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Martin Butler's "Tunnel Vision" part 1
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Conspiracy theories about secret tunnels under the military base on North Head are essentially the reason why this podcast exists in the first place, so we probably should have looked at the book (books?) that puts forward the best case for these conspiracy theories a long time ago. But we didn't - we're doing it now. This will be part one of at least two, depending on how far down the rabbit hole we follow Mr. Butler...
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Transcript
Introduction and Initial Impressions
00:00:00
Speaker
Keep going, keep going, it's just a few more steps. And now, now you can take off the blindfold.
00:00:10
Speaker
Ooh, it's dark. What else are you experiencing? Uh, well, it's cold. It smells of mothballs. What was that? Naphthalene? Toluene?
00:00:21
Speaker
Gunpowder? It's so, so dark. Give it a few moments. Your eyes do need to adjust.
Location and Context of North Head, Auckland
00:00:30
Speaker
Hmm, so where am i In the... inside North Head.
00:00:35
Speaker
North Head, North Head? Is North Head in Devonport? Devonport is in Auckland? Auckland is in New Zealand, Aotearoa? Yes, as on the planet Earth, in the Sol System, in the western arm of the Milky Way galaxy.
Challenging the Reality of North Head Mysteries
00:00:50
Speaker
For God's sake, Josh, you're giving exposition as if this were a sketch rather than actual occurrence in your daily life. Yeah, okay, one, why am I in North Head? And two, aren't these tunnels meant to not exist?
00:01:03
Speaker
Well, Josh, I thought it was time to clue you in on the real conspiracy this podcast has been covering for, well, too long. Hang on, are you saying the planes really do exist?
00:01:15
Speaker
What plans? But, you know, Mallard and Bluebill, the Boeings, the missing planes from the Walsh Brothers Flying School from the beginning of the last century, the planes John Earnshaw was looking for, the reason for your PhD.
00:01:27
Speaker
Okay, okay. Now we do need some exposition. If this were a sketch, people would be going, what, tunnels? Hold on, planes? And what's this about M's PhD?
00:01:38
Speaker
Ah, yeah, I guess we probably do need to explain what's going on here. But how? By reviewing a book. Oh, God, not again.
Introducing the Podcast and Series on Conspiracy Theories
00:01:53
Speaker
The Podcaster's Guide to the Conspiracy, brought to you today by Josh Edison M. Dentis.
00:02:13
Speaker
Hello and welcome to the Podcaster's Guide to the Conspiracy in Auckland, New Zealand. i am Josh Addison Zhuhai, Guangzhou. Guangzhou. Guangzhou, China.
00:02:25
Speaker
It's Dr. Associate Professor Ian Marek Stenteth. I need i be i i should like need to recognize the backgrounds behind you so I know when you're when you're in your apartment and when you're in your office. but but When the old cat is present, I'm in Guangzhou.
00:02:40
Speaker
When you can see board games, I'm in Zhuhai. Yep. Noted. So, Guangzhou. um We've got a lot to get through. do do we Is there anything to get out of the way first, or should we dive into it as fast as possible?
Exploring North Head Conspiracy Theories
00:02:55
Speaker
I think we should dive into it as fast as possible, because this could be a long series of episodes. Yes, we're assuming the material we have is going to take at least at least two episodes to cover, but um we'll see. So we're going to talk about a book, I'm going to play a chime, and then we'll do that.
00:03:22
Speaker
Okay, Josh, before we talk about the book, we need to do some stage setting. So we're going to be talking about conspiracy theories, plural, around North Head in Devonport, Auckland, New Zealand, better known and really as Monoika, but we'll be referring to it as North Head because it is the name of the military site. This is very much a military conspiracy theory.
00:03:47
Speaker
Did you know anything about the North Head conspiracy theories before you met me? but Before I met you? No. No, you introduced me to these conspiracy theories.
00:04:00
Speaker
And, I mean, I guess we're skipping to the end here slightly, but given we're about to review a book which puts forward what might be thought to be the best case for there being a conspiracy by the New Zealand government to hide the existence of a military complex in suburban Devonport in Auckland, New Zealand, do you think this is a convincing story?
Evaluating the Book on North Head Conspiracies
00:04:27
Speaker
Well... As it's told in the book, yes, actually. It does like bit piles a lot of a lot of evidence on you, but um I possibly haven't taken the same amount of time as you have to actually sit down and sift through it properly. But there's a bunch of stuff in here that does sound...
00:04:48
Speaker
like it's convincing and and criticisms of the official theory that also sound convincing but I'm very aware that I'm basically getting one one very what one one side of the story with a ah strong interest in that particular side of it so for one thing I wonder what I'm not reading what what what pertinent information has been excluded from this book um but simply from reading the book yeah yeah he makes a convincing case Now, we'll come back to this whenever we actually finish reviewing the book, because I suspect the convincing case here may not be the entire story, but elements within the story, because this is very much a story of two
Narrative Divergence: Missing Planes and Military Secrets
00:05:30
Speaker
halves.
00:05:30
Speaker
One half is a story looking for some missing planes. The other is a very elaborate military conspiracy to hide the existence of chemical weapons within Aotearoa, New Zealand.
00:05:44
Speaker
And I suspect you find one of those stories slightly more plausible than the other, but we we won't state which one now. We'll state which one at the end.
00:05:56
Speaker
But I guess now we should talk about what the collection of evidence is. So Josh, how are we approaching the story of the North Head Tunnel conspiracy theory? Right. Well, we're we're we're discussing this conspiracy theory through the lens of of a book.
00:06:12
Speaker
Em, you wacky rascal, you got me to read a book again. damn you. Yes, but Josh, you read a book. I've read three books, or at least the same book three times, or the same book kind of twice. It's a little bit confusing.
00:06:30
Speaker
It is.
Reviewing 'Tunnel Vision' by Martin Butler
00:06:31
Speaker
The book that I read is Tunnel Vision by Martin Butler. subtitled Unearthing the Secrets of North Head, released in 2012. This is the first edition of Mr Butler's book.
00:06:44
Speaker
So I've experienced sort of the initial version of the theory. Ian, you have read editions two and three? Well, one, two, and three, but I recently read edition three. yeah so If we had video, you'd see that holding up a copy that is full of post-it notes placed here by Ian during your years of research. and then there's...
00:07:06
Speaker
Then there's my copy of the second edition filled with post-it notes. Equally filled post-its. And my copy of the second edition, which is not filled with post-it notes for reasons which I'll explain shortly. So you're reading the version from 2012.
00:07:20
Speaker
In 2014, Martin Butler released a second edition of the book, which is called Tunnel Vision Refocused. And in 2020, he released a third edition of the book, also called Tunnel Vision Refocused.
00:07:37
Speaker
Now, the second edition has this little red banner on the corner which says, an explosive update, which for reasons we'll get into, is a clever pun of some kind.
00:07:51
Speaker
The third edition simply says third edition. There's no explosive update at all. It's just third edition. The third edition and the second edition are basically the same book. And I say basically the same book because up until page 387, the text is identical
The Host's Connection with the Author and Book Editions
00:08:11
Speaker
on every single page.
00:08:14
Speaker
It just happens to be the third edition has an additional section at the end, which It's in theory a chapter, except it's not called a chapter, which has updates as to what has happened since 2014 as of the date of 2020.
00:08:32
Speaker
And maybe in the next episode, or maybe in some future episode, I will talk about updates post the third edition of the book, because there is...
00:08:45
Speaker
some amount of information that we can share about what is going on here and now. But yes, you've read the first edition. I've read the first edition and have recently reread the second edition, masquerading as a third edition, which has an additional chapter, which really is the only thing i needed to read.
00:09:05
Speaker
But I kind of went through just to make sure there weren't any other differences that needed to be noted. Right, so the edition I read has a prologue 12 chapters and an epilogue.
00:09:20
Speaker
The expanded ones have extra chapters as well as... Yeah, so they have the prologue. They have the 12 chapters that you've read kind of, but in some cases the chapters are in different locations.
00:09:37
Speaker
In some cases the chapters are expanded, and there are a few new chapters. So there are 15 chapters and a prologue in the second edition. and there are 15 chapters and an update section.
00:09:51
Speaker
And confusingly, in the third edition, you get chapter one, chapter two, chapter three. And then you get to, at the end of chapter 15, just get 16 and update. And I do wonder whether there's a formatting issue here, whether that's meant to be chapter 16.
00:10:07
Speaker
But there are 15 official chapters in the third edition, um plus an epilogue, but the epilogue basically is an entire chapter of its
Interaction with Other Researchers and Influence
00:10:17
Speaker
own. and I should also point out, I know the author.
00:10:21
Speaker
I have met Martin Butler, so I got, well, I was invited to the book launch of the first edition back in 2012, as held at the Devonport local library.
00:10:37
Speaker
I was unable to attend. I think the book launch was occurring on a night that I was teaching a adult education course. Martin wanted me to go along and give a talk about the conspiracy theories around North Head as he launched his best case for why we should believe at least some of those particular conspiracy theories.
00:10:57
Speaker
He sent me that first edition that you have to read. When I had a blog, I reviewed the book on the blog in not the best of light, which Martin didn't appreciate, but I got a copy of the second edition when it came out and we met for coffee at the Naval Museum in Torpedo Yard at the base of North Head to discuss my view on his research.
00:11:25
Speaker
And I last heard from Martin just before left for China, where he contacted me and wanted me to get in contact with Dave Vert, another character in the saga, to basically act as an intermediary between himself and Dave Vert and essentially the Department of Conservation.
00:11:47
Speaker
So I'm kind of... In the story, I'm
Impact of North Head Theories on the Podcast's Origin
00:11:50
Speaker
never mentioned, but I am kind of a character outside of the book. Peripheral. Influencing some of what's going in the book.
00:11:58
Speaker
Right. Well, I guess we'd better get into it. Although, actually, no, no, sorry. First, probably what we should do. if if if you're If you're a long-time listener of this podcast, you probably know why we're talking about this. But just in case...
00:12:10
Speaker
Just in case, it's worth pointing out that the conspiracy theories around the existence of hidden tunnels and the various things that may be in them underneath the military base at North Head are basically what got you into conspiracy theories and what started your entire academic career, essentially.
00:12:29
Speaker
Yes, in a kind of curious way in that I was going to write quite extensively on the North Head Tunnel conspiracy theory case in my PhD. It doesn't get mentioned at all in my PhD now.
00:12:42
Speaker
At least it wasn't mentioned in my PhD when i eventually wrote it. So it was the motivating conspiracy theory that got me interested in understanding how conspiracy theories work.
00:12:57
Speaker
And so I am very heavily invested in some sense in this particular tale, even though I've never formally written about it. So it's it's of it's of historical importance to this podcast, if nothing else.
00:13:12
Speaker
Yeah, it's the pre-MH17 conspiracy theory. MH17 is the conspiracy theory that underpins the existence of this particular podcast.
00:13:24
Speaker
But the reason why this podcast even exists is because of North Head. Without North Head, there would be no podcast. Yeah. There would be literally no MRX Denteth. I assume you would have evaporated into the ether without the strength of this podcast, to ground of this conspiracy theory, to ground you to reality.
00:13:44
Speaker
It is true. North Head is the unmoved mover of my existence. Precisely. So, let us get into it. So, as I say, the version I have starts with a prologue.
00:13:56
Speaker
The prologue starts with text from an article from the New Zealand Herald from 1992 about the fact that the Department of of Conservation was then about to begin an investigation into North Head.
00:14:09
Speaker
um a couple of things that stuck out at me from this little excerpt. At one point it says, repeated denials by the Ministry of Defence have served only to fuel intrigue, which immediately made me think, oh, okay, it's going to be one of these, is it? The more the more they deny it, the more that's taken as proof that it's true. But okay, we'll see.
00:14:25
Speaker
um And the other interesting thing that that jumped out was the ex that this this excerpt. Mr. John Earnshaw, a Birkenhead filmmaker who maintains that the Ministry of Defence has tried to cover up the existence of a music munitions dump and the two planes, we'll see what two planes shortly, last night welcomed the move with cautious optimism.
00:14:45
Speaker
The authorities know exactly what it is down there. i just hope that this time they make a genuine effort to uncover it rather than merely pretending, he said. There is no mystery as far as I'm concerned. We know for a fact that inside there are planes and all sorts of ammunition.
00:15:00
Speaker
And I read that we know for a fact. So there are people there who think they know for a fact that this stuff is true. I'll be interested to see these facts. Now, John Earnshaw is unfortunately not a major character in the story. and I say unfortunately because John Earnshaw is dead.
00:15:18
Speaker
John Earnshaw was a British man who came over to Aotearoa, New Zealand during the Troubles, basically. So he left London because of IRA bombings going on.
00:15:30
Speaker
in the UK, moved to Birkenhead on the North Shore, was a documentarian, so was looking for something to make a documentary about, heard about the Boeing planes, as you say, more on that in a moment,
00:15:47
Speaker
and the conspiracy theories about where they ended up, decided to make a documentary about their potential discovery, made an agreement with the Crown to be able to engage in this documentary, because as we will see, they effectively are treasure trove if they are found, so there's always a legal question as to who would own the planes if they were discovered.
00:16:14
Speaker
And basically went through a very lengthy legal battle with the Ministry of Defence and the New Zealand government about what did or didn't happen to him during the attempt of making this documentary. and And unfortunately, Earnshaw died over 10 years ago now, I believe.
00:16:38
Speaker
And thus is kind of a footnote in the story of what we're seeing here. But arguably, he's the reason why everyone suddenly became very interested in the idea of there being a hidden military complex deep within the North Head site in Devonport, Auckland, New Zealand. Yes, yes, we'll and we we'll get into that as as the chapters progress.
00:17:04
Speaker
um Did you have anything more to say of the prologue? Well, yeah, there's there's a line in the prologue which i always find, like it kind of explains Butler's reasoning here. There's this line that goes, I found it difficult to accept that the first Boeing ever built had simply vanished without a trace.
00:17:27
Speaker
And this is one of those post hoc justifications we have here. As we're going to see in chapter one and also in chapter two, Two New Zealanders ended up buying the prototype planes built by the future Boeing Corporation.
00:17:45
Speaker
Planes which are now immensely valuable, and if they were to exist, important artifacts of avionics. And so in retrospect now, it's kind of bewildering to think,
00:17:59
Speaker
that these important artifacts of aviation history no longer exist. They've just disappeared without seemingly a trace. But this is kind of, as I say, it's a post hoc fallacy here.
00:18:14
Speaker
They're important now, but as we're going to see, at the time they disappeared from the historical record, they were not particularly important items at all.
00:18:27
Speaker
And the other thing we're going to see is that Butler is, but what i don't want to say disingenuous, but he's not particularly careful with some of his claims.
00:18:38
Speaker
Because he goes, look, they vanished without a trace. And the problem is we do have traces of what happened to these planes. We know what happened to the engines of these planes, which were separated from vehicles bodies at some point.
00:18:58
Speaker
And we've got some historical records that strongly suggest that once the engines and the bodies of the planes were separated, the planes themselves, the actual superstructure,
00:19:11
Speaker
really weren't particularly important and were in such dilapidated condition that even though the documents don't conclusively say they were destroyed on this particular date, the documentary evidence very strongly suggests that they did.
00:19:29
Speaker
So whilst Butler may find it difficult to accept that the Boeings were destroyed, they didn't vanish without a trace. And I think that's the big issue for at least part of what we're going to see here, is that a lack of evidence is taken to be evidence of something when maybe it's not as much evidence as Butler wants it to be.
00:19:54
Speaker
So we then move into chapter one, the first Boeing aircraft. And as you've as you sort of suggested, Mr. Butler is an aviation buff and he came into this whole thing. um not Not just an aviation buff, a pilot.
00:20:09
Speaker
Yes. yep No, no, no. He's he's yeah all all about aircraft and the history of of aircraft and aviation in New Zealand. So he came into this from the perspective of wanting to find out what happened to the what happened to these historically important aircraft and you ended up going down a rabbit hole looking for them.
00:20:26
Speaker
So so the the book is largely structured from this perspective. And we'll see as as we get through the book, there'll be a shift later on to to sort of the emphasis of of his search. I mean, to the point where he makes joking pun in Chapter 2, and arguably halfway through the book, you could say the same thing about the role of the Boeings. But we'll talk about the pun when we get Chapter 2. Yeah, we will. We will.
00:20:49
Speaker
yeah Yeah, so sort of once we're probably more than halfway through the book, the the planes will become of lesser importance. But for at least the first half, that really seems to be what he's concerned with. And so Chapter 1, the first Boeing aircraft is...
00:21:03
Speaker
I found it very interesting from ah from a historical perspective. It basically just goes through the the history the the early history of aviation in New Zealand. um Nothing overly conspiratorial and doesn't talk a lot about North Head. So I sort of skipped over it, or I'm going to skip over it fairly quickly right now. The main point being that it introduces these two Boeing aircraft that we're interested in. They're called Boeing B&Ws, short for Boeing and Westervelt.
00:21:28
Speaker
And when we say Boeing aircraft, or they were built by Mr. Boeing. This is before the Boeing Corporation was a giant multinational. This is when it was the company of one guy making airplanes. Well, no, two of Boeing and Westervelt were the makers of Yeah, so Conrad Westervelt was the business partner of, was it William Boeing?
00:21:49
Speaker
I'm now going, I can't remember Boeing's first name. So it's the business partner, and then eventually, because of a war... Best of Vowed, who's an enlisted American service person, and goes off to war and Boeing ends up just becoming the Boeing Corporation. Sorry, I've just made it sound as if a human being turned into a large corporation. Although I think that's actually how operations are legally into the yeah and's how legal entities work in the US. I think basically Microsoft was someone called Jim Microsoft once.
00:22:21
Speaker
And then Bill Gates did some IT stuff. Did unspeakable things too. turned into a corporation with all the legal accoutrements of personhood. So yeah, maybe William Boeing did turn into a corporation. Let's assume that's true, but he hadn't at this point ah that the story is taking place. So we have these two aeroplanes. Willow Mallard.
00:22:49
Speaker
Blue Bill and Mallard. And in New Zealand, we have the Walsh brothers, who were early aviation enthusiasts, who were wanting to set up a company. And quite impressively, really, for the early... Oh, no, not early nineteen hundreds Late eighteen hundreds wasn't it? Yeah. um They had Late so the...
00:23:10
Speaker
late nineteenth century late eighteen hundreds yeah um they They had found out about the fact that these two aeroplanes were up for sale, which given good that this was on the other side of the planet at a time with no internet and patchy telecommunications.
00:23:27
Speaker
well me mean They really had their fingers on the pulse and they thought, haha, these ones are up for sale. We could use them in our brand new flying school. And so they bought them and the planes were shipped over from America.
00:23:38
Speaker
And important to note, these are these are prototype planes. So the reason why Boeing and Vestival are happy to get rid of these planes is that they've kind of built two seaplanes as a kind of test of the technology, and then they go into into production for the refined models.
00:23:58
Speaker
So they've got two planes which, as prototypes are... good enough to fly, but not actually the kind of thing you're going to sell on the market.
00:24:09
Speaker
And the Walsh brothers, as you say, without the benefit of the internet or even decent telecommunications, find out that they exist and go, well, actually, that's probably a cheap little purchase there. We need some planes for our flying school.
00:24:27
Speaker
Those prototypes, they don't need them. We can probably buy them and get them shipped at a decent price all the way down under. Yeah. um And so the the first chapter basically goes through stressing the the the historical importance of these aeroplanes, the first ones built by Boeing, and and and what great significance they have. Although, again, right from the start, we see that, that yes, today, knowing what we know, knowing what what became of of Boeing,
00:24:55
Speaker
These are very important, but at the time, they were just a couple of prototype aeroplanes built by a guy in the States, and they were they were used in the flying school. The flying school, the Walsh brothers sort of did well when war broke out, ah will World War I broke out, and then sort of worked with the government to train up military pilots and what have you, and then after the war, there was no longer so much demand, and and and the... um the the The short version of the story is that by 1924, the Walsh Brothers Flying School ended up getting bought out by the government. And that's when wackiness begins to happen. But the point is that by that stage, these two planes were were obsolete, for one thing, and not in the best state of repair.
00:25:45
Speaker
So it is it's it's easy to talk about how significant they are now, but at the time they were kind of just taking up space. Yes, and in the second and third edition there's actually additional information because...
00:26:02
Speaker
Butler has access to the correspondence of George Bolt and via his son, Richard Bolt. And so because of that, we get more correspondence about the about what the planes were used for, how they were...
00:26:17
Speaker
scene at the time. And the problem I have with this particular chapter, because it's ah it's very much a linchpin for part of Butler's story here, is that the story he tells about Mallard and Bluebell is a story as to why you would want them to be destroyed or you wouldn't keep them once the government kind of nationalizes the air service to form their own Air service, what we call the military arm which deals with planes? Air Force. completelyly blame Air Force, there we go. Air Force, yes. yeah
00:26:52
Speaker
but What a great term. Someone should use that formally. So they get used when when the flying school assets are nationalised become the New Zealand Air Force.
00:27:04
Speaker
It's quite clear these are obsolete planes that are of no use to anyone whatsoever. And you do have to ask, why would you keep them? i mean, one of the interesting facets of this chapter is that we're told that in 1921,
00:27:22
Speaker
which is three years before the flying school will be bought out by the government, the Mallard and Bluebill are stripped of their fabric because they're wooden frameplanned with with fabric over the frame, treated canvas, they're stripped of their fabric in 1921.
00:27:44
Speaker
So in 1921, they cease being flyable. They end up not even being used for three years. I mean, but they basically they come in in...
00:27:58
Speaker
1918, they're rendered obsolete in 1921, they were important in the formation of the flying school, they were important with respect to setting flying records within New Zealand at the time, but in 1921,
00:28:17
Speaker
They're already incredibly old tech and are not considered to be fit for service, which does raise an interesting question.
00:28:28
Speaker
Why would you keep them? Why indeed. So this leads us into chapter two, Boeing, Boeing gone. And I have to give Mr. Butler credit there. That is a solid pun. I approve. I approve of that chapter pun.
00:28:41
Speaker
ah But chapter two It's, for the most part, a survey of official communications from the time ah which Mr. Butler reproduces attempting to trace what happened to these two Boeings after the flying school was bought by the government in 1924. And the frustrating thing, that's the reason why this whole affair exists, is that there's no solid evidence either way.
00:29:06
Speaker
um There's ah there's there's ah an amount of supposition, but there are no eyewitness accounts or anything definitively stating that these planes were destroyed.
00:29:17
Speaker
there are There is testimony from people such as George Bolt, who you mentioned previously, who's a man who had worked for the Walsh brothers. So he he says he didn't see them destroyed,
00:29:29
Speaker
He didn't see them not destroyed, if such a thing is possible, but insists that if they had been destroyed, he would have known about it. And after all these communications, near near the end of the chapter, there's a document from the 1980s, goes all the way forwards in time to there,
00:29:46
Speaker
stating the official military position, which is that, quote, no aircraft were ever entombed in the tunnels on North Head. So the chapter, it lists some planes that were that were disassembled and stored at Torpedo Bay North Head. It lists some that were definitely destroyed, but that doesn't include the two BMWs.
00:30:08
Speaker
um And it says, this document says it is, quote, most likely... that other planes, including those two Boeing ones, were burnt at the facility in Koemarama, which is sort of across across the Waitematฤ harbour from North Yard.
00:30:25
Speaker
No, I'll just step in here and say, Josh, when you say B and Ws in your classic Kiwi accent, it does sound like BMWs. BMWs, yes. People might be thinking, what, so there are prototype cars involved as well?
00:30:41
Speaker
So yes, B and Ws. B and Ws, yes. So... Butler concludes this chapter by saying that if the planes weren't destroyed, and he thinks the evidence that he's presented shows that they weren't destroyed, then in that case they must have been put into storage like the ones that we know were put in storage in Torpedo Bay.
00:31:04
Speaker
And so that's his that that that's where he ends up at the end of this chapter. Which is curious because when we read about the assessment of the flying school assets in 1924, as Butler notes in this chapter, the bowings are considered to be both obsolete and not worth repairing.
00:31:27
Speaker
And they state explicitly these are useless for service work. So the assessment of the planes in Kohimarumara, on the other side of the Waitemata harbour, is that, look, these planes are no good.
00:31:45
Speaker
So the argument that then they would still pack them up and move them overseas, sans their engines, seems like an extraordinary claim, given the documentary record records back in 1924.
00:32:01
Speaker
Now, the reason why this ends up being kind of a vexed issue is as you say, there's no document that says that these two planes were absolutely destroyed.
00:32:13
Speaker
Instead, what we have is that we are told that it was intended, this is George Bolt, that 10 or 11 planes be put into storage inside a tunnel in North Head, and that by 1959, when is asked, you know, do you know what happened to the,
00:32:32
Speaker
It says, look, no one knows where this tunnel is. And intended here seems to be the operative word. Butler is assuming that because Bolt says it's intended that 10 or 11 planes be put into storage,
00:32:50
Speaker
and the Boeings are in those 10 or 11 planes. That the official assessment of the Flying School assets that say the Boeings are obsolete, not worth repairing, and useless for service work can't be true. It must be the case the Boeings can't have been in such a bad shape, and thus they're in amongst the 10 or 11 planes in storage.
00:33:14
Speaker
There's also, and i don't I don't know what you thought about this, an interesting argument here that relies upon a distinction between gift aircraft and non-gift aircraft.
00:33:27
Speaker
So some of the aircraft that belonged to the flying school were things that were loaned from the government. And by loaned from the government, we mean the British government at this time.
00:33:39
Speaker
And the non-gift aircraft were those assets owned by the flying school. And Butler makes a really big issue of the fact that there were gift aircraft and non-gift aircraft. And he takes it that the gift aircraft would be irresponsible for the military to be destroying things that were loaned from the British government.
00:34:06
Speaker
And thus this means that it means because the Because we know what planes did get there, we can work out from that which other planes could have been in those packages or aircraft cases taken across to Torpedo Bay, to Torpedo Yard at the base of North Head.
00:34:27
Speaker
Did you think much of this whole distinction between the gift and the non-gift stuff? ah i kind of I kind of glossed over it, to be honest. I didn't see the... um I didn't see the significance so much. it was just this this person says that, this person says that, this person says that.
00:34:44
Speaker
And it felt a little bit like he was picking out the testimony or the evidence that suited his case and kind of ignoring the stuff that didn't. But um to be honest, I wasn't paying that much attention to the to the to the worthiness of his argumentation.
00:35:03
Speaker
So the gift versus non-gift stuff is going to come up again in the court case. And I should point out this is Butler's terminology. He's inventing this terminology to explain a distinction between two types of assets that the Walsh brothers had access to.
00:35:20
Speaker
But he does make a lot of it. And it does seem to motivate his argument, even though it's not the way people at the time were thinking about these particular assets.
00:35:34
Speaker
Now, George Bolt ends up being a very oversized character in this narrative. Because Bolt claims that, as you said, if the planes were destroyed, he would have known about it. So he doesn't see the planes get transported. He also doesn't see the planes get destroyed.
00:35:54
Speaker
And he assumes that as someone who is living in the area around the flying school, and someone who was important to the flying school, if they were destroyed, he would know about it.
00:36:06
Speaker
And Butler takes it that this is kind of proof positive. If Bolt thinks they survived, and he did, therefore it is likely they did survive. And he makes this claim, which I think is interesting.
00:36:18
Speaker
George Polk was a Lieutenant in the Territorial Air Force, the NZAF, and had the credibility to explain the historical and record-setting significance of the civil, non-gift aircraft, particularly the Boeing aircraft, to Captain Izzet.
00:36:35
Speaker
Being cast as a man of vision, Captain Izzet, later Sir Leonard Izzet, may well have decided to preserve the aircraft for future generations.
00:36:46
Speaker
And I think this is interesting because we get the man-o-vision claim and also may have decided to preserve the aircraft for future generations claim.
00:36:58
Speaker
Yeah, that's sort of that's that's sort of the best you've got. This guy seemed like the kind of person who would recognize the future historical importance of these airplanes and want to preserve them. which A man of vision, Josh, a man of vision. stretch Bit of a stretch.
00:37:14
Speaker
um But so having having um come up with his his theory of what... or whether or not the planes were destroyed. here Chapter 3 is called Torpedo Yard, where he now looks at the official communications regarding planes being sent to Torpedo Yard at Torpedo Bay.
00:37:32
Speaker
And I have to say, I got a bit confused reading this chapter in terms of the numbers of things that happened. They start off talking about that there are apparently nine crates of yeah aircraft cases again Aircraft cases. So this is the this is a very important thing.
00:37:45
Speaker
Nine aircraft cases were shipped from Mission Bay to Torpedo Bay, or from the flying school to Torpedo Yard. An aircraft case is meant to contain an aircraft.
00:38:00
Speaker
Therefore, nine aircraft cases means nine aircrafts. But then later, regardless of what's in them or not, there were only five of them.
00:38:11
Speaker
And didn't it never, to me, got cleared up exactly what was in the other four and what happened to them. So I was a little bit so they confused there. that's going to come up in the court case about the four aircraft cases that,
00:38:26
Speaker
And essentially, kind of to skip ahead slightly, the official theory is going to be, look, the aircraft cases were used to ship things from Mission Bay to Torpedo Bay.
00:38:39
Speaker
That doesn't mean that there were nine aircraft shipped there. Some of those cases could have just been used to ship other items.
00:38:51
Speaker
And so when the aircraft are being stored in Torpedo Yard, there are five cases on display. But those four cases that were used to ship other things, items, you know, fuel, spare parts, and the like, they were probably dismantled and thus disappear for that particular rationale.
00:39:11
Speaker
Now, Butler does not accept that. He takes it that those four cases must, of course, have disappeared into storage. But there is an explanation as to why we go from nine to only five.
00:39:26
Speaker
But that's not the only not the only discrepancy, I guess, that comes up. He he goes through, again, a bunch of bunch of historical evidence and official documentation and talks about these these discrepancies in what was supposedly stored where.
00:39:42
Speaker
and then suggests that extra tunnels would have been... The the existence of extra tunnels... Now, I should say, there are tunnels under North Head. You and I have both been in them. there There are tunnels you can walk through to this day, and indeed, as you go through them and around North Head, you'll see there are a few entrances that say this tunnel is now closed off because it's not safe anymore and things like that. So there there are tunnels you can see that are closed off.
00:40:06
Speaker
But he thinks that that the existence of extra tunnels, which are now now hidden... would explain how there could have been room to store everything that was supposedly sent to Torpedo Yard. However, he does include a statement from the Minister of Defence from 1967, which says that the the tunnels at Torpedo Bay that now have been closed up, the ones that they do know about, would not have been suitable for storing planes.
00:40:31
Speaker
And so the statement from the Minister of Defence says that no planes were ever stored there because it would not have been suitable. So he concludes from that... that if these planes, including the B and Ws, weren't stored at Torpedo bay then they should be in the tunnels at North Head. But the thing the the thing that struck me reading through this chapter is that there's a lot of possibly going on.
00:40:56
Speaker
This could have possibly been done. It's possible that this could have happened. And if that's the case, then it's possible that these could have ended up here and so on. So... A lot of the argumentation actually going through the book, I noticed, is because, again, we have no definitive this is this is definitely the case. So a lot of it is, well, it's possibly, that you can't say it's not the case that this is what happened, which is not nearly a strong... Butler hates bad record keeping, and this ends up being important for his argument, because
00:41:29
Speaker
because he really thinks that we have to take it the chain of command in the military is always obeyed and inviolate.
00:41:40
Speaker
So his argument seems to hinge upon the notion that, look, Bolt was right in thinking that the Boeings made it all the way to Torpedo Yard, at which point they're under the aegis of the army at that particular point in time.
00:41:58
Speaker
and therefore the people in the military would be keeping records of everything that went on. So fact there is no record stating the Boeings were destroyed indicates they couldn't have been, because it's inconceivable that a member of the military might do something, A, against the chain of command, and b not put what they've done down in writing.
00:42:26
Speaker
Which is interesting because eventually in the book, he's going to um basically be claiming that the exact opposite of that happened and may have happened quite a bit, but we're not there yet.
00:42:38
Speaker
We are on to the military, though, because Chapter 4 is called The North Head Military Investigations, and Mr Butler says... You know, yeah his here's here's what looks like it might have gone on. We had these planes. They may have been transferred here. They may have been stored here.
00:42:52
Speaker
Someone should really look into that. Oh, wouldn't you know it? Somebody did, multiple times. And so Chapter 4 is the history of investigations of North Head.
00:43:03
Speaker
Now, as you said previously, George Bolt had said that by, when was it, 1959, we weren't quite sure where the planes were anymore. ah So around the mid-50s, George Bolt and others had started trying to track down those missing Boeings.
00:43:19
Speaker
And by 1980, George Bolt's son, who was then an Air Commodore in the New Zealand Air Force, Richard Bolt. Is that a is is is it a kind of 8-bit machine, the Air Commodore? Is that the predecessor or the successor the Commodore 64? Yeah.
00:43:36
Speaker
Maybe it was the imaginary one, maybe it was the Vaporware one that never happened, but it got them in the distance. no, that was the Commodore 65, and prototypes of that have appeared. But anyway...
00:43:48
Speaker
The Air Commodore started an inquiry to try to find some answers. So you had the first investigation in 1980 where they looked for hidden tunnels at various places in North Head by basically drilling holes in walls ah to see if there was a space behind them. And this 1980 investigation found nothing.
00:44:09
Speaker
But it produced a report based on the testimony of historian Paul Titchener. Now, as your eyes so I want to step in here. I've met Paul Titchener.
00:44:19
Speaker
ah So Paul Titchener, historian in Devonport, by historian you mean amateur, his historian, former mayor of the Devonport Borough Council before amalgamation,
00:44:33
Speaker
and owner of Titchener's bookstore where my mother used to work when I were a child. And so i have met Paul, but I was never of the age to discuss the North Head stuff with him. So I know Paul Titchener.
00:44:52
Speaker
I've never talked about North Head with Paul Titchener, in part because only found out about his interest in the North Head stuff well after a chance of ever communicating with him. The other thing, and this doesn't really come up in the text, but you can kind of detect it in the way that Butler talks about Titchener.
00:45:13
Speaker
Titchener initially thinks there's something to the hidden tunnel complex theory. But eventually, he resiles from that view and becomes a thorn in the side of people like Earnshaw and presumably then Butler, although Titchener may have been dead by the time that Butler became interested in this particular case.
00:45:37
Speaker
So Titchener plays a very interesting role because as you're about to explain, Titchener's going to claim he's been in those tunnels. Later in his life, he's not going to claim that at all.
00:45:49
Speaker
So take away the early Titchener. Yeah. So spoilers, he's going to show up now. I don't think he's mentioned for a wee while, but then he is going to show up later in the book with, again, yeah, ah different a different perspective. but So this um report from March of 1980 said that seven planes were stored in the ammunition storage tunnels dug under North Head, and that that one of the Boeings was included in the seven. It says that...
00:46:17
Speaker
and Out of the seven planes, five were destroyed, but the one Boeing plane and one of the other ones was not destroyed ah simply for expediency. Apparently they were right at the back of the tunnels and they were harder to get out and presumably it was judged to be not worth the effort.
00:46:34
Speaker
So the tunnels were then bricked up, and the report then gives information on two people who claimed to have, later on, been into the tunnels and seen plane parts there. So it talks about a petty officer, Irvin Bromley, who was supposedly in the tunnels in 1968, and then it refers to the writer, i assume that's the writer of the report, which would be Paul Titchener, who said in 1976 he went down, the we went fat found an open air shaft that went down into these tunnels and that he went down into the shaft, down into the tunnels, saw what was there, came out, and then he and the the other people who were aware of this then concreted over this this shaft entrance because it wasn't safe having a ah big...
00:47:19
Speaker
um hole dropping down into into underground tunnels. So a report from 1983 looking into the claims made in this 1980 report said that the military was unable to locate an ex-Petit Officer Bromley or indeed find the shaft that Titchener claimed to have used to get in and then concreted over. So Josh, are you talking about shaft?
00:47:43
Speaker
I am talking about shaft. and I can dig it. Well, I think they were concreted and then sealed over. But yes, they would have been excavated in some manner. Now, in 1984, John Earnshaw, who we've mentioned a couple of times now, the documentarian, he interviewed Titchener and others about the missing aircraft. And in 1984, the Navy and the Ministry of Works did some more investigation into North Head again, drilled more holes and more walls, and still did not find anything behind them.
00:48:12
Speaker
Now, 1988 is when things start to kick off. In 1988, John Earnshaw, he forms a documentary company and works with the government to look for these hidden tunnels. So he he makes it an ah and it comes to an agreement with the government. The government will supply resources. so that The army will help him investigate, um looking look for hidden tunnels in North Head.
00:48:34
Speaker
He will fill the whole proceedings to make a documentary for it. So there's there's there's a contract between the Crown and Mr. Earnshaw's company. ah So this chapter then then goes through what happened in the investigation. The investigation took 10 days, and throughout it, at least in Butler's retelling of it, the army is characterized as being unhelpful, flat-out dishonest, and basically ah obstructive. um equipment isn't available when it needs to be available.
00:49:02
Speaker
They change their story about providing surveyors. First, they say they don't have surveyors and they normally contract ones in, but then they do have them and and it's it's all unclear. They bring in the wrong sort of diggers to do the wrong sort of digging.
00:49:15
Speaker
Earnshaw, I think, haded had identified four areas where he thought they should investigate and they would only look at two of them. and didn't appear to do a particularly good job of investigating them.
00:49:27
Speaker
And they ended up looking at sites that he didn't stipulate. Oh, no, we're going to investigate here. yeah At one point, a hole is drilled in the wall and the smell of naphtha comes out, which if you've ever smelled mothballs, it's basically that smell.
00:49:40
Speaker
That's kind of mentioned now and doesn't become significant until a few chapters later, but just remember that. ah But then then on day nine of the investigation, a secret witness shows up. Mr Earnshaw said he was not told and that they wouldn't tell him who this person was and didn't see exactly what they were doing with the army staff.
00:50:00
Speaker
But they came on site and some stuff happened. On day 10, the army did a bit more work without Earnshaw being present and then abruptly concluded the investigation and then eventually put up a barbed wire barricade so no one else could go in.
00:50:16
Speaker
Now Earnshaw, not at all happy with how this investigation had been carried out, took the Crown to court. And we'll be looking at the court case in the next three chapters of the book. But at this point, Butler basically suggests, he implies at this point that the army had been ordered not to find anything.
00:50:35
Speaker
And when the secret witness showed up and meant that they might have been in danger of it, you know, that this person might have actually shown them where they could find something and they couldn't have that. they shut it all down.
00:50:47
Speaker
At this point, well, actually, no, we won't we won't get into what what the something might have been in the significance of the after. That'll come in later. But um it's not clear it's not clear at this point.
00:50:58
Speaker
like like The impression I got kind of was that the army maybe were being obstructive because they'd been told to be or maybe were being obstructive because they thought this Earnshaw guy was a bit of a crackpot who was wasting everybody's time.
00:51:12
Speaker
what does What impression did you get there? Yeah, I mean, i'm I'm sympathetic to what happened to John Earnshaw, because I do think he was badly treated by the military. And as we'll see in the court case, the court agreed. retreat did yeah The military did not do what they were asked to do, and they were in contravention of the agreement that Earnshaw made with the Crown around this investigation.
00:51:38
Speaker
But Butler is very, very convinced, and his evidence for this basically comes up in the second half of the book, that the army are deliberately getting in the way.
00:51:49
Speaker
And the impression I got was that, look, either the army didn't care about the investigation, so they were ordered to help this man called Earnshaw out, and they're going, well, this is a waste of our time and resources.
00:52:02
Speaker
So they're doing a half-hearted job and also kind of go, oh, well, if we can dig a hole, we can dig one here. It would be easier to do it here than it would be over there. Or, as you say, they thought that Earnshaw was a crackpot, so they were actually being deliberately obstructive, but without orders from above.
00:52:21
Speaker
Or it is possible that they were trying to stymie Earnshaw, although then the argument is, why are they trying to stymie Earnshaw? Are they deliberately trying to stymie Earnshaw because they want to cover something up?
00:52:35
Speaker
Or are they deliberately trying to stymie Diami Earnshaw, because they want to use that as an example to others who also might want to do similar work. They say, well, look look what happened to this fellow over here. I mean, he didn't have a good time.
00:52:52
Speaker
Do you want to also have ah not have a good time? I mean, think about what you're doing here. So there are a lot of interpretations that don't necessarily... seraly involve a conspiracy to hide the existence of hidden planes or o hidden ammunition dumps.
00:53:10
Speaker
but Yeah, yeah yeah like they could have been trying to convince him and others that it's simply not worth the effort to do this. But what they actually did was piss him off, and he took them to court. And so the book then goes into the court case that was prompted by this 1988 investigation.
00:53:26
Speaker
And here we get a lot of quoting. A lot quoting. A lot of quoting. The book would be a lot short shorter if there was more paraphrasing going on.
00:53:37
Speaker
Yep. But there isn't. So the the um discussion of the court case takes place over the next three chapters. So chapter five is the court case part one, the aeroplanes.
00:53:49
Speaker
So this court case produced a lot of evidence relating to North Head and it spurred another investigation. This is the one that we mentioned right back at the beginning, the one that the Herald article was talking about that started in 1992 and and went to 1994. This was meant to be the investigation to end all investigations.
00:54:05
Speaker
Because in 1996, this and this this is this was presided over by Judge Sian Elias, now Dame Sian Elias. She would go on to become the Chief Justice of New Zealand's Supreme Court.
00:54:18
Speaker
Which is after we left the the the Privy Council in the UK. So for people who don't know about the judicial system in Aotearoa New Zealand, prior to us establishing a Supreme Court, all of our final judicial arbitration went to the Privy Council in the United Kingdom.
00:54:38
Speaker
And eventually both the people and the government of Aotearoa New Zealand were going... I mean, we should be able to do this ourselves, right? We don't need to rely on British lords for final justice. So, yeah, the Supreme Court was established under the Helen Clark Labour Administration, I believe. And our Dame Sian Elias became the first Chief Justice of our Supreme Court.
00:55:06
Speaker
So the court case, I didn't actually see it. Did it start late 80s or early ninety s It must have been around then anyway. um it must be It must be the 90s, given when the investigation was done. The doc investigation started in 92, definitely. Yeah.
00:55:23
Speaker
yeah Now, the final judgment was in May of 2001. We'll get to that later. But in 1996, partway through the proceedings, Judge Elias found that the Crown had breached the agreement between it and Earnshaw and his company by not providing adequate assistance. As as you say, the the court agreed that um the the Army's investigation had not been up to snuff.
00:55:48
Speaker
But um this this part of the... Oh, and I suppose I should say the And part of the court case was essentially determining whether or not Mr Earnshaw was a crackpot, essentially. i think they I think if the military had been able to show the Mr Earnshaw was a crazy person who was wasting everyone's time, then they could have justified doing a bad job, I guess. But so they had sort of had to establish, yes, he did have reason to believe that it was worthwhile looking for naught for tunnels in North Head.
00:56:21
Speaker
And so part of that was the the investigation by the Department of Conservation that happened from 1992 1994, which
00:56:30
Speaker
So this chapter was part one, the aeroplanes, and it goes over the court's findings, particularly relating to the aircraft that were or were not stored at North Head.
00:56:42
Speaker
So as as as you say, there are quite a few pages of exerted information from Judge Elias' judgment. That excerpt includes the line, so this is the judge's judgment,
00:56:54
Speaker
There is no documentary evidence that the two Boeing aircraft owned originally by the Welsh Flying School were ever taken to North Head, which, as we say, is the whole ah whole problem. So ah this chapter but basically goes through all the other claims and evidence that Butler had already mentioned in the previous chapters.
00:57:12
Speaker
But then having done that concludes, the or rather the judgment concludes, there is insufficient evidence for me to conclude on the balance of probabilities that the Boeings were ever taken to Devonport. So this became the official position um of the of the New Zealand government.
00:57:28
Speaker
So but part of this it was, um as we've seen already, based in large part on testimony. And so we got to the interesting case of Bolt versus Salt.
00:57:40
Speaker
George Bolt. and And not just Bolt versus Salt. Bolt versus Salt Senior. Bolt versus Salt Junior. Salt Senior versus Salt Junior.
00:57:51
Speaker
And i'm presumably we can just do a kind of matrix here and do a lot of different other combinations if need be. Yes. Yes. Many salts, only one bolt. So George Bolt, um now he had died by the time that this investigation was going on, but he had been interviewed by John Earnshaw, so they used Earnshaw's previous interviews with him. but That was introduced as evidence into the inquiry.
00:58:14
Speaker
And so based on these interviews, George Bolt had said that the planes had been stored in North Head. George Salt, who you mentioned previously, Corporal Salt, um had tested or his testimony had said that the planes had never been taken from Karimurama.
00:58:29
Speaker
um So Judge Elias bo basically found Salt's testimony more believable than Bolt's. Now this conflicts with what Butler wants to believe, and so he decides, well, maybe he should take a better look at these two testimonies himself to see that if he agrees with Judge Elias' findings, you'll be surprised to learn that he does disagree.
00:58:49
Speaker
So he thinks... it sort of The judgment was that Bolt may have been confused about what planes were there, what planes were where, and he kind of kind of sounds like he takes this as a disparagement of Mr Bolt's character. He's like, no he was a clever, and respectable man. He couldn't have been confused about what planes were there.
00:59:07
Speaker
Now, as I was reading through this, one of your post-it notes stuck to the page at the time pointed out that Certainly, Bolt may have believed that the boe may and may have honestly 100% believed that the Boeings had been sent to North Head, but even he would admit he hadn't seen them being shipped there himself. He just believed that's what must have happened.
00:59:27
Speaker
And again, his testimony includes the fact that had they been burned at Koemurama, he definitely would have known about it because of the amount of time he spent around there and his association with the place. So Butler thinks Bolt's testimony can't be dismissed.
00:59:41
Speaker
He's not a big fan of Salt's testimony. As he pointed out previously when George Salt came up, there were, as you say, two Salts. There was George Salt Sr. and George Salt Jr., both of whom who had served in the military at different times.
00:59:55
Speaker
and so Butler thinks that sometimes he may people may have been getting confused over over who was giving testimony of whom, whether it was George Salt Sr.'s words or Salt Jr. talking about what his father had said or Salt Jr. saying his own stuff. He also thought that possibly sometimes people were confusing the testimony of Salt Sr. for Eric Patton, who you mentioned previously.
01:00:20
Speaker
He also... Oh, no, i didn't i didn't i didn't I didn't mention Eric Patton at all. i think Oh, you didn't know. He he came up briefly. He but he was another person. it was in the notes. Maybe we didn't say But he he was another person involved at the time-going test, and people thought that they had perhaps been um confused.
01:00:37
Speaker
And he does this weird thing, and going by your notes, you found this weird as well, where he suggests that Salt Jr. may have at times deliberately confused people by sort of taking credit for his father's own actions, or see he actually uses the phrase he takes took a, quote, perverse pleasure in deceiving people by by talking about his father's activities as though they were their own. That that that was weird, right?
01:01:10
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. because ah I mean, in the same respect, Butler steps in to defend the honour of George Bolt by ah basically assuming that Elias is disparaging his character by saying, look, his memory might have become unreliable with time.
01:01:29
Speaker
And to do that, he has to then conversely disparage the character of the witnesses who disagree with George Bolt. And so he does create this really quite elaborate psychodrama between Salt Senior and Salt Junior, where Salt Junior is some kind of Machiavellian character who going around taking a perverse pleasure impersonating his father, at least for the purposes of making legal statements.
01:01:59
Speaker
Yeah. um He also finds a bunch of inconsistencies in Salt Jr.'s testimony, either between what he said in the inquiry and what he had said in previous statements, or between what he said in the inquiry and between and other military records of the time.
01:02:15
Speaker
I noticed this was... this This seemed to be a bit of an example of the quote-unquote conspiracy theorist thing that we see where he sort of takes the bit that he agrees with at its word, but digs into the bit he doesn't agree with with a fine-toothed comb looking for inconsistencies wherever he can find them. He certainly didn't appear to have gone to many efforts to compare George Bolt's statements with anything he might have said previously or what have you.
01:02:43
Speaker
Well, that's because George Bolt was a respectable man. He was a pilot. And there is there are some weird honouring of particular kinds of people in this account.
01:02:57
Speaker
So certain military figures, not all of them, as we will say, are taken to be deeply honourable men and even questioning whether their memories may be incomplete or unreliable several decades after the fact is taken to be an unwanton and unwarranted disparagement of character.
01:03:22
Speaker
But as you say, as soon as someone disagrees with Butler's thesis, then it's kind of taken that they're motivated to lie about what is going on there.
01:03:34
Speaker
So there is something really curious about his treatment as to who he takes to be a credible eyewitness and the way that he disparages the eyewitnesses who disagree with the central claims.
01:03:48
Speaker
So my notes about Chapter 5. Is there anything else you'd like to say before we move to Chapter 6? No, I mean, basically, you've you've kind of talked about all the stuff that's going on here. I mean, as I said, there's something weird about the way that evidence is used.
01:04:04
Speaker
So because Elias took it that Salt was a reliable witness and because Butler doesn't, Then as you say, he looks at any kind of conflict that is going on there.
01:04:17
Speaker
He says, look, as soon as there is a conflict between what Salt Jr. said and what is in the records, then we have an outright contradiction. And the only way to resolve that contradiction is either say the records are wrong or Salt is a liar.
01:04:34
Speaker
But what we're dealing with here isn't necessarily contradiction. What we have are contrary accounts, at which point you might say, well, look, this can probably be worked out by saying, well, look, the records we have are themselves incomplete, which Butler has to admit to because there is no solid documentary evidence either way.
01:05:00
Speaker
as to what happened absolutely to the planes, at which point Salt's evidence is probative. It kind of fits in with the story in particular ways and comes up against the official record in other ways.
01:05:17
Speaker
And so it might be the case you can't strictly reconcile what SALT said with the documentary evidence that's available. But that's how evidence works in legal cases.
01:05:32
Speaker
You end up going, well, look, the records are incomplete and SALT is saying something which questions the way the records have been recorded. That doesn't mean that the records are wrong and salt is correct, or salt must be a liar because the records themselves must be correct, it is a case of, well, look, this is how historical evidence works.
01:05:57
Speaker
There's probably some way to reconcile both statements. And that becomes a a common theme, I think, especially as we go into Chapter 6, The Court Case Part 2, The Military History of North Head.
01:06:10
Speaker
Now, Josh, usually sequels are not as good as the original. Did you feel that this chapter wasn't equal to Chapter 1? Is it an Aliens to Alien?
01:06:21
Speaker
Is it better? Is an Empire Strikes Back to Star Wars? Or is it worse, a Blade 3 to Blade 2 situation? um i thought it was I thought it was just kind of different, really.
01:06:35
Speaker
um different without necessarily being superior inferior, because it takes a different um a different approach now, where previously he was focusing on the bits of the court case that related to what may or may not have happened to those aeroplanes.
01:06:51
Speaker
In this chapter, he looks at the bits of the court case that related to the military history of North Head. So the the the the point of it, he as he sets up at the start, For planes to have been stored at North Head in the first place, there'd need to be evidence that there were at least once tunnels big enough to contain them.
01:07:11
Speaker
ah that if If the tunnels don't exist, then the planes can't have been stored there, full stop. So he looks into the but parts of the court case that relate specifically to this now, and does so by producing another even bigger excerpt from Judge Elias' report.
01:07:27
Speaker
Which, as you say, probably could have been paraphrased to be a lot smaller, which is what I'm going to do now. um so it goes through a bunch of archival evidence, which doesn't seem to show like this. Again, we have no um evidence saying these tunnels were drilled in North Head on this date, in this direction, in this place. There's none of that.
01:07:46
Speaker
It acknowledges that Earnshaw and co. do point out that there are gaps in the archives. There's period of of of several years where there's no record of anything happening.
01:07:58
Speaker
not Rather, not that there are records that say nothing happened in this time. but Nothing is said about that time whatsoever. So there are gaps when it's possible. that um other work could have been done.
01:08:11
Speaker
But the conclusion of the of Judge Elias was that it doesn't seem that there was ever a time when there was both a need for more tunnels and the resources available to make them.
01:08:24
Speaker
um Elias also finds it, quote, inconceivable that records may have been suppressed on this topic, as some have suggested, and indeed, as someone will continue to suggest.
01:08:36
Speaker
Yeah, and in part, there is something to this particular claim, as we'll talk about, presumably, in another chapter. What's interesting about what we know of the building of North Head is we know when the Fort Courtley installation, so the military installation on North Head Fort Courtley.
01:08:57
Speaker
We know when Fort Courtley was built. We know how it was built. What we don't have is a complete set of plans for Fort Courtley.
01:09:10
Speaker
And so Elias is saying, look, We know that the plans are missing, but it's inconceivable that they've been deliberately removed from public access.
01:09:23
Speaker
But Butler and co are going, it is kind of curious that they have disappeared. And it is curious what people said about them in the past. Yes, so that's going to come up more and more as we get through the book.
01:09:37
Speaker
Now, unless I skipped over it and didn't notice in a previous chapter, I believe chapter six is where we're introduced to the idea of there being ammunition also stored in these forgotten tunnels. does occur in the prologue, so the quote from Earnshaw about...
01:09:55
Speaker
Oh, in tunnels, planes and munitions. But yes, at this stage... but in Butler's work, Butler himself hasn't talked about ammunition. It comes up here because it was part of Earnshaw's case and Earnshaw's interest in...
01:10:10
Speaker
why the military were denying him access to what he thought were a set of hidden tunnels obviously hidden within north head so yes it does come up unexpectedly here it is going to take a very outsized role for the rest of the book as to the real rationale as to why there might be hidden tunnel complex Yes, yes. So as we say, Butler, it was his interest in the planes that got all this started. And so up up until now, the the the location and existence of the planes has been the main thing that he's concerned with. But as you can probably imagine, ah for most people, the existence of of possibly unexploded ammunition is of a more pressing concern than the existence, perhaps, of some ancient aircraft. So that becomes more and more significant.
01:10:56
Speaker
So Butler himself, having having having gone through all this information, he still believes that there are enough gaps in the evidence for there to be other tunnels. and And at one point near the end of the chapter states, the fact that a tunnel was not found by DOC, Department of Conservation, does not disprove its existence. And I kind of cringed a little bit when I read that, because yes, that's true.
01:11:19
Speaker
The fact that absence of evidence is not evidence of absence... But you can't prove a negative, and it kind of it kind of made me shudder just at the thought of what I was going to read in the rest of the book. It's like as long as they don't find anything, he's always going to say, well, it could still be there unless you I don't know, use magical future technology to look right through all of North Head and map it out or or bulldoze the entire Maunga to the ground.
01:11:46
Speaker
He's always going to be able to say that. Yeah, and just because they haven't found God thus far doesn't mean that God doesn't exist. I mean, yeah but we've got strong evidence from elsewhere that they keep on looking for these tunnels and they don't find them.
01:12:03
Speaker
But of course, if you believe that's part of a conspiracy or a cover-up, then of course they're not really looking for them at all. Anyway, the only note I have on this chapter, he's really fixated on one particular photo. It's a very famous photo. The photo comes up a bunch.
01:12:22
Speaker
Yeah, of North Head. And there does appear to be a tunnel entrance entrance where no tunnel entrance entrance exists.
01:12:35
Speaker
Now, discussing photos on a podcast is always a bad idea because you can't see what we've seen. But this is a black and white image of low resolution, where essentially there is what appears to be a dark square hole going into the side of North Head.
01:12:57
Speaker
But...
01:12:59
Speaker
That's all we've got. We've got this image which looks tunnel-like but isn't necessarily evidence of a tunnel at all. I mean, there are rival explanations here. it' It's netting over a particular area encampment or some feature which from a distance with the kind of photos they were taking in that light would look like a dark shape and that's a shadowed shape and therefore might look like a hole there are rival explanations here but butler is very fixated on this appears to be one of the smoking guns of north head no pun intended indicating look
01:13:40
Speaker
Here is direct archival evidence of a tunnel that people deny the existence of. So, Chapter 7, The Court Case, Part 3, Case Closed.
01:13:53
Speaker
So this is his final chapter looking at the court case, and it goes over the results of the DOC investigation from 1992 to 1994, which was supposed to be, after this and investigation, it was supposed to be case closed. This was supposed to be the investigation that settles everything once and for all.
01:14:11
Speaker
Its final report was released 1998,
01:14:16
Speaker
um And so going to, um again, another big excerpt from Judge Elias, um who summarises the previous investigations, which Butler has also previously summarised, the ones what it, 1980, 84, 88.
01:14:32
Speaker
And she reiterated again that the 1988 investigation was, in her words, chaotically executed and without sufficient reference to the plan put together by Mr Earnshaw.
01:14:45
Speaker
Now, it quotes a paper put ah provided by um David Viet. Now, we've mentioned him a couple of times, but just for for detail, who is David Viet? the David Virt was the chief archaeologist of Tamaki Makarau.
01:15:00
Speaker
He had an office up on North Head because they had a divisional office for DOC there. And he was the person who, mean, he wasn't chief archaeologist when these investigations occurred. it was a role he took on later on in life.
01:15:15
Speaker
But he was the chief archaeologist responsible for the DOC investigation as to the alleged tunnel complex within North Head. And the fascinating thing about Dave is that he started off as someone who was optimistic that an archaeological investigation of North Head was going to find missing tunnels in or... I keep this how we explain in or on the Mona.
01:15:45
Speaker
And that's in part because, and we haven't talked about this, the cut the process by which... and we'll sidestep whether there are hidden tunnels here. The process by which the existing tunnel structures on North Head were built was the cut and cover method.
01:16:05
Speaker
So rather than tunnel into the hill... the Victorian engineers cut trenches into the hill and then covered those trenches with railway tracks and then put concreted roofs over the top and then sealed the walls.
01:16:22
Speaker
So the tunnels were cut into the hill. And so I guess technically their tunnels... North Head as opposed to tunnels cut into North Head, but that may be a distinction without any real meaningful difference. But whatever the case, but so Dave did think they were going to discover additional tunnels.
01:16:47
Speaker
Whether they were hidden or simply tunnels that had gone missing with time is another matter entirely. But he starts off as a tunnel believer, and ends his investigation as a tunnel sceptic. Yeah.
01:17:01
Speaker
So prior to the 1992 investigation in 1991, he provided a paper which detailed the potential for concealed installations to exist. And this paper gave three possible sites for where they could be. So as you say, he seemed to come into this thinking that it's possible that we might find some hidden tunnels there.
01:17:19
Speaker
Now, unless, again, unless I skipped a bit over in an earlier chapter, I think this 1991 paper was the first mention in this book we see of a report by the GCSB, the Government Communication Security Bureau, which I believe is our largest intelligence agency. I think they're bigger than the NZSIS, is the They are, yeah. Yep.
01:17:41
Speaker
And that that was interesting. that that That was kind of mentioned in passing here, but we'll we'll we'll be hearing from the um GCSB report in a later chapter. ah So again, we get more than 10 pages now of excerpts from Dame Elias' judgments.
01:17:55
Speaker
from from his point in in the final judgment in 2001. As you read through them, it it seems fairly clear that the Dock investigation was more concerned with finding or with with with the possible presence of old ammunition than it was looking for old planes.
01:18:12
Speaker
Again, probably the more pressing concern. But for the purposes of this book, it doesn't really matter. The existence of hidden tunnels was necessary to account for either of those scenarios. Now, again, the the ammunition comes up and it becomes quite significant because there's now disagreement. I see i said earlier in the chapter, to remember, back in that 1988 investigation, they drilled a hole and there was the smell of naphtha.
01:18:36
Speaker
And during the 1992 investigation, again, they were they they they had the smell. They took gas samples of the air that was coming out of these holes that they drilled and detected the presence of naphthalene and toluene.
01:18:53
Speaker
Naphthalene, I think, is a kind of... It's not quite crude to oil, but a sort of oil. It's it's this what you get in it's It's used as fuel. It smells like not mothballs. Toluene is the second tea TNT. They're both...
01:19:09
Speaker
ah compounds that could result from decaying explosives. And so there was a bunch of um discussion as to whether or not the presence of these two gases showed that there were ammunition stored somewhere behind these holes that we or they resulted from the presence of the coal tar, which was used in the construction. As you say, they built these concrete walls and then they would seal them with by by painting them with coal tar.
01:19:36
Speaker
And then they put concrete over the top. So essentially they create insulating layer because Monowica is a Scoria con. The thing about Scoria is that it's rain goes through it.
01:19:52
Speaker
So if you're building a tunnel complex in or on the Mona, then you need to seal it so that it doesn't kind of just become awash in liquids everywhere. What you don't want, Josh, is a moist tunnel.
01:20:07
Speaker
You don't want a moist tunnel. and i mean and and and And I say that quite deliberately. If you're running a military installation, which has armaments and North Head had multiple guns because it was it was built for the defense of the harbor.
01:20:24
Speaker
What you don't want is your ammunition getting wet. It's a very, very bad idea. You don't want rust. You don't want mold. Yeah. So you see all these tunnels with Coltar. And so the official theory is, well, look โ This naphthalene and toline smell is probably due to the fact the coal tar is still wet after all these years and thus is still degassing.
01:20:51
Speaker
Yeah. So they put and they they they brought in Dr. Sprott. Now, was he the um but he the cock death guy? Do you remember Dr. Sprott? I do. I mean, I don't i don't i don't i don't remember him personally, but yes, I think he was the cot death guy.
01:21:07
Speaker
He was the guy that's due to gases emanating yeah from mattresses, according to his theory. he was he was the gas expert, and yeah, he he had come up with the theory that cot death or sudden infant death syndrome, or I think these days it's...
01:21:20
Speaker
sudden death in infancy, or I can't remember. They always seem to be trying to find a new euphemism for what is inherently a horrible thing to talk about. um And his theory was that these infant deaths were caused by gases that were released from the mattresses in in children's, in in cots and cribs.
01:21:40
Speaker
And so he had the theory that if you wrapped mattresses in non-porous plastic, that would prevent cot death. But anyway, the the point is he's an expert on gases. And He seemed to, from what I read, he seemed to think that there was more likely they resulted in ammunition, but they eventually the there were sort of a few competing experts, and eventually they decided it was most likely from Coltar.
01:22:01
Speaker
The reasoning, at least in the excerpt that was in this book, it actually did it it did seem a little bit dodgy. It kind of seemed like they were saying... Well, we've got the presence of we've got these gases.
01:22:13
Speaker
They could come from ammunition or they could come from coal tar. Now, we know coal tar was in was was in the walls. We don't know that ammunition is there, so probably was coal tar, right?
01:22:25
Speaker
And that seemed to me a bit odd given that part of this we were the the presence of ammunition is what we were trying to establish, and yet they seem to use the fact, I don't know, the the reasoning seemed a little bit off, but that's what they came to in the end.
01:22:40
Speaker
Now, after after the discussion of of the Colton, which is kind of ah kind of kind of tangential to what he's been talking about so far, but it's going to become very important later on, um he then turns to rather...
01:22:55
Speaker
but but Butler turns to Judge Elias's consideration of ah bunch of witness testimony and statements from people and statements from people who had since died that were then given to Earnshaw. So it was a mixture of statements given directly to the inquiry and ah old interviews submitted as evidence.
01:23:14
Speaker
There were quite a few. I believe there were 50, around 50 pieces of of testimony. But she gave gave gave a number of reasons to doubt the testimony that said there were tunnels under there. Basically, people saying that, yes, I remember there being tunnels there. I've been in the tunnels.
01:23:32
Speaker
we we'll We'll talk about witness testimony in detail later. But she basically said... There are a bunch of reasons, such as the fact that all of this testimony was from at least 30 years ago at the time of the of the court case.
01:23:46
Speaker
ah Some of the witnesses were only children at the time. Some of the witnesses were servicemen who had also served at other forts similar to North Head, and so it's possible they had been confusing one for another.
01:23:57
Speaker
Some of them had and had been involved in the more recent speculation that there were these secret hidden tunnels under North Head, and so it was possible that their memories had been coloured by the more recent speculation. ah There's the fact that some points in North Head's history, the tunnels weren't lit at all.
01:24:12
Speaker
So to navigate them, you'd needed to be doing it by candlelight. um And in that sort of situation, that can in the dark, that can distort your perceptions of space. um She pointed out that the layer of North Head is just confusing in of itself because it's it's sort of been different bits of it had been built in different places at different times.
01:24:30
Speaker
um And also the the interviews conducted by Minister Earnshaw, in those interviews, he was seen to be kind of leading, leading people and apparently could be a bit antione antagonistic when interviewers didn't say the things that he was hoping that they would say.
01:24:46
Speaker
So in the end, in the end of that this whole investigation, as a final report in 2001, Judge Elias was satisfied that there was no ammunition stored under North Head and that there are no hidden tunnels.
01:25:01
Speaker
Now, Mr. Butler was not comfortable. with Judge Elias dismissing over 50 witness accounts as being merely tricks, lapses, and or contamination of memory.
01:25:11
Speaker
He also has, quote, some nagging but unquantifiable misgivings about the Dock investigation. So in the next chapter, he wants to look at these witness accounts, but...
01:25:24
Speaker
looking at our Looking at how long we've been recording now, maybe this is where we should break. Yes, I believe so, especially since the next episode. I suspect we're going to want to read some of these accounts out.
01:25:36
Speaker
There's quite few. And lee at least two of them, if they are are true Absolutely astounding because spoilers, turns out according to two witnesses, people were just doing tours for geriatrics through a massive tunnel complex in the and and eighty s And if that's the case, this is a pretty piss-poor conspiracy if you're taking people in rest homes and giving them guided tours of multi-level complexes deep within North Head.
01:26:16
Speaker
Yes, but that's spoilers for the next episode, where we will continue. So as I say, we're at the end of Chapter 7 of For Me 12, For 15. So... for you fifteen so We've got at least one more episode to go we'll see We'll see how far through it we get next time. But for now, I think we're done.
01:26:37
Speaker
I'm just scrolling down through our notes, and I'm pretty sure the notes get bigger the further through the book we go. So, yeah, we may be looking we may be looking at three episodes.
01:26:48
Speaker
Who can you say? Because let's just say the conspiracy is about to get a lot bigger and a lot wilder. Yes, I mean, I should say at this point, Butler has sort of insinuated that maybe that the the military was sort of working on orders to not find anything.
01:27:08
Speaker
So far seems to be taking the Dock investigation on good faith. But once we yeah once we get into the later chapters, I think his conspiracy theories are going to become a lot more explicit and a lot more detailed.
01:27:20
Speaker
But you'll have to wait till next time to hear more about that. What you won't have to wait for, if you're one of our patrons, is a bonus episode. what of what What surprises and excitement do you have for us in this episode's accompanying bonus episode?
01:27:36
Speaker
Well, we're going to talk about a potential podcast that we might be listening to, a podcast you have listened to and I am listening to. her I'm going to talk about another book about North Head that I read recently.
01:27:52
Speaker
And who knows what other exciting morsels of information may pass from our lips to the ah but say the reader's ears, because apparently you read our bonus episodes today.
01:28:03
Speaker
With your ears, yes. That's how it works. Or the listener's mouths or maybe the listener's eyes. I mean, I don't care how you consume the bonus content. We just care that if you do consume the bonus content, it does make you some of the best and most beautiful people that have ever existed and, frankly,
01:28:25
Speaker
ever will exist. Precisely. So if you want to become one of these people, and if you'd like to know more about M's special supplementary book report that will be in this next episode, just go on down to patreon.com and search for the podcaster's guide for the conspiracy, and you can sign yourself up as easy as that.
01:28:42
Speaker
But for now, but for now, it's time to end this episode. i'm still I'm still looking for a proper catchphrase to go out on. So this week I'm trialing.
01:28:54
Speaker
So until next time, conspire me to the moon and let me swing among the stars. Will we get in trouble for that? o No, no, I'm fairly sure that's, I'm fairly sure Cole Porter's fine.
01:29:07
Speaker
Actually, no, that's not even Cole Porter. But sure Cole Porter's fine. I mean, he is dead, so he's actually not fine at all. Actually, Cole Porter's not, yeah, not fine. I mean, he may even be roasting in the fires of hell.
01:29:20
Speaker
Oh dear, Cole Porter. Anyway, and enough about Cole Porter. I'm off to Nagelabat.
01:29:32
Speaker
The podcaster's guide to the conspiracy features Josh Addison and Associate Professor M.R. Extentis. Our producers are a mysterious cabal of conspirators known as Tom, Philip, and another who was so mysterious that they remain anonymous.
01:29:46
Speaker
You can contact us electronically via podcastconspiracy at gmail.com or join our Patreon and get access to our Discord server. Or don't, I'm not your mum.
01:30:13
Speaker
And remember, groove is in the heart.