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Author Topic: The Question of 2-2-V-1  (Read 1022833 times)

Ric Gillespie

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Re: The Question of 2-2-V-1
« Reply #555 on: March 16, 2014, 07:47:28 AM »

If I understand correctly the theory about the rivet pattern not exactly matching what is expected is that stringers/keel/other structure were tweaked a bit in the ground loop and perhaps not restored to perfect placement.

No one knows what was done, but whatever was done met Bureau of Air Commerce standards and was inspected and approved.  No one is suggesting that the repairs were sloppy or half-assed.

So I'm trying to get a feel for what sort of magnitude of extra effort would have been required to get the underlying structure mentioned above back to "perfect" and if its reasonable that Lockheed didn't go that route. Are we talking a few hours, an extra couple of days, or weeks, assuming no extra repair crew or shift added?

Jeff Neville will correct me if I'm wrong, but it is my understanding that the use of larger rivets in the keel was necessary due to the presence of the original small rivet holes that could not be re-used.  The only fix for that would be the replacement of the entire keel.  Faced with that, it would be cheaper to just give her a new airplane.

I'm also raising a Spockian eybrow about the alclad stamp not being buffed off of 2-2-v-1..

No one is saying it wasn't buffed off.  All we know is that a D and to a lesser degree an A remain visible on the metal.  It's not ink.  It appears to be an effect the ink of the label had on the metal itself. We don't know by what process that occurred.

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Ric Gillespie

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Re: The Question of 2-2-V-1
« Reply #556 on: March 16, 2014, 07:56:02 AM »

It might, if one of those films showed the piece you have.

The x-rays were taken of the plane to determine what parts were damaged. They were taken before repairs were made.  They wouldn't show the piece we have if it is a repair.
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Ric Gillespie

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Re: The Question of 2-2-V-1
« Reply #557 on: March 16, 2014, 09:04:29 AM »

Is there any other correspondence besides the one you refer to above, that bears on the question of whether this was a 'rush job'? From the correspondence you quote it is clear that GP misinformed the State Dept. about the progress of repairs (either accidentally or intentionally). But its not clear to me that 'Team Earhart' actually pressured Lockheed to finish the repair asap. It is a fact that the repairs were finished more quickly than the inspector told his boss, but it seems to me there are other reasonable explanations for why that was so, oner than it being a rush job. For instance, I have often seen contractors overestimate how long it will take to finish a job just to avoid getting pressured by their customers to finish on time, i.e. it was the opposite of a rush job! It seems to me that, unless additional documentation exists that indicating that Lockheed was pressured we can't be very certain that this was the case.

The example you cite of a contractor overestimating the time required so as to avoid pressure doesn't apply in this case.  As shown in the attached correspondence, this is what happened:

On May 10 Putnam wrote to Undersecretary of Commerce Johnson in Washington asking for a new letter of authority for Earhart to do her world flight. In that letter Putnam states that the plane has been "thoroughly repaired at the Lockheed plant under the direction of Department inspectors."

On May 13 Reining at the Bureau of Air Commerce in Washington wires the Supervising Aeronautical Inspector in Inglewood, CA asking him to  "wire status inspection repairs Earhart NR 16020." He wants the inspection report airmailed to him.

On May 14 Marriott, the Chief General Inspection Service wires Reining saying that "completion of repairs and inspection will take ten days."  Marriott has no reason to exaggerate the estimate.

On May 19 Marriott wires Reining that "Earhart Lockheed repairs completed [and] approved.  Report air mailed today."

Note that Putnam is in New York handling the correspondence with the government.  As shown in photos, Earhart is in Burbank on the shop floor.  Anecdotal accounts have her pushing for the repairs to be completed as quickly as possible.
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Mark Pearce

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Re: The Question of 2-2-V-1
« Reply #558 on: March 16, 2014, 11:01:52 AM »


As shown in photos, Earhart is in Burbank on the shop floor.  Anecdotal accounts have her pushing for the repairs to be completed as quickly as possible.

The photo was taken by Harvey Christen, "..long time Lockheed jack of all trades." Two thousand photos he collected while working for the company were donated to the Huntington Library in San Marino, Calif. 

http://huntingtonblogs.org/2011/11/basney-donation-of-harvey-christen-papers/
http://dornsife.usc.edu/news/stories/830/return-to-camelot/

He is pictured on page 14 in this 1957 Lockheed Co. publication;

http://www.mbmcdaniel.com/burbankia/of_men_and_stars_3.pdf

When the 2-2-V-1 story was first got underway, Christen was interviewed for a story in the LA Times-

http://articles.latimes.com/1992-03-30/news/vw-278_1_amelia-earhart/3

"...Gillespie sees no mystery in variances of rivet spacing and patterns. He believes the positioning was changed when Earhart's plane was repaired after the takeoff accident.

"Not so, insists Ed Werner, 82, of Santa Cruz, the assistant foreman of Lockheed's fuselage shop at Burbank at the time.  The rivet patterns on the fragment, he says, "just don't follow the engineering orders for the repairs. If those orders weren't followed, the repair couldn't have passed inspection and the airplane wouldn't have been released. And no double riveting along the center line . . . is tampering with the structural integrity of the airplane."

"Harvey Christen, 81, of Pasadena agrees. A retired director of quality reliability for Lockheed, Christen was Werner's boss during repairs to the Earhart plane.  "Nobody repaired anything at Lockheed without taking it back to its original configuration, as dictated by the airplane's federal certification," he says. Under such rigid controls, it would be "unthinkable" that any worker or inspector would allow a repair where the riveting missed a complete line of attachment to a fuselage stiffener.  Gillespie believes his fragment should have never been compared to a Lockheed 10B because Earhart was flying a Lockheed 10E..."



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Ric Gillespie

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Re: The Question of 2-2-V-1
« Reply #559 on: March 16, 2014, 01:09:47 PM »

"Not so, insists Ed Werner, 82, of Santa Cruz, the assistant foreman of Lockheed's fuselage shop at Burbank at the time.  The rivet patterns on the fragment, he says, "just don't follow the engineering orders for the repairs. If those orders weren't followed, the repair couldn't have passed inspection and the airplane wouldn't have been released.

Yeah, that was really damaging.  Elgen Long asked me for a template of the artifact.  I sent him one (not realizing that the bowed shape of the artifact introduced distortion to the rivet pattern).  Elgen rounded up Ed Werner and Harvey Christen and compared the template to a Lockheed 10 in Oakland (as I recall).  I knew their criticisms were flawed but who was the LA Times going to believe - me or two former Lockheed mechanics?

As we've seen, Mr. Werner's statement is not accurate.  The engineering orders for the repairs to the part of the airplane where the artifact appears to fit do not contain specifics about how the repairs are to be carried out. There is nothing in our hypothesis that contradicts the engineering orders.

And no double riveting along the center line . . . is tampering with the structural integrity of the airplane."

As we've all seen, in the engineering drawings and on surviving Electras, the Lockheed 10 is double riveted along the center line (keel) in the area where the artifact appears to fit.  Why would Werner say something like that?  He was 82 at that time. Maybe he wasn't with Elgen and Harvey Christen when they visited the airplane in the museum. Maybe he only saw the template and was relying on memory about how Electras were built.

"Harvey Christen, 81, of Pasadena agrees. A retired director of quality reliability for Lockheed, Christen was Werner's boss during repairs to the Earhart plane.  "Nobody repaired anything at Lockheed without taking it back to its original configuration, as dictated by the airplane's federal certification," he says.

Historical documents show Christen's categorical statement to be simply not accurate. As we've seen, Earhart's airplane was modified during repairs.  New drawings were made and approved for changes to the nacelle ribs.  Those have survived but there were also numerous engineering orders approved that have not survived.

Under such rigid controls, it would be "unthinkable" that any worker or inspector would allow a repair where the riveting missed a complete line of attachment to a fuselage stiffener.  Gillespie believes his fragment should have never been compared to a Lockheed 10B because Earhart was flying a Lockheed 10E..."

I never said that and, of course, we are suggesting no such thing.  At the time Christen made that comment we thought the artifact fit best on another part of the belly further forward.  This was all going down in 1992 and it pretty much shut down further research on 2-2-V-1.  But the more we learned about what probably happened to the airplane the more interesting the artifact became.  It was 2004 before we developed the current hypothesis about where it fits.  Ten years later, as our research capabilities have continued to grow (in no small measure thanks to this forum) the artifact looks stronger than ever. Previous criticisms, such as the ones you have posted, are now clearly in error and there's nothing that disqualifies the artifact except the possibility that it matches some other aircraft.  That is now the focus of our research.
« Last Edit: March 16, 2014, 01:13:07 PM by Ric Gillespie »
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Dale O. Beethe

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Re: The Question of 2-2-V-1
« Reply #560 on: March 16, 2014, 01:20:13 PM »

It might, if one of those films showed the piece you have.

The x-rays were taken of the plane to determine what parts were damaged. They were taken before repairs were made.  They wouldn't show the piece we have if it is a repair.
Thanks, Ric!  I wondered after I posted if that would be the case.
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Monty Fowler

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Re: The Question of 2-2-V-1
« Reply #561 on: March 16, 2014, 02:06:08 PM »

Mr. Pearce, while you have posted some genuinely interesting and enlightening information, with this last post, I'm sorry, but I see an agenda.

LTM, who tries to keep agendas confined to useless meetings,
Monty Fowler, TIGHAR No. 2189 CER
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Jeff Carter

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Re: The Question of 2-2-V-1
« Reply #562 on: March 16, 2014, 02:41:28 PM »

Maybe a trip to California is warranted -- hit the photo collection at Huntington Library and then swing by Castle Museum to look at the rivet patterns on the B-24M.
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Ric Gillespie

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Re: The Question of 2-2-V-1
« Reply #563 on: March 16, 2014, 06:46:03 PM »

Mr. Pearce, while you have posted some genuinely interesting and enlightening information, with this last post, I'm sorry, but I see an agenda.

Of course Mark has an agenda. He's trying his darndest to debunk 2-2-V-1 but he hasn't resorted to trollism (much, yet, anyway).  He's a dynamite researcher and that makes him extremely valuable.  We're trying to be objective but we want the artifact to be part of NR16020 and that might color our objectivity.  Mark wants it to be a Canton repair so his bias goes in the opposite direction.

Personally, I'm thoroughly enjoying his challenges. He's doing more to reinforce our hypothesis than we could ever do.
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JNev

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Re: The Question of 2-2-V-1
« Reply #564 on: March 16, 2014, 08:25:25 PM »

If I understand correctly the theory about the rivet pattern not exactly matching what is expected is that stringers/keel/other structure were tweaked a bit in the ground loop and perhaps not restored to perfect placement.

No one knows what was done, but whatever was done met Bureau of Air Commerce standards and was inspected and approved.  No one is suggesting that the repairs were sloppy or half-assed.

Agree - and if terms I've used implied that, I did not mean to be so harsh.  What must be understood is that with any repair of this type there is latitude for acceptable variation.  There will also be the occasional poorly bucked rivet in some corner somewhere, no matter how good the mechanic or how hard they try.

Quote
So I'm trying to get a feel for what sort of magnitude of extra effort would have been required to get the underlying structure mentioned above back to "perfect" and if its reasonable that Lockheed didn't go that route. Are we talking a few hours, an extra couple of days, or weeks, assuming no extra repair crew or shift added?

Jeff Neville will correct me if I'm wrong, but it is my understanding that the use of larger rivets in the keel was necessary due to the presence of the original small rivet holes that could not be re-used.  The only fix for that would be the replacement of the entire keel.  Faced with that, it would be cheaper to just give her a new airplane.

Yes, agree - it would be an acceptable practice to replace damaged holes with larger rivets.  Damage to holes can happen during repair efforts, e.g. drilling off-center, etc., but more likely with so many affected it might be due to the original rivets being stressed and elongating holes a bit. 

Quote
I'm also raising a Spockian eybrow about the alclad stamp not being buffed off of 2-2-v-1..

No one is saying it wasn't buffed off.  All we know is that a D and to a lesser degree an A remain visible on the metal.  It's not ink.  It appears to be an effect the ink of the label had on the metal itself. We don't know by what process that occurred.
- Jeff Neville

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JNev

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Re: The Question of 2-2-V-1
« Reply #565 on: March 16, 2014, 08:30:05 PM »

Is there any other correspondence besides the one you refer to above, that bears on the question of whether this was a 'rush job'? From the correspondence you quote it is clear that GP misinformed the State Dept. about the progress of repairs (either accidentally or intentionally). But its not clear to me that 'Team Earhart' actually pressured Lockheed to finish the repair asap. It is a fact that the repairs were finished more quickly than the inspector told his boss, but it seems to me there are other reasonable explanations for why that was so, oner than it being a rush job. For instance, I have often seen contractors overestimate how long it will take to finish a job just to avoid getting pressured by their customers to finish on time, i.e. it was the opposite of a rush job! It seems to me that, unless additional documentation exists that indicating that Lockheed was pressured we can't be very certain that this was the case.

The example you cite of a contractor overestimating the time required so as to avoid pressure doesn't apply in this case.  As shown in the attached correspondence, this is what happened:

On May 10 Putnam wrote to Undersecretary of Commerce Johnson in Washington asking for a new letter of authority for Earhart to do her world flight. In that letter Putnam states that the plane has been "thoroughly repaired at the Lockheed plant under the direction of Department inspectors."

On May 13 Reining at the Bureau of Air Commerce in Washington wires the Supervising Aeronautical Inspector in Inglewood, CA asking him to  "wire status inspection repairs Earhart NR 16020." He wants the inspection report airmailed to him.

On May 14 Marriott, the Chief General Inspection Service wires Reining saying that "completion of repairs and inspection will take ten days."  Marriott has no reason to exaggerate the estimate.

On May 19 Marriott wires Reining that "Earhart Lockheed repairs completed [and] approved.  Report air mailed today."

Note that Putnam is in New York handling the correspondence with the government.  As shown in photos, Earhart is in Burbank on the shop floor.  Anecdotal accounts have her pushing for the repairs to be completed as quickly as possible.

Somebody most likely found some way to avoid replacing as much metal as first thought necessary to get that done that quickly; what we can see in 2-2-V-1 is consistent with that thought.
- Jeff Neville

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JNev

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Re: The Question of 2-2-V-1
« Reply #566 on: March 16, 2014, 08:32:45 PM »

Mr. Pearce, while you have posted some genuinely interesting and enlightening information, with this last post, I'm sorry, but I see an agenda.

Of course Mark has an agenda. He's trying his darndest to debunk 2-2-V-1 but he hasn't resorted to trollism (much, yet, anyway).  He's a dynamite researcher and that makes him extremely valuable.  We're trying to be objective but we want the artifact to be part of NR16020 and that might color our objectivity.  Mark wants it to be a Canton repair so his bias goes in the opposite direction.

Personally, I'm thoroughly enjoying his challenges. He's doing more to reinforce our hypothesis than we could ever do.

Agenda aside (duh), I find Mark's sharing of research helpful and agree, the challenges allow a thorough discussion.

As has been said recently, "could be anything" doesn't fly with 2-2-V-1 anymore - there have to be specific alternates or Cinderella keeps the glass slipper...
- Jeff Neville

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JNev

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Re: The Question of 2-2-V-1
« Reply #567 on: March 16, 2014, 08:54:48 PM »

For Jeff Neville primarily I guess...

I have no doubt that it would (sorry I know we don't like "would" but I lost my thesaurus) have been at least possible, given enough time, for the factory repair shop to bring the Electra back to virtually "perfect" in terms of strength, dimensions, rivet placement and any other measurable aspect, ie in all practical aspects indistinguishable from a virgin airframe.

Time and resources permitting.  The trouble I have with any assumption of that is the obvious where Earhart and Putnam were concerned about most anything with this flight (and as evidenced by the compressed schedule and reports of Earhart's kind attentions to the front office to push repairs ASAP) - people start finding ways to accommodate that are short of the ideal of a perfectly restored machine.  That does not mean 'slipshod' - merely that some stuff gets straightened instead of replaced, and oversized rivets are used prolifically instead of removing extensive components to start with fresh pilot holes, etc.

As to stiffener migration (the spacing we see is on average something approaching 3/4" greater than original, except, oddly (and perhaps tellingly), for the first row - which is 'just about right') there could be many reasons, any of which could have remained unrecorded in a way that we've been able to find to-date.  For one, while an L10E is supposed to be the same as an L10A except for engines, and some other mods, I don't know that subtle alterations weren't made to areas like this to better distribute skin stresses in tension and bending with such a high fuel load / gross weight capability.  I also don't know that some mode of failure wasn't observed that suggested such a necessity - and that a relatively minor alteration scheme wasn't effected during the repair to meet such a newly-realized need. 

Not saying 'did happen', saying 'don't know didn't happen' as an example of some things that do happen in the real world.  Mechanics who might have worked the project later hearing these things proffered may feel a bit defensive, and of course they were loyal in their craft and would defend their work as having 'met spec'.  No one says it did not - merely that like all such efforts that work was subject to some allowable license for deviations.  What is apparent in 2-2-V-1 easily fits within that real-world scheme: ideally it would perfectly match a museum L10; the deviations we see fall within what I've described.

This may make our our review of other types a bit more challenging as they too could have undergone similar efforts - but it's a chance we have to take.  Also, we may tend to find that other types have less-mobile features like the stiffeners in the L10 belly, which if I understand correctly dead-end at each bulkhead and don't 'carry through', so can be shifted as to butt line locations, unlike the keel and major longerons which do traverse the bulkheads intact.

Quote
If I understand correctly the theory about the rivet pattern not exactly matching what is expected is that stringers/keel/other structure were tweaked a bit in the ground loop and perhaps not restored to perfect placement.

Maybe - but my suspicion is that what we see may have been more deliberate - perhaps as a means to better distribute stresses realized in the outcome of the accident.  Or, there could have been some as-yet not detailed alteration in that area of Earhart's airplane.

Many things are possible as to why we see these variations - most of them having to do simply with the nature of such repairs under the working circumstances we know of.

Quote
So I'm trying to get a feel for what sort of magnitude of extra effort would have been required to get the underlying structure mentioned above back to "perfect" and if its reasonable that Lockheed didn't go that route. Are we talking a few hours, an extra couple of days, or weeks, assuming no extra repair crew or shift added?

I'm also raising a Spockian eybrow about the alclad stamp not being buffed off of 2-2-v-1...this was still a current production aircraft at the time of repair, as I understand it, and in the control of probably the highest profile customer Lockheed or any other manufacturer was likely to see and they don't take a few minutes to buff the repair patches to match surrounding?  What up with that? No doubt they would have been hoping to sell an Electra or two on the backs of our hapless duo so don't you make sure the demo model is tarted up to the max?

There was some discussion of why alclad marking is visible in another recent thread but no real answer that I saw.  When one is buffing something one uses lighting and varying view angles to ensure a quality finish leaving no trace of whatever one was trying get rid of
- Jeff Neville

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« Last Edit: March 16, 2014, 08:56:35 PM by Jeffrey Neville »
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Mark Pearce

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Re: The Question of 2-2-V-1
« Reply #568 on: March 16, 2014, 10:00:13 PM »

Regardless of when this photo was taken...  :)  ... does it appear to have just enough detail to show "crossing lines" of rivets in the same area 2-2-V-1, (which has no "crossing" rivet lines), is alleged to have come from?
Just asking.   

The photo was taken at Floyd Bennett Field, Brooklyn, New York.  The caption reads-

"Here Amelia Earhart is seen talking with her husband George Palmer Putnam before a race to Los Angeles."

Click on the photo in the Daily Mail article for a larger view.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1370750/The-airport-time-forgot-Floyd-Bennett-Field-Brooklyns-Ghost-runways-Howard-Hughes-Amelia-Earhart-flew-revealed.html

« Last Edit: March 16, 2014, 10:11:21 PM by Mark Pearce »
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Martin X. Moleski, SJ

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Re: The Question of 2-2-V-1
« Reply #569 on: March 17, 2014, 05:21:59 AM »

Regardless of when this photo was taken...  :)  ... does it appear to have just enough detail to show "crossing lines" of rivets in the same area 2-2-V-1, (which has no "crossing" rivet lines), is alleged to have come from?
Just asking.   

Is it not the case that the image below has appeared in this thread already?  Wouldn't an attentive researcher have remembered this picture of where TIGHAR thinks 2-2-V-1 might have originated?  Is it possible to make accusations in question form?

Just asking.

LTM,

           Marty
           TIGHAR #2359A
 
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