Robert99

and so I post my original photo again! with add ons. Blevins can take credit for the ID if he wants. How do you know its Rataczak? Tosaw's book? Does Tosaw talk about Blevins posting his photo? Or show the same in his book? Same piece of Blevins photo in Tosaw's book? The label clearly says "F.O." in any event. I would assume that means Fugus Orgit, or maybe Flight Officer? Maybe "oh fudge" backwards? Does Tosaw comment that, in his book? Is it in RH's book too? Back to Blev's original thesis. IS THIS KC IN THE PHOTO - YES OR NO! A PHOTO SHOWING BOTH RATACZAK AND KENNY? How old was Kenny vs Rat at this time? Any idea who the other guy is? I was referring to the three photos in the "comparison2.gif" (112kb) attachment to Blevins post number 34446 which is the one I responded to.

Rataczak is the fellow on the right with the circular insignia on his hat. Compare with Rataczak's picture on page 47 of Tosaw's book. In the old days, flight attendants also wore wings and the purser would probably have one strip on his/her(?) company jacket.

Uh, yes it does. And it's a US Army ammo box. (We don't keep ammo boxes around the office.) I'll admit it helps when you have the TIFF original to work with, and the imaging software we do around here. You're not going to be able to examine or blow up these photos effectively using

I agree. But this does: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_9th_Company Maybe Blevins can explain the time line for when the American Airborne outfits transitioned from a letter, or phonetic, for company designation...such as "Foxtrot Company" to a number designation, like "9th Company". I'm sure Matt can chime in and tell us when the 101st Airborne changed over. I can tell you it didn't happen during my time in the 82nd Airborne. I can't imagine the Americans wanting to copy the Russians. Guru312 is correct. As everyone who has watched the TV show on "Easy Company" knows, the company designations in the Army during WW2 were alphabetical starting with the first letter of the alphabet and only using the first five or six letters. Thus, A was "Alpha", B was "Baker", C was "Charlie", etc. using the phonetic alphabet. The paratroopers would NEVER have been using a heavy water cooled machine gun such as the one in the picture. In fact, everything in those first two pictures could have been in use prior to World War 1.

Blevins, I hope you didn't pay good money for the pictures of KC's "paratrooper training". Those two pictures don't have anything to do with paratrooper training. In fact, based on the uniforms and equipment, both pictures were probably made prior to 1935, repeat 1935, and not 1945. Those fellows look like they were getting ready to go chase Pancho Villa. Paratrooper training is only about three weeks long and concentrates on parachutes and related equipment and not weapons training. Weapons training is conducted elsewhere and prior to and after jump school. Physical conditioning is conducted throughout the training. But in my day, people who wanted to go to jump school had to pass a physical conditioning test before they would even be considered.

Other than the bit about the south seas, how is that different than some other posters here? It's basically the same except that the DZ posters are trying to peddle books. That is small potatoes compared to TIGHAR's budget, as reported by mrshutter's post. But I must say that TIGHAR has an absolutely beautiful web page with lots of information on Earhart. It's to bad that none of their information seems to support the Gardner Island theory. I'd like to address this post. Tighar and Gardner: The evidence they have posted on their website...well, it's pretty extensive, but a bit thin. The biggest problem I have with their scenario is the fact that human beings were NOT on Gardner at the time of Earhart's disappearance, but WERE there within a year AFTERWARD. And that no one who was there afterward reported anything about bodies or wreckage. They do have a picture of some possible wreckage from the plane, but it's also thin. It comes down to this: If they find Earhart's plane this time off the reef, they will be vindicated. If they do not, then the whole thing was a waste of their time and a lot of other peoples' money. About some posters being here just to promote a book on Cooper: Except for a brief time in August of 2011 when Geoff Gray's book came out at Amazon, sales of Blast have been steady...and the same amount of copies each month...for more than two years now. My postings here have had absolutely NO effect on sales. Blast continues to be AB of Seattles' #4 selling book. Number of copies going out each month are the same, within a few copies here or there. And I have a standing offer to anyone at DZ: Shoot me an email and you can have the complete PDF (pictures are much better than the print version or the Kindle version) for FREE. Our website says the same thing on the Info for Press and Media page. It's the only book we have where we do this. I gave up on trying to make any real money from Blast a long time ago. My only interest in the Cooper case these days is whether we are right or wrong in our theory about Christiansen. Just breaking even on the book will take us about five more years, LOL. Blevins, With all due respect, you state that Blast is your 4th selling book and that it will take five more years to break even on it. Are your top three selling books bringing in a lot of money or are you in the book business to just go bankrupt? Another small consideration in the Gardner Island theory is that Earhart never gave any indication that she was heading anywhere other than Howland Island and, in any event, she did not have the fuel to fly the 400+ miles from Howland to Gardner. Earhart knew that she was within a few miles of Howland Island. Would she invest her remaining fuel in trying to find Howland or would she head for Gardner and then have to repeat the same search procedures in an effort to find it? Howland Island was difficult to spot from the air (see Ann Holtgren Pellegreno's book). But with Noonan's sun shots narrowing down their location, they should have been able to bracket Howland Island if they had sufficient time (meaning fuel) to do so. Of course, the whole Howland Island problem would have been eliminated if Earhart had bothered to learn how to use the radio direction finder capabilities, how to do a DF steer (which was routinely taught to American student pilots until about 1970), and informed the Navy people of her take off time from Lae. In addition, the Navy was not informed of Earhart's unusual communications schedule in which she would transmit and then listen for a reply 30 minutes later. It would also have been helpful if Earhart and the Navy were operating on the same time (such as GMT). Some of the time zones in the Pacific in that era were only 30 minutes apart, so it is possible that Earhart and the Howland Island people were transmitting at the same time and listening at the same time. "Bad planning, bad execution" seems to have been the Navy's conclusion about the whole approach to Howland.

Other than the bit about the south seas, how is that different than some other posters here? It's basically the same except that the DZ posters are trying to peddle books. That is small potatoes compared to TIGHAR's budget, as reported by mrshutter's post. But I must say that TIGHAR has an absolutely beautiful web page with lots of information on Earhart. It's to bad that none of their information seems to support the Gardner Island theory.

The only thing that TIGHAR is on to is their discovery that they can raise money for their vacations in the south seas by claiming that Earhart is in the Gardner Island area. If they were interested in finding Earhart, they would be searching the area very close to Howland Island. So don't hold your breath in expectation of TIGHAR finding any actual trace of Earhart in the Gardner Island area.

AFTER that flight, I know many airlines penned a hijack procedure into their respective flight manuals...I'm curious if SW had anything like that in place prior, and if so was it of any use to the flight crew in that instance...or were they just 'winging' it? IF there was a procedure in place prior, did it change any following the hijacking? (I know procedures changed significantly following 9-11, curious if that was also the case in '71) It would be logical for the airlines to develop such procedures in order to get everyone working on the same page. About the only specific thing done by the FAA (and at least circulated more or less publicly in the general aviation community) was the designation of a hijacking transponder code. I don't know if it is still in use today or not, but at that time the hijacking code differed from the lost communications transponder code only in that the second number from the left was one digit smaller.

BK writes: Recommended stall....Yes, I knew that was faulty, but I figured you would figure out what I was trying to say. The manufacturer's stated speed at which the airplane can no longer sustain flight. As I understood the conversation, flight 305 had slowed beyond this stated number before the co-pilot realized it. I thought it may have been 160 knots, but I am hazy in the exact number. I'm sure you understood. R99 replies: The only thing I understand is that you are hazy because you don't know what you are talking about. You don't have the slightest idea of what the term "stall speed" means. BK writes: I remember a discussion about parachute canopies, but not their numbers. The ones the trainer liked were of an older variety, and had less tendency to split. I very clearly remember that. It was not really steerable, but you could pull on the front chords to get some control. It was a military parachute, all one color, dirty white like natural nylon color. The trainer had a red and white canopie that he jumped with. But that just causes problems here. Forget the red and white chute. Not important. R99 replies: Was this "tendency to split" before of after ripstop materials started being used in canopies? Also, "steerable by pulling on the front chords"? Did you have the parachute on backwards?

I was thinking more of the time period in which the flight slowed down to try to get the guy in back to leave the plane. To the best of my knowledge, the only time the airliner slowed to below about 170 knots was just after takeoff in Seattle when they did so to help Cooper get the stairs down. My understanding was that the speed fell below the recommended stall speed before it was realized, no problems. Was that MPH or KTS? 170 was a number that sounds familiar from that conversation. I'm not sure, could have been 160, but I'd be surprised. The co-pilot would know. Drag strip parachutes open as high as 325 MPH in every run with a ton more weight to stop. How would that relate?? Knoss, Do you see a single number above, that you didn't write, that doesn't have the units just after the number? Define your terms. "Recommended stall speed?" In 60+ years of hanging around airports, airplanes, pilots, aeronautical engineers, and beautiful women, I have never heard of such a term. Where did I go wrong? Have you noticed a difference between drag strip and personnel parachutes? Maybe in size or design.

I was thinking more of the time period in which the flight slowed down to try to get the guy in back to leave the plane. To the best of my knowledge, the only time the airliner slowed to below about 170 knots was just after takeoff in Seattle when they did so to help Cooper get the stairs down.

"Coop" as we called him was trained to pull on the count of ten seconds which was enough time from 170 kts to slow him down. The particular chute that was provided in the dummy pack (the good chute marked with the "X") was chosen by, packed by, and stitched shut by a very topnotch packer guy with significant jumpers respect. The chute did not fail, because Duane Weber lived through it. No 727 jumpers have EVER been killed attempting this jump. I do not know where TOG got the chute, but because it worked, it must have been OK. Huh? There have been hundreds of higher speed successful jumps. I think your point is proven mute. The airliner was doing about 170 KIAS (Knots Indicated Airspeed) which is between 220 and 225 MPH (Miles Per Hour) True Airspeed for the conditions that existed at the time of the jump. Cooper would probably still be doing about 200 MPH in 10 seconds. Most military static line jumps are from aircraft doing about 140 MPH or close to that.

I agree with Quade about the Cooper stories and names that various posters have been pushing on this thread. Not a single one of those named Cooper suspects has any realistic chance of being Cooper or associated with him in any manner. And the people pushing those names all seem to have ulterior motives while some of their stories are just plain laughable.

An extensive search of Hominid's posts here at Dropzone finds no word-associations for: skyglow cloud cover visibility seeing seeing conditions conditions saw Portland saw Vancouver Rataczak Anderson Scott etc crew: Hominid used the word 'crew' here about a dozen times but with no reference to weather or visibility. Example: Posts (Sep 30, 2011, 8:00 PM Post #27096) and (Nov 30, 2011, 8:48 PM Post #29056) and 11 times (Sep 29, 2011, 3:14 PM Post #27021) I dont recall Hominid ever addressing the issue of visibility specifically. Did you have something in mind - some specific post? You keep citing Hominid. The person addressing 'visibility' the most here, Robert99, has been you, with numerous examples in your posts too numerous to list. Lets see what Hominid has to say about all of this - Those are the facts at my disposal I see. No games. Just facts and actual interviews of Rataczack, Anderson, etc. Again. You say you have data from the chase pilots but havent revealed it. If you want to know what the Portland visibility was on the evening of the hijacking, a good place to start would be the FAA hourly sequence reports for 8:00 and 9:00 PM. The visibility given in those reports were produced by trained weather people. Aren't you the one who coughed up the weather data that Hominid used? I have never claimed to have any "unrevealed" data from the chase plane pilots.

That's right. I forgot. I get stuck having to tread water in people's dogma. The wx report did say "visibility at Portland was about 10 miles. " 10 miles just not vertically, or at 15 degrees, to the north, or to any and all incoming pilots coming from the northish. Just 10 miles visibility for Batman and Robin. How convenient. You have an EASY switch! Would you grant even a hint of skyglow from Portland and Vancouver that night? Something an IR detector would see? You do realise you are making this VERY difficult! Do you know that some of Bohan's crew were interviewed? Would you care to guess what they had to say about 'visibility' coming into PDX that night? Robert99, you might as well quantify the visibility that night and get it over with - give us something of an empiracle nature to work with. Maybe you are on to something here! Maybe Cooper picked the one spot on Earth where there was no ground visibility that night, and intentionally bailed into what looked like a "black hole". That combined with the particles Tom found may suggest Cooper was a machinist cosmologist at Area-51 ? Aren't you actually saying that only "you" can solve the DB Cooper riddle - and your qualifications and experience trumps all other qualifications and experience in crime solving? How is the visibility up there in the Nuttall-Grady-Himmelsbach tower? I'm not going to play any childish games with you. If you want to argue, wait until Blevins returns. If you want to know what the weather was the night of the hijacking, then read Hominid's posts on the subject from a few months back.

Jo, Why don't you also reveal your "vested interest" in the Cooper hijacking? To make a full disclosure, my "vested interest" is that I don't have a "vested interest" in the Cooper nonsense. Robert99

Yes I remember - you cite your sources again. You cite Hominid and have always claimed a static no-visibility condition for Portland-Vancouver during the crucial hours. Now you throw Nutall - Grady- Himmeslbach into the mix with "the storm was severe with a strong wind coming at them from 245 degrees. " Which is it today: static no-visibility SEVERE STORM WITH STRONG WIND or a static no-visibility NON- STORM AND NORMAL LOW KEY WIND ? Your previous static no visibility stance is at odds with your Nutall citation above, so I guess you are chosing to pick & reject from the same citation, to get to an intended result? Think it over. Your reference to reports from the chase pilots is interesting and new - care to explain that? Oh!, did Nuttall and Grady interview the crew? Did Himmelsbach? I thought this was a Seattle case, or am I missing something!? The Carr report stands on its own and is consistent, Its even consistent with the general weather facts you and Hominid have presented, except for the issue of visibility during the cross-over at Portland- Vancouver. The Carr report is also supported by reports from people who interviewed the crew, for a total of somewhere between 20 and 30 hours. We are using different data sets, each drawing our ideas and conclusions from the data sets we each have, and that is all there is to this. At least that is what Im doing. What is a "static no-visibility condition"? The weather reports for the evening of the hijacking always list the visibility at Portland as about 10 miles. There has never been an issue with the visibility. Where were Batman and Robin the evening of the hijacking? Think it over.

First, I dont see that anyone must weep. More to simply trying to figure this out as per evidence given by people. My statement you quote above is a direct quote by Larry Carry after Carr reviewed Rat's sworn testimony in the FBI files - then Carr posted the statement here. Carr's quote is freely available in a back search here at Dropzone. So, its not something I dreamed up. Secondly, Robt99 keeps quoting the "flight crew" as saying, quote: " the flight crew of the hijacked airliner said that the overcast and several layers of clouds below them that night were so thick that they could not see the light glow from the Portland and Vancouver areas." I have no idea where Robt99 got this statement on behalf of the whole "flight crew". I would sure like to know what Robt99's source for this is. Maybe H's book? I have a feeling Robt99 has a reference in mind, because I know yhe would not make something like this up. Thirdly, I have talked to a number of people including two retired observatory directors who say they recall sky conditions the evening of 11-24-71, in Portland and at Vancouver. Most everyone reported 'broken clouds' from time to time, and when asked 'could Cooper have seen the sky glow from Portland-Vancouver that night' all responded 'yes' or 'I think so'. Lastly, I have said this before, I will say it again: I find it strange nobody made a formal report of sky conditions at PDX-VCR that night, as seen over those cities. Pilots. The helo pilots. One reason for the lack of reports on this issue involving VCR-PDX specifically, may be nobody thought Cooper had bailed there - so no reason for a sky condition report. My personal stance on this matter is, its undecided pending further evidence of a specific nature. And I know just as quickly as I write this Robt99 may say: 'The aviation wx report for PDX-VCR that evening is the best evidence and conclusive'. ??? I agree with you Sail. I dont think this issue is settled fact. And Carr's report of Rat's testimony weighes heavily in my mind, that this is undecided. Im very torn about this, frankly, because I also take Robt99 seriously. And why after all this time the matter is still undecided, is a mystery all of its own! My specific source for the above is on page 95 of George Nuttall's book which discusses a conversation between Harry L. Grady (Nuttall's friend and researcher for his book) and FBI Agent Ralph Himmelsbach. Following is the specific quote written by Grady: "He (Ralph Himmelsbach) guesses that flight 305 was a little east of V-23 but in debriefing the pilots could not say how far. He said the co-pilot did all the flying that night and that the storm was severe with a strong wind coming at them from 245 degrees. There was a cloud cover below them when they passed over Vancouver that was so thick that they couldn't see landmarks or even the glow of city lights." Now is there something in the above statement that is not understandable? Further, comments from the chase pilots as well as other sources support Himmelsbach's statement. In addition to the above, my personal knowledge of aviation weather led me to the same conclusions several years ago about no glow being visible from the city lights. Anyone wanting to argue about the weather in the Portland/Vancouver on the evening of the hijacking should make it a point to read Hominid's extensive posts on the subject a few months back. If you disagree with what Hominid has written please post your remarks on this thread. I'd love to see your attempts to explain away Hominid's conclusions. Honest! Robert99

Sailshaw, I hope I didn't hurt your own feelings by pointing out that Tom Kaye, you may recall that he did the research on the Titanium, has probably got much more experience in such matters than yourself. Also, I hope I don't hurt your feelings by pointing out that as an aeronautical engineer and general aviation pilot with some parachuting experience, I probably have more aeronautical type experience than yourself. As I understand your previous statements, you are an electrical engineer whose primary experience has been in electrical systems and structural matters. In addition, I have looked down at night time through clouds at quite a few areas of light glow, coming from various cities, over the last 50+ years. Nevertheless, the flight crew of the hijacked airliner said that the overcast and several layers of clouds below them that night were so thick that they could not see the light glow from the Portland and Vancouver areas. Finally, I really am disappointed that you don't/didn't know how clouds heights are measured. I believe that how the cloud heights are measured is actually common knowledge and doesn't require any aeronautical experience or knowledge.

attached - There was an American TV movie, probably sometime in the 1970s, on the same subject. I believed it starred Van Johnson. In the TV movie, the airliner managed to get to a high elevation airport that was above the altitude set for the bomb to explode.

Sailshaw, How many hours have you spent looking at Titanium under a microscope? Do electrical engineers use microscopes? For that matter, in view of our previous exchange of posts, do you now understand how cloud heights are measured?

Jo, As mrshutter45 has pointed out, the military services were using fingerprints prior to WWI. Your claim that "inmates" were working in military offices with access to sensitive information is nonsense. In fact, people entering the military were screened and rejected if they had criminal records. The USAF had my fingerprints on record (and they probably passed them to the FBI) because I sometimes flew on military aircraft at the tender age of 16. In the early 1950s, all pilots in the United States were required to have an Airman's Identification Card which required a completed fingerprint card and a passport type picture before being issued. The FBI would be the logical place to deposit those cards. You are putting out as much dis-information as Bob Knoss. Also, you seem to be getting more paranoid by the day. What is your motive for this baloney?

Jo, You are just blowing more smoke about fingerprints. In case you haven't considered it, fingerprints were quite useful in identifying bodies of military personnel. That is, assuming that they could be recovered from the bodies. Will your blowing the whistle on the FBI be featured on "Sixty Minutes", "UFOs land in Florida", or "Tales of the Paranormal"? Or perhaps the "Evening News from Pluto"?

Jo, It was well known at least 25 years before the 1971 hijacking that a little model airplane glue on each finger would make the fingerprints unidentifiable. Every crook in the country plus ever 10 year old kid building model airplanes probably knew this. The military and the FBI were keeping finger print files long before Duane Weber or anyone else was in the military during WW2. Matt and others have given you some sound advice about Duane over the years. You can't bring yourself to believe anything they tell you because you are so fixated on being known, for only God knows what reason, as Mrs. Dan Cooper. Recently, you hinted in a post that you were getting ready to go public. Presumably you are interested in putting out another Cooper book. Is that correct?