I couldn't tell if the bullet points were your summation or not
I've modified the message to put them all in green ink. That's easier than using quotation marks.
the actual balance point is irrelevant, the general statement that the floatation was to the rear is flawed.
I am even less familiar with buoyancy calculations than I am with aerodynamics.
Bob Brandenburg, LCDR USN (retired) has a more than passing experience with flotation, I imagine.
It seems conceivable to me that the way the airplane responds while moving through the air (location of CG with respect to the center of lift) might differ from the way it responds to water.
"Center of Gravity is the point in a body where the gravitational force may be taken to act. Center of Buoyancy is the center of the gravity of the volume of water which a hull displaces"
("Center of Gravity--Center of Buoyancy").The article about the sinking of a standard Electra appears in
"Amelia Earhart's Crash Reconstruction" by the National Institute for Aviation Research (NIAR). It sounds to me as though that aircraft did not assume a substantially nose-down attitude--the passengers were reported to have been rescued from the wing.
not that it changes the outcome of a water landing any, there is still no way the electrical system would function with the plane floating flat and level. I still fail to see how it could function after being submerged even for a short time. (as would most likely be the case with a reef landing theory)
TIGHAR has collected tidal data on several of the latest expeditions and found out how to correlate the conditions on Niku with other areas nearby that have established tide tables. This allows "hindcasting" the expected tides for July, 1937. I presume, without evidence, that TIGHAR has calculated the effect that the high tides might have on the fuselage and dynamotor. I don't have any of the data in hand nor do I know where it might be on the website in an easily accessible form, but here are some conclusions drawn from TIGHAR's studies:
"Some portions of the reefs surrounding the uninhabited atolls of the Phoenix Group are smooth enough to permit a normal, wheels-down landing and are dry at low tide. During the late morning hours of July 2, 1937, the time when the Electra could have arrived overhead, the tide was out in the Phoenix Islands" (Gillespie,
Finding Amelia, p. 178).
"On the reefs of the southwestern Phoenix Group, late in the morning on Monday, July 5, 1937, it was roughly the midpoint of an incoming tide. Water levels on the reefs ranged from a few inches to a couple of feet, depending on the exact location, but even at full high tide the levels did not reach five feet. There could be knee-deep water in the cabin if the plane was on its belly, but in that situation the radio would be submerged and inoperable. For the messages to be legitimate, it had to be possible to run the plane’s right-hand, generator-equipped engine to recharge the battery. For the right-hand propeller to have clearance, the right-hand landing gear had to be supporting the engine" (Gillespie,
Finding Amelia, p. 180).
"In Gardner’s case, the protecting reef is a broad, flat expanse of hard coral. At high tide, upward of four feet of water cover the surface, but at low tide, the reef flat at Gardner is dry or covered by only a thin film of water. At such times, from the air, the island looks like it is surrounded by a giant parking lot. In many places, especially near the ocean’s edge, the reef surface is smooth enough to ride a bicycle—or land an airplane. On the morning of July 9, 1937, the tide was high at Gardner Island, and a photograph of the shoreline taken from one of the search planes shows lines of surf running across the flat to the beach. Heavy breakers all along the reef’s seaward edge hide anything that might have been there" (Gillespie,
Finding Amelia, p. 208).