Good discussion. The next issue of TIGHAR Tracks as currently planned, will feature three articles/papers:
• What happened to the Plane?
• What Happened to Fred?
• Lost In Translation (a discussion of cultural factors that influence the credibility and accuracy of the several accounts we have of airplane wreckage seen at Nikumaroro)
To answer a few of the questions raised by Don, Jon and Greg:
Don - "I'm wondering if TIGHAR has ever investigated other similar circumstances for a known aircraft?"
As Greg pointed out, we have one example of a plane being landed on a reef. See
Better Than Average Luck Whether that plane was ultimately washed off the reef is not clear.
During WWII planes did land or crash on reefs but they didn't last long. I'm aware of no occasion when an aircraft landed on a reef was washed off, and floated away to sink in deep water.
Jon - "..the Electra likely experienced a very rough ride across the reef, banging in the troughs, leaning or tumbling on the crests, with wheels (and later props and wings and other protuberances) getting stuck in fissures or troughs in the coral and likely damaged or torn off."
The landing gear in the Bevington Photo is wrecked. The fork has pulled out of the oleo strut and the worm gear has cut through the tire. The brake line may be the only thing holding the whole mess together. The scenario that makes the most sense to me is that waves big enough to float the plane surge across the reef, lifting the plane and setting it downward enough to collapse the gear. The plane, now on its belly on the reef gets pushed around and the gear comes apart and separates from the airframe in much the same way as it did in the Luke Field accident. At some point the wrecked gear assembly gets jammed in one of the grooves in the reef edge.
I'm not convinced that the "debris field" Jeff Glickman saw in the ROV video is not just coral, but there is far more evidence to support the hypothesis that the plane broke up close to the reef edge than there is to support the "floated away" theory.
Don - " I do find it hard to understand how if the plane broke up on or near the reef how more of it didn't float back to shore."
But much of it did float back to shore.
Jon cites:
"1. Nessie
2. Wheel seen in the Tatiman Passage
3. Emily Sikuli seeing aircraft parts on the reef
4. 2-2-V-1
5. The dado
6. Numerous pieces of aircraft(?) aluminum"
And there's more than that. I have a pretty good idea exactly what Emily saw.