You like to set up a "strawman" so that you can easily knock it down. You demand that the "crash and sankers," and now the "floated away from Gardners," to provide physical proof to back up their theories knowing full well that inherent in those theories is that the plane sank somewhere on the 70% of the earth's surface that is ocean so that it is highly unlikely that the plane will ever be found. So as long as the plane is not found you can claim that those theories are weaker than yours, this is a pretty clever tactic on your part.
It is not a strawman and it is not a tactic. I merely ask that proponents of other theories do what TIGHAR has done - present evidence. The champions of Japanese Capture have failed to produce evidence other than contradictory anecdotal recollections and a few fancifully misinterpreted archival documents such as the
Love To Mother telegram and the
Morgenthau transcript.
The advocates of Crashed & Sank don't even have that much, but it's not for want of effort. The Howland Group, Nauticos, and most recently Waitt have spent orders of magnitude more money than TIGHAR searching the ocean bottom in the area where they calculated the plane should be (somewhat less than 70% of the earth's surface). They have found exactly nothing. That, of course, does not prove that the plane isn't there - only that they didn't find it. What says that it isn't there are the post-loss radio signals. If only one of the signals is genuine, then the airplane can't have crashed and sank. Our
catalog and analysis of all the known reported signals leaves us with two possibilities:
-Either the Earhart aircraft was on land and on its gear in the Phoenix Islands area for several nights following its disappearance
or
- There was a hoaxer in the Phoenix Islands area who had the capability to transmit on Earhart's frequencies, could mimic her voice, had information about her that few people were aware of (such as her incompetence at Morse code), and just happened to be in the Phoenix Group on July 2 or had positioned himself there because he knew ahead of time that she would not reach Howland.
Which possibility do you feel is the most likely?
The Floated Away hypothesis has the same problem as Crashed & Sank. You can do calculations all day long but the available evidence argues against it.
But lets turn this around and as Lucy said in one episode:
"Oh Ricky, you've got some 'splaining to do."
Fire away Lucy.
1. What became of all the debris in the 1937 photo?
I don't know. It was there then and it's gone now. That's a given. It was apparently still there in 1940 or '41 when Emily Sikuli saw what her father said was debris from an airplane in the same spot. The reef edge is an extremely dynamic environment.
Norwich City looks a tad different today than it did in 1937. I'm frankly surprised the debris Bevington photographed in '37 was still there three or four years later.
2. What became of the metal door?
Beats me. Maybe it's still somewhere back in the bush where the kids left it. We'll take a look when we're there next summer but that area where the door was reportedly found - just south of Bauareke Passage, known as Nurabu - gets overwashed periodically. One thing we've learned is that the sea giveth and the the sea taketh away.
3. How did the debris field move over to the main entrance, and what happened to all that debris?
I wasn't there so I can't say for sure, but
Norwich City provides us with an excellent model for what happens to man-made structures that get hung up on the reef. The ship went aground in November 1929 and remained largely intact until January 1939 when the aft half - the part that was not aground on the reef - broke off and sank. There is some, but surprisingly little, wreckage on the reef slope down to about 150 meters. The bulk of the stern must be deeper than we've looked so far.
The massive triple-expansion steam engine was amidships and remains on the reef edge to this day. Over the years, the half of the ship from the engine forward gradually weakened due to rust, broke up in storms, and was scattered across the reef flat. Only the lower structure of the hull and keel now remain where they were in 1929. Most of the ship is just gone. A debris field of heavy components - oil tanks, boiler, winches, etc. - runs in an east and southeasterly direction across the flat. There's a large section of hull plating up against the shoreline about halfway to the entrance of the main lagoon passage. There is some shipwreck debris on the shore of the lagoon peninsula (Taraia) opposite the main passage and there is a large tank from the ship on the lagoon shore just north of Bauareke (the southern) Passage.
So .... at least in the case of
Norwich City, some parts of the wreck went into the water and sank to a depth greater than we have yet explored, and parts that were on the reef were scattered in an east and southeasterly direction, then along the shore toward the main passage. The passage is basically a venturi and there is a strong flow in or out of the lagoon depending on the state of the tide. Floating debris moved through the passage and either across or down the lagoon, probably depending on the direction of wind and surge through the main passage. Most of the wreckage from the forward half of the ship - tons and tons - is just gone, apparently rusted away.
4. How did the debris move to inside the lagoon opposite the main entrance and what happened to all that debris?
My guess would be that it got there the same way floating debris from Norwich City got there. Based on what we have found in the abandoned village, the aluminum used by the locals - from whatever source - was primarily sheet (skin). They made combs, decorative inlays for carved wooden crafts they traded or sold to servicemen, but mostly they just cut it up into small rectangles they used as fishing lures. In other words, most of their use of aluminum was consumptive. They used it up.
5, What happened to the wheel?
I don't know. What I do know is that in the year between the time Greg Stone says he saw it (2002) and we were able to get a team out there to look for it, the west end of the island was hit with weather that did significant damage to the shoreline where he said he saw the wheel. Over the years we've been going to the island we've seen a regrettable increase in the severity of storms. Buildings that have stood since the place was abandoned in 1963 have only recently been flattened by waves coming ashore in storms and parts of the old village that were still rich with artifacts in 1989 have since been swept clean by overwash.
6. Why didn't Lambrecht notice any of these shiny debris fields since they were obvious enough to show up in a photo?
I don't think the debris fields were there yet. At the time Lambrecht flew over I think the wreckage of the airplane was hung up in relatively shallow water just past the reef edge and obscured from view by the surf. Had there been aircraft debris washed up all over the place, Bevington and Maude should have seen it in October 1937; the new Zealand Survey party should have seen it in late 1939/early 1939; the Grumman Duck from USS Pelican should have seen it in April 1939; the USS Bushnell survey party should have seen it in November 1939. The earliest report we have of airplane debris being seen is Emily in 1940 or '41 and she doesn't see a debris field. She sees one piece of wreckage, apparently jammed in the reef, that can only be seen at low tide on a calm day and doesn't look like an airplane. How did her father know it was part of an airplane? Somebody must have seen more than that, either her father himself or villagers who fished on the reef edge. By 1944 the locals were decorating carved wooden boxes with bits of aluminum they told U.S. servicemen were from "the downed plane" so they apparently had some access to pieces of wreckage - but the Coasties were certainly not aware of any great mysterious debris fields of airplane wreckage. The first debris field we know of turns up in the 1953 aerial mapping photos and it's only four pieces of light colored metal, but they're along the shore just at the ocean side entrance to the main passage - just where they should be if the plane has started to seriously break up and the wreckage is following the same distribution pattern as the
Norwich City wreckage. Later in the 1950s we have reports of part of a wing on the reef in that same area, another piece of wreckage on the Taraia lagoon shore and the door down by Bauareke Passage - all consistent with the known distribution pattern of
Norwich City wreckage.
"A debris field here, a debris field there, here a debris field there a debris field everywhere a debris field, old McDonald had a farm, ee eye ee eye oh."
You have the same problem that the various Japanese capture theories have, conflicting locations that can't all be right and if three out of four are wrong then there is a good chance that all four out of four are wrong. Same with all of your "debris fields."
Not so but far otherwise. The anecdotes and photos do not conflict. They fit a known model of wreckage distribution determined by the natural forces acting upon the island.
Up to this point you have recovered about five pounds of materials that you speculate could have come from the Electra.
I wasn't aware you had weighed it. I haven't.
You have not been able to prove that any piece that you recovered came from the Electra and from nowhere else. Stuff was "consistent with" the Electra but also "consistent with" other sources.
Which pieces are you referring to that are consistent with the Electra but also consistent with other sources? If an artifact is so amorphous that it's consistent with the Electra but also consistent other sources we don't pay much attention to it. It's the ones that we can't connect with other sources that get our attention.
We've tried our level best to match our piece of aluminum skin (2-2-V-1) to something, anything, other than an Electra. I could bore you for hours with the aircraft we've crawled over and measured. The closest match is still to the Lockheed 10. Everything fits except the rivet pattern - and that comes darn close. We know the metal is from a repair. We don't know how the repairs to NR16020 were actually carried out. Find me an airplane that it fits better than an Electra and I'll thank you sincerely. That thing has been driving me nuts for 20 years.
Our piece of plexi matches the engineering drawing for the cabin windows of the Model 10. The material, thickness, color, and compound curvature are right. I can't find a match anywhere on WWII airplane but i haven't checked them all. Maybe you can find one.
The things we think are heat shields are puzzling. We can imagine how they might have been used on Earhart's aircraft but we haven't been able to find any other aircraft that has any part anything like them. Maybe you'll have better luck.
The plane weighed 7,000 pounds, where are the other 6,995 pounds of the wreckage that you claim was seen at various times? Since the pieces of metal would have been valuable materials, they should have been recovered by the natives and put to use in their village and you should have found a whole lot more than five pounds of questionable materials.
As I hope I've 'splained above, I think most of those 6,995 pounds are underwater and the bits that did wash ashore were, for the most part, salvaged and used up. What we have found in the village are the scraps left over from that activity.
These island people are very adept at harvesting things from the sea and they had plenty of time to do it. They would not have just passed a "legend" down that there was such valuable stuff out on the reef, they would have gone and gotten it. So Ric, what did you do with all that other stuff?
Would have? Did the people who lived on Nikumaroro harvest things from the sea by diving or didn't they? I've often wondered whether a fisherman who looked down from the reef edge on a rare, flat calm day and saw a wrecked airplane five or ten feet below might dive down and try to salvage something. I sure wouldn't. Torn aluminum is sharp and there are always plenty of sharks around - but I'm not Gilbertese. In numerous interviews with former residents and reading thousands of pages of archival documents I've never heard or seen a reference to the people who lived on Nikumaroro diving in the ocean, or in the lagoon for that matter. They did a lot of fishing but you don't need to dive to get fish there. At Niku you don't even need bait. Just put a line in the water with something shiny on it (like a little piece of airplane skin) and in no time you'll have a fish. They mostly fished from sailing canoes in the lagoon. Getting out over the reef through the breakers to the ocean was dangerous and usually only done in the whaleboat that was used to ferry supplies ashore from ships. There was apparently also some ocean fishing done by standing out at the reef edge at low tide on calm days (the ONLY time you'd want to be anywhere near that reef edge).
Sorry for the length of this posting but your questions and tone made it apparent that some 'splainin' was indeed in order. If you could have so many misconceptions, so might others. That's our fault, not yours, or theirs. It's our job to make what we've learned easily and clearly accessible so that interested people like yourself can form their opinions based on accurate information. We try, but we clearly need to do better. I hope this overly-long posting helps.