The latest Tighar Tracks explanation of the damage to 2-2 V-1, particularly the bottom edge “failure in tension” struck a chord with me that I hadn’t realized until this morning. I guess it was lurking in my sub-conscious until I was in that half-awake/half asleep period. I’ve a couple of questions which may shed some light on feasibility of some further research that the Forum may weigh-in on.
The observation that the heavy taxi/takeoff, long flight and perhaps a rough landing on the reef may have led to the “failure in tension” is a good one. I’d like to carry it one or two steps further.
When the picture of AE and NP beside the window first surfaced and the gap in the fuselage was noted I remember a search on the forum looking for similar damage on the left side in the vicinity of the cabin door. I don’t think any was found. Given the worsening conditions that may have existed at the end of a long series of flights and after landing on the reef, I wonder:
1. Might the cabin door have been sprung to the point it would not close (or even open) properly, creating a water leak in the fuselage? I think an undamaged fuselage would be relatively water tight, except perhaps around the tailwheel location.
2. If there was no damage to the door, how water tight would the fuselage have been during high tide. Would the tail end have filled with water to the level of the tide and then had to drain (slowly?) as the tide went out? Seems like the weight of this seawater would have added to the vertical stress on the tail twice a day, worsening the gap under the window and perhaps extending it underneath the fuselage to the left side. If the fuselage retained enough positive buoyancy, it seems it might have bobbed up/down in the wave action, perhaps bouncing the tailwheel on the reef, adding to the stress and damage on the fuselage. Might an engineering study of these forces and weights acting on the fuselage be useful? How complicated (and expensive) might it be? Need to figure out volume of fuselage below high tide waterline, weight of water is known, some sort of calculation regarding the strength of the compromised fuselage an values for the forces acting on it.
Probably not a trivial exercise but doable.
3. If you assume the damage was getting progressively worse each day (and how could it not given the above) then the “failure in tension” may have happened at some point prior to the last radio message. At 1:30am local time on July 7, Thelma Lovelace heard Earhart say “we have taken in water.” The tide was low at that time so the aircraft must have moved closer to the reef edge. And/or something bad had happened to the fuselage. Perhaps later but prior to the last known message, the tail assembly failed completely and broke, if not all the way off, enough to drop that section of the fuselage all the way to the reef. What would this have done to the water level inside the fuselage and any attendant effect on the ability to transmit. I expect this would have forced them to evacuate to the beach if they were still aboard.
4. Later the tail separates completely, is broken up and is washed past the Norwich City wreck, around the point to the reef flat where the 1954 photographs appear to show highly reflective objects just under the surface.
All speculation I know but it seems to fit the evidence.