Former TIGHAR board member Russ Matthews' "Air Sea Heritage Foundation" is sponsoring a search for the wreckage of the PanAm Sikorsky S-42B Samoan Clipper that caught fire and crashed 12 miles off Tutuila, American Samoa in 1938 killing Captain Ed Musick and his six man crew.
The search is being conducted by E/V Nautilus, owned by Bob Ballard's Ocean Exploration Trust.  Aviation Underwater Archaeologist Megan Lickliter-Mundon PhD is leading the science team.  Megan has been an instructor on TIGHAR field schools served on TIGHAR's 2010 and 2012 expeditions.  TIGHAR member Lonnie Schorer did historical research for the project and is also abroad Nautilus. Ballard is not aboard.

You can follow the search live via "telepresence" at https://nautiluslive.org

Ran across this awesome documentary of Linda Finch and her restoration of the Lockheed Electra and re-enacting Amelia's Around the World Flight. In this documentary it shows part of the Lae takeoff that I've never seen before. For those of you who watch this correct me on this if this isnt something new. I was also amazed by the cockpit filming of Amelia on the start of her journey. Overall, it was an awesome piece of filming!

https://youtu.be/zv1Gqmio7Zg

As I said I would be surprised if you hadnt checked this! I remember you making this trip as I had planned to attend but I had other commitments unfortunately.

The link I attached earlier does show some good information on rivet sizing and repairs for different t skin thickness. I wonder if the specific section could have been the repair from the clipped guy wire that required the plane to be repaired for so long. That would be the only reason for the irregular river placement on a aircraft skin.

Thoughts... not worth much without that velum print to slide over every aircraft that went through canton!

On July 16, 2017 I inspected the portion the DC-3/C-47 wing section at the New England Air Museum alleged to resemble Artifact 2-2-V-1.  At that time the wing section was out behind the museum, stored outdoors with various other bits and pieces of aircraft.  There was no way to check the thickness of the skin but, although there were some general similarities in rivet pattern, the rivet type, rivet size, rivet pitch, and spacing between rivet lines did not match the artifact. Not even close. TIGHAR videographer Mark Smith recorded the investigation.

of course after posting this I did find a very hard to read structural repair manual for a dc-3/c-47.... it's looking like the wing panels are possible too thin in most areas, so we are going from one extreme to the other?? the inner front edge of the wing appears to be the only skin that is .045 thick...

http://www.avialogs.com/index.php/en/aircraft/usa/douglas/dc3c-47/structural-repair-manual-for-the-model-dc-3.html#download

it calls out ad6 rivets which are 3/16 brazier head. great read in general for skin repair and rivet patterns.

just looked at the 2-2-v-1 article again to refresh my memory... seems I was mistaken on the thickness. thickness is .032 and the rivets were 3/32 and 5/32... hmmmm

I had a question regarding wing panel comparisons of nearby wrecks and the artifact. I did some searching of wrecks from Canton Island some time ago and the artifact. I came up with an article about B-24 wing panels that showed a claim that the artifact came from a section of that wing. it was debunked due to thickness and rivet sizing being too large. I was wondering if it was possible that this piece may have come from the wing of a C-47 that crashed on sydney island?? especially since that wing was torn off before the plane struck the ground and burned, never to be recovered.

https://tighar.org/Projects/Earhart/Archives/Research/Bulletins/07_Sydneycrash/07_Sydneycrash.html

this came to me on friday as I walked under the freshly stripped and polished wing of a DC-3 at the new england air museum with my son not 10 feet away from the Lockheed Electra they have.

I have tried searching for a C-47 wing repair manual such as was used to debunk the B-24 claim. it makes sense to me that the C-47 skin would be thinner and use smaller rivets that would closer match the construction of the wing panels in these planes. looking over at the construction of the Electra shows completely different construction/rivet patterns across the entire plane. I had trouble looking at it and seeing how they would deviate from their standard rivet patterns even for a small patch especially being able to compare the two so closely.


has this been investigated?? i would be surprised if it had not.

Thanks for the update, Ric.  I'm very glad to hear that the software developer was so helpful.  I will also be very interested to hear what the Massachusetts lab has to say.

Jeff hit a bit of a snag which has now been resolved. The cutting edge super-resolution software Jeff wants to use is not commercially available.  He was able to do a rough proof-of-concept test using a "watermarked" demonstration copy.  The results were excellent.   He got in touch with the developer and was able to arrange for TIGHAR to get a free license to a full copy the software.  Jeff is now setting up all the parameters necessary to run the full program on the digitized images from the 16mm film.
Also, in mid-July, TIGHAR videographer Mark Smith and I are scheduled to meet with metallurgists at a lab in Massachusetts who are experts in the mechanical failure of metals. They will examine Artifact 2-2-V-1 to determine how each of the four edges of failed - what forces were required to cause the damage and what events or tools may have been used.

The forum has been very quiet.......

I understand the Jeff Glickman donates his time and thus has to do TIGHAR analysis in between paying jobs, but isn't there a little update/tidbit you could give us while we're waiting?  I know he had said the images looked promising.........

Very in-depth article summarizing the whole mystery and the attempts to solve it. Worth the read.