The Real Richard Godfrey [S2Ep34 video]

As phase 2 of the seabed search wraps up, we reveal the truth behind a controversial character

On Friday March 28 the ship scanning the seabed for MH370, Armada 78 06, stowed its AUVs and set sail to the north, putting an end to the second phase of the third seabed search, during which about 5000 square kilometers was scanned. According to Kevin Rupp, who has proven himself to be well-sourced, Ocean Infinity will likely source a larger ship for subsequent phases of the search, and will wait until the southern spring — most likely, November — to recommence its efforts.

I go into more detail about what was learned and what lies ahead in today’s video. For now, I’d like to focus on the second part of what I cover in the episode, namely an investigation into the background of noted independent MH370 researcher Richard Godfrey. Godfrey has received the explicit imprimatur of approval from Australian search officials and from the BBC, yet is known for spreading misinformation about the search. In other words, he is incredibly influential on the topic of MH370 but has used that influence to detract from, rather than advance, the search for understanding. Today I’ll dig into why that is.

Godfrey was one of the original members of the Independent group, along with me and Victor Iannello, when it formed in early 2014 as an informal gathering of technically-minded folks who swapped information and ideas about the technical aspects of the case. From the beginning, he was one of the most active members. Whenever someone suggested a new idea he was always one of the first to tackle it, no matter how complex the mathematics.

Over time he became respected by a wide range of people in the MH370 community. The Australian government thanked him by name in the final report into the disappearance of MH370, and later when people came to the ATSB asking what it thought about Godfrey’s claims that he could use ham radio data as a kind of over-the-horizon radar to track MH370’s path, it issued a statement on February 16, 2022, entitled “Statement on Mr Richard Godfrey’s analysis of the location for missing aircraft MH370,” in which ATSB Chief Commissioner Angus Mitchell said: “The ATSB is aware of the work of Mr Richard Godfrey and acknowledges that he is a credible expert on the subject of MH370.”

A few months later the agency issued a report in which it reviewed its previously collected seabed data to assess whether the plane could have wound up at the endpoint predicted by Godfrey’s ham radio data and just not been spotted. Which no doubt took considerable time and expense and again shows you how highly they regarded him.

That regard continues to this day. A few months ago Godfrey was featured prominently in the BBC documentary “Why Planes Vanish The Hunt for MH370”:

That show refers to him as “retired aerospace engineer Richard Godfrey” and says that he has “has worked with NASA, Boeing, and Airbus.”

Clearly, Godfrey is a heavy hitter, a man to be taken seriously. And yet, if one studies his constributions to the MH370 conversation, a strange pattern emerges.

There is of course, the ham radio idea, known as WSPR, which Godfrey claims he has used to track MH370 with great accuracy to its supposed endpoint near 29 degrees south latitude. Despite how widely this idea has been taken up, experts in the fields of radar and radio transmission have stated emphatically again and again that it is impossible. I have tried to explain why that is, but frankly a much more compelling and erudite explanation is given in a new YouTube video by sk999:

The WSPR idea is just one in a very long stream of erroneous ideas that Godfrey has spread over the years, often in collaboration with Blaine Alan Gibson and Geoffrey Thomas.

Shortly before the third seabed search started Godfrey claimed on Thomas’ YouTube channel that he had inside information that Ocean Infinity had already called the search off. Then Godfrey erroneously claimed that Armada 78 08 had been designated as the search vessel for the new expedition. Then he said that Armada 78 06 has been deploying ROVs and doing bathymetry. And of course who could forget Godfrey’s infamous claim that an Emirates pilot had actually spotted MH370 during a flight over the Indian Ocean on that ill-fated night?

As Kevin Rupp noted recently, ‘I've not seen Richard Godfrey get a single thing right for this search. If you were to believe him, then you should be tracking Armada 78 08 right now, which is in the middle of the Atlantic.”

Why does Godfrey keep getting the facts to wrong? What’s going on?

You almost have to wonder: Is Godfrey really who he says he is?

On his website Godfrey has this biographical info about himself:

Richard Godfrey completed a Bachelor of Science at the University of Salford in Computer Science and Systems Engineering and a Post Graduate Diploma at the European Business School INSEAD in Paris. He has designed and successfully operated a number of avionic systems for a wide range of commercial and military aircraft including Boeing 747, Panavia Tornado, General Dynamics F-16 and LTV A7 Corsair. These avionic systems include autopilots, automatic landing systems and flight management systems. He was the lead engineer for the integration and test of the European Space Agency Spacelab with the NASA Space Shuttle. In this capacity, he designed and implemented an engineering simulator of the NASA Space Shuttle.

This is all very impressive and obviously very relevant expertise in the quest to understand a complicated aviation mystery. Of course, it’s all on the say-so of Godfrey himself.

Being a journalist, I naturally wondered how much of it could be verified. I reached out to the ATSB to ask him if they had checked Godfrey’s claims about his employment history.

They replied:

Mr Godfrey was known to the ATSB from his time as a member of the Independent Group during the original ATSB-led MH370 search. Any questions regarding Mr Godfrey’s professional qualifications and experience are best addressed to Mr Godfrey.

So I emailed Godfrey at the address on his website. He hasn’t replied. He’s welcome to contact me at any time.

I also reached out to the director of the BBC documentaries to ask if they had tried to verify that Richard Godfrey really is an aerospace engineer, as he claims. I haven’t heard back.

So I decided to dig in for myself. It isn’t hard to find traces of Godfrey online. He’s been involved with several companies online, and he has an online resume at Xing.com that lists some of the jobs he’s held over the years. The details of that resume largely match another one, written in German, that I was able to obtain. It paints a picture that is quite at odds with the aerospace engineer of MH370 fame.

It says that Godfrey was born in August 1950 in London, and that he got his degree in computer science at Salford University in 1972. His first job was as a project manager at Marconi Avionics Systems, where he worked until 1976. He was a freelance consultant for a while, then worked as operations director for a company called Cortex for two years (I haven’t been able to figure out what they do). Next he worked in IT for Essers, which is a transport and logistics company; then was a managing director at InfoNet Systems, which describes itself as “a leading provider of software development solutions.” In 1997 he started working with a whole bunch of banks: Dresdner Bank, Bankgessellschaft Berlin and Norddeutsche Landesbank, Comdirect bank, and so on. That’s the kind of thing he did for the rest of his career.

On his CV he describes various kinds of expertise that he has: busness models, process optmisation, IT strategy, sales strategy, outsourcing, account management, training coaching, and mentoring. He knows Java, XML, Oracle, SQL, Unix and Windows. Basically his expertise is banking IT.

The thing that really stands out is that, apart from his first job right out of college, there’s not a single word in his resume about aviation.

Keelie, the famously indefatigable researcher, bent over backwards trying to find any evidence that Godfrey worked on the Space Shuttle or for the ESA, or did any of the things that he has claimed, and basically came to the conclusion you can’t prove a negative. While ESA told us that he never worked for them, it’s conceivable that he worked for a subcontractor, of which there are hundreds.

So maybe he was doing these high-powered aeronautical jobs as an independent contractor, supervising the coordination of Spacelab and the space shuttle as a freelancer and not seeing fit to mention it on his resume.

Soon after 2014, when Richard was enjoying a modicum of fame thanks to MH370, a documentary production company came calling and asked him to provide background information about himself. He gave them a modified version of the resume I just described.

This new version had all kinds of impressive aerospace names:

1976 - 1988, Independent Consultancy

IT Consultant (Darmstadt)

1976 to 1981 – SpaceLab – Bremen, Germany

Hardware Software coordinator for the whole SpaceLab integration & test programme. The test system included developing a complete simulation of the NASA Space Shuttle. The software was developed on an IBM Mainframe in GOAL and HAL/S, two languages designed especially for NASA.

1972 - 1976, Marconi Avionic Systems

Project Manager (Rochester)

As it happens, my father spent his entire career at Honeywell, starting out as an optical engineer and winding up as an executive. I asked him if a company like that in the ‘70s and ‘80s would let a freelancer take charge of an important engineering project like the spacelab integration and test program. He said no, that kind of thing happened later, when cost cutting became a corporate fad, but not in those days.

I’m not saying Godfrey didn’t do freelance work for any of these companies, but what’s clear in context is that Godfrey is not an aerospace engineer. He does not have expertise in aerospace nor a professional background in aviation at all. He is a software IT backend kind of guy.

In fact, back in 2013 he was working on a book project about bank IT with a colleague named Frank Schwab. I reached out to Mr Schwab and told him that I was “researching the background of a leading MH370 researcher, Richard Godfrey, and I understand that you used to work together.”

He replied, “Yes, I worked with Richard in the banking technology industry. I wasn't aware of his interest in MH370, though. What would you like to know?” Unfortunately he didn’t respond to my follow-up question.

To be sure, there’s no shame in being a bank IT guy. It takes a lot of brain power to do that for a living. But Bank IT is a completely different thing than aerospace engineering, and so when the ATSB or the BBC refers to him as a retired aerospace engineer, they should correct themselves and say that actually he is a retired banking technology consultant.

Once you start thinking of Godfrey as a retired bank IT guy, a lot of things make sense. Like all of these very self-assured proclamations about radar technology that don’t pass muster with actual experts.

And as I’ve said before, I don’t think that Richard is doing this to rip people off. When I think of Richard I think of George Costanza from Seinfeld: a guy who doesn’t get any respect in life and sometimes he fudges the truth a little. He wants to impress a woman, so he tells her that he’s a marine biologist. He wants to brag about a prestigious job so he pretends to be an architect named Art Vandelay. None of these make-believe jobs make him rich, in fact they inevitably backfire and leave him looking like even more a schmuck than when he started, but for that brief little while, people are looking at him with admiration and treating him like someone they should listen to.

Of course, Seinfeld is a comedy. No one getting hurt. It’s not a tragedy. But MH370 is a tragedy, and real human beings who are being affected, people who miss their loved ones. Saying that you’ve invented a miracle technique to track the flight of the plane is not the same as saying you can lower the cholesterol level in whales. What you’re doing, potentially, is derailing a deadly serious undertaking. And that is actually not funny at all.