Robert99

Here is an attempt at a possible and simple explanation. D.B. Cooper had never seen that specific operating panel for the 727 rear stairs. Assume that he had experience with 727 rear stairs that had been modified to lower in flight. For such stairs, it is very likely that the manufacturer would provide additional functions, such as stopping and locking at intermediate positions, and that would mean a new control panel design with more buttons and levers. The modified stairs would probably also have a lot of work done on their design to insure that the stairs could be retracted and the cabin re-pressurized.

Vicki, If your father was born in September 1927, he would be 83 years old now if still alive and you indicate that he disappeared in 1971. I don't know how the police process people who die without any known relatives, whether naturally or otherwise. But the fact that the California authorities, as well as the US Marshalls, have processed your father through their system means that they have his fingerprints on file. So there is a possibility that his fingerprints would be sent to some state or federal police agency for their information and assistance. Consequently, depending on how far back the various police agencies went in their records when the new automated fingerprint files were established, there is a possibility that your father is still alive and has stayed out of trouble. Presumably, the US Marshalls would have the capability to search every automated file in the USA. If you want to pull out all the stops on finding your father, I would suggest that you get back in touch with the US Marshalls and ask that they do a new fingerprint search using all the new data bases that have come online since November 2001. People who have been sought by law enforcement agencies for more than 50 years have been found using these new data bases. If you do find him, and he has stayed out of trouble since disappearing in 1971, then after the initial adverse publicity it may be possible to get his legal problems resolved fairly simply. The decision on what to do about this is yours and you should consider all the possibilities, including the one that he might be found. Again, how you proceed on this is your personal decision and you should consider all possible outcomes. Good luck. Robert Nicholson

Vicki, It is very unlikely that your father is/was D. B. Cooper. Cooper had knowledge of some very closely held information on the Boeing 727 airliner and he almost certainly would not have had access to that information with a long standing prison record. The same goes for Duane Weber. And unless the FBI is kicking your door in, there is no reason for throwing any money in the river or burying it somewhere. Robert Nicholson

Jo, The additional drag of the stairs being lowered would be overcome by increasing the engine thrust which would not be a problem. Just more fuel would be used. I agree with your statement that weather was apparently not a problem in the Portland/Vancouver area despite contrary information in a book or two. Before take-off in Seattle, the crew asked for the weather along the planned flight path and were essentially told (I'm going from memory) that it would not be a problem but that they might have some haze south of Portland. Somewhere around Medford, the crew expressed some concern about some light icing that they were encountering. But the NWA performance group in Minneapolis told them it would not be a problem and not to worry about it. Robert

I hope Farflung will respond to you Jo. He has flown big jets. My guess is the speed loss from stair and open door drag would be only a few knots, certainly less than 10. Jet airliners are on autopilot most of the time and maneuvers such as climbs, turns and descents are done by making inputs to the autopilot rather than hand flying the plane with the control column and rudder pedals. The autopilots have an altiitude hold feature to assure maintaining level flight, so you wouldnt get a lot of altitude variation unless the power settings were insufficient to hold the set altitude. When I jumped from a DC 9 jet I didn't feel any deceleration at all when they opened the cabin door, but it wasnt faired into the fuselage outer surface, it was inside and at the top of the stairwell area. The stairs had been removed and we just jumped out of the now open area where the stairs were normally stowed. We had good looking flight attendants too, but none quite as appealing as Tina. 377 According to a post from Jerry Thomas a long time ago, NWA reportedly told Rataczak to hand fly the airplane all the way to Reno. But with the stair door open, the flaps down, and the landing gear down, the crew did report trouble in climbing, turning, and descending. Reportedly, the aircraft could not make a standard rate two minute turn (3 degrees per second). In approaching Reno, the crew told the controllers that their best descent rate was slightly greater than 500 feet per minute. Then while on final approach to Reno, the aircraft had to break off the approach and do a 360 degree turn in order to get into the proper position. Part of the final approach problem may have been that the 727 had a reputation for being difficult to stabilize on the final approach. Robert

It sure would be hard to egress undetected from your landing area and get back to civilization without getting caught unless you had help from an accomplice. There is another possibility though. Gossett was in the Army (reserves?) and could have jumped into Ft Lewis (very unilkely to be noticed at night) and blended in. He might have even left a car there and a uniform. Wasn't Ft Lewis consistent with a very early jump post takeoff? I don't see convincing evidence that Gossett was Cooper, but there are viable Norjack escape plans that could have been pulled off without an accomplice. If Gossett was Cooper his Ft Lewis jump plan didnt work out because the pilots would not take off with the stairs lowered. By the time Cooper got the stairs lowered post takeoff the plane was far away from Ft Lewis. 377 Cooper had an argument with Rataczak about the lowering of the stairs before take-off. Rataczak claimed that they couldn't take-off with the stairs in a partial down position. Cooper finally said to take-off with them up but he told Tina that he knew the airplane could take-off with them down. The airliner took off towards the south and, about the time it rotated, it passed within about 1000 feet laterally of the Seattle VORTAC from which V-23 runs to the Toledo area. In proceeding along the centerline of V-23, the airliner would have passed about 1 or 2 statute miles east of McChord AFB base at about 23 statute miles from the SEA VORTAC. About 5 statute miles further along V-23, the airplane would have passed about 5 statute miles east of Gray AAF at Fort Lewis. Then as it continued along V-23, it would have passed to the east of several restricted areas that are probably part of the Fort Lewis complex. The boundaries of Fort Lewis are not shown on any map I have, but it appears that from about the McChord AFB area there is nothing in the way of civilization (even today) that Cooper would have to avoid until he got to the Toledo area. The airplane probably passed McChord about 7 minutes after take-off, and from that point Cooper would have a "window" of about 10-15 minutes to jump and land in a relatively unpopulated area from which he could probably easily slip through the brush into Fort Lewis. So his goal may have been to land in the Fort Lewis area after dark and that may have been one reason for selecting this specific flight. Since sunset in Seattle that day was a number of minutes before 5:00 PM, and Cooper specified that the money was to be there at a time that was just after sunset, he probably planned to do a night jump all along. But giving in to Rataczak, in order to get the airplane flying again, loused up a jump into the Fort Lewis area. Robert

LOL, I have to agree with you there. But see that's also part of my point. If that dumb ass could get away with it for a few days until he was caught..... And where he jumped has some nice clear areas to land in, but there's a lot of trees and very thick woods surrounding any open space of land in that area. He got very lucky he didn't end up impaled on something. As far as his gold goes, who knows. Why did he even mention it? If he had the gold I could still see him doing it though because he wanted people to think he was dead. I haven't been down there since the news released that part. I figure there's people stomping and trespassing all over the place looking for it and it's probably not there. Probably an excuse to say I had it but I don't anymore and it's really somewhere else and he'll grab it 10 years from now when he gets out of prison. Obviously D.B. had his crime planned out way better than the dufus jumping out of his plane over the state I live in. Speaking of determining a jump point how hard would that have been in Cooper's case? If you know the plane is going to be flying from point A to point B at a certain speed I would think that one could figure it out. The "fly right under 200" has always intrigued me. The plane could have gone slower than that making for an easier exit but yet he wanted right under 200, why? As I recall it, he didn't mention speed as such but specified 15 degrees of flaps and the landing gear down. It was the NWA performance group in Minneapolis that told the crew that an indicated airspeed of 170 knots would produce the best range for the aircraft. They would have considered such things as the gross weight of the aircraft, the winds and atmospheric conditions, as well as the aircraft configuration. Cooper apparently wanted to jump shortly after leaving Seattle. However, he didn't get his wish on that point. There was nothing that he could have had on his person in 1971 that would have produced any meaningful information about his location while he was on the aircraft. Basically, he probably could not have known his position to within a radius of about 20 miles at the time he actually jumped. I agree with your earlier point that he probably had an assistant somewhere along the way to help his escape. Robert

JCW1966, Marcus Schrenker was dumb and is now living proof that sometimes the Almighty gives a special break to idiots and drunks. He could and did determine his jump point from his aircraft navigational instruments. He neglected to consider the increase in drag that the opened cabin door would cause after his jump and that resulted in the aircraft crashing just short of the Gulf of Mexico rather than in it. Also, he did not anticipate that his aircraft, now flying on autopilot, would be intercepted by military aircraft that could determine that the windshield was not broken (as he had told ATC) and that the cabin door was ajar. If he had had 50 pounds of gold, I don't think he would have made the flight in the first place. He was just trying to run out on the "life" that he had created. For people like Schrenker, it usually comes down to money, liquor, and women (not necessairly in that order). And Schrenker apparently cut a wide swath with all three. Crime does not pay (at least as Schrenker was doing it). Boom! Boom! Robert

Jo, with all due respect, just exactly what does a chase plane sound like? How did they know it was a chase plane(s)? About the only thing from the Seattle ARTCC transcripts that can be believed is that the airliner was reporting that it was level at 10,000 feet as it passed through the Portland/Vancouver area. And that altitude would put it above three broken cloud layers and maybe an additional complete cloud layer (undercast) according to the FBI released weather reports for the Orchards area (and those reports seem to be correct). Further, there is not one bleeping fact to support the idea that the airliner passed over the Battleground VORTAC (which was known as the Portland VORTAC at that time) or east of the BTG VORTAC. In fact, going over or east of the BTG VORTAC doesn't make sense in the first. Such a route simply does not pass the smell test. Robert

For you 727 pilots that have experience with the 727-051 model at night in light icing conditions, how do check for airframe icing? When you turn the wing icing lights on can you visually check the wing from the cockpit or do you have to go to the cabin and look out the passenger windows? Is icing visible around the cockpit windows? Is there a source at this point in time for identifying the hardware, and its metallic composition, as it was used in 1970 and earlier for the NB-6 and NB-8 parachutes? Can similiar hardware still be purchased? Robert

Well Mr. J. Christ, please forgive my failure to recognize You. However, I didn't expect the Second Coming to be like this.

Mr. NexusOfCivility, You should visit the FBI's government site and note the information about their asking for public assistance and their discussion of the Cooper hijacking. FBI names are mentioned. A visit to Sluggo's web site would provide you with access to just about all information on the Cooper hijacking that is in the public domain. What is it in your background that makes you feel qualified to disparage Jo Weber and Robert Blevins? Jo Weber, Robert Blevins, and others have fully disclosed their backgrounds. What is yours? Be strong, Mr. NexusOfCivility. Robert Nicholson

Thanks for the links. I have visited both and it looks like at least one of them may get the job done. I'll do an indepth checkout of both sites. It is that horizontal component of motion and the atmospheric density that makes the problem complicated and requires an iterative approach. In case anyone is interested, early last year I calculated the Portland atomspheric density that existed at the time of Cooper's jump. Corrections were made for the below standard temperature, above standard pressure, and for the high humidity. The end result was that the Portland atmospheric DENSITY at the time of the jump was slightly above the standard given in the 1962 U.S. Standard Atmosphere. In addition, I have estimated the drag coefficient times reference area (CD x A) values for two jumper positions that should represent the slowest and fastest free fall conditions. Robert

Does anyone know of information existing in the skydiving community for predicting the forward travel of a jumper after exiting the aircraft and before deploying (or not deploying) his canopy? Assuming Cooper did not deploy a canopy, his landing location would be several miles from his point of seperation from the aircraft. Or does anyone, presumably academics, have access to computer software and hardware that is capable of computing this information? The computation requires an iterative type program and is rather complex. Robert

Hi, right back. Please elaborate. Robert

Robert, We actually agree on something I think. Despite the statements in Himmelsbach's book, there is no actual evidence to support the idea that weather was a major factor in this hijacking. Indeed there were clouds and some rain and icing at altitude, but that was just another day at the office. Robert

Robert, You have it backwards. A REAL investigation determines the data points and then plots the curve. Otherwise, you have the curve (or theory) determining which data points are accepted or rejected and thus driving the investigation. Admittedly, there are instances when some data points must be rejected for one reason or another but that is the exception rather than the rule. But valid data points must be the driving force in any meaningful investigation. Robert

This is a perfectly valid point. Blevin's hypothesis - that it was meant to be found earlier - is also a reasonable one (in my opinion). If you want it to be found, you do not throw something as small as a hand full of money in the Columbia River, much less bury it somewhere. Within a couple of days of the hijacking, Cooper would have known that his FBI estimated landing area was wrong and that he didn't have much to fear from them. So he would plant any clues in an area where he didn't land such as the place where the FBI was looking. But I am one of those who subscribes to the theory that Cooper died within one minute of separating from the aircraft. That is, before 8:20 PM PST on November 24, 1971 Cooper had Met His Maker. Robert

Jo, After getting away with the money for 7+ years, why would Cooper or anyone else throw money in the river in 1979? If Cooper was alive in 1979 then he was basically home free. And why would he throw it in a location where it would end up at Tina Bar since that is not where he was thought to have landed and the find would only reactivate the invetigation. Robert

The claim that Cooper threw money in the river or buried some at Tina Bar just doesn't pass the smell test. And since it took 8+ years to find it, it didn't fool anyone initially. There is credible evidence that fragments of some bills were found a couple of feet under the sand. To me, this suggests that the money deposition at Tina Bar was a repeatable event and that, if true, means that Cooper probably landed on solid ground near Tina Bar and stayed in that location for a period of years. Robert

TDG, Welcome and you have your work cut out for you. "Facts" are hard to come by in this matter and there are about 20+ versions of the facts for every item that is discussed. May I suggest that you visit Sluggo's web page and, for instance, compare the Air Traffic Control transcripts from the Seattle ATC Center with those from the Oakland ATC Center. You will rapidly come to the conclusion that the Seattle ATC transcripts have been "sanitized" after the 1971 hijacking, and probably after the money was found at Tina Bar in 1980. Apparently after the money was found, some of the facts were changed, or deleted, so as to not contradict someone's theory and the flight path was the main item changed. Consequently, there is no agreement as to the actual flight path in the Portland area. And careful checking into radar data will eliminate it as a meaningful tool for determining the flight path. Having said that, there is no reason whatsoever at this time for dismissing the possibility that the airliner actually flew directly over Tina Bar. Some people disagree with this possibility rather strongly. So please act as a defense attorney in this matter and don't accept any alleged "fact" at its face value. If you want to act as a prosecutor, Jo Weber would probably be delighted to have you assist in proving that her late husband, Duane Weber, was D. B. Cooper (although he wasn't). Again, welcome. Robert Nicholson

If KC made off with the entire $200,000, which he didn't, and ran it into about $800,000 in 22 years, he had finally found his calling. He should have been a financial consultant and he could have given lectures on the side to teach other people how to rip off the IRS. He also apparently didn't like to spend money either and decided to just leave all of it to other people. Robert

Thanks Sluggo. In her original message, Jo was apparently referring to streets in the Vancouver area and I thought she was referring to towns east of the Cascades. In any event, the baloon bomb I saw was near Wenatchee and it was shot down by P-38s that were based somewhere southeast of there, probably in the Yakima and Hanford area. It should be remembered that in early 1945, Hanford was not a familiar name. That would change with the events that following August. Robert

Jo, I cannot locate Hockinson on a map either. But you had mentioned the balloon bombs and Cold Creek may have been the name of the area where the P-38 fighters were based that shot down the one I saw. I believe this air base was in the Yakima and Hanford area but don't have any better information on it. Robert

I should have said about 5 or 10 thousand feet above ground level. Another good but obscure book all about Japanese attacks on the US West Coast during WW2: Silent Siege, lots of tech detail about the Fouga ballons and also about sub carried seaplane attack aircraft. http://www.amazon.com/Silent-Siege-III-Civilians-Documentary/dp/0936738731 Most balloons were made of doped paper. Some were assembled as class projects by school children. Some "scout" balloons had HF telemetry with a vacuum tube transmitter! The Fougas (incindiary balloons) had an ingenious system for automatically releasing sand ballast to maintain altitude. The balloons were supposed to set the Pacific NW forests ablaze but the only time the trans Pacific winds really favored the operation was winter when the forests were too wet to ignite and support a sustained burn. The program was a huge failure as a weapon. Some UFO debunkers thought the Roswell alien was a mummified Japanese midget found long after the war. Their theory was that the Japanese experimented with manned balloons to insert spies and saboteurs onto the US mainland. Small pilots would be chosen to minimize payload. Roswell crash debris was consistent with a balloon and it turned out it (according to the USAF) was a cold war balloon project carrying an instrument payload to monitor atomic tests, Project Mogul. The alien story appears to be urban myth. So does the Duane as a Ranger trained jumper story. 377 My understanding is that the balloon bomb project itself was a direct result of the insults to the Empire that resulted from the Doolittle raid in April 1942. The Japanese responded in kind as best they could but it took them about two years to get the balloons developed and most of them were launched in 1944 and 1945. Robert