The question for me (I'm not AE, of course...) would first be whether a reef landing appeared to be more survivable (to the ship and therefore me) than a ditching; having read about and looked at pictures of Niku's reef I'd take the reef (AE remains to be seen, we hope). Wheels up or down would be next question - wheels down can be an off-airport hazard - but not always. At Niku I believe I'd try for wheels down, given big fat airwheels like the Electra had - that reef isn't much worse than some strips that bird likely saw in her day. This other adventure worked out OK, good to see.
Again, none of us can say about AE for sure, of course - but my own consideration for the reef would be doubly positive had I found myself there and knowing of this fascinating precedent - which was brought to us in this string.
Many thanks, Chris - very cool.
I posted this a few months ago when we were discussing parachutes:
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Back in 1972 a friend of mine, Bob Staehling, had an engine failure one day while flying N7984C, an SNJ, the Navy version of the AT-6, which has the same engine as Earhart's Electra. He made an emergency landing in a plowed farmer's field, the plane flipped onto its back crushing the canopy and killing Bob. Bob had been shot down three times in WW2 and he parachuted into the Pacific each time and floated in his life raft, the first time for nine days, before being saved. We all thought it to be terribly ironic that he had survived being shot down in the Pacific three times and then got killed on dry land only a mile from his house. I wouldn't be at all surprised if his last thoughts had been "gee, I wish I had worn a parachute on this flight."
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Bob's son was riding in the back seat and was severely injured but survived and he told us that his father said, as they were on the approach to the farmer's field, that he was going to put the gear down to try to save the plane and minimize damage. If he had kept the wheels in the wells the plane would have slid on its belly, damaging the belly, but they both would have walked away. I actually suspect his very last thought was "why the $#@^& did I put the ^%$# gear down!"
When I instruct I carefully explain the concept of being "pilot in command" since "command" is not a term used in civilian life. We are all good at making decisions where we choose between good result and bad result. But when you are in command you may have to make decisions where the only choices are bad result and very bad result, the "good result" choice is not on the answer sheet. An army commander might have a mission to take an enemy occupied hill. He thinks it through and if he attacks from the east he estimates he will have fifty killed and if he attacks from the west he estimates he will loose seventy. He doesn't want to have any of his troops killed but he must capture that hill. So he chooses the least bad option, attack from the east. Landing
gear up on the reef and doing damage to the belly of the Electra is a bad option but landing
gear down and having a wheel get stuck in a hole, flip the plane and kill everybody on board is a
really bad result. I can't tell you how many cases I had with dead people because the pilot in command tried to get to a destination when he didn't have the fuel in the tanks to make it, the "good result" choice was not available, rather than make a safe precautionary landing on a dry lake bed and then deal with the hassles, a bad result. So instead they got the really bad result with a bunch of dead people in the plane after running completely out of gas over dangerous terrain.
These guys were lucky. What if, on the landing roll, one of the main wheels had gotten caught like the tailwheel did, destroyed plane and with dead or injured occupants.
gl