Get Back to Me With Evidence; Earhart Ed.

The retired federal agent who discovered what he believes is the first photographic evidence of Amelia Earhart alive and well after crash-landing in the Pacific Ocean during her attempted round-the-world flight says he didn't initially capture the significance of the image until years later.

The black-and-white photo is of a group of people standing on a dock on Jaluit Atoll in the Marshall Islands, including one who seems to be a slim woman with her back to the camera. A new documentary airing Sunday on the History channel claims the figure is the famed aviator who disappeared 80 years ago this month.

This is the largest image that I could find.

This is with the area of interest cropped:

(Click on the image for full size)

The claim is that the man on the left is Fred Noonan and that the person sitting on the dock with her back to the camera is Earhart.

Contrast that with this claim that she died as a castaway.[1]

For now, it's all smoke and mirrors and bullshit. But it'll fill up a two-hour special which will be mostly conspiracy theory horseshit.

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[1] Full disclosure: I have very low regard for TIGHAR. Log into Charity Navigator (it's free) and look at their most recent Form 990 on file. (Not sure if the link will work by itself, but if it does, there it is.)
You'll see what I mean when you see where their money goes.

The Fourth

241 years ago, the Second Continental Congress came to grips with the facts on the ground..

IN CONGRESS, JULY 4, 1776

The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America

When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

The Mass Lynching of 100 Years Ago

It's often called the East St. Louis Riot, but let's be clear on this: It was a mass lynching. It was a pogrom.

White mobs killed every black person they could find: Men, women, children, it made no difference. to have a dark skin in East St. Luis 100 years ago marked one for a brutal death.

The cops did nothing, other than to disarm black people. The National Guard joined in on the rioting.

President Wilson, who was probably one of the most virulent racists in the White House during the last century, made no real efforts to use the power of the Federal government to bring about any justice after the fact. About the only prominent politician who spoke up to denounce the rioters was Theodore Roosevelt.

The authorities engaged in victim-blaming and almost half of those prosecuted after the fact were black.

The End of the Beginning + 75 Years

Yesterday was the 75th anniversary of the start of the Battle of Midway. The battle marked the turning point of the war against Japan. The Japanese sent a large force to invade Midway Island, spearheaded by four carriers. The US Navy had three carriers and, thanks to the Navy's code breakers, some knowledge of what the Japanese plan was.

The Japanese carriers launched strikes against the island, only to be found and attacked.


USN divebombers badly damaged three of the carriers on the morning of June 4th. All three were out of the fight, they were all abandoned and scuttled.



The fourth Japanese carrier struck back. Her planes badly damaged the USS Yorktown, which was later sunk by a Japanese submarine while under tow. This photo shows the Yorktown under attack.


The fourth Japanese carrier was sunk that afternoon.

Turning points to a war are only apparent long after they happen. At this point, the US and her allies in the Pacific had been at war with Japan for six months, the war would continue on for three more years.

The person who saw this most clearly, though, was Admiral Yamamoto, who, in 1940, was quoted as saying this about the prospect of a general war in the Pacific: "In the first six to twelve months of a war with the United States and Great Britain I will run wild and win victory upon victory. But then, if the war continues after that, I have no expectation of success."

He was right and he was proven to be so 75 years ago.

(Longtime readers might recognize this one.)

There is a press report about the leak that ran in the Chicago Tribune. The officer who inadvertently leaked it, the reporter who reported on it and the publisher, Robert McCormick of the Chicago Tribune, were lucky that they weren't all shot. What was astonishing was that no quasi-neutral country's diplomatic staff in Washington, such as Switzerland, didn't see the newspaper story and pass it along to the Germans, who would have, in turn, informed Japan.

If you pass through KMDW, be sure and spend a few minutes at the hallway to Concourse A:

There is a display by the windows which succinctly explains the battle, the time leading up to it and the aftermath.

Because It's Friday

Steam-turbine-electric locomotives:

Basically, they worked sort of like diesels, in that the prime movers powered a generator which then fed power to the driving wheels in the engine's trucks. They were interesting and fast.

But even if they could have competed with diesels, they came along at the wrong time. Railroads needed proven locomotives to haul wartime trains, which meant diesels if they could be gotten, conventional steam if they couldn't. Even if GE wanted to pursue the technology, the plants that would have made the turbines were likely backlogged with building steam turbines for naval warships.

GE scrapped the locomotives before the war ended. GE would became one of the two primary manufacturers of diesel locomotives in North America.

Memorial Day

I realize that today isn't the legal Memorial Day, but it once was (and it should be again). And so, with no further ado:

This is the commemorative stone and the grave of Jacob Russell, a veteran of the Revolutionary War. He served in the Connecticut Militia in 1775 and later moved to what was then Warrensville Township and is now Shaker Heights, Ohio:

When the original South Park Cemetery was relocated in 1909, Mr. Russell's grave was left undisturbed. If you were to go for a walk around the Shaker Lakes, you'll find his grave to the west of the south side of Horseshoe Lake.

What Mr. Russell did during the war has been lost to history. He served for five months. His rank is not known. Whether he was wounded or injured and invalided out or served his enlistment or just walked away is lost to time. There is even dispute as to whether he was born in Windsor, CT or Kingston, NY. There is dispute as to when he moved to Ohio.

But he served his country before it was officially a country.

This day exists to remember Mr. Jacobs and all others who have served in this country's armed forces and whom are no longer with us. It was originally called Decoration Day, a day to put flags and other tokens of remembrance on the graves of veterans. In short, this isn't the day to go around thanking living veterans for their service. You can do that on any other day.

This day is to remember those who have passed.

A Quarter of a Century Gone

Johnny Carson's last episode of The Tonight Show began 25 years ago, ending a thirty-year run. The show was more of a retrospective; the last show with guests Robin Williams and Bette Midler had aired the evening before. 55 million people tuned in to watch the last show.

It's pretty hard to describe the impact of the show at the time. It was the era of what is now called "appointment television", for you either watched shows as they aired or missed them. In offices around the nation, what was on "Carson" the night before was a standard topic of conversation. Carson loved political humor, and his jokes could enrage a politician like few others.

If you watched the show, you know what you were supposed to do when you reached the Slauson Cutoff.

A joke by Carson about an impending shortage of toilet paper triggered a run on the stuff in December, 1973, stores were rationing the stuff. There had already been shortages of meet earlier that year (not to mention the gasoline shortage that was going on at the time).

Jay Leno and David Letterman fought hard to replace Carson. Leno won, but there was considerable bad feeling between the two. CBS created The Late Show for Letterman to compete with The Tonight Show.

Both Letterman and Leno have also retired.

Johnny Carson kept a pretty low profile in retirement. He died of smoking-related emphysema in 2005

90 Years On

The Spirit of St. Louis departed from Roosevelt Field in NY enroute Paris. The goal was to win the Orteig Prize for the first successful flight between New York and Paris.

Recently, unpublished photos of the first test flight of The Spirit were uncovered:

It's hard to overstate the importance of the flight. It sparked an interest in aviation that lasted in this country for most of the rest of the century. For decades, a common refrain of the early builders of experimental (amateur) airplanes was that they became interested in flying after Lindbergh's flight. Some of them told of seeing The Spirit of St Louis on its tour in the year after the flight to Paris.

Lindbergh's arrival airport, Le Bourget Field, is still in use. His departure airport, Roosevelt Field, was taken over by a developer who turned it into a shopping mall. The tragedies and controversies of Lindbergh's later life are beyond the scope of this post.

Cinco de Mayo

Today is Cinco De Mayo, a holiday that celebrates Mexico's victory over a superior French force at the Battle of Puebla in 1862. So it is a holiday that celebrates a French military defeat-- sort of like every other holiday in Germany and every third holiday in England.

The French began mucking around in Mexico in 1861, because the United States had more pressing matters to attend to than to get froggy about a violation of the Monroe Doctrine.

Despite the victory and despite heavy guerrilla resistance by Mexican patriots, the French were able to set up a puppet regime in Mexico. By 1866, with some realization that the United States now had the largest navy and the most battle-hardened army on the planet, the French began to withdraw. The United States helped things along by "losing" arsenals of weapons to the Mexican resistance.

For some reason, the French puppet emperor of Mexico, Maximilian I, didn't flee. He was captured, given a trial by court-martial, and, along with two of his generals, shot by a firing squad on June 19, 1867.

Max is on the right side.

The story was that Maximilian paid the firing squad not to shoot him in the head, so that his mother could view his body after he was embalmed and sent home. They kept to the bargain.

The generals died shouting "long live the Emperor". Which was sort of futile, as they shot Max first.

Anyway, today isn't supposed to be a day for stupid Anglos to get wasted. That's St. Patrick's Day.

For the Love of G-d, Read a Book for Once in Your Life, Donnie!

"I mean, had Andrew Jackson been a little later, you wouldn't have had the Civil War. He was a very tough person, but he had a big heart. He was really angry that he saw what was happening with regard to the Civil War. He said, 'There's no reason for this.' People don't realize, you know, the Civil War, you think about it, why? People don't ask that question, but why was there the Civil War? Why could that one not have been worked out?"

Does Trump not know that Andrew Jackson was long dead before the fucking rebs opened fire at Ft. Sumpter?

Trump also does not seem to realize that the Civil War may well be the most written-about war in American history. You could blow out the springs in a large car if you loaded it with one copy of every book on the war. And there is no shortage of discussion in those books about the causes of the war and whether or not there was a hope in avoiding the outbreak of the war.

But Ol' Dumb and Delusional doesn't know a thing about that. Your average fifth grader would know more about the Civil War than Our Preznit.

He's earning the appellation of Dolt-45. He may very well be the dumbest motherfucker ever to hold down the job.

Update: This.

ANZAC Day

ANZAC Day today commemorates the 102nd Anniversary of the Battle of Gallipoli. Though, in truth, we probably should be calling ti the Battle of Çanakkale, because the Turks prevailed.

56,000 soldiers of the French and British Empires died, as well as a roughly equal number of soldiers from the Ottoman Empire.

In a more just world, a few general officers would have been shot afterwards.

Anyway, a past post, with links to others.

We Had It Rough In Our Day

Kids these days have it easy.

If we wanted to know about something, we had to go to the public library and look it up in books. Or magazines. Or back issues of the newspapers. And if we wanted to insult people, we had to do it face-to-face, by letter, or over the telephone.

Patriots' Day

For reasons that, to be blunt, are none of yer frelling business, I've not been able to pay much attention to either this blog or the news for the last few days.1

Today is Patriots' Day, the anniversary of the Battles of Lexington and Concord, where the Colony of Massachusetts kicked off the Revolutionary War. I've written about it a few times in the past.

Also, for your reading pleasure, a past essay on patriotism.
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1 Which is why you've been seeing mostly photos, links and short snark.

100 Years On

On this day in 1917, President Wilson asked Congress to declare war on the German Empire. Four days later, they did.

Wilson might have thought that entering the war would make the world safe for democracy. It arguably had the opposite effect. The crushing of Imperial Germany led, less than 30 years later, to dictatorial regimes controlling all of eastern Europe.

Years ago, I read something that the British government had informed Wilson that if the Americans didn't enter the war, that the British would have to sue for peace. One can never know, of course, what would have happened if Wilson had turned a deaf ear to the British and let the war play out among the European powers.

If the United States had not entered the war, imagining an outcome that would have led to even more carnage than that which arose from the Great War might be a difficult endeavor.

135 Years Ago

Jesse James was shot to death by Robert Ford, who hoped to collect a $10,000 reward, which would be worth about a quarter-million dollars in today's money. He didn't collect all of it, but he may have gotten a piece of it.

Ford and his older brother, Charles, were indicted for murdering James, convicted, sentenced to hang and received full pardons, all in the same day.

Ten years later, Ford was shot dead for reasons that remain unclear. His killer served nine years for the murder and later was killed in a fight with a police officer.

Mannix

I've been watching the episodes on MeTV, which airs old stuff.

I saw a few of the first season before he switched to private practice. As a corporate private copy, he carried a PPK. As a solo practitioner, he carried a Detective Special. Which he could shoot, including hitting a laterally-moving target at 50 yards or better. His car phone was a full-duplex radio set; the calls went through an operator.

The one thing that was really nice was the episodic nature of the show. Too much of television has gotten into long story arcs, where if you haven't seen the previous episodes, you've no clue as to what is going on. You can watch an episode of Mannix and as long as you know that he's a private cop and that his secretary, Peggy Fair, was a widow raising a son, you pretty much had all of the background that you need to know in order to enjoy the show.

Don't get me wrong, extended storytelling is very effective. The Americans would pretty much such with stand-alone episodes. Still, it's nice to look at a few episodes collected on the ol' DVR and know that it doesn't matter in which order they're watched.

As for the guns: Colt and S&W revolvers, mostly. The only automatics I've seen so far have been PPKs and 1911s. One episode had Mexican Caballeros patrolling a hacienda; they had SA Colts (or imitations, it being Hollywood in the late 1960s).

Because It's Friday

Laying and running a "trench railway" in World War One:

Gasoline-powered locomotives were favored for daylight use, as they didn't put out a column of smoke for the German gunners to use for aiming points.

Barely Interactive Post

You can either read about ICE allegedly dragging a woman with a brain tumor out of the hospital or you can read about when Ogunquit, Maine had a Renault LeCar as a marked police cruiser.

Frankly, the first story doesn't surprise me. If President* Trump ordered ICE to form death squads and begin summarily executing people, I have little doubt that they would cheerfully comply. Oh, he might have to "boil the frog" a little more to get them to that point, but it wouldn't take a lot of calories to get there.

Because It's Friday

Kind of stupid poetry, but it's an interesting look at high-speed rail in 1954. Note the crew change.

Longest Flight?

Qatar Airways is the new titleholder for the world’s longest regularly scheduled airline flight.

The airline on Sunday inaugurated service on the 9,032-mile route between its Doha hub and Auckland, New Zealand. Flight time on the route is 16 hours, 10 minutes, on the New Zealand-bound leg. The return, which typically faces more headwinds, is scheduled for a whopping 17 hours, 30 minutes, according to the carrier’s website.

Qatar Airways’ new service edges it past Middle East rival Emirates, whose 8,819-mile route from Dubai to Auckland clocks in at 16 hours, 5 minutes, in the direction of New Zealand and at 17 hours, 20 minutes on the return.

Longest in the Jet Age, maybe. But it's not the record holder. Qantas holds that record for its "Double Sunrise" flights.

The Qantas flights were arguably military flights conducted under civil cover. The purely civil record holder is TWA.