Feel free to move to another thread if appropriate.
Here's one way we may have ended up with "The Artifact Formerly Known as 2-2-V-1
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The Breakup of NR16020
Here's how I envision the breakup of NR16020 after it's abandoned by AE and FN. I'm not an aircraft
architect, so the terms may not be precise. Please correct.
This didn't happen all at once. With a little more work I can fit it into the time line Ric came up with a few years ago.
Once the surf starts pushing the aircraft around the first thing to fail are the landing gear. They're probably broken off where the strut attaches to the main spar/engine mount, maybe not all at once so they're flopping around underneath as the a/c is moved around, grinding up the underside of the wings and the belly.
Eventually the a/c gets broadside to the breaking waves and the tail begins to break off at the patch/cabin door/buckled skin/weakened frames point. The tail separates, ripping and tearing the window patch but keeping it, and being relatively light is washed inshore. It begins its journey through the Norwich City debris field, getting knocked apart even more as it moves toward the lagoon entrance and the large reef flat just to its north. By now it is separated into its component parts; horizontal and vertical stabilizers and a section of fuselage from just in front of the patch/cabin door. Our artifact 2-2-V-1 is probably still attached to the tail section of the fuselage at this point. Later, months or years later given the amount of carbonate (coral) encrustation, it's recovered by an enterprising colonist. The flat tail sections and fuselage piece are photographed in the 1953 aerial mapping survey, then are likely washed through into the lagoon to be buried in the sand or ground to aluminum dust. At some point the cabin door washes ashore is found and played with.
Meanwhile, back at the landing site, the remaining largest section of the fuselage is broken off from the main spar, washes over the edge, sinks and begins its journey across the reef face, ending up as Richie's Anomaly. The sections of the wing outboard of the engines have gone away and probably drift a fair piece as they sink. More surface area for the current to push against means they probably went past the NC debris field and are further off shore and deeper.
The main spar, one or both engines and both main gear are left. One gear, strut, and tire become the Bevington Object. The other, somehow makes its way to Tatiman Passage and becomes the Wheel of Fortune.
The main spar and perhaps one or both engines remain in the surf line north of the North City and are photographed as the 'dot-dot-dash' by the New Zealand expedition and are seen by the colonists (and Emily) before eventually falling off the edge of the reef. I expect they went straight down and did not drift as the fuselage did. I think the engines would come off and go tumbling down into the depths. The main spar frame, a large, heavy rectangular shape would resist tumbling may still be fairly shallow.
Nothing is left above water except 2-2-V-1
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A fun thought piece.