I am new to this venue having been drawn in by the recent announcement of this group's dedicated work. It is just coincidence that my wife, my father in law, and myself visited Amelia's birth place in Atchinson just three weeks ago. We live in Texas but were visiting in Kansas and took a day trip to see the museum.
If I can offer any contribution it comes not from myself but from my father in law. I do have hundreds of hours in land navigation experience from my time in the military. Also have almost 200 logged hours of marine navigation experience from my sailing days. All of this with a compass, a map, celestial tables, and a sextant.
But my father in law was a B-29 pilot flying off of Tinian Island during the last several months of WWII. He and his crew had 30 combat missions to their credit by the time the war was over. Before that he was a navigator on B24 Liberators, a pilot on B-25s, and a flight instructor. He joined the the Army Air Corp in mid 1941 expecting to serve his time but then....
After the latest information on your sonar hit he and I had some extensive conversations about these findings. From our recent trip to Atchinson we got out our own charts and did some looking. Drawing from his own experience and knowledge all he could say was if AE and FN ended up on Niku that would have been the result of one heck of a navigational error.
His own crew had flown in daytime, at night time, in large formations and small. They had been the guide plane that the fighters would rendezvous with strictly to navigate the fighters to their target and back. In other words he has deep combat experience in navigating around the endless Pacific and he tells me that even the worst navigators he ever worked with or trained could not make such an error even on their worst day, or night. Even in the days of dead reckoning for them to end up 350 miles off course requires a stupendous navigational error.
Especially considering that once AE and FN realized they were in trouble they would have checked and rechecked their navigational plotting, fixes, dates, times, azimuth, instruments, charts, math, etc...
While I hope we are wrong and that you guys really have succeeded in solving this mystery I have to agree with my father in law and say this will not be the answer. I will still make a contribution in hopes that the funds can be raised to send in the ROV and turn that digital data into a real Lockheed Electra. Best of luck, In Shallah.
Mike Adams, K5CDA