Pre-war aluminum and a pre-war rivet found in it. The aluminum was a type used for repairs. A rivet pattern match to a specific spot in on the belly of an L-10 Electra. AE’s Electra was repaired in this same area. All of this matches, not just an Electra, but AE’s repaired Electra. It was found in an isolated place AE went missing. Sure looks like smoke.
So what are the non matches to an original Electra that may actually still fit AE’s repaired Electra? Are their photographic examples of the repair method in question used on other planes? If it is bigger rivets used on repairs, find pictures of before and after as an example or take pictures of a plane repaired with this method and one of the same type that wasn’t. It might be used as an illustration to help people understand.
A great summary the puts it in perspective for me, a long time, too-ignorant-to-contribute lurker who can no longer hold back.
So ... if we postulate that 2-2-V-1 is an actual piece of Alclad used to repair AE's Electra, does its present condition say anything about how it got to be where it was found, and in its present condition?
Good questions, and we may never know the answers for certain. But its battered condition suggests a hard journey to our hands - apparently separated from the host airframe by some degree of violence, whether sudden or gradual unknown to me. It is rich with complex failure modus (if not moduli (sic)) - cracks and tensile failures abound in multiple planes, bending and stretching is evident to degree that I believe NTSB commented on some property changes in the metal (plastic state?) - and we can see edge-evidence of that where the heavier rivet line was torn-out by some force. We also see a dimpling effect where the many #3 brazier rivets once were, so some 'blow-out' effect is there, whether by mechanical separation or some hydraulic force, as has been suggested, or 'other'. Then we have some prospect of the sheet having been used to cook fish over a fire or coals - further compounding the possibilities of how it may have been recycled by its finders.
Where did it have to be for all that to happen? Obviously those things could have happened in various sequences in any number of different places, but they could have also happened right there on Gardner / Niku if the metal arrived with Earhart, was found among debris in the surf and rescued, and subsequently subjected to further man-handling for various reasons of salvage / secondary use.
How might it have been removed from the rest of the Electra? Is it part of a larger piece that was ripped off the belly of the plane on landing?
Impossible to say for certain in my view and likely not by one neat process, but by 'worrying' in the surf, perhaps after some initial mechanically-imposed damage (impact of some sort). It could have remained attached to a parent member, which had been detached - or been partly exposed in a storm, or washed up as a singular piece during some heavy surf event. My personal suspicion is that foraging people found it attached to some portion of junk that might have led to the anecdotal reports we have of an airplane wreck on the reef.
Why wasn't it washed off the reef with the rest of the plane?
Maybe it was. The sea taketh, and the sea giveth back on occasion; or maybe it was jammed in a groove and later found or dislodged and washed ashore. Can't know.
Is there anything in the high resolution aerial photos that might hint of its presence on the reef ?
I don't recall anything like this being found, but we're talking about something that could well be hard to see at that resolution. I do recall TIGHAR studying some metal signatures earlier from satillite or similar images, and it could have shown up as an indistignuishable item - if on the beach when those pictures were taken. If deep in the village - where it was found, my guess is it would have been impossible to see.
I hope I'm not going over material that's already been covered before, at least in the present context.
If you are it is worthwhile to freshen the discussion in my view - can't hurt the effort to be thorough about the reiview of this item.