As you’ve seen over the past six weeks, we’ve teamed up with some heavy hitters in various industries to help us with our research and investigations.
Bill Stinnett, former Hawaii Five-O Police Investigator and Truk Lagoon resident, is back this week to tell you his feelings and to give you some background on the tasks ahead in the search for The Lost Clipper.
lostclipper.com 
that should be jamiedodsonbooks.com. I often fat-finger my typing – especially on Mondays. I never did get that hang of Mondays …
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The disappearance of HAWAII CLIPPER is a mystery right up there with Amelia Earhart. I wish you luck in locating the long lost clipper.
I certainly hope that you find some evidence of NC14714, the Martin M-130 Pan American Airways HAWAII CLIPPER. I do no suspect skulduggery but rather a weakened wing strut that was problematic on all three M-130s.
John C. Leslie, later Pan Am VP, was Pacific Division Chief Engineer during the disappearance of NC14714. He and Glenn Martin had a fierce row in the media about the disappearance. Son Peter Leslie wrote “Aviation’s Quiet Pioneer, John Leslie”. In it, Peter provided copies of the letters and the reason that John thought the clipper suffered a catastrophic failure during a typhoon. See “Flying the Oceans: A Pilot’s Story of Pan Am, 1935-1955” Revised Edition by Horace Brock. Brock was scheduled to fly as 1st Officer on the return journey from Manila to SF. Brock describes the typhoon that NC 14714 must have attempted to fly through.
Best of luck and good hunting.
Cheers! Jamie
jamiedodosnbooks.com
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Thanks Jamie and I too must keep an open mind as I have been at this for over 16 years and am susceptible to target fixation (tunnel vision). Proof to another possible ending for the clipper may be found in the news papers from September 1938. In one article from the Reno Gazette dated September 14th, it tells how debris from the clipper washed up on the Philippine shores of a small fishing village called Malaga (west of Samar). The clipper transmitted its last radio message 500 miles east of Malaga and the bits of wreckage were received by the local postal inspector from Catbalgoan – the capital of Samar province. Perhaps a time bomb took her down?
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