P-MAN X Update #05 - Getting started
25 February 2008 - Monday

Last night Flip elected to hit the sack a little early and not make the airport run with us. He had spent some time late in the afternoon trying to get our wireless router to work (including spending a fairly long time on the phone with Netgear tech support), and since dinner he'd been feeling a little puny. He felt that some sleep might help with both problems.

Still a little jet-lagged from our flight in the previous night, Pat, Grover and I nevertheless came back from the airport still a little pumped from from our great visit with Jolie, so despite the fact that it was after 2 a.m., Pat and Grover set about trying to download Skype (a voice-over-internet application) for Pat's computer, using the hard-wired line to which our balky router was connected. I came back to our room, finished yesterday's progress report (#4), and managed to upload it to the Web site via a pirated wi-fi signal from somewhere else in the hotel.

Got to sleep close to 3:00.

At about 5:45 I awakened to the sound of a phone ringing. Might have been ours, but I couldn't tell. I could see light under my bedroom door so figured Flip had gotten up early and was trying to make calls back home. The phone kept ringing. I got up. Looked out into the ready room. Most of the lights were on. Yep, our phone was ringing. Flip was gone. I answered the phone. Noboby there. Went back to bed. Lay there for awhile trying to imagine various explanations for a lights-on-phone-ringing-Flip-gone-less-than-3-hours'-sleep scenario. I couldn't conjure up any scenarios that sounded totally benign, so got up again, convinced myself that Flip really wasn't anywhere in our digs (our suite includes two bedrooms, a bathroom, an un-air-conditioned walk-in closet, and a big open kitchen/dining/livingroom area that serves as the Ready Room. Went across the hall to Grover's suite. Flip was there, lights on, back to trying to figure out the wireless-router issue. Grover was still asleep in his bedroom. No clue why our phone had been ringing.

Sun coming up. Coffee maker sporting a fresh pot of coffee that Flip had brewed. Might as well get started off-line on Progress Report #5...

The first order of business today after our morning briefing was to drop by Neco Marine, let them know we're back in country, see if Joe was around, and then head over to the Historical Preservation Office to see if they've approved the Memorandum of Agreement that accompanied our proposal for the various investigations that we hope to accomplish this year. Without approval from them, we would not be authorized to do any of the stuff that we do, regardless of permission from anyone else. The National Archaeologist is the top approval level in the country for this kind of stuff. It was doubly important to make this the first stop, because Rita, the National Archaololgist, is heading to the U.S. in a couple of days to attend a big conference. Plus, in the past, it has often taken us a couple of days to track busy Rita down for meetings. She was there. They signed the agreement. We're through the first gate and ready to go.

We had seen Joe briefly at Neco, where he works, but he was going to be busy with family matters for the rest of the day so we'll catch up with him later. The Neco folks set up an early afternoon meeting with Shallum and the acting Governor of Ngatpang. After lunch we had that meeting. During the meeting they made a few phone calls and set up a joint meeting between us and three or four other governors on Wednesday afternoon. Josie at Neco arranged to distribute copies of our proposal to those governors in advance of the meeting so we can describe our goals, procedures, and schedule and solicit their support and approval for us to work some targets in their states.

Back at the room, we found some waiting e-mail from Mark and Katie back in DC, who have uncovered some interesting and very relevant new war-crimes testimony that bears on the executions of missionaries and UDT team members up in Ngatpang, and may also have implications for the three B-24 crew members who were taken to the same general area. We know the area very well that this testimony is discussing, so we're starting to plan a run up there, perhaps on Thursday morning. At dinner we got to spend some time discussing this newly discovered testimony with JPAC's Rich Wills, who has developed a remarkable understanding of the geography and events. It looks like Rich will accompany us on Thursday.

Dinner discussions with the JPAC guys only served to deepen my admiration and respect for their technical skills and dedication. Eric Emery, who has been the lead anthro on the B-24 for all three missions, spent some time describing their analysis of the site in terms of the kinetics of the spinning, dropping bomber and its ultimate impact with the water. It's amazing how they can work backwards from a debris field and reconstruct a sequence of events. They examine structures and components to understand how the structures twisted and spun as the aircraft fell and they can see how upon impact some structures didn't just crush but also sometimes exploded outward in predictable ways.

- Reid
 

Return to Progress Reports Index