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[Tim Collins]

With regard to the previous post -  How much flex could there possibly have been in the fuselage? Surely there was some - I am reminded of the videos of the flex seen in ocean going tankers and cargo ships.  I could imagine a patch added after the fact not necessarily acting as one with the rest of the body and being a weak link to the stresses of landings etc.

[Bill Mangus]

This is an interesting theory, but any damage suffered in a 'hard landing' on the reef couldn't have been so bad as to prevent running an engine to power the radio afterwards.  It does provide another way for any injuries to FN and AE, as Betty's notebook seems to say.

[Friend Weller]

Landings at that time were almost always three-point, full stall landings. There is movie film of AE landing the Electra that way.  The hard landing at Miami probably involved stalling the airplane several feet in the air and dropping it onto to runway in three-point attitude.

Speaking of three-point, full stall landings, are the on-shore breezes on the reef near the Norwich City strong enough and from the right direction generally to cause an aircraft like an Electra to stall, especially if that aircraft was nearing stall speed itself?  I can envision an airplane stalling due to a strong gust just as the pilot was about to intentionally stall the aircraft to make such a landing and dropping it roughly onto the reef surface....

like somebody pushed a metal trash can off a roof - and it feels like you're in the can.

....perhaps hard enough to cause damage to the airframe (buckling of the fuselage in the area of 2-2-V-1?) and maybe resutling in bodily injury but not so much as to render at least the r.h. engine inoperable.

[Ric Gillespie]

I was at the New England Air Museum on Sunday, June 15 doing a couple of speaking presentations so I took the opportunity to take a close look at the starboard side of the Electra in the area where the window/patch was on NR16020.  I taped off the area outline of the patch as best I could and had a volunteer hold the artifact up to the airplane. (see photo) I later used the tape as the basis for an overlay (also attached).  These are rough approximations, not meticulous measurements, but it's clear that the artifact fits within the dimensions of the patch, albeit fairly tightly which, in itself, may be significant.

I was struck by how low to the ground the window/patch is when you're standing beside the airplane and how small and cramped the "lavatory" room is.

[Ric Gillespie]

Looking through the photos taken during the second world flight attempt it's hard to find pictures of the right hand side of the airplane.  All the action was on the left hand side where the crew entered and exited.  Of the few shots the show the right hand side and the patch, by far the best is the one taken in Miami as the plane taxied out. The photo was probably taken early in the morning of June 1, 1937 as AE and FN departed for Puerto Rico. The patch is new and shiny so there's a lot of reflection.  No rivet pattern is apparent, although by zooming in I can see what I want to see (cue the banjo music). 
We obtained the photo many years ago from the Miami Herald.  A Miami Herald photographer took the photo and the paper owns the copyright.  There's a chance they still have the negative. If they do, maybe they'll let us borrow it for forensic analysis.  I'll see what I can find out.

[Ric Gillespie]

This just in.
After trying several different methods, Dr. Jennifer Mass has been unable to find any trace of paint on 2-2-V-1.  Looking at a cross section of the aluminum sheet using a Scanning Electron Microscope she was able to see the paint layer on the interior surface on the piece of wreckage from the Idaho Electra.  Nothing shows up on the artifact.

We learned in Dayton that WWII bombers serving in Europe were not treated with corrosion inhibitor because they weren't expected to survive long enough for corrosion to be a problem.  The salty Pacific Theater was a different story.
What WWII airplane serving in the Pacific would not have been treated with some kind of corrosion inhibitor?
Would the Pan Am mechanics (or whoever installed the patch in Miami) have gone to the trouble of painting a small patch? 

[Andrew M McKenna]

Ric

Don't photos and movie of her last take off at Lae show the right side of the aircraft?

Would be interesting to compare them to this one in Miami.

Andrew

[JNev]

Looking through the photos taken during the second world flight attempt it's hard to find pictures of the right hand side of the airplane.  All the action was on the left hand side where the crew entered and exited.  Of the few shots the show the right hand side and the patch, by far the best is the one taken in Miami as the plane taxied out. The photo was probably taken early in the morning of June 1, 1937 as AE and FN departed for Puerto Rico. The patch is new and shiny so there's a lot of reflection.  No rivet pattern is apparent, although by zooming in I can see what I want to see (cue the banjo music). 
We obtained the photo many years ago from the Miami Herald.  A Miami Herald photographer took the photo and the paper owns the copyright.  There's a chance they still have the negative. If they do, maybe they'll let us borrow it for forensic analysis.  I'll see what I can find out.

Excellent - if the negatives can be had it may tell us much.  We really need a good, sharp look at that window covering.

[Ric Gillespie]

Don't photos and movie of her last take off at Lae show the right side of the aircraft?

Yes, but the patch is not discernible.  As the flight progressed the patch naturally became less and less shiny until, by the time they got to New Guinea, it blended in with the rest of the skin.
There's a good air-to-air shot taken from a Netherlands East Indies Airlines (KNLM) DC-2 over Java that shows the patch nicely but there's not enough resolution to pick out the rivet pattern.  This was not a telephoto lens.  That Dutch captain was tucked in tight!
I don't think anyone else has this photo.  We got it many years ago from "Fuzz" Furman (now deceased), the Martin company rep in Bandoeng, Java who hung out with Fred while they were there.  "Fuzz" got it from the pilot who took it.  We took a copy photo of Fuzz's print. 

[Monty Fowler]

So the dry paint - ain't. Still, this is a win. We know more about 2-V-1-1 than we did, and it's still in the running as the *putative poop hatch patch. (Sorry, could not resist, what with the ongoing putative poop analysis effort).

LTM, who will now find something besides dry paint to watch,
Monty Fowler, TIGHAR No. 2189 ECSP

*edited by J. Neville to include link...

[Bill Mangus]

"A Miami Herald photographer took the photo and the paper owns the copyright.  There's a chance they still have the negative."

If they still have that negative, there's a good chance there are others.  I've known a few photographers and they never take just one picture when eight or twelve will do.  That's just the one the paper happened to print.

[Jeff Lange]

"A Miami Herald photographer took the photo and the paper owns the copyright.  There's a chance they still have the negative."

If they still have that negative, there's a good chance there are others.  I've known a few photographers and they never take just one picture when eight or twelve will do.  That's just the one the paper happened to print.

True- at that time I am sure a photographer would have bracketed his shots varying the aperture or exposure to get a properly exposed shot, especially with the apparent lighting conditions and the reflectivity of the subject in the photo.

[Ric Gillespie]

The Miami Herald has responded to my request.  They're looking to see what they have.

[JNev]

Outstanding!  Here's hoping.

[Ric Gillespie]

Nothing is ever easy.

"I have been asked to respond to your inquiry regarding a photo from the archives of the Miami Herald. I will search what remains of the Herald's archives for this photo. Unfortunately there are severe limits to what I am likely to find.

First, the archives were badly out of order and much was lost or misplaced over the decades. Older material like this photo was especially likely to have disappeared. It's a good thing you got your copy of the photo when you did.

The situation now is that the collection of prints has gone to the Rogers Archive, which sells them on eBay. In return, the Herald received digital scans (of mediocre quality) from Rogers. The scans we received are, if anything, in worse order than was the print collection when it went to Rogers. It is this heap of scans that I will be searching. Of course I will let you know if I find anything. It is quite possible that even if I do it will be of no better quality than what you already have.

This all suggests that it might be worth contacting Rogers directly to see if they have an original print."

I have sent a request to Rogers.