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12 minutes ago, Math of Insects said:

Any conclusions that rely on the investigative and analytical skills of Eric Ulis should be considered to be somewhere between Wrong and Comically Wrong.

 

Well my team has been working with actual metallurgists this whole time. I can’t speak for Eric. He may have people helping him or he may not. We arrived at Rem- Cru separately and for different reasons.

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21 minutes ago, olemisscub said:

Well my team has been working with actual metallurgists this whole time. I can’t speak for Eric. He may have people helping him or he may not. We arrived at Rem- Cru separately and for different reasons.

 

It’s been a crash course in metallurgy to say the least!

Edited by Nicholas Broughton

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2 hours ago, Nicholas Broughton said:

 

It’s been a crash course in metallurgy to say the least!

Working completely independently from each other, both groups zero in on the exact 3 particles and then independently both decide on RemCru? How is that possible?  Eric was talking about this well before anyone else.

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7 hours ago, CooperNWO305 said:

I don’t think anyone is saying that box was filled with all the particles. 

The tie probably came from some industrial setting. Tracing that to one location is impossible, regardless of how much we’d like to do that.

None of the elements on the tie are uncommon. None. Some are just more common than others. Find some uranium or plutonium and then we have a lead. 

If the tie theory fell apart, is your guy still a good suspect? 

BOOM, this is gold...

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7 hours ago, olemisscub said:

Well my team has been working with actual metallurgists this whole time. I can’t speak for Eric. He may have people helping him or he may not. We arrived at Rem- Cru separately and for different reasons.

You both used the same flawed logic that the TISB particles could only have come from an alloy patent and people associated with it.

Everything relies on that flaw.. both of you guys have essentially found a random guy who resembles the sketch and tried to make him fit the evidence.. is it possible to find Cooper that way, sure, but the odds are astronomical.

You really think an older guy (58) with over 80 patents, a PHD, worked on the Manhattan Project, no military parachute experience, no aviation experience fits Cooper's profile?

Remove the (flawed) tie particle premise then what do you have,,,

 

Now, I will say that I would probably have pursued the same line of inquiry but I would not have brought them forward as a suspect without some major evidence..

I have pursued many things based on a hypothesis that never panned out.

 

Edited by FLYJACK

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7 hours ago, CooperNWO305 said:

Working completely independently from each other, both groups zero in on the exact 3 particles and then independently both decide on RemCru? How is that possible?  Eric was talking about this well before anyone else.

 

2 hours ago, FLYJACK said:

You both used the same flawed logic that the TISB particles could only have come from an alloy patent and people associated with it.

Everything relies on that flaw.. both of you guys have essentially found a random guy who resembles the sketch and tried to make him fit the evidence.. is it possible to find Cooper that way, sure, but the odds are astronomical.

 

 

I believe we've already explained this, but I'll explain it again. Eric indeed found the 3 possible alloys. He gets credit for that. They do stick out like a sore thumb on the spreadsheets. He came up with Rem-Cru on his own somehow. He'd have to tell you how he did that. I'm not even sure how he did because he's a guy who works alone. However, for our part, we took those particles to metallurgists who led us to several places, one of which eventually was Rem-Cru. We did not begin at Rem-Cru though. We learned that the places that were experimenting with TiSb alloys in the 1950's were originally Bureau of Mines and Battelle Memorial Institute. We built a spreadsheet for each of these places of as many of their R&D guys as we could find and then attempted to vet those people, looking for military experience and ties to the PNW. We weren't able to find any. But that seemed like a dead end anyways because the tie wouldn't have been around these 1950's raw TiSb alloys since it came from the 60's. 

We then decided to look for patents that might reference TiSb alloys. We located 1,400 patents 1950 through 1959 that mention both titanium and antimony somewhere in the patent (usually in a long list of elements but almost never adjacent), and around 3,500 in the 1960's. Virtually 100% of these are for pigments and chemicals, never alloys. In fact, the only two places that actually have patents for TiSb alloys are Rem-Cru/Crucible and Sprague. You can search the US Patents yourself and for titanium antimony alloy it's literally just those two. FWIW, Vordahl is the only Crucible employee who is listed on those patents (there are 13 of them in total, but only one in the "tie era"). He apparently learned the skill from a collaboration with Battelle. TiSb is apparently an extremely difficult and also inefficient thing to alloy, which is why it never caught on and was purely experimental. TiSn alloys essentially give you the same advantages as TiSb but it is much, much more efficient and easy to do, which is why the industry used it instead of TiSb. You can see below a query on the metallurgy reddit from Chaucer and the befuddled response he received. 

So we then narrowed our focus on seeing if anyone stood out in the R&D labs for Rem-Cru/Crucible and Sprague. We built spreadsheets for those as well. You can see below a sample of the first page of our Rem-Cru sheet that we built. FWIW, John L. Sprague from Sprague Electronics would have made a damn good Cooper if you were holding a Cooper lookalike contest. But he of course was just the CEO of Sprague and wasn't a grunt metallurgist working in a lab. 

So we kept vetting all these names we could find at Rem-Cru and Sprague, looking for military experience and/or ties to the PNW. We used an expensive software that I have access to in order to check for these things and also looked up their obituaries and military records for height/eye color/hair color/build, etc. on Fold3. Not surprisingly, very few of these nerds had real military experience. They were used in wartime industries or recruited to work on various things for the war effort, like Vordahl on the Manhattan Project. To our surprise, Vordahl was the only one who was from the PNW, but he would have been 58 during NORJAK, so we sorta skipped over him. We kept digging and digging and came up with nothing that would make any of these individuals stand out as unique. So we eventually decide, what the hell, lets look at Vordahl anyways. The 1965 patent is, after all, his sole invention. 

So reluctantly, due to age, we decided to do a deeper dive into Vordahl and saw that not only was he from Washington, but he was actually living there at the time. Well, that's neat, but doesn't mean too much. What about his size? Measured in barefeet for the draft at age 26 he was 5'10 1/2. Good size for anyone wanting to be Cooper IMO. Yeah, well, that's all fine and good, but what kind of person was he? Were he and the Mrs. akin to Ward and June Clever? Oh no, hell no they were not. I'm not sure how many couples in the 1960's and 1970's caused people in their town to make public complaints against them accusing them of Paganism. He seemed to have a narcissistic and often angry personality. He seems like the sort that would have perhaps been upset that he received no public recognition for some of his notable contributions to aerospace since all of his marvelous inventions were assigned and he received no royalties (93% of the alloy coating the SR-71 is one of his). He appeared to be such a miser about certain things that instead of buying his children contacts in the 1960's, he literally made them contacts in his spare time. He had some fascination with optics and would build his own telescopes, many of which are still on the family property. There are other troubling aspects of his personality that, out of respect for the family, we are not publicly discussing as of now.  He ended up dying of a rare neurological disease that, among other things, effects the part of the brain that controls impulsivity. Could he have been already suffering from this? Something for us to consider at least.

Was he an arthritic broken down old timer? Quite the contrary. He appeared to be a very good athlete. When doing deep dives on him, many of the references you'll come across are about him competing (and sometimes winning) amateur tennis and golf tournaments. According to one of his grandchildren, he was an obsessive golfer and played tennis or golf everyday that he could. We have him still playing in senior tennis tournaments into his 70's. He also wrote about jogging and running during the 1960's. I think we all know that wasn't exactly a common practice in those days. So he would have been in good shape for a man his age. Drinker and smoker? We literally have a video of the man drinking and in the same video there appears to be a lit cigarette set in an ashtray in front of him. He also made his own wine, fwiw. 

Well what else? Any ties to Boeing? Sure, he consulted with Boeing many, many times over the previous 15 years before NORJAK. Our source with access to Boeing records has him many times consulting for Crucible and TIMET with Boeing. We have him on the floor of Boeing as late as 1970 consulting on the SST. What was he doing in 1971? He appeared to still be a consultant for Crucible and also for TIMET, which was located in Henderson, NV. He maintained a home in Henderson from 1965 until his death. He appeared to snowbird in the winter time and relocate to his home in NV during the rough winters in northern Washington. His exact job title is unclear, but we have him working at the TIMET lab in Henderson in the 1960's and also again in the 1970's as a consultant. The last patent of his life, incidentally, was published in 1971. His "home laboratory", so to speak, was at the TIMET plant in Henderson, which was only 2 miles from his home. This plant closed in August 71 due to the aerospace bust and laid off all of its workers. The research manager there, as we all know, was a guy named Don Cooper. They opened back up in mid 72.

It should be noted that one of the very last things we knew about Vordahl was what he looked like. We were well over a month into researching him that we finally saw what he looked like as an adult. He was Mr. "not appearing in this photo" guy throughout much of his life. It wasn't until we had already contacted the family and held discussions with them that we received an actual clear photo of his face. It should also be noted that we've never encountered a single word of objection from his family. Literally none of them have said "no way" or anything like that. They're merely intrigued. They knew he was a unique individual and just want to learn more.

Does any of this make him Cooper? Absolutely f**king not. Odds are astronomically overwhelming that he ISN'T D.B. Cooper. I recognize that. I'm not a fool (even though many of the people on this site may think that about me) nor am I some gullible idiot. However, for an outside-the-box Cooper suspect, I think it's worth looking at an anti-social, often hostile, narcissistic, genius inventor, with ties to aviation, with ties to the SST bust, who was living in one of the most isolated communities in Washington in 1971, and who looks so similar to the sketches. 

Our team spent months and months seeking the opinions of metallurgists, authors on metallurgy, other scientists, and making contacts with individuals at Boeing, etc. We didn't just pull Vordahl out of a hat. We had already vetted like 200 different individuals at various companies before we dug deeper into him because, as previously stated, we had previously set him aside as we figured his age put him out of contention (and perhaps it still does). Again, we didn't even know what the guy looked like until well into our investigation of him. He could have looked like Chris Farley for all we knew and that would have been the end of it.

Three of us busted our asses on this every day for four or five months. That's well over a year of combined time researching this to try and get to Vordahl. Eric will openly admit that the way he found Petersen was he contacted an older guy who used to be a supervisor there. He was actually one of only two guys that we vetted who was still alive and we actually gave the contact info to Eric. He called and asked the guy "who was someone you worked with who was about 6'1 and was around 45-50 in 1971. The old guy said "that sounds like Petersen". That's how Eric found Petersen, and hey, maybe he got super lucky.

However, as you can see, our research methods to find our suspects were obviously night and day, so please, as fellow Cooper researchers, do not disrespect our efforts by claiming that we half assed this. We've spoken with numerous experts. We've collectively spent hundreds of hours and financial resources looking into this lead on the off-chance that maybe, just maybe, it might produce something.

And yes, of course this is based on a hypothesis. It's no different than finding a suspect based on what is arguably a fictional novel or making an assumption that this individual came from this or that particular commando unit. 51 years later we are all kind of grasping at straws here. 

It's just a theory based on something that may or may not turn out to be true, but we chased a lead and so far this is what we've come up with after doing months of due diligence. So please chill it with the aspersions claiming that we half-assed this TiSb theory. We absolutely did not.  If you want to attack EU for being given a random name and running with it, then sure, that's a very valid criticism. But that criticism should not be leveled against us. 

We understand the flaws of Vordahl. He's arguably outside the age range. We haven't found any parachuting experience as of yet. Why would he commit aircraft piracy? Etc.

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VP is due an apology. That man should have been allowed to rest in peace and his family should have been allowed to have his memory be whatever it was for them. I hate for them that their father/grandfather etc is now forever internet-associated with something he so comically obviously had not a thing do with.

MV can at least have a case built for him if you start with the tie evidence as gospel and the presumptions made from it as sound. I think the water leaks from the case on the tie particles, the presumptions made from them, and getting him on the plane for a suicidal/murderous terrorist mission after which he went back to a life of bored op-ed writing. Those are some pretty big leaks and I've relayed my thoughts about them privately. But if you go with certain assumptions, I can see how they might lead you to MV as a box to check, and the fact that he looks like the pictures certainly doesn't hurt once you get there. He's fun to consider, and if his family doesn't care, there is at least some justification as to why he's being (temporarily) looked at. 

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Any sem photos of these crucial particles?

Does Tom say the TiSb  specimen is an alloy?  What process and type of alloy? 

Any isotopic work on these particles ?

Are any of these 'particles' machined?  What "process" are these 'particles' associated with? 

What is Tom's role in all of this ?

Any sand particles associated with the Columbia on the Cooper tie?

Are all of these rare particles being picked up at one location or from multiple locations ?  I guess some have decided its from one location ? The TiSb alloy location ?

What happened to Kaye's friend, the materials expert Dick Stone? Is he still onboard or long gone?

Edited by georger

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3 minutes ago, georger said:

Any sem photos of these crucial particles?

Does Tom say the TiSb  specimen is an alloy?  What process and type of alloy? 

Any isotopic work on these particles ?

Are any of these 'particles' machined?  What "process" are these 'particles' associated with? 

What is Tom's role in all of this ?

The SEM photos are like 64 pixels or something like that. 

Tom is missing a part of his scope at the moment. It's on backorder from China, so we're obviously waiting for that to confirm if they are or aren't alloys. 

The family has one of Vordahl's name badges from TIMET from what we believe to be mid-1970's and another from Crucible dating to late 50's or early 60's. Tom has requested that we try and get the family to send him those so he can have them scanned for particles as well.

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8 minutes ago, olemisscub said:

Very brief shot from the opening credits of that new horrid I Am DB Cooper movie. Appears to show Rat and Andy giving an interview next to the plane, likely the next morning. Has anyone ever seen this??

Grabbed it from here..

https://archive.org/details/kcrasp035dbcooper

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Edward's still gets the facts wrong and the wrong conclusion,,

https://www.goodreads.com/author_blog_posts/23193030-d-b-cooper-and-flight-305-the-oscillations-and-the-pressure-bump-rev

Rataczak said he was hand flying the plane. IT WAS NOT ON AUTOPILOT..

Then Edwards gets the "suburbs of Portland" out of context..

That was when they called Soderlind,, minutes after Cooper jumped..

Cooper did not jump over the Columbia or beyond the Columbia..

 

As for the oscillations, there were minor ones for some time, normal, then they increased rapidly on the gauge culminating in a physical bump.. this is within seconds not minutes..

An extreme oscillation seen on the gauge was felt as a bump..

Edwards is claiming there is a 7-10 minute separation between the crew reporting oscillations and the bump, this is false and a misread of the evidence.

The bump was an extreme oscillation.

Edited by FLYJACK

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15 minutes ago, Andrade1812 said:

I don't understand his reasoning behind moving the time 305 crosses the Columbia to 8:13.

Frankly, it is a mess.

Basically he is claiming the report of oscillations and the bump were two events not separated by seconds but by 7-10 minutes,, 

The crew reported the oscillations about 8:13, but felt the bump after the Columbia.. he claims

He misreads several things and ignores others to get there.

He insists the plane was auto, on auto the pilot wouldn't feel the hijacker on the stairs. It is mentioned in the files but is wrong, Rataczak said he was hand flying the entire time, Scott took over just before Reno and landed. Rataczak also stated he felt Cooper on the stairs.. He reported the mark your shrimpboat comment right away and called Soderlind minutes later.

The other big thing he gets wrong is the reference to "suburbs of Portland" that was the call to Soderlind minutes after the "bump/oscillation".. 

Edwards has the evidence wrong and missed some important points.. He has repeated these errors for some time and for some reason he is fixated on moving the jump zone further south, confirmation bias maybe.

 

 

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“”(Referring to the bump or the report of the bump) "They had not yet reached Portland proper but were definitely in the suburbs or immediate vicinity thereof" (First Officer, 1971.) To me, this sounds like they have crossed the Columbia River.“””

Portland proper is literally across the river so how could they have not been in Portland proper once “they have crossed the Columbia River”?

I think it’s clear that they were referring to the suburbs north of the Columbia. “Immediate vicinity thereof” sounds to me like they were closing in on the northern suburbs like Battle Ground. 

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1 hour ago, Andrade1812 said:

I don't understand his reasoning behind moving the time 305 crosses the Columbia to 8:13.

I believe it's based on the last paragraph which cites the location of the plane at time 2018 PST being 23 Nautical Miles south of the PDX/BG VORTAC.  Then he traces back the plane speed of ~3 miles per minute ( 3 Miles x 5 minutes) and that puts the plane approximately over the Colombia.  The position of the plane at 2018 is based on McClleland's log entry on the night of the hijacking.  Some of the other NWA personnel had a different time stamp of 2022 PST.  So that's a 4 minute difference which would be a ~12 mile location swing.  So Edward's is going with the 2018 PST time stamp and location. The question is which log entry is correct.

This isn't new, it's in his book also. What's kind of new now is that the NWA personnel taking the logs/notes have been identified and he is wrapping some of the communication and it's timing into it.  

  :
At 2018 PST +/- 30 seconds, Flight 305 passes the position 23 nautical miles south of PDX (the Battle Ground VORTAC) on the Victor 23 airway. It is now south of Lake Oswego and approximately abeam Tualatin, Oregon. Backtracking from this point at three nautical miles per minute: Flight 305 begins its crossing of the Columbia at approximately 2013 PST.

db-pdx-location.JPG

Edited by JAGdb
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This is what Edwards misunderstands,,

The context here is the phone call to Soderlind shortly after Cooper jumped.. and the oscillation (Cooper's jump) could have been between 8:05 and the call to Soderlind. Rataczak is giving a range indicating the time would be recorded.. the end point of that range is the call to Soderlind in the suburbs of Portland. He is not saying Cooper jumped or the oscillations or the bump was in the suburbs of Portland. 

Soderlind was listening in and took notes and times.. Soderlind's LZ (map) went South to about Battleground, about when he got the call from Rataczak. 

cooperjump.jpeg.4214210c7ca4559af608ed5207ae8150.jpeg.f96d271f47652de0f2614bd57e41885e.jpeg

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2 hours ago, olemisscub said:

“”(Referring to the bump or the report of the bump) "They had not yet reached Portland proper but were definitely in the suburbs or immediate vicinity thereof" (First Officer, 1971.) To me, this sounds like they have crossed the Columbia River.“””

Portland proper is literally across the river so how could they have not been in Portland proper once “they have crossed the Columbia River”?

I think it’s clear that they were referring to the suburbs north of the Columbia. “Immediate vicinity thereof” sounds to me like they were closing in on the northern suburbs like Battle Ground. 

The city across the river from Portland is:  Vancouver. Two FBI agents there at the time. The Ingram find was technically in their jurisdiction. 

They had not yet reached Portland proper but were definitely in the suburbs or immediate vicinity thereof" (First Officer, 1971.)   In other words, Rataczak didnt know what was Vancouver vs Portland! The suburbs of Vancouver are: the northern climes of Vancouver. Vancouver is not the suburbs of Portland or Mexico City either. And Earth is the third planet from the Sun! 

There is Rataczak Company speak vs language for the rest of the US population? !

Rataczak was weird!  Rataczak was playing a role! Rataczak was busy being busy ?  Rataczak barely knew where he was except in general terms somewhere north maybe of Portland maybe !  Which is north of Mexico City on the third planet from the Sun.

Soderlin was "missing in action" according to R99.  MIA Soderlin got the whole flight path wrong according R99. Which is north of Mexico City on the third planet from the Sun.

Edited by georger
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4 minutes ago, olemisscub said:

Honestly why do we give a shit where he jumped at this point?

Because R99 and Ulis want to go there and dig the whole county up .... and claim the land as abandoned since Soderlin was MIA. ?

Edited by georger
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10 hours ago, olemisscub said:

Honestly why do we give a shit where he jumped at this point?

It is based on flawed logic,, that the TBAR money could only arrive there from Cooper landing outside the FBI LZ.. and the FBI made an error searching the wrong area. Why, because the FBI didn't find anything in their search area. That includes moving the flight path West or East or moving the jump zone South. They beleive that reverse engineering TBAR will produce a place to search the FBI missed and potentially find evidence. To do this one must ignore or distort the actual evidence..

It is a hail mary pass..

There are many ways the money could have arrived at TBAR while maintaining the FBI LZ and flight path. Cooper evidence may have been found in the FBI LZ but never turned in or recognized.

It is extremely unlikely TBAR will be solved beyond some good theories.

 

BTW,, If I was going to do a new search my #1 spot would be along the South Fork Lewis River from the Heisson bridge Eastward..  it is right in the LZ sweet-spot and there was a parachute found there that was rejected based on Cossey's flawed description.

 

Edited by FLYJACK
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