...FLIGHT SERGEANT PJ CRAMER
RAAF...
Patrick's final resting place is in Esbjerg, Denmark.
LEST WE FORGET
...CONTINUING THE SEARCH FOR TRUTH... We are the leading fact, evidence-based, and authoritative blog on the Somerton Man case. The TAMAM SHUD case, all began with the discovery of the body of a man on Somerton Beach, South Australia on Dec. 1st 1948. He had been poisoned. No identification was found on the man or at the scene, and there were no signs of violence. The sand around the body was undisturbed. The discovery of secret codes and a local telephone number add to this enduring mystery,
Let’s start with the Oxford dictionary definition:
A traditional story is sometimes regarded as historically correct but not authenticated or substantiated. As in “The Legend of King Arthur".
Similarly, we often refer to sporting heroes as ‘legends’ or append it to the names of the famous and describe their exploits, good or dubious, as 'legendary'. But the ‘legend’ that we could append to the “SOMERTON MAN’ has an entirely different meaning
I say ‘could append’ because there is no certainty about the accuracy of what I am about to describe. It based on what I have learned about the world's second-oldest profession, the science, art and practice of espionage
In the world of spies and espionage, the term LEGEND refers to the story that a field agent may 'wrap' around his real identity, his biography in a way.
Here's an outline, by no means complete of what you might expect in a spy 'Legend'
1. History.
To commence the legend, the spy must have a convincing story about his or her past, their date and place of birth, and names of parents, siblings and relatives. People they knew at school or had worked with. Details about the town where they grew up, employment history. And all of this and more would be accompanied by the relative documents, fake of course. People who were employed to provide these documents were known as 'shoemakers'. One such person was Jacob Golos, a soviet spy who left this world in 1943 due to a heart attack, or so it is said. Read more here:
2. Possessions. Planning to the minutest detail is required in the building of a legend. For example, a man who was had as his 'cover' the identity of an itinerant worker who took on basic work be it on a cattle station or in a printer's workshop would have all the trappings that would be expected of such a man. His clothes may be neat and tidy but with one or two repairs, his shoes would be clean, and his pockets would have a range of normal everyday items, cigarettes, matches, a comb, and some chewing gum. You could even throw in a few travel tickets, or random items. Everything would appear to be as normal as possible. When it came to his clothes though, he might want to remove the labels and anything that would identify him or where he had been on his travels, spies were known to do this if they knew they were heading into a dangerous situation.
The deception would even extend to a suitcase deposited at a railway station, it too would be filled with nothing extraordinary, some hand-crafted bits and pieces and clothing.
Collectively, the items on his person and the suitcase contents are known as 'litter', put there to allay suspicion if caught. It was all part of the 'legend'.
By now of course you will have seen that all of these things could apply to the Somerton Man. A very ordinary working man who, apparently ended his life on a beach at Somerton in South Australia.
But, and it's a big but, two mistakes were made. Mistake 1 was the fact that the left luggage ticket was missing, nowhere to be found and 2, and perhaps the most telling of all, was a tiny scrap of paper with the words TAMAM SHUD typeset on to it, rolled up tightly and pushed well down into a concealed, secret, waistband fob pocket of the trousers the man was wearing when his body and clothing were subsequently examined. Why would he have done that? What was so special about that scrap of paper that it had to be concealed in the way that it was? The answer as per previous posts, is that on that tiny scrap of paper was some information, so valuable that he was killed for it.
The man died and the presence of a 'legend;, is a strong possibility but not, as yet, a probability. Dead spies tell no stories. and the legend is no more. Until that is, we completely crack the codes that were found and associated with him.
I wondered at the time how a young man from regional Victoria could get such blond hair especially when the earlier image of him in a soccer team photograph showed his hair to be a darker colour?
The immediate thought was a result of spending many hours in bright sunlight. Either that or just maybe he had been at sea, as a merchant seaman perhaps. That led to a search of records for merchant seamen and that in turn led me to the crew list for the SS Golden Sun where I found an Able seaman in 1931 by the name of Carl Webb on the crew list, his date of birth was similar but his height was just 5 feet 8 inches.
I undertook extensive research with numerous communications with US authorities and archives. The result was negative.
Some historical background to this information. In the 1920s which, if proven correct, was when Carl or Charles went to sea, the press was filled with stories and accounts of young men who ran away or went to sea, a great adventure. The press was not he only influencing factor, the airwaves were filled with sea shanties as gramophone recordings were plentiful. Going to sea was a definite 'thing' in those years. A search of TROVE using the search term 'ran away to sea' is all it took to confirm a suspicion.
...This post is a result of reviewing the earlier ones regarding the estimated height of Carl Webb. I had missed an important factor in the calculations, simple as it may sound, I had not made an allowance for the fact that in the family photos of Roy and Carl fo the fact that they had their mouths slightly open. They were in fact smiling.
Odd as it may seem when a person smiles, their mouth opens slightly and the jawline drops measurably.
In the image of Roy above, you can clearly see that his mouth is firmly closed and his height dimension is based on that fact.
Let's run through the information:
1. His known full height according to the Military record on the NAA site was 5 feet 8.5 inches or 1734 mm.
2. A known dimension in this photograph that we can use is the ruler alongside Roy, it shows his height with markers at 3-inch intervals.
3. For the purposes of this post, I have assumed that the 3-inch divisions are measured between the marked lines and not central to each line.
4. The onscreen measurement for the marked 3-inch division is 7.5 mm thus 1 inch equals 2.5 mm, a ratio of 1 inch to 25 mm or 25.4 mm to 25 mm
5. Roy's on-screen head height is 23 mm which when converted to real size using our ratio is 233.68 mm or 9.2 inches
6 We can now calculate a ratio for Roy's head height to full height by dividing his known recorded full height by the head height as in 1734 mm divided by 233.68 mm, giving us a head to full height ratio of 1:7.42
We can carry Roy's known head dimensions forward into the family 'group of 4' photograph seen below:
There is a fair bit of information on the above photograph so I numbered each point to minimise any confusion
1. By dividing the known head height dimension for Roy, 233.68 mm, and then measuring and dividing the photograph height of Roy's head, 41 mm, I arrived at a ratio of 1:5.7
2. Next I measured Carl's head dimension on the photograph which was 42 mm
3/ I then adjusted the head dimension to allow for the fact that Carl's mouth was open.
4. This meant that to get a more accurate dimension of Carl's head we needed to deduct the 2 mm as shown above. 2 mm doesn't sound a lot but when you use it to calculate Carl's full height, it can add 1 inch or more to his estimated actual height. In this case, our adjusted photograph head measurement for Carl is 40 mm. We can then multiply that by our ratio of 1:5.7 which gives us an adjusted Actual height of Carl's head of 228 mm.
5. The next calculation is based on the assumption that Carl's head height to full height ratio is the same as Roy's which is 1:5.7. The calculation is 228 mm X 7.42 which equals 1691.76 mm or 5 feet 6.5 inches, shorter than Roy by a full 2 inches.
6. The apparent difference in height of 2 inches was a puzzle, it relates to an extent because Carl is standing a little further away from the camera lens than Roy. This is a measurement we do not have and it adds an issue of perspective view. An adjustment of 1.5 inches should be made to account for this difference in height between Carl and Roy This gives us an estimated height for Carl of 5 feet 8 inches.
The image on the right was deliberately darkened so that the collar outline could be clearly seen. |
Firstly, my apologies for the delays, it has been a busy time both personally and in respect of research activities surrounding this blog.
As the headline suggests, the code has been front and centre with interesting new developments. New information and techniques made possible by improved technologies have led to some fascinating insights into the code and its meanings. More soon.
It does not mean that the issue of the identity of the Somerton Man has been left behind, far from it. There will be a time in the not-too-distant future when I will be in a position to reveal more on the latter subject.
For the moment that’s where things are, a Somerton Man code update very shortly and more on his identity in due course.
As for the ‘milestone’, last week and according to Google blog stats, this blog passed through 1 Million page visits since we started here in 2013.
The majority of visitors come from the USA followed by Australia, UK, Germany, France and Russia and so on.
The audience is from all parts of the world with 80 plus countries listed. More than 70% of the audience are return visitors.
We get between 500 and 1800 visits a day, for example, so far this month we have been extra busy with more than 7000 visits recorded. In March we had 34600 visits,
There is increasing interest in particular posts related to the code and to the identity issue.
My sincere thanks to everyone who has visited over the years, your interest and support is greatly appreciated. Without that, the blog simply wouldn’t be here.
Gordon
The thought on how we might achieve the goal of establishing a height from this photograph came from this excerpt from the document known as 'Cleland's notes', I will include a download link for the notes later in this post I should point out that the notes are not the full copy some parts of it have been removed before it was made available.
Here's the excerpt:
This paragraph tells us that the jacket worn by the Somerton Man on the day his body was found indicates that it fitted Professor Cleland, except for it being tight to button up.
For that jacket to fit Professor Cleland, indicates that both men were the same or very similar height.
In this standard-sized image, 8 " X 10" as per the file on SA State Library, I have marked several objects that we can measure and use that photo measurement to calculate the approximate height of Sir John.
In the calculations, the final output variance is +/- 1 inch
Here's the objects list:
From the top:
I have used the instrument case as the base known object.
Median Height information, head height: 225 mm. Full height ratio is 1:8. + - 8 mm
JBC Measured full height on photograph + 208 mm ( Allowance made for shoe heel height)
JBC Measured face height = 15 mm
The instrument case estimated known object height =15 inches or 381mm The object measured height on the photograph = 45 mm. Ratio 1:8.5.
The Vitruvian Man shown above was drawn by Leonardo da Vinci and it was based on the work of Vitruvius 20 BCE, who was the author of De Architectura a 10-volume work with the third volume focusing on body proportions or, as in the case of our recent posts, on ratios.
da Vinci created the Golden Ratio, 1.618 or 'PHI'. Each part of the body in this scheme, the height of the head, for example, is related to the full height of a body in a ratio of 1.618.
Those familiar with the Somerton Man case will know that his body was measured on the day it was discovered and it was found that he had a height of 5 feet 11 inches.
In this post, the same technique used to calculate Charlie’s height has been applied to the body of the Somerton Man to verify his height based on the photograph you can see above. The photograph shown is from the 1949 inquest, I have added the information on the photograph for those who would like the detail.
In the image to the right above, I have added a ruler set to measure the height of the man's head. In this scaled-down image, you can see that the ruler indicates the man's head measures 7 cm from top to chin. By multiplying the head height by 8, we arrive at the scaled-down full height of the man 70 X 8 = 560mm
The man's head should measure 1/8th of his full height thus to arrive at the man's actual full height we divide the 5 feet 11 inches (1803.4 mm) known height by 8 giving us a head height of 225.45 mm. which by default gives us our full height of 1803.4 mm (5 feet 11 inches)
To calculate the scale for this image we simply divide the actual full height by the scaled-down photograph height as follows:
1803.4 divided by 560 = 3.22 our scale for this image is therefore 1:3.22
This exercise had two purposes, firstly to verify the height of the Somerton Man and secondly, to prove the validity of the Researchgate technique. Both objectives have been met.
The previous post covered the technique with which we could accurately calculate the height of Carl ‘Charlie Webb. This exercise aimed to prove or disprove the claim made by Professor Abbot that the man named ‘Charlie’ in the 'family group of 4' photograph was the ‘Somerton Man’. The technique relied upon the known height of Roy Webb, Charlie’s brother, obtained from his military service records clearly showed, both written and in a photograph taken at the time that Roy had a height of 5 feet 8 inches. Subsequently, and based on Roy’s height we calculated Charlie’s height which was also put at 5 feet 8 inches +/- 1 inch. That result disproved Professor Abbot’s claim regarding Charlie as the Somerton Man’s height is known to have been 5 feet 11 inches, approximately 3 inches taller than the man Charlie shown in the family group photograph.
In December of 1948, a man was found dead on a South Australian beach not far from the sites of Atomic and other weapons development centers and at a time when the world was teetering on the brink of war again. And in Australia, the future of the country itself was under threat of a Communist-inspired insurrection. A civil war was on the cards.
This man had no means of identification on him and just a few items including two tickets, one train and one bus, a packet of Army Club cigarettes which contained 7 of the Kensitas brand, a part box of matches, two aluminum combs, a part packet of 'Juicy Fruit' chewing gum and sixpence in coins; labels had been removed from his clothing, and an autopsy revealed that he had been poisoned but the type of poison was never clearly identified. The examining doctor who performed the autopsy made a chart of the man's teeth, it recorded the fact that 18 of his teeth were missing.
And now let's add more facts to this picture. A copy of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam is later found not far from that beach. When the book was examined, indentations on its back page were revealed. The indentations formed the shape of handwritten letters arranged in 5 lines, other markings on the page did not appear to have any particular meaning. The letters were believed to be a code of some kind.
Two telephone numbers were also found on the back page of the book which were written in 'really tiny lettering and under the code' according to a Detective who took part in the original investigation. One of those numbers belonged to a nurse who happened to live minutes away from where the man was found. The same nurse when questioned said that she had given a copy of the Rubaiyat to an Australian Army Lieutenant some 3 years earlier whilst she was employed as a trainee nurse in Sydney. This Army lieutenant was later to agree that he had been in Intelligence during his Army service.
One last clue is that sometime after the autopsy and before the inquest held into the man's death, a mall piece of paper was found tightly rolled up and pushed well down into a secret fob pocket located on the inside of the waistband of the trousers the man was wearing when he was found. The two words typeset onto this slip of paper were TAMAM SHUD. The shape of this slip which had been torn out of its original page of a copy of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. was found to match the shape of a torn section in a copy of a book of that title that was handed to the Police by an unnamed local businessman not long before the inquest was held.
You have just read the core facts of the Somerton Man case. Now imagine that you are a seasoned detective who had the experience of serving through the years of World War 2, (this was a time when State Police through their 'Special Branch operations, worked alongside Australia's intelligence services.) Or perhaps you are a Special Branch officer who was in regular contact with the Intelligence services.
Just what is a 'Special Purpose Book'? The simple answer is that this book, widely known as the Boxall Rubaiyat, was made specifically for its purpose and its purpose in this case was to be used as a training aid for those engaged in the business of espionage.
A big statement? Yes, you could say that. But is there any evidence to back it up? And again the answer is 'yes' and you're actually looking at it.
Before the Stuart Littlemore interview, an image of this page from the book showed that the name 'JESTYN' was covered over with a piece of paper and some sticky taoe to hold that paper in place.
At some time after the interview, Alf or someone else removed that paper, and in the process, they tore away a layer from the paper of that page. You can see it quite clearly as outlined in orange.
That can only mean that the paper of the pages in the book was coated, in fact, the core paper had a minute pattern printed on it, if you look closely you will see markings inside the marked area. That pattern got there from special rollers over which the paper was processed and which left those marks. The next step in the process is to apply the coating. This was made from either a wax or an adhesive of some kind. It provided a degree of water resistance and added strength/ toughness to the pages.
The paper was in fact what is known today as a 'security' paper. In the war years, it was used extensively for in-the-field message pads, carrier pigeon notes, etc. It had an added benefit in that the background 'water markings' served to obscure to an extent any hidden writings or indentations on the paper.
As far as I can ascertain, security paper was not used for normal book production during WW2. As it happens, I have a copy of the same edition of the Rubaiyat, and the paper is definitely not coated. Coated paper is smoother and less porous, not necessarily glossy, my copy is quite rough due I think to the significant paper shortages in the war years.
Here's an unmarked version of the Jestyn signature shown at the head of this post:
You can read more details here:
..Apart from this famous gesture (which he apparently made by mistake when this photo was taken), Churchill was renowned for his sharp wit and great quotes. The quote in question today is regarding Truth..
For those who believe that Australia and other countries were not at 'war' in 1948, perhaps you would do well to rethink that position.
The war was very much a Cold War, a full-on arms race coupled with an intelligence war without parallel in those years and, in Australia at least, rumblings of an insurrection organised, coordinated, and paid for by the Soviets in league with the Communist Party Of Australia.
There were casualties, many died in this war, mostly discretely and without fanfare, a Spy Versus Spy affair that went on for some years.
Those who have spent any time reading through the Milliers Hat, the story that it is said gave Ian Flen=ming the idea for Operation Mincemeat, could draw some but not that many parallels with that operation and the case of the Somerton Man. The relatively recently released files by UK Archives provide quite some detail but sadly it is not a digitised offering.
Amongst things that we may learn from it include the comparative ease in which a Coroner and a pathologist were drawn in to 'help' with the provision of a body and all that that entailed, the meticulous attention to detail in setting up the documentation that was to accompany Glyndwr on his final journey was astounding, the work was so good that the case didn't have a hint of being an organised 'litter' job.
One story is that Glyndwr's sister turned up to claim the body, her story was that Glyndwr had been mentally ill for some time. Shades of Paul Lawson's thoughts on the Kangaroo Island connection and the SS Warrawee, the Captain of that ship was a certain Captain Harkness I understand,
What can we get from this example? The involvement of officialdom during the war years, the clever and well-thought-out creation of the cover story including the pocket and suitcase litter. An unknown/undetectable cause of death, in Glyndwr's case he had taken rat poison which, according to accounts would be hard to detect in the body after death.
Having spent some years studying the SM case and having read widely on the subject added to my own earlier Police experience, whatever actions the Police may or may not have taken were planned actions. They had a job to do and they did it without question. Bear in mind that these men who were involved in the case had just come through WW2 and their job was to be the front line for Intelligence services who were well truly stretched in those years. It's well and good for the armchair gurus to make their rather unpleasant and often nasty comments about these men, but these same gurus were not there at the time and do not speak from experience. Relatives and descendants of these men read the blogs and we all should respect their feelings.
A last thought, Cholmondeley, a senior member of the XX team, remained in SOE until retirement in 1962. No doubt his expertise would have been called on whenever a body was to be used.
This year marks 14 years of involvement in the Somerton Man case. The first 2 years plus were spent on the original Adelaide University Facebook page. It was during that time that the whole microcode issue came to the surface and I spent much time attempting to convince Professor Abbot and others of its existence, which was a pointless exercise based on the level of ignorance and inability to see past their preconceived ideas on the nature of the case. In other words, what I had found would upset the applecart and their agenda would be undermined. Welcome to the real world.
Don't get me wrong here this post is not about calling the detractors and nay-sayers stupid or ignorant, I really don't have time for that. The purpose today is to show everyone just how simple it now is to uncover concealed microcode from beneath printer ink. In fact, all that is needed is to be found at the foot of this post...
In the image at the head of this page, there are 5 listed instances where the microcode may be hidden, if it's there it will be beneath one or more of the blue lines that you can see. the question is, is it there?
Yes, it is there and here it is for you to view at your leisure: