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Author Topic: After the Landing  (Read 388430 times)

Greg Daspit

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Re: After the Landing
« Reply #255 on: June 16, 2012, 09:48:57 AM »

"What was the likelyhood of the search spotting a floating Lockheed or wreckage of a water crash?"
I did read somewhere that due to empty tanks the Electra would float. However, it would float nose down due to the engines pulling the nose down. So I think if it did float, it's tail would be up and therefore easier to spot.
http://tighar.org/Projects/Earhart/Archives/Forum/FAQs/float.htm

"The plane’s center of gravity (CG) was forward of the wing, and virtually all buoyancy was aft of the CG. 10 The unpressurized fuselage was not watertight. If the plane ditched, the nose section, the cockpit, and the space below the cockpit, would flood within minutes 11 and the plane would float nose-down, with the engines and generator submerged and inoperable. The main electrical junction box would flood, short-circuiting the electrical system and discharging the batteries. And the transmitter dynamotor would be submerged and inoperable"
http://tighar.org/Projects/Earhart/Archives/Research/Bulletins/50_HillPaper/50_HillPaperCritique.htm
3971R
 
« Last Edit: June 16, 2012, 10:04:59 AM by Gregory Lee Daspit »
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C.W. Herndon

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Re: After the Landing
« Reply #256 on: June 16, 2012, 09:49:46 AM »

That would depend on a number of factors John...
Pilot skills
Dead stick ditching
Sea swell and conditions
There's probably more, maybe someone could add to the list.
The 2 aircraft that I mentioned that went into the Pacific sank within minutes, the plexiglass is no match for the Pacific Ocean. Once the plexiglass went the ocean poured in so fast they barely had time to get the rafts out never mind anything else.

Jeff, John, Leon,

Here is a web site with an evaluation of a simulated water landing by the Electra.

http://www.niar.wichita.edu/CompMechPortal/MainMenuCurrentResearchProjects/AmeliaEarhartsCrashReconstruction/tabid/94/Default.aspx
Woody (former 3316R)
"the watcher"
 
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Jeff Victor Hayden

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Re: After the Landing
« Reply #257 on: June 16, 2012, 10:52:45 AM »

It might be concluded by examining any statistical or anecdotal reports of ANY plane ever floating after crashing or crash landing in the pacific.  I can think of only one:  Way back when (1950?) a Lockeed constellation airliner passed the point of no return from LA to Hawaii, only to determine it could not reach Hawaii. With a lot of fuel left the airliner coordinated a highly orchestrated daylight water landing near Navy/Coast Guard vessel(s) in a particular location after burning fuel off.  There are photos (I believe) of the airliner in the water, like the one that went into the hudson river, with people getting out etc.  No fatalities.  Or, I could have remembered this entirely wrong. 
During WW II there might be some statistics, but I'm  thinking the plane would not last long. If it lost even one wing on crash, the rest would sink I'd imagine.

Leon
An optimist may see a light where there is none, but why must the pessimist always run to blow it out?
-Rene Descartes


This one?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pan_Am_Flight_6

This must be the place
 
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Gary LaPook

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Re: After the Landing
« Reply #258 on: June 16, 2012, 11:28:55 AM »



"The plane’s center of gravity (CG) was forward of the wing, and virtually all buoyancy was aft of the CG. 10 The unpressurized fuselage was not watertight. If the plane ditched, the nose section, the cockpit, and the space below the cockpit, would flood within minutes 11 and the plane would float nose-down, with the engines and generator submerged and inoperable. The main electrical junction box would flood, short-circuiting the electrical system and discharging the batteries. And the transmitter dynamotor would be submerged and inoperable"
http://tighar.org/Projects/Earhart/Archives/Research/Bulletins/50_HillPaper/50_HillPaperCritique.htm
The center of gravity of a plane can never forward of the wing or even near the front of the wing. The CG of the Electra was limited to to 11.65 inches forward of the wing spar to 2.9 inches aft of the spar, pretty much limited to the middle of the wing's span. The second part of the statement is correct, that the center of buoyancy, with the empty fuselage tanks, is aft of the center of gravity range so the plane would float nose down. The question is how much nose down? This is a difficult thing to model because the buoyancy force is produced by the parts immersed in the sea while a downward force is caused by the parts still out of the water.

gl
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Brad Beeching

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Re: After the Landing
« Reply #259 on: June 16, 2012, 12:04:47 PM »

Mr. Daspit, here is a link that better explains why things float and why they don't: see Buoyancy

Mr. LaPook, In the above link you will find sufficient mathematical formulae for you to expound further on why the Electra would or wouldn't have floated for any appreciable time. Have some fun!  ;D

Brad
Brad

#4327R
 
« Last Edit: June 16, 2012, 12:07:51 PM by Brad Beeching »
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John Ousterhout

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Re: After the Landing
« Reply #260 on: June 16, 2012, 12:23:49 PM »

The analysis that Woody provided a link to (thanks Woody) predicts a well executed water landing would be survivable, and that the aircraft might float for 8 minutes without any contribution from the fuselage tanks.  How long might the tanks keep it afloat?  What is  the chance it would have been afloat when the search was conducted?
Cheers,
JohnO
 
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Tom Bryant

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Re: After the Landing
« Reply #261 on: June 16, 2012, 12:25:02 PM »

Perhaps we should move the floating plane discussion to a new thread - newcomers might not have the stamina to wade through the earlier discussion to get to it and it deserves to be given some better searchable uniqueness. (And no I have no way to calculate the capability of searchers on this site given their training, the conditions they are under, the likelihood that the topic is out in the open or covered by thread cover. Since I lack the proper tables to calculate their potential for success given the above I just think it would be nice to get the topic out on the beach with flares, smoke and a signal mirror to give the poor thing a chance.)
"Well... it seemed like a good idea at the time"
 
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Chris Johnson

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Re: After the Landing
« Reply #262 on: June 16, 2012, 12:29:51 PM »

Concure, thread drift (unlike the electra - lol)
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Tom Bryant

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Re: After the Landing
« Reply #263 on: June 16, 2012, 12:45:39 PM »

Yes exactly and how much does anybody wanna bet that if/when electra parts are found on the reef that a bunch of the crashed in the ocean folks will be trying to argue that while the electra ended up there it in fact crashed into the ocean and drifted there from somewhere hear Howland.
"Well... it seemed like a good idea at the time"
 
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Greg Daspit

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Re: After the Landing
« Reply #264 on: June 16, 2012, 01:35:54 PM »

Gary, I was just quoting what Tighar wrote.I agree with part of what you said and think the sentence I quoted from Tigher should be clarified. I think they meant the Center of Gravity of the plane was forward of the centerline of the wing and not just the "wing", but I could be wrong.

Brad, Thanks for the link
Of course what parts of the plane were more buoyant is more of a factor in which way the plane would settle than center of gravity. And of course empty tanks are more buoyant than full ones. The article someone else linked to said the plane would sink in 8 minutes but the example they used was a passenger configuration of an electra and not one with big empty tanks in the cabin.

The reason I think discussion of if the plane could float is important to this thread is for salvaging operations after the landing. If it was still on the reef after water rose, then at low tide they may be able to go back out and salvage stuff, even if the plane was flipped over.  Of course the force of the tide could move the plane if it floated or not.  The buoyancy of the plane could be a factor in which way the tide moved it, closer to the beach or farther away.
3971R
 
« Last Edit: June 16, 2012, 03:44:48 PM by Gregory Lee Daspit »
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John Ousterhout

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Re: After the Landing
« Reply #265 on: June 16, 2012, 04:46:36 PM »

Moving the discussion about what happens if the aircraft floats is appropriate. 
A point I was anxious to hear discussed was a comparison of the statistical chance of the search aircrraft spotting a floating Electra in the large area covered, vs. the chance of spotting two people on Gardner island.  We've heard Gary and others offer documentation and anecdotes of what has come to be called the "TIGHAR hypothesis", that AE/FN may have landed on the reef and may have been present when the search aircraft flew over, but what about a comparable analysis of the effectiveness of the search over the open ocean?  What are the chances that the search would have spotted some trace of the "crashed and sank" hypothetical end of the flight?  Shouldn't we be comparing the relative chances of the two different scenarios, rather than only one?
Cheers,
JohnO
 
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Gary LaPook

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Re: After the Landing
« Reply #266 on: June 16, 2012, 04:55:47 PM »

Mr. Daspit, here is a link that better explains why things float and why they don't: see Buoyancy

Mr. LaPook, In the above link you will find sufficient mathematical formulae for you to expound further on why the Electra would or wouldn't have floated for any appreciable time. Have some fun!  ;D

Brad
I've already done that, see my October 18, 2011 post here. and my my October 27, 2011 post here.

gl
« Last Edit: June 16, 2012, 05:04:12 PM by Gary LaPook »
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Malcolm McKay

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Re: After the Landing
« Reply #267 on: June 16, 2012, 06:30:43 PM »


Quote
In view of that if it was my hypothesis that Earhart and Noonan met their end on Nikumaroro I would simply accept that they were missed by the Navy and leave it at that. The failure of the Navy to find the missing pair on the island is not proof positive that they weren't there, but that is all it is.

OK.  That's all I've ever said.

Quote
Equally however it cannot be turned into proof positive, by adding a frisson of supposed Navy incompetence, that they were.

I agree that anyone who defended that straw man would be absurd.  I think I've said that already, more than once, in writing.

Marty - let us both draw a line under this debate - I am obviously not changing your mind while neither are you changing my mind. There are more important things to consider in the evidence offered to support the hypothesis, rather than debating over the value of what someone not seeing something really indicates. There are only two possible responses, you have one I have the other.
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Malcolm McKay

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Re: After the Landing
« Reply #268 on: June 16, 2012, 06:58:25 PM »

All this argument is silly. ...  to me rather desperate sounding, attempts to blow up the Navy overflight into something like a near-conclusive indictment of the TIGHAR theory sounds a bit strident and silly.


No it is not an attempt "to blow up the Navy overflight into something like a near-conclusive indictment of the TIGHAR theory". It is simply part of the process of looking at all the bits of evidence and arguments offered to support the hypothesis. In that way we eventually winnow out the components that provide no strength to the argument and eventually arrive, if we can, at those that do.

The problem at present is that is that all the cited evidence for the TIGHAR hypothesis is circumstantial while none, apart from the last verified radio message that sparked the search, has any direct provable and unassailable link to Earhart and Noonan. Now it may well be that at some time someone will spot in the physical evidence, or in the reported events of those few days, some correlation that has eluded everyone which will prove the hypothesis to be correct. However that point cannot be arrived at without rigorous testing and that is all that is happening with the assessment of the Navy search results.

There is nothing wrong with testing data especially if people confuse what they would like to believe with that which is correct. We would all like our own theories and conjectures to be correct but in the end only testing the data and the assumptions it creates will arrive at what we need.
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richie conroy

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Re: After the Landing
« Reply #269 on: June 16, 2012, 07:29:56 PM »

Malcolm

u believe that the new England hypothesis deserves more investigation based on sum guy sayin he found a tag wid simillar numbers to the engine tag of electra which u aint seen for ur self

yet u dismiss Tighar's documented evidence

how does this work ?
We are an echo of the past


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