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2020 Amelia Earhart Vision ~~~
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TIGHAR
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NAUTICOS
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CHASING EARHART
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When it comes to Amelia Earhart 'cottage industries' promoting
different theories within their attempts to explain what really happened to Amelia: This Practice Really Needs To Stop WHY? Because there is only one truth: Amelia Earhart
survived her 1937 disappearance and later became known as Irene O'Crowley Craigmile. Amelia did not crash into the ocean and sink
to the bottom, nor did she live for awhile on a deserted island, where after she died her flesh was supposedly torn apart
by giant crabs. People in the know realize how outlandish these suggestions sound to those who conducted true investigative
research studies that identified the reality-based truth.
Over the years many well-meaning
individuals succumbed to the misguided offerings of Amelia Earhart plane-hunting, or 'mystery hyping' cottage industries such
as TIGHAR, Nauticos, Chasing Earhart and more. In recent decades these and other privately run clubs intent on receiving financial
gain within their adulatory pursuits--have promoted a slew of misleading ideas about Amelia's 1937 flight ending and outcome.
The differing theories they offer, while inspired by similar 'solve the Earhart mystery' motivations, managed to divert the
public away from embracing the reality of Amelia's continued survival after World War Two. As a result of the 'official
silence' from the governments of the United States and Japan--that from early on blocked the truth about Amelia Earhart's
loss, the above mentioned cottage industries and other individuals recognized a way to assume 'vocational proprietary stances'
when it came to addressing public curiosity about Amelia's last flight. Most exist as non-profit organizations, and while
some have happened on some interesting underwater wrecks during their fruitless searches for Amelia's plane, the truth is
they originally built their company profiles, some decades ago, by exploiting the so-called "mystery of Amelia Earhart's
disappearance" to their financial advantages--before Amelia Earhart's "missing person case" was forensically
addressed in the new millennium. Some actually market products bearing Amelia's name to support their endeavors. Those who
run the cottage industries, especially the ones primarily devoted to 'finding Amelia's plane' pay themselves handsome wages
(one has been making over $100k a year for some time now) from the donations they receive, and this practice really needs to stop. People grew to be somewhat romantic about Amelia Earhart's disappearance
and many have donated huge sums of money over the years reliant on false-hope, 'we feel we know where Amelia's plane ended
up' offerings. It is imperative to identify here, that Amelia recalled the last time she saw her plane while she was still
living during her later-life years, and it certainly wasn't resting on the deep ocean floor at the time.
The Misleading 'Media-Hyped' Amelia Earhart Enthusiasts:
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TIGHAR's Richard Gillespie
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In the
1980s, Richard Gillespie started his soon to be well-funded 'non-profit' organization, TIGHAR, in order to promote the idea
that Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan died as castaways on a desert island. He included that their bodies were eaten by giant
crabs and parts of their flesh and bones were dragged around and scattered about. He cited Nikumaroro Island, located in the
Phoenix Islands group hundreds of miles south of the Equator, as the place where the duo ditched Amelia's plane on a reef.
He offered that from there, after Earhart and Noonan safely exited it the plane, it was pulled out to deep sea waters by a
strong tide. Although this concoction basically amounts to nothing more than false-story peddling to the general public, one
winked and nodded at by those most informed about Earhart's loss, the TIGHAR club is still at it today.
Its website is rather impressive, and over the years Mr. Gillespie has headed several well-funded expeditions to Nikumaroro
(FKA 'Gardner Island') to look for both Amelia's remains and her plane under the TIGHAR organization umbrella, AKA, 'The International
Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery.' The basic theory Richard Gillesppie asserts is that with no pre-mention to anyone,
Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan chose to steer their plane deep into a vast ocean desert region--that other experts deemed
to be an inexplicable death-wish decision. Of note, after over thirty-years of trying to convince people to believe
his claim, none of the debris found on the once colonized Nikumaroro Island by Mr. Gillespie's TIGHAR club
has ever been authentically linked to Amelia's last flight. Still, incredibly enough, in 2019 the National Geographic Society,
backed by Mr. Gillespie's enthusiaistic encouragement, engaged and funded famous Titanic locator, Robert Ballard, to try and
find Amelia's plane underwater near Nikumaroro. Mr Ballard accepted Nat Geo's offer, but of course, found nothing. While his
involvement did renew interest in TIGHAR's far-out theory, Mr. Ballard himself cautions that none of TIGHAR's claims have
ever been backed by "definitive" evidence.
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Elgen Long of 'Nauticos'
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In the 1980s, Elgen Long started what
later turned into a formidable non-profit organization known as, 'Nauticos' to promote the idea that Amelia Earhart simply
crashed and sank near Howland Island, and that was it. Going up against experts from Lockheed and many others who disagreed
with his fuel use analysis of Amelia's plane, Mr. Long still claimed to have 'solved the mystery' as described in the title
of his 1999 book, Amelia Earhart: The Mystery Solved. Those most educated on Earhart's world flight ending dismissed
Mr. Long's projection based on the hoard of evidence that showed Amelia continuing to fly in a northwest direction well after
she gave up on finding Howland. Amelia had mentioned her plane to head back to the British Gilbert Islands if she missed Howland,
and that's exactly what she did. She would have made it, too, if storm squalls had not pushed her farther north to the lower
Marshall Islands, then controlled by Japan. No matter, with and without Nauticos, gentleman Elgen Long raised millions to
finance several fruitless expeditions intent on finding Amelia Earhart's Lockheed Electra 10E plane fathoms-deep underwater
in the northwest vicinity of Howland Island.
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Dr. Alex Mandel
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Ukranian Physicist, Dr. Alex Mandel,
emerged onto the 'Earhart mystery' scene in 2001 to support the suggestion that Amelia died on Saipan while in Japan's
custody. Dr. Mandel offered that Amelia was captured, held, and died in Japan's custody, admitting at the same time that he
had no certifiable knowledge as to how or when Amelia's death occurred. Still, after posting a non-truthful Wikipedia bio-page
on Irene Craigmile Bolam, he then enlisted one Mike Campbell's help, (see below) that resulted in the two of them presenting
a co-written dissertation at the Amelia Earhart Festival in Atchison, Kansas in 2012, based on false pretenses, that overtly
campaigned against The Swindell Study's forensic findings, let alone any possibility at all of Amelia Earhart's
continued survival after she was picked up by Japan's Imperial Naval Authority. Even though no evidence was ever located that
offered authenticity to the differing claims on how Amelia died while she was in Japan's care, Dr. Mandel and Mike Campbell
both attested to believe Amelia did die in Japan's custody and campaigned that it happened under the guise of Japan's military.
They stressed Amelia's 'death' while in Japan's care was later covered-up by the United States and Japanese governments. It's
worth noting here: Japan averred it never harmed Amelia Earhart--and the United States never accused it of doing such a thing.
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| Mike Campbell |
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In the early
2000s, Amelia Earhart theorist, Mike Campbell, befriended the Amelia Earhart Society's 1989 founding president, Bill Prymak.
Marshalling Mr. Prymak's gathered Earhart files to suit his objective, Mr. Campbell rebirthed the idea that Amelia Earhart
died according to the earlier claim of one Thomas Devine, who offered she was executed by Japan's military on Saipan and was
subsequently buried there. Mr. Campbell wrote a book chocked with Devine's beliefs entitled, Amelia Earhart: The Truth
At Last, issued in 2012. His assertion about Amelia's final fate, however, was misguided from the start.
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| Woody Peard |
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Woody
Peard, an Amelia Earhart theorist knowledgeable of Japanese culture during the World War Two era, asserted that Amelia was
executed by Japan's military on the Island of Taroa in an incredibly macabre way, and that the event was filmed and surreptitiously
sent to Washington DC. In May of 1938, when Assistant Secretary of the Treasury, Stephen Gibbons said about Earhart's loss,
"We have evidence that the thing is all over. Sure, terrible. It would be awful to make it public...," Mr. Peard
suggested Japan's filmed execution of Amelia Earhart was possibly what he referred to. Others more prudently maintained it
was the withheld "wireless messages" of Amelia's "last few minutes" notated in the same
transcript where Gibbons' "we have evidence" statement appeared.
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THE TRUTH: ~~~ A Remarkable Twenty-Year Journey From
the mid-1990s on, The Swindell Study analyzed and expounded on the previous '1950s to 1990s' investigative research
efforts of Paul Briand, Joe Gervais, Fred Goerner, Vincent Loomis, Randall Brink, Donald Moyer
Wilson, and Rollin Reineck. Each of these investigators devoted decades to unconvering the non-conveyed realities
of Amelia Earhart's last flight, with their individual efforts resulting in the following published works:
| Randall Brink's 1993 'Best Seller'... |
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| Proved a White House cover-up; concluded Amelia ended up in the Marshalls and continued to survive |
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| The Vincent Loomis account... 1985 |
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| Also concluded Amelia ended up going down in the Marshall Islands |
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Truth:
In 1989, Bill Prymak started the Amelia Earhart Society
after researching the work of the above mentioned investigators and ascertaining that Amelia was quietly picked up
by Japan in the Marshall Islands. Over time a variety of rumors came to exist describing different ways Amelia Earhart might have
died while in Japan's custody. Conveyances of a mysterious illness, executions in the Marshall Islands or on Saipan,
a plane crash in China at the end of the war, even her death in a prison cell or on a deserted island entered the fray. Here
again, it's important to recognize that Japan denied ever 'harming' Amelia Earhart--and the United States never accused
it of such a thing. From the 1980s into the 2000s, Prymak traveled to the Marshall Islands time and again
to conduct interviews, at times in the company of famed Amelia Earhart historian, retired USAF Major, Joseph A. Gervais, whose
own research findings led him to conclude that Amelia survived her disappearance and later changed her name to 'Irene.' Joe
Gervais died in 2005, Bill Prymak died in 2014.
Below: The same human being, different names, different eras.
As hard as it is to believe, it's that simple to explain.
| Superimposed |
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| 1923, 1978 |
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| Superimposed |
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| 1933, 1965 |
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| Superimposed |
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| 1928, 1963 |
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| Superimposed |
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| 1932, 1976 |
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| Superimposed |
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| 1928, 1977 |
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| Mrs. Bolam superimposed with her former self |
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Amelia Earhart in 1937
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Amelia & post-WWII Irene
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Post-WWII Irene, 1965 Photo taken by Joseph A. Gervais
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| The former Amelia Earhart in Yugoslavia in 1976 |
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