the many accounts of there being an aircraft wreck already present when the first settlers arrived are true, there is only one aircraft it could possibly be.
Ric, have you by any chance catalogued these various accounts? I only remember Emily, the girl who later moved to Tarawa. Are there any others that are not just hearsay?
There are at least five.
- Emily Sikuli, who moved to Fiji in November 1941, twice saw what her father told her was aircraft wreckage on the reef north of Norwich City in 1940/41.
- PBY pilot John Mims saw the locals using heavy duty fishing tackle made from aircraft aluminum and an aircraft control cable in late 1944/ early '45. Mims knew there were no aircraft missing in the area. When he asked one of the guys where they got the stuff he was told by his informant there was an airplane wreck there when he arrived in 1941. Mims asked where the wreck was now. The guy just shrugged. Mims later traded for small carved wooded boxes and model canoes that had little diamond and heart shaped metal inlays. He was told that the metal came from "the downed plane." We had one of the inlays tested by the NTSB Lab. It's aircraft grade 24ST ALCLAD.
- A year later, Coast Guardsman Glen Geisinger also traded with the locals for carved boxes with inlays he was told were from "the downed plane" that was once somewhere on the island.
- In the late 1950s, Tapania Taeke saw "part of a wing" on the reef near the main lagoon passage and "airplane parts" washed up on the beach.
- Her father, island school teacher Pulekai Songivalu, saw airplane wreckage washed up on the lagoon shore opposite the main passage.
When Gary Quigg's team interviewed former Nikumaroro residents in the Solomon Island's in the summer of 2011 he also ran into people who knew the legend of the downed plane. I don't have the specific at hand. We're still pulling together the many hours of interviews done on that trip.