Bill, share the story about your Otter (on wheels) sliding off an icy beach into the water. If there was ever any account that would prove that a few waves won't destroy an engine that's the one. In fact, the image I have is rather like Amelia's situation (without the ice, of course).
I'm a flyer, too, a mere fledgling compared to Bill with his 30,000+ hours whom, I'm proud to say, was the pilot/parson at my wedding. My wife and I operated a Beechcraft C-45 for almost 10 years, a bird easily mistaken for AE's Lockheed.
The Beechcraft Model 18 was designed by Ted Wells and the Lockheed 10 by Hall Hibbard, and there are those that say they look, not very but suspiciously, similar. But I digress.
The C-45 had the same R-985s, though not as powerful as AE's, and virtually identical electrical system. All of which is to say that I vote that Bill knows what he's talking about (as if there was any doubt) when he says you had to get the engines up to about 1500RPM before the system would start to charge the batteries. There seems to be a lot of confusion about that point, so perhaps Bill's account will lay that issue to rest.
They say the way you sculpt an elephant is to get a big block of granite, and chip off everything that doesn't look like an elephant. Seems to me finding Amelia and Fred should be the same process. Only problem is some folks keep slapping goop back on the sculpture, often in the wrong place and for the wrong reasons, so it makes it hard to see exactly what the thing looks like.
It'd be interesting to see a curated collection of information, a database, of everything that has been collected, and (like intelligence data) rate it by reliability of the source and how critical the information is. Then you can start chipping off stuff, perhaps even with the help of smart statistical analysis, that doesn't look like Amelia's final resting place.
To close, a short story about Noonan. Over the years I've owned and operated several Travel Air biplanes. I found the first at Van Sant Airport north of Philly, a place run by a likable old timer by the name of Bill Smella. He told me about flying as a passenger with Noonan in a gutless 90hp OX-5 powered Travel Air on a hot day. Those of you who fly can probably guess the rest of the story. Yup, they put it in some trees at the end of a runway in New Jersey, and Billy assured me it wasn't the plane's fault. Seems Fred was flying high already...a typical state of affairs, Smella assured me.
I'm not saying all those details are accurate, but is fun to know that I'm only "2 degrees of freedom" away from our adventurous heroes.