Can anyone comment on the potential aircraft swap?
Anyone can comment.
The big question is whether anyone can present a conclusive argument against the hypothesis.
Here is
a short article on what
seems to me to be the authentic history of the Daily Express.
The problem with developing a decisive rebuttal of the switched-in-Miami theory is that all photographic evidence can and will be waved away. Whatever is built by humans can be rebuilt by humans. If one submits photos of NR 16059 that differ from NR 16020, the conspiracy theorists will simply say that the photographs prove that the newer aircraft was rebuilt with the features of the older aircraft before being unveiled to the unsuspecting public--and, of course, NR 16020 was rebuilt at the same time with the features of the newer aircraft, so that it could play its new role as the "Daily Express."
I'm not very good at playing "spot the differences" with aircraft. I'm pretty sure the undercarriage of NR 16059 lacks the
"worm gear" of NR 16020.
To have the two airplanes rebuilt as replicas of each other is not a trivial task. It would take a multitude of skilled A&P folks in a well-equipped shop over a relatively long period of time. All of them would have to have been sworn to secrecy, and all of them would have to have kept that oath until death.
I guess the problem can be diminished by flying in the replica NR 16020 and hiding the real aircraft; the fake NR 16020 takes off and then the real NR 16020 can be made over into a replica of NR 16059 at leisure.
I just can't bring myself to even begin to entertain the thought of doing so much work for so little gain. The purpose, of course, is to provide AE and FN with extra fuel and super-secret spy technology so that they could dash over Japanese territory, make history-changing discoveries about Japan's preparations for war in the Pacific, then arrive near Howland Island just two hours off-schedule, as if they had been delayed by unexpectedly strong headwinds instead of by spying on behalf of FDR. Gary LaPook examined
all of the possible spy missions and concludes that none of them make any sense.
