TIGHAR
Amelia Earhart Search Forum => Alternatives to the Niku Hypothesis => Topic started by: Martin X. Moleski, SJ on August 28, 2010, 11:42:06 AM
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"Claims Amelia Earhart's Plane Found." (http://www.stuff.co.nz/world/south-pacific/4070865/Claims-Amelia-Earharts-plane-found)
If so, we'll have to revise our thinking. ;D
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Interesting! But, how can that be? Well, it'll be interesting to see what the outcome is of this wreckage.
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Near the bottom of the article it talks about New Zealand Coast Watchers and 2 bodies on Niku, both sent back to Fiji.
Dosn't scan with the available evidence for the Niku Hypothysis (sp)
Are there records of Electras in the South Pacific and Loss dates and locations? Could just be another plane wreck. Could also be anything without some photo evidence.
If........it was then quite a few people would have to change there ideas but i'm not holding my breath on this one.
In the UK they claim August as a quite month for news.
And (added after thinking about it) the Itasca had radio messages from AE that put the plane there or there abouts in the vacinity of Howland. Therefore to even a navigational newbie like me this means that they must have got past PNG and associated islands.
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Before I get even remotely excited about this - let's all remember that there was a war fought here, there were a lot of twin-engine planes that resembled Electras, including the Japanese Tachikawa Ki-54, the Beech C-45 Expeditor, and any number of others I can think of off the top of my head, lost in that theater of operations.
Plus, trying to positively ID a coral-encrusted wreck in 120 feet of water isn't as easy as it sounds. Sure, you and I can look at photos and say, "Yep, that's an Electra." But without reliable on-site measurements, or aircraft-specific, diagnostic artifacts, what you get from photos is usually no better than a WAG.
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It took our Earhart Project Advisory Council (EPAC) researcher Art Rypinski about six hours to find a likely candidate for the Lockheed reportedly found in the Solomons. On February 2, 1944 a Lockheed PV-1 "Ventura" was lost in Buka Passage off Bougainville. See the list of Ventura losses (http://www.aviationarchaeology.com/src/USN/PV.htm) on TIGHAR member Craig Fuller's AAIR website. The Ventura was a military version of the Lockheed Model 18, the third in a series of follow-on designs to the original Model 10 Electra. All had the same basic twin-engine, twin-tail layout. The Model 12 "Electra Junior" was a smaller six-passenger business aircraft (used as a stand-in for AE's Model 10 in the recent chick-flick). The Model 14 "Super Electra" was much larger and chunkier, immortalized as the RAF "Hudson" bomber. The Model 18 "Lodestar" was sleeker, flush-riveted, and very fast. The USAAF had a transport version called the C-60. The U.S. Navy versions were the "Ventura" and "Harpoon."
Earhart is known to have been within about 200 miles of Howland with less than five hours of fuel remaining. To return 2,000 miles to crash in the Solomons would require a speed of 400 mph - something of an improvement over the airplane's usual cruising speed of 150 mph. I don't think so.
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Earhart is known to have been within about 200 miles of Howland with less than five hours of fuel remaining. To return 2,000 miles to crash in the Solomons would require a speed of 400 mph - something of an improvement over the airplane's usual cruising speed of 150 mph. I don't think so.
My thoughts exactly, Ric.
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Well that's impressive! Solving a riddle in six hours. Amazing to think that those guys have been down there for 66 years.
All the same, is there anything we can learn from a similar plane model being in a similar environment for a roughly equal period of time? Perhaps something about how corrosion affects the plane?
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We have many examples of aircraft in similar environments for similar periods of time. The best is a Douglas TBD-1 "Devastator" (http://tighar.org/Projects/Devastator/tosave.htm) at a depth of 125 feet in Jaluit lagoon in the Marshall Islands. Coral growth depends upon sunlight so, in that respect, the deeper the better. Corrosion does not become a big problem until the aircraft is brought to the surface and then it's a BIG problem. TIGHAR is working with the Texas A&M's Center for Maritime Archaeology and Conservation (CMAC) in College Station, TX to develop and test techniques for stabilizing aluminum aircraft that have been submerged in salt water for extended periods.
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Once again, for TIGHAR, as the saying goes, "Nothing but net!" ;) Still, it would be nice to positively ID the aircraft, to give the families involved closure if nothing else. My thoughts are with them.
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There are a few tales of finding Amelia's electra. It is a fact that Amelia said gas running low, and yet there it David Billings, who claims he saw a wasp engine in the mts of New Guinea that had a tag on it with SN1055. He says he has been searching for it for 15 years. he thinks Amelia coud have conserved fuel and flew almost back to Lae.
Tighar's hypothsis, is the most plausible, has the most evidence, and only needs some positive identification of at least one of the artifacts that we have found.
You can read this by googling "Engine in mts of New Guinea". also http://www.electranewbritain.com.
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Sorry about the link. Try http://ameliaearhartandpng.blogspot.com/ Mike
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i am from the area where the plane is believed to be submerged.. though some of the locals have sighted the wreck and actually touched it we are yet to actually photograph the wreck as evidence . there are two skeletons located in the cabin upfront.. we are in the process of identifiying now with the help of qualified divers.. according to one person who actually saw it go down and several old people in the village who were around the plane crashed in 1937...before the war... the island name is matsungan island on the west coast of buka in the north of the autonomous region of bougainville
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Joel
that is very interesting to hear. Photos, of course, would help establish whether this is credible, and if there are qualified divers involved, they should be able to take the photos necessary.
You say "we are in the process of identifying..." Who is we? Are you directly involved?
I'd like to hear more about the eyewitness accounts, and how they remember the year as 1937. Are there any written / recorded accounts?
The original news of this find, found at
http://www.stuff.co.nz/world/south-pacific/4070865/Claims-Amelia-Earharts-plane-found
says the following:
"Local politicians have become involved and an expedition is to be mounted next month in a bid to confirm the identity of the plane."
Do you have any information about the local politicians or the expedition described?
Thanks
Andrew McKenna
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I don't think we need to get too excited about these reports around New Guinae. AE flew for 11 hours from Lae, talked to Itaska with signal getting louder, talked about going 157-337, Gas running low, all good information. For her to show up over there on 3 hours of fuel is ridiculous
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I don't think we need to get too excited about these reports around New Guinae. AE flew for 11 hours from Lae, talked to Itaska with signal getting louder, talked about going 157-337, Gas running low, all good information. For her to show up over there on 3 hours of fuel is ridiculous
You are, of course, correct.
And yet, whatever is underwater is a "historic aircraft," ant TIGHAR stands for "The International Group for Historic Aircraft Preservation."
It is an interesting find. It seems to me that it will be fun to see how the story turns out. YMMV. ;)
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I don't think we need to get too excited about these reports around New Guinae. AE flew for 11 hours from Lae, talked to Itaska with signal getting louder, talked about going 157-337, Gas running low, all good information. For her to show up over there on 3 hours of fuel is ridiculous
Agreed with you, there! I personally don't see how she could be at that LOP, and be able to turn back to New Guinea... Seems impossible.
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... I personally don't see how she could be at that LOP, and be able to turn back to New Guinea. ...
A Line of Position (http://tighar.org/wiki/LOP) is just a straight line on a map.
It doesn't have any particular location.
From anywhere in the world, one can fly on the straight line indicated by 337-157 on a compass.
The last transmission (http://tighar.org/wiki/%22We_are_on_the_line_157_337%22) doesn't tell us anything about how far east or west AE and FN were at the time they made the transmission.
A navigator with access to the same tables that Fred used that morning might be able to draw a region of probability about where the aircraft must have been IF Fred derived the 337-157 line from a dawn observation--I'm not sure how big the region is where that line would be derived from sighting sunrise. But in and of itself, the message does not say how close they were to Niku or how far away they were from Papua New Guinea.
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A Line of Position (http://tighar.org/wiki/LOP) is just a straight line on a map.
It doesn't have any particular location.
From anywhere in the world, one can fly on the straight line indicated by 337-157 on a compass.
The last transmission (http://tighar.org/wiki/%22We_are_on_the_line_157_337%22) doesn't tell us anything about how far east or west AE and FN were at the time they made the transmission.
A navigator with access to the same tables that Fred used that morning might be able to draw a region of probability about where the aircraft must have been IF Fred derived the 337-157 line from a dawn observation--I'm not sure how big the region is where that line would be derived from sighting sunrise. But in and of itself, the message does not say how close they were to Niku or how far away they were from Papua New Guinea.
Oh, thanks for the information, Marty. :)
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With all due respect, a Line of Position is more than just a straight line on a map. When Fred Noonan shot the sun on the morning of July 2nd and put a 157/337 line on his map, he could be sure that he was somewhere on that line. Realistically, the "line" might be as much as ten miles wide in an East/West sense and he couldn't know for sure where on the line he was in a North/South sense, but it was better than a dead-reckoning guess. Go to What is the significance of Earhart’s statement “We are on the line 157/337”? (http://tighar.org/Projects/Earhart/forum/FAQs/navigation.html) for a good explanation of Line of Position.
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With all due respect, a Line of Position is more than just a straight line on a map. When Fred Noonan shot the sun on the morning of July 2nd and put a 157/337 line on his map, he could be sure that he was somewhere on that line. Realistically, the "line" might be as much as ten miles wide in an East/West sense and he couldn't know for sure where on the line he was in a North/South sense, but it was better than a dead-reckoning guess. Go to What is the significance of Earhart’s statement “We are on the line 157/337”? (http://tighar.org/Projects/Earhart/forum/FAQs/navigation.html) for a good explanation of Line of Position.
okay, now I don't feel so bad. I had read that link you posted a little while back and understood it as how you explained it in this post, not as moleski put it simply as a compass heading.
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With all due respect, a Line of Position is more than just a straight line on a map.
No. That's all it is. The term refers to a line drawn as the result of doing an observation. The ideal is to get two LOPs to cross. Then you know that you are almost certainly at the point of intersection (or nearby, at any rate).
"A line indicating a series of possible positions of a craft, determined by observation or measurement. Also known as position line" (Sci-Tech Dictionary (http://www.answers.com/topic/line-of-position)).
A Line of Position is not a "fix." The "fix" comes from having Lines of Position cross each other.
When Fred Noonan shot the sun on the morning of July 2nd and put a 157/337 line on his map, he could be sure that he was somewhere on that line.
But Fred didn't tell us the time at which he made that observation. The terminator swept out that line all across a very large region of the Pacific that morning. With the knowledge of what time he observed the sun, plus knowledge of his altitude, plus some tables, plus some calculations, FRED could draw a line on his charts and say, "We were on that line at such-and-such a time this morning. Now I all have to do is dead-reckon to a parallel Line of Position drawn through Howland Island. When we reach that advanced LOP, which I have drawn on my chart to aid dead-reckoning, then we will know that it is time to turn north or south."
Note that both LOPS are 337-157. That's because they are parallel. You can't tell one apart from the other by the compass headings that define them.
Without Fred sending us his chart and without any record of WHEN he made the sun observation, we are ignorant of something he knew.
From the information that his two LOPs were 337-157, we cannot say how far apart their were on his chart.
What we could know is how big a range in the South Pacific would have a 337-157 line drawn by the terminator between night and day on 2 June 1937. The angle of the line drawn by the terminator changes with one's location at the time of the observation because the earth is a globe, not a circle, and the line between night and day is curved around that globe.
We can (and do), of course, surmise that AE's transmissions about being 200 and 100 miles from Howland give us some idea of when Fred drew the two LOPs on his charts and started counting down the distance from one to the other. But that extra information is not encoded by saying, "The dawn LOP on my chart and the advanced LOP that I drew through Howland is 337-157."
Realistically, the "line" might be as much as ten miles wide in an East/West sense and he couldn't know for sure where on the line he was in a North/South sense, but it was better than a dead-reckoning guess.
I never said it was a guess. What I said was that from the information given that their advanced LOP was 337-157, we do not know where they were when Fred took the dawn observation. He knew (if his watch was keeping good time); we don't know.
Go ask a navigator where the line 337-157 is in the Pacific. He will tell you that is everywhere and nowhere. Any time you're flying, you can turn to a heading of 337 or 157.
Go to What is the significance of Earhart’s statement “We are on the line 157/337”? (http://tighar.org/Projects/Earhart/forum/FAQs/navigation.html) for a good explanation of Line of Position.
Go to Marine Navigation courses: Lines of Position (http://www.sailingissues.com/navcourse4.html) to see how lines drawn on a chart lead to a fix.
Go to Lines of Position (http://www.math.ubc.ca/~cass/courses/m308-02b/projects/jackson/Page3.html) to see how such lines are drawn on charts from observation of celestial bodies.
"Lines of position are constructed on a geographic map from observational data and indicate the observer’s position. For complete determination of a position, it is necessary to construct at least two lines of position, whose intersection corresponds to the unknown location. Here, to ensure a reliable determination, both lines of position must intersect at an angle that is not too acute—at least 30°. If the lines of position have several, usually two, points of intersection, it is not difficult to select the necessary point, since the approximate location of the point of observation is usually known. For the same reason, observers often restrict themselves to constructing only a short segment near the approximate position of the observer rather than an entire line of position. This segment is replaced with the tangent to the line of position.
"Lines of position are used extensively in navigation and aviation to determine the position of a ship or aircraft from the observed altitudes of two celestial bodies. This method was first published by the American sailor T. Sumner in 1843. Such celestial lines of position are called Sumner lines. A convenient, simple method of calculating and constructing these curved lines on a map was demonstrated in 1849 by the Russian sailor M. A. Akimov. Since the late 19th century, celestial lines of position have been calculated and constructed by an even more convenient method proposed by the French sailor M. St.-Hilaire in 1875."
Source: The Great Soviet Encyclopedia. (http://encyclopedia2.thefreedictionary.com/Line+of+Position)
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With all due respect, a Line of Position is more than just a straight line on a map. When Fred Noonan shot the sun on the morning of July 2nd and put a 157/337 line on his map, he could be sure that he was somewhere on that line. Realistically, the "line" might be as much as ten miles wide in an East/West sense and he couldn't know for sure where on the line he was in a North/South sense, but it was better than a dead-reckoning guess. Go to What is the significance of Earhart’s statement “We are on the line 157/337”? (http://tighar.org/Projects/Earhart/forum/FAQs/navigation.html) for a good explanation of Line of Position.
okay, now I don't feel so bad. I had read that link you posted a little while back and understood it as how you explained it in this post, not as moleski put it simply as a compass heading.
Let me quote from Ric's link: "The numbers refer to degrees on a compass. Amelia was saying that they were on a line that points 157 degrees (roughly southeast) one way, and 337 degrees (roughly northwest) the other way.
"Of course, you are on a 157 337 line right now and it can’t tell you anything about where you are ..."
That is quoting the page to which Ric referred (http://tighar.org/Projects/Earhart/forum/FAQs/navigation.html). Even when you add in the idea that this was a compass heading given by the line between night and day, you still haven't specified how big the region is out in the Pacific where an observer could have derived that line from seeing the sun rise, checking the chronometer, consulting tables, and doing some calculations to account for the altitude of the aircraft above the surface of the earth. Saying that AE and FN were on a LOP of 337-157 at sunrise does not tell us how far east or west they were--because we don't know what time they made that observation. The statement that "the LOP was 337-157" does not contain that crucial information. There is a limit to how far west they could have been, if we make some assumptions about their latitude--but, so far as I know, no one at TIGHAR has done the calculation.
The closer you get to the poles, the closer the LOP drawn by the dawn terminator would approach to 270-90 (E-W). If the earth weren't tilted 23.5 degrees on its axis, at the equator the dawn LOP would always be 360-180 (N-S). But the earth is tilted and the dawn LOP is going to vary continuously from one observation point as the days pass until a full solar year has elapsed. I don't know how refined the tables were--that is, whether the steps were by day, week, or month. But it's not hard to see the issue. For a moment, hold the earth still. Hold it in your hand so that the terminator west of Howland Island, not too far north of the equator, has a tangent of 337-157 from the circle of light falling on the globe whose center is in the sun. With your other hand, drop the sun down until it reaches the winter solstice--the most southern point of its course. Your dawn LOP is now going to be closer to N-S than it was on 2 July. Bring the sun back up through the next six months to the summer solstice in June--the most northern part of the sun's course. The LOP near Howland is going to be more E-W than it was six months before. On 2 July, the sun has started back down and has about 1/13th of the distance to the next solstice. I can't picture whether that is a 2 degree difference or a 4 degree difference from LOP observed at the summer solstice, but it is in that neighborhood, I think.
If there were no tilt of the earth, the LOP observed from the dawn sighting would be the same every day. I think that the difference between the solstice dawn LOPs must be 23.5 degrees every six months, for a total cycle of 47 degrees. The sun appears to be 23.5 degrees above the equator at our summer solstice and 23.5 degrees below the equator at our winter solstice. If so, the dawn LOP observed from the same place would vary a little less than a degree per week.
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Woah. Gentlemen, I thank you for both of your help (Ric & Marty). :)
Didn't mean to start a little debate here. :P
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Ric's likely correct in the overall sense, in my thinking - there are too many details established about proximity to Howland to lead me to believe that AE somehow wound up so close to her point of origin...
I'm betting on the Niku hypothesis. I'm not arguing against it. I'm trying to clarify how to visualize and state it correctly. We do not know where on his charts Fred drew the line he derived from his dawn sighting. There is a very large area on the face of the earth where a LOP of 337-157 would be derived from watching the sun rise. That tangent to the terminator travels with the terminator across the face of the earth 24 hours a day. We are unable to put our finger on a map of the Pacific and say, "That's it. That's the line that AE and FN were on when sun rose." From the information that the LOP was 337-157, we know roughly what region they were in--on the assumption that Fred made a good observation, that his chronometer and the plane's altimeter were accurate, and that his calculations were correct.
That said, IF FN did take the shot at a reliable time by his timepiece at sunrise, then the LOP would most definitely be along a 'certain line' of the surface of our earth (or the Pacific Ocean, in this case) - and at 337 - 157 as stated as a function of bearing to the sunrise.
Somehow I suspect the 'new find' will turn out to be another airplane, perhaps another Lockheed, not AE's - and would bet on TIGHAR's current notion on which one it probably is. That too said, it will be most interesting to see what really comes of this - we're in the middle of a long-standing mystery that has had some weird turns in it at times, so who really knows until 'they' can establish what this long-lost / newly-found bird really is.
Agreed on both counts.
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As I've read posts to this thread what I've found most interesting isn't the technical details of one navigational alternative or another but the very real fact that items have been found on Niku that have been identified to be virtually exactly what the AE/FN crew might have been carrying. So what potentially interests me most isn't if the discovered Electra is THE Electra (although that is interesting and remains to be seen), but that if the discovered Electra is the AE Electra, then how did all those artifacts turn up on Niku?...
Yeah - I believe the potentially most interesting mystery would be that if in the case AE's Electra was no where near Niku then where did the post-loss transmissions come from? Where did the artifacts come from? Who's bones were those? If AE/FN weren't on Niku then I believe we'd really have the greatest mystery of recent history...
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We do not know where on his charts Fred drew the line he derived from his dawn sighting.
I agree but I would submit that it doesn't matter. He could have made his observation at dawn or any time over the next hour or so and still gotten a 157 337 LOP. The particular time at which he made his observation told him where to draw the line on his map. Wherever he was, he apparently drew his line and then advanced it by dead reckoning to fall through his intended destination. He then calculated his groundspeed and determined how much time it would take the Electra to cover the distance between the two parallel lines. If he was dead on course in a north/south sense, when the time expired Howland should appear. He may have passed AE a note that read something like "ETA 1907" (they were using Greenwich time). It's unlikely that Earhart understood what Fred was doing and that the ETA he gave her was for reaching the advanced LOP, but not necessarily Howland. When 1907 arrived and Howland didn't she may have scanned the horizon for five minutes and then radioed at 1912 (0742 Itasca time), "We must be on you but cannot see you." That phrase - we MUST be on you - conveys much more certainty than Noonan can possibly have had and almost certainly reflects AE's misunderstanding rather than Noonan's calculation. All he could know is that they had reached the advanced LOP at a point either north or south of Howland. The logical course of action then was to search north and then south along the advance LOP hoping to spot Howland. And that, in fact, is exactly what AE said they were doing an hour later in her last in-flight transmission heard by Itasca - probably reading from another note from Fred.
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We do not know where on his charts Fred drew the line he derived from his dawn sighting.
I agree but I would submit that it doesn't matter. He could have made his observation at dawn or any time over the next hour or so and still gotten a 157 337 LOP. The particular time at which he made his observation told him where to draw the line on his map. Wherever he was, he apparently drew his line and then advanced it by dead reckoning to fall through his intended destination. He then calculated his groundspeed and determined how much time it would take the Electra to cover the distance between the two parallel lines. If he was dead on course in a north/south sense, when the time expired Howland should appear. He may have passed AE a note that read something like "ETA 1907" (they were using Greenwich time). It's unlikely that Earhart understood what Fred was doing and that the ETA he gave her was for reaching the advanced LOP, but not necessarily Howland. When 1907 arrived and Howland didn't she may have scanned the horizon for five minutes and then radioed at 1912 (0742 Itasca time), "We must be on you but cannot see you." That phrase - we MUST be on you - conveys much more certainty than Noonan can possibly have had and almost certainly reflects AE's misunderstanding rather than Noonan's calculation. All he could know is that they had reached the advanced LOP at a point either north or south of Howland. The logical course of action then was to search north and then south along the advance LOP hoping to spot Howland. And that, in fact, is exactly what AE said they were doing an hour later in her last in-flight transmission heard by Itasca - probably reading from another note from Fred.
In other words, the evidence of how close they got to Howland Island is not in the words "flying the LOP 337-157," but in an evaluation of other data not contained in that transmission.
Which is the point I was making in reply to Ashley's remark that she could not believe that they could have reached 337-157, then made it back to Papua New Guinea. "337-157" does not contain any of the information you give above which provides good reasons to think that they got so close to Howland that they could never have made it to Papua New Guinea.
As the earth rotates on its axis, there is always some region from which an observer could derive a LOP of 337-157 at dawn. Those numbers, by themselves, without any other information, do not say "they came awfully close to Howland."
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"337-157" does not contain any of the information you give above which provides good reasons to think that they got so close to Howland that they could never have made it to Papua New Guinea.
As the earth rotates on its axis, there is always some region from which an observer could derive a LOP of 337-157 at dawn. Those numbers, by themselves, without any other information, do not say "they came awfully close to Howland."
That's true, but we do have other information. We know that this 157 337 line was drawn at or near dawn on July 2, 1937. Therefore the sun had to rise at 67° (90° to the LOP). In other words, to see the sun rise at 67° on the morning of July 2, 1937 you had to be somewhere on a 157 337 line that, at its closest point, passed a couple hundred miles to the southwest of Howland. The plane may not have been (and probably wasn't) awfully close to Howland, but from nowhere on that line was it possible for that airplane to return to New Guinea.
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I've got a couple navigation questions that don't necessarily fit into the normal lines of questioning.
we know the time that Earhart thought she was on howland, what time was it?
how long after that was she able to stay airborn? (would she have landed in the morning?)
my question is because I read on the forum that one of the popular reasons people are presuming that AE and N would go to the southeast corner of the island is because he would be able to get a fix on his position. My question is why would he?? it would take him longer and more effort to get there than derive his latitude and longitude from the sun sitting on the beach?? granted if he had more celestial bodies to site he could make a more accurate estimate of position but that would mean leaving the plane that was still able to transmit.
If they landed on gardner in the AM Noonan could have determined lat/long. by noon the next day.
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we know the time that Earhart thought she was on howland, what time was it?
At 07:42 local time (1912 GCT) she said "We must be on you..."
how long after that was she able to stay airborn? (would she have landed in the morning?)
Of course, no one knows for sure how much fuel she had left at that point, but based on the airplane's known fuel load at departure and the known capabilities of the airplane she "should" have had about five hours left.
my question is because I read on the forum that one of the popular reasons people are presuming that AE and N would go to the southeast corner of the island is because he would be able to get a fix on his position. My question is why would he?? it would take him longer and more effort to get there than derive his latitude and longitude from the sun sitting on the beach?? granted if he had more celestial bodies to site he could make a more accurate estimate of position but that would mean leaving the plane that was still able to transmit.
If they landed on gardner in the AM Noonan could have determined lat/long. by noon the next day.
I agree. I don't see why Noonan would have to go anywhere to observe local noon to get his latitude or to take star sightings at night to determine his exact position. If he did either of those things he should have been able to figure out where he was. The absence of credible lat/long coordinates or any mention of an island name in any of the known post-loss radio messages makes me think that he was not able to do either of those things for whatever reason. I see no reason to think they abandoned the airplane until forced to do so. I think the move to the southeast end came much later.
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that all works out rather handily for easy ways to reasonably determine position within the time limits of the post loss radio traffic. Too bad either none were heard or they were unable to do so.
the only post loss transmission that seems to fit to me was the one that the girl (in Florida I believe it was?) started jotting down notes on. Someone on the forum cleverly noted that she heard "new york city" which could have easily been a misunderstood description of the wreck of the norwich city.
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Navigation guys’
Jeff may be onto something here.
If AE and FE found themselves on Gardner and FN was able to get a good fix on where they where and he reported on the line (1)58-338 (in Betty’s notebook) can this give us and idea of how far South or North of their original course they were?
If I understand the LOP, it is 90 degrees to the course line, if the final LOP (see above) has changed doesn’t that change the course line?
My guess (and that’s all it is) if you back calculate the Betty’s LOP to the course line you will find that it reinforces the hypotheses that AE and FN were way (and perhaps a mileage figure) South of the intended course to Howland.
Ted Campbell
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"337-157" does not contain any of the information you give above which provides good reasons to think that they got so close to Howland that they could never have made it to Papua New Guinea.
As the earth rotates on its axis, there is always some region from which an observer could derive a LOP of 337-157 at dawn. Those numbers, by themselves, without any other information, do not say "they came awfully close to Howland."
That's true, but we do have other information. We know that this 157 337 line was drawn at or near dawn on July 2, 1937.
Dawn happens all around the world 24 hours a day. On any given day, the 157 337 tangent to the terminator can be observed at any of those dawns. You just have to be in the right place to make the observation.
We don't know what time Fred's dawn was. If we did, we would know where to place a LOP on our charts of the flight. Without that information, there is simply a region of probability.
Therefore the sun had to rise at 67° (90° to the LOP). In other words, to see the sun rise at 67° on the morning of July 2, 1937 you had to be somewhere on a 157 337 line that, at its closest point, passed a couple hundred miles to the southwest of Howland.
Not true. "Morning" is traveling across the face of the earth at approximately 1000 miles per hour close to the equator. There is no "the morning of July 2, 1937."
The plane may not have been (and probably wasn't) awfully close to Howland, but from nowhere on that line was it possible for that airplane to return to New Guinea.
"That line" doesn't exist for us. There isn't just one spot north of the equator and west of Howland where an observer would derive 337-157 from that observer's dawn sighting.
Think of it this way. The 337-157 tangent to the rays of the sun gets carried along on the edge of the terminator. The terminator is moving at about 1000 miles per hour. Every 15 minutes difference in local dawn is about 250 miles difference between the position of the 337-157 LOP that a navigator would put on the map at that observer's dawn. Dawn 250 miles to the east of the observer is not the same "morning" for the western observer. Each one would put the line 337-157 on their chart as one part of getting a fix. The slant of the line is the same but the LOPs are very different.
I'm not saying that Fred's LOP was close enough to New Guinea so that he could turn back. What I'm saying is that the argument about the aircraft's proximity to Howland cannot be made by imagining that there is just one LOP of 337-157 west of Howland and that we know where "it" is. We put a mental boundary on how far west Fred was because of other information, interpreted on other assumptions. Apart from that body of information, interpretation, and argument, we don't know where a LOP of 337-157 is--there is always a 337-157 tangent traveling with the terminator across the face of the earth, 24 hours a day.
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Ric & Marty, both of you gentlemen have interesting points about the LOP. :) Very interesting, and I thank you gentlemen for the facts.
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I agree. I don't see why Noonan would have to go anywhere to observe local noon to get his latitude or to take star sightings at night to determine his exact position. If he did either of those things he should have been able to figure out where he was. The absence of credible lat/long coordinates or any mention of an island name in any of the known post-loss radio messages makes me think that he was not able to do either of those things for whatever reason. I see no reason to think they abandoned the airplane until forced to do so. I think the move to the southeast end came much later.
Personally, assuming that they indeed landed in the vicinity of the Norwich City, I see no reason to make a journey all the way to the southeast corner of the island for a sun sighting. I should think that anywhere on the eastern beach would suffice.....the idea being merely to have an unobstructed view of the eastern horizon at the moment of sunrise. (Or are there obstructions of some kind on the eastern side of Niku that would preclude this except at the SE corner?)
Two other additional issues come to mind, however.
First....assuming he was able and still equipped to take that sighting, could it be that he just didn't believe the position he calculated? My understanding is that Gardner/Niku, as it was portrayed on the charts they carried, did not resemble the actual shape of the island. Niku being triangular but being depicted on the charts as rectangular. After the events of the past 24 hours: He thought they should have been on or near Howland....but IT wasn't there. Now he showed a position near an island that in no way seemed to match the one on which they stood. I could see how one's self-confidence might be a bit injured after all of this. Might lead one to question the accuracy of his equipment....or himself.
Second....do we know what FN was using as his timekeeper? Ships at this time were typically not using pocket or wristwatches as time standards. Many used gimbaled Deck Watches as they were far more accurate than the movements in wrist/pocketwatches. Deck Watches, when they were not permanently affixed, were typically carried (gimbals and all) housed in a set of nested wooden boxes roughly the size of a sextant box.
If FN was using such a timekeeper, it might have been more susceptible to damage or destruction in a hard landing. Perhaps his clock (whatever it might have been) and/or sextant didn't survive the arrival and therefore he was unable to calculate their position. Might also explain why a sextant box was found but no sextant...although the sextant was now worthless, the box and eyepiece could still be useful.
Yes, yes.....I know. Idle speculation all without foundation.
.....tb
PS -- The same might also be said for their compass. If FN was using the Electras' compass for his calculations...after the plane went out to sea, I doubt he'd have been able to calculate position without it.
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"New York City"...
Yes, and I revisted Betty's notebook. One of the hazards of accumulating birthdays seems to include some occasional inaccuracy on my part - she actually only wrote "N.Y." repeatedly - and that it was something that "sounded like New York" if you read the actual copy of the note book (the transcription renders that last entry only as "NY", not as Betty wrote it) - but not 'city'. Which still does not preclude the "Norwich City" co-inky-dink in my (aging) mind at least.
Maybe they never knew for certain where they were but found identifying information on an embossed builder's plate on the ship somewhere; maybe it was even burned, rusted and pitted enough that all they could make out was "New---h(say 'looks like a 'k''?) or something along those lines, just dunno.
yes, I read betty's notebook to see what she actually wrote. I could just picture a young girl straining to hear what was being said and writing what she heard in the quickest easiest terms in order to hear/write the next words. shortening what she interpreted as "new york city" right down to NY is quite reasonable to me.
I'm sure the state of the wreckage of the norwich city has been gone over time and again. I've seen many pictures of the wreckage in that "era" but cannot remember if the fire had destroyed the ships name or not. if it did, I don't think it destroyed all of it. (shady recollection at best)
Also from Betty's notebook - some of the numbers are tantalizing - "58 338" still haunts me as weirdly proximate to "157 337" because Gardner (Niku) lies closer to that "line" if Howland and Gardner are considered as 'points' (notwithstanding the loss of the '1' from what then should be '158 338' - was the digit '1' lost in transmission perhaps?)... But it is difficult, maybe impossible, to pin hard meanings to much of what is there. But, where (on what bearing) did the sun rise in the days following the loss from the vantage point of Gardner? What would the LOP of the island be in that case? I'm with Ric on why they would have moved to the 7 site 'much later', but do have a thought about where one might wish to be to see the sun rise if accuracy were needed (but then would be separated from the airplane and radios, too)...
read up on what moleski is saying about the 157-337 lop. it is not a useful point on a map, but a compass heading. the only way a compass heading would have been useful to their rescue is if they determined their location and were trying to give their rescuers a heading from Howland. This sounds like an extremely unlikely way to go about it to me. gardner island is located at 4.66S and 174.53W not matching anything she wrote. (even if you take what she wrote as 3.38s by 158w you come up close to 1000miles east of gardner)
I'll have to leave that to those who know celestial navigation better than me. But I for one do believe that Betty was sincere; I also believe there is a good chance that she heard a genuine plea from AE and FN, in bits and pieces, and if hard evidence of the plane, AE and/or FN ever surfaces it may even explain a few of Betty's details somehow (note in a sealed bottle would be nice...). I think it is also likely that there would have been enough interference and perhaps voice-overs from other traffic to make Betty's listening experience very confusing at best. But she seems to have heard enough to have been keenly alerted and then to lock-in on the traffic, and she gave us all she could from that experience. Remarkable, and it in no way discounts any idea of AE being on land at Gardner at that time.
agreed
Couple all of that logic with what the navy thought at the time, the body of evidence TIGHAR has painstakingly amassed and printed, now the emergent report of a late WWII loss of a PV-1 in the Buka passage in the wake of the breathless press release from down under, and my money is still on TIGHAR and Niku.
If, however, the Electra turns up in the Solomon Seas against all odds, then we STILL have a most intriguing 'castaway' mystery on our hands - SOMEONE apparently struggled and died on Gardner, likely at the 7 site. Seems to have been a European-descended female, circa 1930's, too...
Same here. I'm as open to new hypothesis as anyone out there, but this one just doesn't follow any evidence we have.
the castaway mysteries to me are almost inevitable. with the number of ships roaming the world and the evidence of people that Tighar has seen simply visiting the island the odds that there haven't been castaways on the island would be astounding.
And, we'd be left wondering (probably forever) how in the cosmos so much realized real-time radio traffic and navigational clues could be so tragically off the mark. Could all of the "Howland/Itasca vicinity" radio traffic REALLY have occurred much farther west than thought? Might FN's "LOP" been tragically off due to some wrongful assumption (there was an element of dead-reckoning always present and when the some of the clues don't align as they should or skies are obscured, humans can tragically second-guess many things)? Did AE then realize she was short of Howland, panic and do a 180 and exhaust 4 or 5 hours of reserve to just make it back to the Solomon Seas (having not gotten so far east after all)? What could ever explain such gross errors? Much stronger head winds going / tail winds returning than realized? Were the Itasca contacts aided by a 'harmonic' somehow (wacky)? What then of the body of post-loss traffic?
The world can be a very weird place of rogue winds and waves, but until somebody proves that's AE and FN lying in a Lockheed in the Solomon Seas, I'm still with Ric & Co. - "I don't think so."
LTM -
- Jeff
the possibilities are literally endless on this one.
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Using the NOAA Solar Calculator (http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/grad/solcalc/), the sun rose at an azimuth of 66.94 degrees on July 2, 1937 at Howland Island. Seven days later, July 9, (when the Navy planes flew over Gardner Island), the azimuth of the rising sun at Howland Island had only advanced to 67.62 degrees. A couple of days before that, on July 7, the azimuth had only advanced to 67.4 degrees.
So I conclude that the sunrise azimuth would not have varied enough in that week to warrant a change of the figures for the LOP to 158-338. Of course, there's always the possibility that a weary, thirsty, hungry, marooned navigator might have misread his sextant (and then failed to properly stow it in its box!).
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But then, there's always the consideration that the great circle direction from the Seven Site to the original incorrect coordinates for Howland Island (about 6 miles west of its true location) is on a 158-338 line! Maybe the weary, thirsty, hungry, marooned navigator nonetheless still had a steady enough sextant hand to fix his latitude, a reliable chronometer to pinpoint his longitude, and a set of those incorrect coordinates for Howland Island!
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and yet there it David Billings, who claims he saw a wasp engine in the mts of New Guinea that had a tag on it with SN1055. You can read this by googling "Engine in mts of New Guinea". also http://www.electranewbritain.com.
For the record, Mr. David Billings believes that AE's plane is in New Britain, but he has never claimed to have seen any part of it, let alone an engine. He does say that some Australian soldiers saw the plane.
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I've drawn a couple of pictures and put them in a new thread in the Celestial Navigation area. (https://tighar.org/smf/index.php/topic,206.msg1549.html#msg1549)
Most of the pictures and conclusions drawn from them were wrong. I've modified the post. Live and learn! :-\
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I've drawn a couple of pictures and put them in a new thread in the Celestial Navigation area. (https://tighar.org/smf/index.php/topic,206.msg1549.html#msg1549)
If I ever get good at Flash, I could animate the whole argument. Not today. For now, you have to do your own animation. :D
So what did AE mean by saying "we are the line 157 337"?
She did not mean the line that Fred drew on his map at dawn (wherever that was for them). That LOP wouldn't do them any good--from his watch, Fred could tell how far west of a second and parallel LOP of 157-337 that he drew on his map through Howland Island.
So a full expansion of what she meant would be "We think we have reached the advanced line of position 157-337 running through Howland that Fred drew on his map and toward which we have been dead-reckoning since dawn."
If that is what is meant by the LOP, I guess I have to concede that there is just one of them out in the Pacific (treating Howland as a point). But it is not a morning LOP and it is always where it is by definition, not by navigation.
We don't know where the LOP was drawn on Fred's charts based on celestial navigation because AE didn't tell us the exact time on the chronometer when the sighting was made nor what their altitude was at the time. We know it had to be later than dawn on Howland and, if we assume that they did, in fact, get pretty close to the parallel LOP drawn through Howland, that there is a finite region in which they must have been to derive that LOP and still get near the advanced LOP by the time of the last transmission.
I'm not sure whether Randy Jacobson tried to narrow down that range in his Monte Carlo simulation. (http://) It seems to me that the range ought to be calculable, given a range of possible airspeeds-made-good from the dawn LOP to the advanced LOP.
It also seems possible to me that reckoning from the dawn LOP was the basis on which AE reported four "positions" (http://tighar.org/wiki/Transmission_timeline): 200 miles out reported at 1742 GMT, 100 miles out reported at 1812 GMT, "we must be on you but cannot see you" reported at 1912 GMT, and on "the" line drawn through Howland, flying North and South, reported at 2013 GMT.
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Marty makes interesting and accurate points. The report that you are flying the line 157/337 is not a fix nor a position report. Without any antecedents, it is a meaningless report.
The way that I understand the probable sequence of events is that Noonan and Earhart, after flying for 17 hours and 50 minutes, were attempting to approach Howland on a track of 78 degrees. When Noonan saw the sunrise and noted his chronometer he knew, according to his nautical almanac, where to plot the dawn line that he was on. He also knew the right angle from the sunrise would be 157/337 so he then plotted that line on his chart.
He also knew, from his almanac, that sunrise at Howland was 1745z, therefore, he then knew just how far he was from the line running through Howland. When Earhart reported 200 miles out, that report was probably given to her by Noonan who would have clocked the sunrise at about 1757z or as the sun travels, about 200 miles southwest on course for the LOP.
What Noonan probably did not know was his exact position on the line, or if he was north or south of course. When, according to his calculations of groundspeed and distance, he told Earhart that they were approaching the LOP is when she began her letdown. Then at the ETA of about 1912z she reported “we must be on you….flying at 1000ft. ”
Noonan probably hit the LOP within 10-15 miles and then Earhart turned either left to 337 or right to 157. Meanwhile Noonan was probably trying to get an accurate fix on their exact position with a sun shot.
In my estimation and premises considered, all of the aforesaid would indicate that more likely than not, the 157/337 line that Earhart reported was the line running near Howland.
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The way that I understand the probable sequence of events is that Noonan and Earhart, after flying for 17 hours and 50 minutes, were attempting to approach Howland on a track of 78 degrees. When Noonan saw the sunrise and noted his chronometer he knew, according to his nautical almanac, where to plot the dawn line that he was on. He also knew the right angle from the sunrise would be 157/337 so he then plotted that line on his chart.
He would have to account for his elevation, too. Someone standing 10,000 feet above the surface of the earth sees the sun rise before an observer directly underneath. It seems to me that I heard that even ship navigators had to account for their elevation, even though that doesn't seem at all likely. OOPS--I was wrong. "The sextant angle obtained is corrected for dip (the error caused by the observer's height above the sea) and refraction to obtain the true altitude of the object above the horizon" ("Long by Chron" (http://www.worldlingo.com/ma/enwiki/en/Longitude_by_chronometer)).
He also knew, from his almanac, that sunrise at Howland was 1745z, therefore, he then knew just how far he was from the line running through Howland. When Earhart reported 200 miles out, that report was probably given to her by Noonan who would have clocked the sunrise at about 1757z or as the sun travels, about 200 miles southwest on course for the LOP.
OK. I think that blows away my theory that the 200 mile "position" report might have been based on the dawn LOP. It seems as though the horizon to an observer at 10,000 feet is over 100 miles (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:How_far_away_is_the_horizon.png). But that would only let Fred see the sun five or six minutes earlier than the ground-pounder--not enough time for him to make the observation before the sun rose on Niku.
What Noonan probably did not know was his exact position on the line, or if he was north or south of course. When, according to his calculations of groundspeed and distance, he told Earhart that they were approaching the LOP is when she began her letdown. Then at the ETA of about 1912z she reported “we must be on you….flying at 1000ft. ”
Noonan probably hit the LOP within 10-15 miles and then Earhart turned either left to 337 or right to 157. Meanwhile Noonan was probably trying to get an accurate fix on their exact position with a sun shot.
In my estimation and premises considered, all of the aforesaid would indicate that more likely than not, the 157/337 line that Earhart reported was the line running near Howland.
I agree. That's the one they were looking for and thought (calculated) that they had hit.
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This makes me wonder about how they would have established and used any LOP procedure - was it a 'last minute / last ditch' effort to establish how far east they had come after belatedly realizing that the RDF apparently was not working?
Drawing Lines of Position on charts is how navigators nagivate.
The intersection of two LOPS taken at practically the same time gives you your most probable location. It is fuzzy due to the limits of the instruments and observers.
If you can get three LOPs at about the same time, that gives you a triangle as the center of your most probable location.
We don't know how many celestial sightings FN got during the night.
Therefore, we don't know how many LOPs he drew on his charts.
We speculate that he was able to make the dawn sighting because the charts tell us that from the region west of Howland and close to the equator, the dawn observation would yield a LOP of 337-157--the same as was announced in the last transmission.
If so, could FN have made rapid readings on the fly ...
Could have. Maybe would have. They still wouldn't give him a fix all by themselves, but they would give him new LOPs to work with to refine his dead reckoning. But you have to give the sun time to change position significantly so that your new LOP has information not contained in your old LOP.
... that were enough off the mark to leave the aviators woefully further short of the progress across the pacific than they had thought?
I don't think that's likely. If FN got a good LOP at dawn, he would have a good sense of the distance between that LOP and a parallel LOP drawn through Howland. It seems that he must have had the dawn sighting in hand; otherwise, it would make no sense for AE to announce that they were searching "the LOP" (i.e., "the advanced line of position that Fred drew through Howland parallel to the LOP he drew on the map shortly after our dawn, west of Howland") north and south.
They thought they were close--really, really close.
Could the sun have been well up by the time it fell to FN to determine a LOP?
FN didn't start drawing on his charts when they realized that they were not going to get help with direction finding.
Drawing lines on his charts was his job. That was the basis of the newscasts that AE made during the night about where they were.
Could cloud cover have made star shots in the preceding night difficult or impossible?
Yes, of course.
Could the early reports of how far out they were have come then from dead-reckoning alone when those calls were made, and not a sunrise LOP / offset reading?
I think this is a list of all of the transmissions heard from the aircraft (http://tighar.org/wiki/Transmission_timeline) during the flight.
It seems to me that the "200 mile" message couldn't have been from a dawn sighting; it was logged at Howland 3 minutes before the sun rose there. AE and FN's local dawn would have to be at least a few minutes later than Howland's.
The "100 mile" message might be after FN had done some chart work with the dawn LOP.
Might then FN have resorted to a belated sun-shot to establish a LOP in haste - realizing he could not know how far south or north he was (and having to rely on dead-reckoning to believe he was "close")?
I think not. Drawing lines on his chart on the basis of celestial observations was not an emergency measure; it was Fred's job.
If so, how much error might be caused by a later-morning sun-shot under their flying circumstances?
You may assign as large an error bar as you like. Just make assumptions about visibility, troubles with instruments, exhaustion, hangovers, and ordinary human lapses in judgment. How big do you want the error bar to be?
None of that can really blow a hole in the logic we have seen put together to-date, but if we find ourselves having to 'rethink' things at some point then maybe some of these wandering wonderings will apply. Still, I am beginning to believe that AE and FN realized all too late how very lost they may have been after a night of assuming that all would be well with the RDF approach for too long into the flight.
They were assuming that the RDF would work from the time they left Oakland. If they had thought more about the technical difficulties, we wouldn't be here today talking about them.
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... I still wonder how much FN really drew on his charts with the assumptions they had about the RDF ...
He had to get them within radio range in order that:
- They could talk to the Itasca.
- The DF equipment (on land or on the plane) would have a chance of getting a bearing.
- They would have sufficient fuel to fly the bearing given by the Itasca or worked out by AE and FN.
I'm moderately confident that Fred didn't say, "Fly east until we can hear Howland. Then we'll get a bearing from them and fly thataway until land comes in sight."
The 1812 GMT transmission suggests that Fred was hard at work before they were aware of any radio emergency. AE says that they are about "100 miles out" and asks for a bearing.
The 1910-1912 GMT transmission is where AE indicates that they can't hear the Itasca.
At 2013 GMT, she reports that they are on "the line." She doesn't say how long they've been on it.
I don't see any evidence that Fred wasn't on the job, doing what he was supposed to do. If there hadn't been a failure to communicate (http://tighar.org/wiki/Failure_to_communicate) (a complex problem with many factors--an accident chain that began long before the last flight), they would have gotten to Howland.
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He had to get them within radio range in order that:
- They could talk to the Itasca.
- The DF equipment (on land or on the plane) would have a chance of getting a bearing.
- They would have sufficient fuel to fly the bearing given by the Itasca or worked out by AE and FN.
I'm moderately confident that Fred didn't say, "Fly east until we can hear Howland. Then we'll get a bearing from them and fly thataway until land comes in sight."
The 1812 GMT transmission suggests that Fred was hard at work before they were aware of any radio emergency. AE says that they are about "100 miles out" and asks for a bearing.
The 1910-1912 GMT transmission is where AE indicates that they can't hear the Itasca.
At 2013 GMT, she reports that they are on "the line." She doesn't say how long they've been on it.
I don't see any evidence that Fred wasn't on the job, doing what he was supposed to do. If there hadn't been a failure to communicate (http://tighar.org/wiki/Failure_to_communicate) (a complex problem with many factors--an accident chain that began long before the last flight), they would have gotten to Howland.
Very good points, Marty! Well said! :)
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It seems to me that the "200 mile" message couldn't have been from a dawn sighting; it was logged at Howland 3 minutes before the sun rose there. AE and FN's local dawn would have to be at least a few minutes later than Howland's.
The "100 mile" message might be after FN had done some chart work with the dawn LOP.
I think that the 200 mile report would indeed be based on Fred’s observation or anticipated observation of the dawn line time.
AE made the 200 mile out report at 1742-45z which according to the almanac tables was the sunrise time at Howland and was on her scheduled transmit time. Also, according to the tables, sunrise time at the coordinates for 200 miles southwest, bearing 258, was 1757z or 12-15 minutes after her report at 1745z.
Perhaps because it was twilight, Fred was estimating that the sunrise was 12 minutes away when he gave her the 200 mile note, therefore, they could have actually been about 227 miles from the Howland LOP. 12 minutes x 2.25mpm=27 miles. For the Electra to have covered the distance from the position that it appears to have been at 1745z, to the reported position at 1912z, the ground speed would be about 150 mph which seems a little fast. If their actual position at 1912z was still about 10-15 miles west, tracking inbound to the Howland LOP, then the ground speed would have been about 140 mph and seems feasible.
Fred was obviously a very competent navigator and understood the importance of an accurate time check. Their departure from Lae was delayed until he could get an accurate to the second time check that he knew he would need to use the almanac tables. This indicates that he planned on plotting the LOP at sunrise to determine how far they were from Howland.
I do not sense that he would have simply relied on radio navigation. His expertise was in celestial navigation. His intent was to find the island by the LOP method with or without radio navigation. If AE could get a directional bearing from the Itasca, then they could find Howland, nevertheless, he was going to use his sightings, charts and chronometer to the best of his ability. Doing so is what probably saved them from having to ditch in the ocean. Without a radio bearing to the Itasca, it was almost impossible to hit the island. With an elevation on the island of only 20 ft. and flying at 1000 ft, it would be impossible to distinguish it from the sea.
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This is an interesting discussion, albeit somewhat off-topic.
I have searched and can't find any more information on the plane that was found in PNG. Does anyone know if they ever dove the wreck and identified the plane?
Love to Mother,
Alfred
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I too would like this other group to make that final effort to ID the wreck, if for no other reason than to give some closure to the families if it is the PV-2 we think it might be. Even after more than 60 years, they never stop wondering what happened. Trust me.
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I too would like this other group to make that final effort to ID the wreck, if for no other reason than to give some closure to the families if it is the PV-2 we think it might be. Even after more than 60 years, they never stop wondering what happened. Trust me.
Absolutely correct.
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Does anyone know how to contact Joel Rangat Wandau who indicated he was "from the area" and "we are in the process of identifying now with the help of qualified divers..."
Joel, are you out there?
Seems he is connected somehow, but didn't reply to the questions I asked after his early post in this thread.
Andrew
i am from the area where the plane is believed to be submerged.. though some of the locals have sighted the wreck and actually touched it we are yet to actually photograph the wreck as evidence . there are two skeletons located in the cabin upfront.. we are in the process of identifiying now with the help of qualified divers.. according to one person who actually saw it go down and several old people in the village who were around the plane crashed in 1937...before the war... the island name is matsungan island on the west coast of buka in the north of the autonomous region of bougainville
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Still nothing further out there on this that I can find.
I suspect the locals may have found reason(s) to grow cool to the idea of this lost and found Lockheed being the actual Earhart Electra or more noise would have been coming through the wires by now. Anyone else heard or seen anything?
Not me. I haven't gone looking, either. It's not hard to imagine that they've found a historic aircraft; I do find it very difficult to imagine that it is NR16020.
Strange things do happen, but that's not the way to bet.
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Are there any news about the Papua-Electra? August was 5 month ago...
Oskar
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I think it was captured by the Japanese ;D
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I think it was captured by the Japanese ;D
...and shipped to NIKU? :o
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Are there any news about the Papua-Electra? August was 5 month ago...
I think that if they were confident it was NR16020 it would have already been indentified as such and plastered all over the news by now. I think no news points towards it not being the Electra in question.
LTM,
Don
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I don't know if it has been mentioned, but there is a gentleman who claimed that several australians on patrol found a half buried wasp engine in the hills of papua New guinea during WWII. they pulled a tag off of an engine mount that had information that coincided with AE's plane yada yada yada. (not really believing this whole part of the story)
the writer goes on to say that prior to WWII there were several lockheeds (forget the exact variant but I think he said a 10) flying out of an airport on papua new guinea. Makes me wonder if this possibly IS an electra just not THAT electra.
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couple of links
http://www.electranewbritain.com/Page1.htm
http://www.wingsoverkansas.com/earhart/article.asp?id=850
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We looked into the airplane in the Solomons and found that a Lockheed PV-1 Ventura was lost during WWII in the same area where the sunken "Electra" was reportedly seen. The Ventura (Lockheed Model 18) was basically a bigger version of the Model 10. It's easy to see how someone could jump to the conclusion that a twin engined, twin-tailed Lockheed was the famous missing twin engined, twin-tailed Lockheed.
As for the wreck in the New Britain jungle .... that fish has gotten bigger and bigger since the Aussie corporal who saw it first contacted me in 1992. He said nothing about an engine tag.
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We looked into the airplane in the Solomons and found that a Lockheed PV-1 Ventura was lost during WWII in the same area where the sunken "Electra" was reportedly seen. The Ventura (Lockheed Model 18) was basically a bigger version of the Model 10. It's easy to see how someone could jump to the conclusion that a twin engined, twin-tailed Lockheed was the famous missing twin engined, twin-tailed Lockheed.
As for the wreck in the New Britain jungle .... that fish has gotten bigger and bigger since the Aussie corporal who saw it first contacted me in 1992. He said nothing about an engine tag.
Hi Ric!
Are you absolutley sure that the "Electra" of Papua New Guinea isn't "THE ELECTRA"?
The New Britain jungle-Electra of the Aussies an old story, as we know. Never believed it. (Distance!!!)
Oskar
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Are you absolutley sure that the "Electra" of Papua New Guinea isn't "THE ELECTRA"?
The New Britain jungle-Electra of the Aussies an old story, as we know. Never believed it. (Distance!!!)
If you don't believe the New Britain jungle airplane can be the Electra because of distance, why would you wonder about the Papua New Guinea airplane which is even further away from Earhart's last known position?
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You're right, Ric, but I never said I could imagine that the Papua New Guinea-Electra is the right one. The distance is too far and there could have been no radio messages after the crash if it was in deep water. (And I'm sure there were distress-calls coming from AE) I only wanted to know just your opinion, because you know a little bit more about the subject. :D
If we would hear a clear message from Papua officials that it wasn't AE plane, we could stop thinking about for good.
Oskar