Robert99

100% confirmed, in the smoke jumper history archives. He was in the Missoula (MSO) class of 1953 and became a full fledged USFS smoke jumper. Pete was an out of the box thinker on skydiving too. He was doing home made bat wing jumps, night jumps, all sorts of stuff back in the day. He was a sport jumper in Viet Nam while he worked as a civilian refugee advisor. Of course I am biased, and I agree that Bob's account of "Dan's" pointed inquiry about 727 stairs a decade before the skyjack should raise some skeptical eyebrows, Still, let's see how it pans out. I have always been intrigued by a passage from his book where the main character spends a miserable night trudging along the freezing banks of the Columbia River wearing loafers, with leather soles that were frozen. Other stuff from the book mirror's Pete's real world experiences, such as the Bubbleator job and various skydiving episodes. 377 377, As much as I hate to discount a promising theory, let me point out that the minimum temperature in Portland, OR was 44 degrees on November 24, 1971 and 43 degrees on November 25, 1971. So anyone truding along the banks of the Columbia River near Portland the evening of the hijacking would no doubt be miserable but their shoe soles would not be frozen or anything close to it. Robert Nicholson

377, What is the name of the last DBC book you read? Would you recommend some DBC books for the rest of us? Robert Nicholson

JT, When will your book be out? Don't be shy about admitting what you are doing. You can't hid your intentions forever. And you well know that everyone on DZ can keep a secret. Robert Nicholson

Actually, I am an aeronautical engineer who also started learning to fly when I was 15 years old. So I have been juggling these performance numbers longer than you and Georger have been breathing in all probability. For the record, it's just about paying attention to all the nit-picking details. RN99

At 8:10 PM PST, the FBI notes indicate that the fuel flow was reported as 4000 pounds/hour/engine which comes out to 12,000 pounds/hour/total or 2000 gallons per hour if Jet A weighs 6 pounds/gallon (I think the number is slightly more). The above fuel flow numbers are reported to be the ones that the NWA performance group used in their range calculations. With a true air speed of 194 knots (or 223 statute miles per hour) this comes out as 9 gallons per mile, ignoring wind, or 587 feet per gallon. The feet per gallon would be less than 587 due to the headwinds. Robert Nicholson

That wasn't the problem Farflung. Drag is far more important in ship performance than weight. If weight were a big factor those huge container ships would have to be nuclear powered to do 23 knots but they do OK with big diesels of relatively low horsepower (100,000 hp typical). A Boeing 747 has about 500,000 hp. A friend of mine is an officer on a medium sized container ship and he says he calculates that they burn about 60 gallons per mile. The Palo Alto (which I used to fish off of when I was a kid, before they blocked access) displaced about 6000 tons and did about as well as any other ship of similar size with a T3 steam engine. That engine only developed 375 hp at full boiler pressure (nhp). It obviously wouldn't win any races. In the 60s and 70s a lot of so called ferro-cement fishing commercial boats were built. They performed OK and were cheap to build, but eventually water would penetrate the cement and the encased steel rebar and wire mesh would start to rust. Cracks ensued. They could be patched, but what really killed the ferro-cement boat craze was a university engineering study that showed that the hull strength was directly proportional to the amount of steel used in rebar and mesh, hence the strongest ferro-cement boat would have 100% steel and no cement, so back to welded steel hulls. There is a ferro-cement commercial fishing boat at Princeton harbor at Half Moon Bay, called the EOLITH. It's still shipshape and active. If you want to see a real radical ship building idea check this out: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Habakkuk I am awaiting details of Jerry's flow tests. If stuff launched in the Washougal ended up at Tena Bar that is significant. I know flow, storms, tides etc are big complicating factors in trying to model how the currency stacks might have travelled over that path, but still it is a big deal if Jerry has demonstrated at least a possibility that the Tena Bar bills orginated in the Washougal. 377 That medium size container ship gets 88 feet per gallon if it only uses 60 gallons per mile. There is a sign in the Queen Mary's (docked in the LA area) engine room that states it got about 10 or 11 feet per gallon of diesel after it was converted from coal. Maybe the Queen Mary cruised at a higher speed and was a lot smaller, but the container ship's fuel consumption seems to be high. Robert Nicholson

Jerry, I thought you were either writing or serving as a consultant to all the people who were doing books or TV programs. For the record, I have been to Bonneville Dam, I have driven across the Bridge of the Gods, and I have seen that big pond downstream from Tina Bar several times over the last 65+ years. Keeping in mind that the Columbia River level at Tina Bar is normally between 5 and 10 feet above sea level, and that the ole' Buttermilk Moon's daily effect on the level of the river at Tina Bar is less than two feet, most of the changes in the river's water level are due to water releases from Bonneville Dam (which is not a flood control type structure) and inflows from streams downstream of Bonneville Dam. So the Columbia River's level at Tina Bar is influenced greatly by rainfall and snow melts upstream. Some people in the Vancouver/Portland area keep records on the level of the Columbia River. They even have a water level gage on the Vancouver side of the river and just east of the I-5 bridge. The data from that gage indicates quite a large variation of the river level during the winter and spring. But you have indicated previously that inflows from the Washougal watershed routinely results in objects from there being washed up at Tina Bar. To be repeatable, the water flow patterns must be similar. What was the river water level at the time you did your tests? Did you do tests at different water levels? Surely you thought to record such information during your investigation. Robert Nicholson

Professor Thomas, I would greatly benefit from your wisdom and learning if you would answer the two following questions. First, In the 1990 version of the Sauvie Island, OR-WA topographical map, there is an object at the north (downstream) end of Catepillar Island, and just a few hundred feet upstream from the money find location. The object appears to be the remains of a beached ship. Do you know what the object actually was and if it has been removed from the river? Do you know when the object first appeared in the river? It does not appear in the 1970 to 1979 series of aerial photographs that Sluggo has on his site. Second, Would you please explain the water flow patterns that move objects from the Washougal watershed to Tina Bar on a repeatable basis? For the movement to be repeatable, the flow patterns must be similar. Please give specific details. Smoke, mirrors, and voodoo are not sufficient. Robert Nicholson

Vicki and Jerry, I have taken another look at the above link and at 8:57 and 8:58 the certificate is reasonably visible to the camera. However, the image on youtube is not readable, at least to me. But if Vicki could send the better e-mail version to someone with photographic type skills, perhaps at least part of that certificate could be enlarged and read. If that certificate is a commendation or such, it almost definitely will include his serial number. But I am not familiar with the way Navy serial numbers were set up. Robert Nicholson

Vicki, Do you know the location where your father entered military service? Do you have the approximate date of his entrance? Did he volunteer or was he drafted? As I am sure Jerry will agree, once you have entered the military's record system you are there forever. Have you considered contacting an organization such as the American Legion for assistance in this? In this computer age, a veterans assistance organization can access information that you can't as an individual. Perhaps Jerry could put you in touch with such a group. And don't believe any stories about all the millitary records burning up in a fire in St. Louis, MO a few decades back. They didn't! But you need to get in touch with an ex-military group of people who know how the system works. Robert Nicholson

Jerry, I don't know if Georger is counting snowflakes, but we are suppose to have snow here in southern Arizona, 12 miles from the Mexican border, tomorrow night and Sunday. Robert Nicholson Viva Baja Arizona, working on becoming the 51st state.

Jerry, I'll agree with you that in some specific instances it doesn't make any difference what you see on TV if the talking head is just blowing smoke and running on ego. However, the instances I cited were hardly on an ego trip. That is, they didn't represent themselves as Cooper experts and just let the facts speak for themselves. Robert Nicholson

His instructions were to count to "one-thousand-ten" (ten seconds) and pull. I'm sure he followed those instructions. Duane had had survival training in the service. "Wasn't bad, but I didn't like eating that xxxxx stuff." McCoy already did it. Enough said. The History Channel (I think it was) had a program on the Cooper jump that involved a Hollywood stuntman by the name of Troy Hartman making jumps under various conditions. The true airspeed at the time of Cooper's jump was about 195 knots which would be quite close to the ultimate speed capability of the parachute, if not beyond it. In addition, the Boeing 727 people stated a number of decades ago that the aircraft had an unusually severe downwash. The downwash was considerably worse than their estimates and they didn't know why. So there was going to be some unusual turburlence for the first several seconds. If the money bag was at the end of a tether, you would have an "earth-moon" type dynamic system. The only sensible thing would be for Cooper to tie the money bag tightly against his body and that would result in a much simpler dynamic system. A couple of years ago, there was a TV series on the HALO military training program. In one of those programs, an experienced jumper was jumping with a belly pack for the first time. The guy had problems stabilizing and an instructor moved in close to try to help him. The instructor almost got kicked in the head. And that was on a sunny day in Arizona. The end result was that the student was booted out of the course. Robert Nicholson

Problem: Winds at the time of the hijacking were less than five knots, not sixty knots. Cook's research is pathetic. Heavy cloud cover at 5,000 feet, plane flying at 9,600 feet. He buys into the Janet story hook, line and sinker. What? Ground wind speeds of 5-7? The winds at 9600 ft. were at gusts to 80 Kts in all reports. That's about 60 MPH of steady winds at altitude against a 200 kt thrust or a ground speed of comfortably 140 kt. You can't seem to get anything right, Blevins. Just give it up. You waste our time. BK I have jumped many many times when the winds aloft were over 70 MPH And the speed of the winds on landing were only 5 to 15 MPH.. The shear where those air masses meet gets a bit bumpy.. but its a fun ride. It has zero effect on the skydive.. and little on the canopy ride... especially if you know how to spot for that. You should try jumping and learn the reality of what the sky holds in store.... facts always trump bullshit. You got the wrong guy. It was Blevins with the wrong information. I agree with you. You are just in the habit of beating me over the head and have apparently done it again by force of habit. Beat up on Blevins. I'll hold him down for you. Bob Knoss, YOU have got the wrong weather information and Blevins has the correct information! If the airliner had experienced a 60 MPH (or knots?) headwind, it might not have made it to Reno that night. Do you have a source for your weather allegations? If so, please cite chapter and verse. Robert Nicholson

Lodestar, Tell us something we don't already know! Robert Nicholson

Swear all you like, but you are not telling the truth. There was no such thing as a "nylon standard issue, white big canopy" in the 60's or later. There were white canopies, and there were big canopies, but there were no white big canopies. Mark Mark, As you are probably aware, the standard "sports parachute" in the early 1960s was an ex-military 28-foot diameter rip-stop nylon canopy with a 5-TU or 7-TU modification. It was steerable, more or less, and usually white. The word "big" is relative so maybe it was big and maybe it wasn't depending on who is speaking. Some people have recently stated that one of the Cooper chutes was a Para-Commander. Again as you are probably aware, the earliest Para-Commanders were round and had their own front mounted reserves. So these allegations cannot be correct since neither of the back packs given to Cooper had reserve hardware attachments on the front. Robert Nicholson The sport mains of that era were not white. The 24' chest reserve was frequently white. The 28' canopies used as mains came as either orange and white, or orange-white-tan-O.D. PCs (and their variants, like the Papillon and later the Sparrow) could be ordered in any color. The double-L, 5-TU and 7-TU canopies were considered steerable, and the PC-class canopies were "high performance." Mark Mark, Perhaps the colors were different in your part of the universe, but in the early 1960s in my part of the universe the color of the ex-military 28-foot modified main canopy was ALWAYS white. And the ex-military 24-foot reserve canopy was ALWAYS white also. My point about the PCs was that Cooper didn't get one since it had the front hardware for a reserve. Robert Nicholson

Swear all you like, but you are not telling the truth. There was no such thing as a "nylon standard issue, white big canopy" in the 60's or later. There were white canopies, and there were big canopies, but there were no white big canopies. Mark Mark, As you are probably aware, the standard "sports parachute" in the early 1960s was an ex-military 28-foot diameter rip-stop nylon canopy with a 5-TU or 7-TU modification. It was steerable, more or less, and usually white. The word "big" is relative so maybe it was big and maybe it wasn't depending on who is speaking. Some people have recently stated that one of the Cooper chutes was a Para-Commander. Again as you are probably aware, the earliest Para-Commanders were round and had their own front mounted reserves. So these allegations cannot be correct since neither of the back packs given to Cooper had reserve hardware attachments on the front. Robert Nicholson

Mr. Knoss, You write: "I swear this is the real truth. I have no reason to not tell the truth." As much as I hate to nitpick, you don't specifically state that you have a reason to tell the truth. Do you have a reason to be truthful? Robert Nicholson

COULDA SHOULDA WOULDA Janet made a report to the FBI. McCoy called on her. She was scared. She talked to Cook. Her information is consistent with the balance of information confirmed by Nicholson, Rataczak, McCoy, Jo Weber, Himmelsbach, and perhaps others. Sorry, dude. You can coulda shoulda woulda til you are blue in the face. Facts are facts and Janet is an indisputable fact. Every detail of her story does not have to be proven to be critical. She saw the frickin' plane where it really was and THAT is all that I care about. It PROVES the proposition that the Victor 23 path was erroneous and the flight path was really 15-20 miles West of where the Air Force plotted based on mis-information. I don't know how, but I do know they did it. Ask Nicholson how it was done. He appears more qualified to resolve the how. I can verify the words that were uttered, that's it. Sorry, dude. You can't put this story together by intimidation and logic. It was built on dyslexic reversals and illogical actions. That is what made it work, along with lengthy detailed planning by knowledgeable PILOTS. I know that you know better. You are too friendly with the powers that be. Even the best laid plans of mice and men can go astray. No secrets last forever. Time is up on this one. "Knuckle dragging Neanderthals...." Always enjoyed that phrase. Aperpos to be sure. If it fits, wear it.~ Forrest Gump. Knoss, Ask Nicholson how it was done? Hell's bells man, if you are referring to this Nicholson then I have already explained about 10 times how it was done! Would anyone believe the 11th time either? And for the record, I agree with Jo Weber's assessment of Jerry Thomas. Robert Nicholson

Over the signature of J. Edgar Hoover, a list of the serial numbers of the bills were posted and transmitted on November 29, 1971 which is just five days after the hi-jacking. How does Nuttall come up with two years? A copy of the Hoover letter of transmittal is on page 128 of Tosaw's book and the serial numbers are on the following pages of that book. Robert Nicholson

I was just sitting here in the middle of our Blizzard thinking about the Bun Boy and the Mad Greek. Opa. Did you ever have an opportunity to drink the water in Baker in the mid-1960s? If so, you know the name of the geographical feature on the south side of I-15 there. Robert Nicholson

Farflung, Congratulations on your reading the transcripts. The communication you cite is at 0545 GMT (9:45 PM PST) and is given on page 203 of the transcripts that are on Sluggo's page. It should be noted that this transcript was obtained from the Oakland Center and not the Seattle Center. You need to back up one minute to 0544 GMT (9:44 PM PST) and note that "OAK ARTCC" and "SEA ARTCC" are the ones having the conversation and it is related to the hand off from Seattle Center to Oakland Center. The boundary between these two centers is about 10 or 15 nautical miles south of the Fort Jones VORTAC. And this conversation is not being conducted by radio, it is being done by a phone connection between the two controllers. Both controllers are looking at radar screens and making sure that they are talking about the same airplane. When the Oakland Center controller has identified the target on his screen, he radios NWA 305 and tells them that he has radar contact with them. The exchange between NWA 305 and the Oakland controller continues with the airliner reporting that they are at 10,700 feet and climbing to 11,000 feet. The controller confirms that he understands what they are doing and tells them to "ident". Pushing the "ident" button on a transponder amplifies the return to the controller so that he has additional confirmation as to the airliner's position. The Oakland controller then tells the airliner again that he has radar contact with them. For the remainder of the flight from Fort Jones VORTAC down V-23 to Red Bluff VORTAC and then direct to the Reno airport, the Oakland transcripts include the phone conversations that are being carried on between the Oakland controller and the controller located at Reno. Unfortunately, after NWA 305 reports that it is on V-23 and 15-20 nautical miles south of the Seattle Airport, there are no further position reports in the Seattle ARTCC radio transcripts. Even the one in the Oakland transcripts for the hand off at Fort Jones is deleted from the Seattle transcripts. If someone had not removed the location information, the rest of the conversations between the airliner and the controllers, and the phone conversations between the controllers, it would be very easy to determine the flight path of the airliner. And an accurate location of the Cooper jump zone could be determined. To answer your specific questions, the controllers could tell the distance from the Fort Jones VORTAC from looking at their radar screens. The crew wasn't covering up for anyone. And you did not notice this first since I have been harping on the matter on this thread and elsewhere for more than a year. Robert Nicholson

Jerry, You are blowing smoke. I have no idea what you are talking about in your last sentence. What "compacity" are you referring to? Transcripts, unless intentionally changed or "sanitized", are accurate. The ATC transcripts were originally sworn to as being accurate by ATC personnel. But anyone even casually knowledgeable of IFR flight can understand what is being said, and/or not included, in the Seattle to Fort Jones, CA portion of the flight to Reno. Your claim that the US Weather Service data has been falsified is laughable. I will plead guilty to not believing all the fairy tales that you have put forth. But that's not my problem. Robert Nicholson

Jerry, An overcast by itself doesn't mean bad weather. Robert Nicholson

I love Farflung's posts. The man has talent. I don't think slant range errors add any meaningful ambiguities to 305s altitude or position. It was flying unpressurized. You know the approximate altitudes. You know it wasn't high enough for the crew to don O2 masks or Cooper to get drowsy. DME gives you a "good enough" range and bearing fix relative to the VOR/DME station. I like military radios and avionics. I am willing to bet that Farflung's "DME" was really a USAF ARN 21 TACAN set. Am I right Farflung? Continental Airlines pilot Bohan supports my violently turbulent dark and stormy night prelude, but nothing else does. 377 377, It is unfortunate that Captain Bohan's remarks are not supported by the available weather data. The relevant weather information can be obtained through the links that are in Robert Blevins posts. Robert Nicholson