Robert99

No.

You are not correct about the river current. Even if the money bag did not land in the river, it would not have been possible for it to stay dry. I made it a point to be in the Portland/Vancouver area during late November 2009 and it rained off and on all day every day. That was typical late November weather there. Finally, Cooper jumped into some very bad and wet weather. It was raining in Portland/Vancouver at the time he jumped and there were also rain showers there when he boarded the airliner. So Cooper and everything with him was going to get soaked that evening.

About 10 years ago, more or less, Dr. Meyer Louie and I visited Tena Bar and had the good fortune to encounter a fellow named "Jon" who said he had visited Tena Bar almost every day for the past several decades. He had the key to the Tena Bar gate so he may have known what he was talking about. Anyway, he pointed to a railroad tie just a few feet from and slightly lower than the Tena Bar gate and said that the river water had never been above that tie even during its worst flooding. The above was discussed in detail here long ago. But to repeat, I have never seen any appreciable debris at Tena Bar. What little I saw could easily be accounted for by the fishermen and the debris from the marina that is in the Caterpillar Island channel.

Flyjack, this is just more of your nonsense. You need to visit Tena Bar to understand what is going on with the water flow. For instance, it is the western bank (the Oregon side) of the Columbia River that turns the water flow to the north and that absolutely does not move anything up to the beach at Tena Bar. In addition to the main river flow, a flow of water that passes between the eastern bank of the Columbia and Caterpillar Island rejoins the main river flow just upstream of Tena Bar and forms a boundary layer that anything coming from the shipping channel area has to cross to get to the Tena Bar beach. And then another miracle is needed to get it 20 feet or so upon the beach. You need to do your homework. This matter has been discussed at length here over the past 13 years and I would suggest that you review some of those posts.

Flyjack, you need to pay some attention to how water flows in rivers. In my younger days, I spent a few summers swimming in a tributary of the Columbia River, about three miles from the Columbia itself. I have made several visits to Tena Bar and I have never seen any accumulation of debris there that came from the river. The fishermen could easily account for the few cans that were dug up there. And there is no Creature from the Black Lagoon or anywhere else that is going to move the money from the bottom of the river to well above the nominal water level. Dream on!.

Flyjack, let's get real here. 1. There is nothing in the money found at Tena Bar that would lead to a suspect. 2. There is nothing to support the dredge or human burial theories. 3. The three individual packets/bundles, or whatever you want to call them, did arrive at the same time and were not connected by paper or rubber bands. They were found within inches of each other and "practically touching". 4. The torqued bundle suggests that it was at an angle to the water flow before it congealed and was not connected to the other bundles.. 5. All of the money could be easily tied up in the bag in which it was delivered. And that bag could be easily secured to Cooper or the parachute harness by the lengths of the shroud lines that were cut from the reserve chute left on the airliner. 6. The money found at Tena Bar did not arrive there from the river. If it had been in the river it would have passed Tena Bar on the bottom of the shipping channel which is close to the Oregon side at that location. 7. Any theories about how the money got to Tena Bar must take into account basic physics and you are ignoring them.

Flyjack, Dan Cooper was not based on George Cooper. I never met George Cooper but I did meet Robert Harper on several occasions in connection with USAF contracts that the organization I worked for had with Cornell Aeronautical Laboratory in Buffalo, NY which is where Harper worked. Those two fellows produced what is now known as the Cooper-Harper ratings that are mentioned in the link you provided. Also, I happened to work with an ex-P-47 pilot years ago who was credited with four German fighter kills in WW2. He told me that all of his dogfights were below 7,000 feet in mountainous terrain and two of those kills involved getting the German aircraft into situations where they couldn't avoid crashing into a mountain which is exactly what they did. There is nothing magic about the term "randomization" as used in the Cooper money. The Cooper money came from a specially set aside group of money that was reserved for just such incidents. The money was selected from bills that had been circulated and was not arranged in numerical order. As Carr points out, the bills for Cooper were packed in different size bundles to give the impression that they had been hastily assembled without recording the serial numbers. Of course, the serial numbers had been previously recorded.

Flyjack, this is even worse. You either have the money moving uphill or else you have the money landing on solid ground from the jump. Tom Kaye's analysis suggests that the money was not exposed to water for a rather lengthy period of time following the jump. This is consistent with the money landing on high ground in the vicinity of Tena Bar but then being washed downhill during the spring runoff which is a realistic scenario. But once the money gets into the river water proper, it is not going to get out of there by natural means.

Flyjack, you are assuming that the location where the money was found was under water at the time of the jump. There is nothing to support that assumption. The flooding of the Tena Bar area takes place during the spring snow melt run off which was several months after the jump.

If the money came from the river it would have to be by way of the dredge. The money is going to stay on the bottom of the river and is simply not going to get above the nominal tide line by flooding. The only way that flooding can move the money is by moving it from a higher elevation to the elevation that it was found at Tena Bar and the money's movement has to be downhill all the way. For the money to move up hill requires an intervention by a dredge or some other mechanical means that adds energy to the money. This is elementary physics.

Olemisscub, you have just jumped into the ongoing argument between Flyjack and Georger on rubber bands and paper tape. Here, going from memory, is what happened with the money in Seattle. The bank had about $500,000 of used randomized bills of various denominations set aside for just such matters as the hijacking and this may have been done at the request of the FBI. This money had been run through a business microfiche machine that made an image of each bill that was in that $500,000 and recorded the serial numbers. While Cooper didn't specify any bill denominations, the FBI reportedly decided to use $20.00 bills to provide a rather hefty package and no one bothered to put them in a backpack as Cooper had wanted. So when the bank got the word that $200,000 in $20.00 bills were needed, they packed them in different size bundles with approximately 100 bills per bundle to give the impression that they were hastily assembled and that the serial numbers had not been recorded. The Seattle detective was given the job of transporting the money from the bank to the NWA facility at SEATAC. Within a very few minutes, the detective and Al Lee drove out to the airliner with the money, all four parachutes, and a box with several crew meals plus aeronautical charts and approach plates. Presumably, they used an NWA car or truck for the drive to the aircraft. I have not seen anything in the records to indicate that anyone other than the bank, the Seattle detective, and NWA personnel had possession of the money. There is no record of anyone doing anything to the contents of the money bag with the possible exception of taking a look in it to be sure it was money. Whatever the bundles were wrapped with appears to have been done at the bank. Since the small bundles were reportedly found with rubber bank wrappings, it would seem reasonable that the bank did it. Since the FBI was not involved directly in preparing the bundles, any reference to the way they were wrapped would probably not come in a 302 as something an agent directly witnessed.

I believe that there have been documents posted here from Boeing that listed the personnel that were involved in their company evaluation of the flight characteristics with the stairs down and that all of those people had been cleared. I don't remember exactly when the FBI fingerprint files were digitized but it was probably in the 1990s. NCIS can take a single partial print of one digit and obtain the fellows life history in about 5 seconds flat but they don't have to prove anything in court.

I personally know of a number of people who served in the military, not necessarily for an entire career, where they acquired specific skills and then worked as contractors for various organizations in a number of geographical areas. These people were not interested in 9 to 5 jobs and liked to have a little excitement from time to time.

If Cooper was in his mid-40s, he could have had 25+ years experience as a crew member on military aircraft without being a pilot. In that time, he could have easily acquired all the experience and knowledge that was necessary to make his statements about IFR clearances and parachutes. It was not necessary for the hijacked airliner to file a formal IFR paperwork for a clearance. They had everything they needed when they were told by the FAA personnel at SEATAC that they could do "anything you need to do and we will keep people out of your way."

Judging from the handle on the bulkhead door in olemisscub's picture, it appears that the bulkhead door can be closed and secured from outside the pressure bulkhead but I doubt if it can be locked. To secure the aircraft, it would be best to have a lock on the outside stairs control panel to lock the stairs up and another lock on the entry and service doors in the cabin compartment.

Georger, the question you should be asking is what is your own problem.

Georger, don't you deliver orations from time to time about your alleged knowledge of space and the known and unknown universe? Perhaps you remember something being mentioned on this and other sites about the weather in the Pacific Northwest the evening of the hijacking. If you don't remember, let me refresh your memory. Numerous sources claim that it was raining and that there were several cloud layers plus an overcast (actually, "undercast" in this instance) below the airliner's altitude of 10,000 feet. Further, the there are reports from the flight crew, as well as FBI files, that the airliner was flying in the "soup" (meaning clouds) and rain at their 10,000-foot altitude. This means that there were also clouds above the airliner that were producing the rain. So the moon didn't produce light or anything else that aided Cooper in the hijacking since he couldn't see it. But fear not, the moon was orbiting the earth in 1971 and the last time I noticed, which was a few days ago, is doing the same thing today. Isn't that amazing?

Dr. Edward's posts related to the flight path and jump area have some very interesting and perhaps surprising consequences. I hope to post on this before the end of next week, but I need to go back to some posts that started in 2010. Stay tuned.

Just ignore everything that Cossey said and problems with the parachutes disappear. Stick with Hayden and Emrick's statements and everything checks out okay.

I personally saw Army personnel doing HALO jumps in the 1963-1965 time frame. Also, I saw Navy QAC emergency parachutes on board Navy aircraft in the early 1950s.

Georger, excellent, excellent! But do you really understand what the above means? Within the past couple of weeks or so someone (probably FlyJack) posted an FBI document that quoted the flight crew as saying that they were "in the soup" when they thought Cooper jumped and couldn't see anything outside the aircraft. Did you see that post? I have a life outside of Cooper World and it is quite busy at this time and has been for the past several years (or maybe decades would be more accurate). But I will try to amplify on some Cooper related matters shortly since some new information has become available (which you probably missed or didn't understand) recently.

Come on Georger, get real. There was an overcast (do you know what that is?) at 5000 feet and at least two broken cloud layers (do you know what they are?) below the overcast. The airliner was at 10,000 feet. This has been talked to death before here and it is obvious that the flight crew could see the "glow" of the lights from Portland/Vancouver but could not see the ground. Nevertheless, Cooper jumped at night in the northern "suburb's" of the Portland/Vancouver area.

Well if you don't care where Cooper jumped, you may as well search for him in Acapulco, Mexico. The weather there is a lot more pleasant than in Portland/Vancouver during the winter. Actually, determining where Cooper jumped should be the first thing done if you are really interested in solving the hijacking.

Can the parachute riggers or skydivers on this site confirm that the above correctly identifies a 24-foot ripstop canopy, type SN DA5853912 (whatever that may be)?

The Hayden's backpack that was left on the plane and that is now on exhibit at WSHM does not have a single component from an NB-6 parachute. However, there is a possibility that a 26-foot conical canopy was in the chest pack that was opened and left on the airplane. The normal military chest pack at that time was a 24-foot twill canopy. But the 26-foot conical canopy could apparently be packed in the same container as the 24-foot twill canopy. 377 has posted that in his early jumping days he had a 26-foot conical reserve and that he came down on it a couple of times. I have not seen a detailed description of the chest pack canopy that was left on the airliner and had some shroud lines removed. Tom Kaye has described this canopy to some extent but I don't remember seeing any information about its size or the fabric. So does anyone have a detailed description of the chest pack canopy that was left on the airliner such as its diameter, how the shroud lines were connected to the risers, and the canopy material?