A post elsewhere hinted that further White Bird news and a possible expedition are on the horizon. As TIGHAR's oldest project, a new expedition is a fitting way to celebrate TIGHAR's 30th anniversary. Since I haven't seen any public announcements, can we assume planning is underway? Can you share any insights?
I'll try to quickly review where we are with that project.
Has new information been uncovered that refines the search area or points to a new one?
No new information. Just some new thoughts.
What kind of team is required to conduct the search and what skills or expertise are needed? Has the effort to identify and select team members begun?
We're not there yet. Here's the hypothesis we'd like to test:
On the morning of May 9, 1927, as the White Bird flew southwestward over the Cape Shore arm of Newfoundland's Avalon Peninsula, the aircraft's coolant system ruptured forcing an emergency landing on or near a small lake known locally as The Gull Pond (shown on maps as Goose Pond). The landing was not successful and the aircraft was destroyed. The crew was probably killed on impact or in a post-crash fire. Months or possibly years later, the wreck was discovered by James Joseph (Jim Joe) Doyle of Gooseberry Cove, a small village on the western side of the Cape Shore about eight miles from the pond.
Doyle's sole interest in the wreck was as a source of useful materials (aluminum sheet and steel wire/cable). There was more useful material than he could carry home at one time so he stockpiled salvaged components on a small rocky island in the southern end of the pond. This was probably accomplished in the winter using a horse and sled to move wreckage over the ice from the crash site to the stash site on the island. Local people typically only went "back in the country" during the summer months to hunt grouse, so storing his stash on the island protected it from being taken by others. Local people did, however, notice the debris on the island and recognized it as airplane wreckage - thus was born the legend of "the plane in the pond."
Over the years, Doyle retrieved and used much of the material. Eventually all of the debris was removed from the island except for one fragment buried in the mud which we found.
Logically, all that now remains is the rusted hulk of the 12-cylinder Lorraine-Dietrch engine.
Logically, the engine is at the original crash site, it being too heavy for Doyle to move and of no value as salvage.
Logically, the crash site and engine are within a distance from the island in the pond that
Doyle could traverse with a horse and sled.
We have searched the southern end of the pond and the immediately surrounding area. Nothing there.
It is impractical to physically search the rest of the pond and the surrounding muskeg with boots on the ground. The area is only accessible on foot (five mostly vertical miles from the nearest road) or helicopter. What we need is some kind of remote sensing technology that can image an anomalous mass of metal from the air even if it's buried in silt on the bottom of a pond. So far I've looked into LIDAR and Synthetic Aperture Radar. Neither seem ideal.
Is any approval or cooperation of a government agency needed?
Any archaeological searching on the ground requires the participation of an approved Newfoundland archaeologist and a provincial permit.
Based on those approvals, is there any anticipated timeframe when the expedition will occur, how long it will last, and how much funding needs to be raised?
The first step is to identify the right technology, figure out how much it will cost to deploy it, raise the money, do the survey, and then we'll know if we have targets to go after with a ground team.