man. They were then put in storage, and during the Second World War, were lost.

Were the bones those of Amelia Earhart? Maybe. Amelia stood 5 feet six or seven inches tall, and when Richard Jantz, from the University of Tennessee, compared the ratio of the humerus of the skeleton in question to the radius bones he got a figure of 0.76 - exactly that of Amelia, based on bare armed photos taken before the flight.  Added to the apparent campsite found on the island, the remains of make-up and a pocket knife, and "credible" reports of 47 messages heard by professional radio men six hours after she went missing, the case is enticing, better than believable. 

 But unless the coral encrusted remains of her Electra reside 600 feet below the waves breaking along the reef surrounding Gardner Island (above), we will never know for certain. And maybe not even then.

There have been no humans living on Gardner Island since 1963, and after 1979 its name was changed to Nikumaroro, as the British Empire finally retreated from the Pacific. Its new native governors abandoned the atoll to its large land crabs and birds. And if they know what happened to Amelia Earhart, they are not talking.

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THE GREAT DIAMOND MOUNTAIN Chapter Six

I can imagine what William Ralston felt when his assistant Mr. Colton handed him the telegram from Professor King. His shock, and probably anger at this previously unknown (to him) interloper,  who dared to  question his dream, must have been overwhelming. But this was quickly followed by reports from the London newspapers detailing the bizarre Americans who had bought junk diamonds in bulk. 

Wrote the London Times, “....they purchased without reference to size, weight or quality, the lot including diamonds, rubies, emeralds, etc. to the value of over $15,000.”  Shortly there after King himself arrived in San Francisco, with full details of the salted claims.  Ralston, admiral of the San Francisco money armada,  wasted no time in moving to minimize the damage to his finances.

First he made arraignments to repay every investor in full. That million dollar hit to his personal finances did hurt, but in the days before the Securities and Exchange Commission, and their meddlesome regulations, tens of millions of dollars in investments could vanish with a mere whiff of rumor against the reputation of one man. If the Bank of California was to have any future, then Ralston had to restore at once the full trust of men like Baron Rothschild. It was at moments like these that it should be clear that a lack of government regulations is a severe hindrance to the trust which makes larger international investments possible.  But those interested in the short con,  are always opposed to having a cop on the beat. 

Next Ralston moved to get his money back. He hired the best detective he could find, the English bron, long time San Francisco Captain of Detectives, Isaiah Wrigley Lees (above). Over thirty years of service, Lees had managed to avoid any taint of corruption while rising to the top of a department awash in payoffs and political favoritism. 

Lees (above) had championed innovations such as photographing all arrested suspects, and originated the rouges gallery of their photographs. Lees  was now granted a leave of absence from the department, and Ralston provided him with a salary and an expense account to find out everything he could about the Great Diamond Mountain con.

Lees immediately set out for Europe and found, as he suspected, that there were many along Tulip Street who recognized the photographs of the two odd Americans from their 1870 expedition.  By tracking the aliases they had used in Amsterdam against shipping manifests Lees could confirm that Arnold and Slack had sailed – in both 1870 and 1872 – from the Canadian port of Halifax. The Windsor and Annapolis Railway had been completed in January of 1872,  connecting the U.S. State of Maine with Nova Scotia, and that seemed the obvious path they had taken to avoid American ports and American customs agents.

Although John Slack was was nowhere to be found at the moment, the Pinkerton agency easily tracked down Philip Arnold, living amongst the 2,000 residents in his home town of Elizabethtown, Kentucky. And far from hiding, Arnold had followed the example of William Ralston. 

He had invested his ill-gotten gains in a troubled bank run by Thomas Polk, now renamed the Arnold and Polk Bank (above, b;g; right). The move saved the small town from financial ruin. 

Arnold put the rest of his money into the safe in his two story brick Italiante home (above) at 422 East Poplar street, in the hills on the north side of “E”town, along with 500 acres of farmland where he started breeding horses, hogs and sheep.

Arnold and Slack were both indicted for fraud in San Francisco, but Philip Arnold (above) had no intention of giving himself up.  His family connections in Hardin County, Kentucky, and his donations to local politicians were only reinforced by the interviews he gave to the “Louisville Courier”; “I have employed counsel, a good Henry Rifle” he announced.  

Philip Arnold's feisty talk assured public opinion would materialized firmly behind the local boy who had outfoxed the west coast robber barons.  He even hired a lawyer or two. The con man turned banker was dug in like a tick on a Kentucky mule, and banker Ralston was not going to get him out without an expensive, exhausting and embarrassing court fight. Rather than see himself mocked and derided in Kentucky courtrooms, the robber baron decided to cut a deal.

The details were never made public, but it seems the California banker settled for less than a third of what he personally had lost, about $200,000.  In exchange Ralston dropped all claims against the Kentucky con man.  But the bad news was just starting for the Magician of San Francisco. The capitalist sharks smelled blood in the water.  

In August of 1875,  fellow robber baron and close personal friend Senator William Sharon (above), broke a promise to Ralston and sparked the collapse of the Bank of California. Try as he might to avoid it, William Ralston ended up just like Henry Comestock, and he made the same exit. 

The day after they took his bank away, William Ralston was found floating in San Francisco bay. his pockets full of rocks.  His funeral was attended by 50,000 people. They loved him, they just weren't willing to lend him any more money.

Charles Lewis Tiffany (above), the man who had vouched for the value of worthless diamonds and sapphires, reestablished his reputation in 1878 by buying himself a French Legion of Honor.  He died in 1902 at the age of 90.  He left behind an estate valued at $35 million.

Shortly after paying Ralston to go away, Philip Arnold opened a hardware store at 58 Public Square in “E” town (above).  It seems he had gotten considerably something like 4 or 5 million dollars in total out of  the diamond hoax, and even after his deal with Ralston he was doing pretty well.  Unfortunately, he would not live long to enjoy it. 

Just five years later, on Tuesday, 20 August 1878, Philip Arnold got into a bar fight with Henry Holdsworth, a clerk at a competing bank. In a story that would be familiar to anyone who watches the local news, Holdsworth left the bar and returned a few minutes later with a double barreled shotgun.

According to the Breckenridge News from Cloverdale, Kentucky, Arnold was just leaving the bar when he saw Holdsworth approaching. Arnold pulled his revolver and fired twice. He missed both times. Holdsworth returned fire with one barrel, missing Arnold but hitting two innocent bystanders, one of them in the neck.  Hodsworth then ducked behind a tree. From there he emptied the second barrel at Arnold, hitting him in the shoulder and “lacerating it terribly”. Not dissuaded, Arnold fired three more rounds, again missing Hodsworth, but this time hitting a local farmer named John Anderson, in the gut, and killing him.  Since everybody was now empty, the gun fight was over, and the tally was seven rounds fired, one antagonists wounded, one innocent bystander killed and two more noncombatants injured - a typical gun fight.

Philip Arnold did die, just not quickly. The 49 year old lingered for almost a year, finally dying  of pneumonia on 8 August, 1879.   At least he outlived his victim,  William Ralston.  Arnold's funeral was one of the best attended in the history of “E” town, and his monument on the rolling slopes of the Elizabethtown Cemetery is one of the tallest. But over time memories of Philip Arnold have shifted and over a century later, every October, the residents of “E”town stage the “Philip Arnold Dead Man Rolling Bed Race”- to raise money for charity, of course. Contact the E-town Heritage Council for details. The final irony is that Arnold's hardware store has now become a law office.

In a footnote - Arnold's nemeses, Henry Hardworths, was not satisfied with having mortally wounded Arnold. He also sued him for $7,600 for injuries suffered in the bar fight. Henry lost. But that figure came up again in August of 1884 when Henry was arrested in New Orleans for passing bad checks  in "E" town, totaling $7,000.

Arnold's partner in crime, John Slack was eventually tracked down in St. Louis, where he was working in the affiliated professions of cabinet and coffin maker. Evidently he had no money for  William Ralston to recover. But the silent con man missed the mines of his youth and continued his profession as a prospector in the  New Mexico silver strike boom town of White Oaks, where he became “one of the oldest and most universally respected citizens...” of Lincoln County.  He died in 1896, at the age of seventy-six years, two months and six days, leaving an estate of $1,611.14.

The only conventional hero in our tale seems to have been the geologist and professor, Clarence King (above). He had uncovered the scam, and that act rocketed him to fame as a paragon of virtue and science, which saw him made the first director of the United States Geological Survey.  But there was, of course, another side to the rock hound, a human side.  In 1888  Professor King  married Ada Copeland, an ex-slave who had moved from Georgia to New York. What was dark about this marriage  was that King hid his true identity from Ada, telling her that his name was actually James Todd, that he was a black man and his profession was actually that of a Pullman Porter. Over the next 13 years he continued this divided life, black man James Todd at home, and world renown white geology professor Clarence King while away from home. Ada and James/Clarence  had five children together, but Clarence did not reveal his true identity to poor Ada and the children until December 1901. And did it via long distance, from his death bed in Arizona. The lesson here is that everybody is lying to somebody, usually to themselves. 

If you want to see the Diamond Mountain that has no diamonds, find Diamond Wash Draw, in Moffat County, Colorado, about one mile south of the Wyoming state line and a quarter mile east of the Utah state border. The flat topped mountain in front of you is Diamond Peak. And the square mile scrub brush plain to the north of that is the scene of the Great Diamond Hoax of 1872. If you can get there, you just might be able to pull a diamond right out of the ground. And when you do, if you do,  you will understand why William Ralston had been so willing to believe, and why capitalism has always depended upon a mix of fantasy and fraud to thrive. 

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