As a long time follower of this topic, and a fan of those who share a similiar passion, I commend you for re-igniting the discussion in the forums.
I have a unique connection to the topic. In 1997 I worked at a private aircraft hangar (FBO) at Honolulu Internation Airport (Circle Rainbow Aviation). Linda Finch recreateed Amelia's flight and stored her aircraft (a lockheed electra E) at our facility for a few days.
I pointed out a small vibration related crack in one of her engine cowlings. She let me drill a 'drill start' at the terminus of the crack (it was a fairly short crack).
As a former airframer on aircraft, I was pretty pleased with myself lol.

I am sympathetic with your desire for quantification.

That is one aspect of the hard sciences (physics, chemistry, biology) that has driven great advances.

For like-minded people, the numbers may be consoling.

My problem is that every number entered in the spreadsheet is a judgment call, as is the decision to take some items as originating from the aircraft or crew in the first place. The numbers come from a prejudgment that the item is evidential: the judgment does not come from the numbers.

I worked very hard on tracking every sextant number that we could find on the internet, thinking that the odds against the sextant box not being related to all of the other artifacts at the Seven site were astronomical. I was wrong. The numbers on the sextant box eventually did tell a tale, but it was not the Niku narrative.

I do salute your effort to make a list. That in itself may prove helpful in grasping how much TIGHAR has discovered. I have held the original bones file in my own hands in Fiji, and I saw a tiny sample of Ric's mapping of low tides at Niku against the timing of the transmissions that were probably from AE and FN. Of course, I went to New Zealand and to TIGHAR headquarters because I was already persuaded that the hypothesis is true not on the basis of assigning numbers to elements of the case but by a personal judgment that the many strands of TIGHAR's case do add up, in a non-mathematical sense, to create a rope or a cable that is stronger than any of its components that are weak and inconclusive in isolation.

I hope this offering is not unwelcome or untimely, but I have an enduring interest in determining the combined/overall probability of our hypothesis.

TIGHAR has identified MANY items of evidence, none of which is a "smoking gun" that, when all items are combined, result in a near certainty. Rick has stated this many times in interviews and writings. Although it may be foolish to try to put actual numbers on so many items for which probabilities are difficult to ascertain, it seems to me that, using wide ranges of probabilities for each item, and then combining many items, we could perhaps get closer to certainty and reinforce Rick's claim. The principle is that many items - even that are of very low probability and nominally useless - when combined result in something of real value, and where the initial high individual uncertainties average or cancel each other out (I am no statistician but I believe that is correct).

Attached is a sample (Excel file) of how we might approach putting actual numbers to the combined probability for the hypothesis, based upon all of the evidence that has been amassed by TIGHAR. If it has not already been done, this effort might also provide a record in one place of all the items of evidence (I have wanted this list for a long time). Finally, this worksheet could be a living document that can be updated as new information or analysis is acquired.

Please let me know if you think this is doable and worthwhile.


Thanks for your interest!

Jon

Possible scenario
2-2-V-1 was salvaged from a C-47 crash at Sydney Island by Gardner colonist and used for things like the aluminum inlay in the Mims wood boxes.
When they abandoned the colony 2-2-V-1 and other stuff was wrapped with a wire found on Gardner or elsewhere.  Since it was found near the channel blasted for the abandonment, this wire bound package could have fell overboard when they left.
It is also possible the fatigue failure was done on Gardner Island. The other 3 failures occurring from the C-47 crash and its salvage on the Sydney.
Tom Palshaw analysis has a picture of the wrecked C-47 wing with torn metal exposed.
https://istigharartifact2-2-v-1apieceofac-47wing.yolasite.com/
Tom noted "It was assumed that the fatigue failure on artifact 2-2-V-1 was caused by back and forth bending of the artifact while still attached to the source aircraft. This cannot be proven. The bending could have occurred later.  The fatigue failure lines are so straight as to have another possible meaning. If the artifact had been wrenched from an attached underlying structure the fracture line should have been more uneven based upon the variance of stress at and between attaching fasteners.  It is quite possible that artifact 2-2-V-1 was originally larger when removed from the source aircraft"

Dec- 17, 1943 C-47 crashes on Syndey
Dec 1944  to Feb 1945  John Mims could visit Gardner obtaining aluminum inlay boxes

Question:
Does the aluminum inlay in the Mims boxes match 2-2-V-1?

(My statements below are from memory. Please - maybe it was some other artifact that had a loose rivet. I'm not familiar with searching the new forum layout.)

Didn't 2-2-V-1 also have a incorrectly bucked rivet as well? Wasn't that rivet of a more uncommon size? Wasn't this size also one unlikely to be found on a military aircraft? Even if you can line-up the hole pattern to a possible fit to a military aircraft, why would they patch an aircraft with a smaller rivet?

Under what factory quality control conditions would an incorrectly bucked rivet be allowed? Doesn't this point to  2-2-V-1 being some kind of field mod or patch?

   Randy, thank you for this post and your reference to Ric Gillespie's recent review of the changes in TIGHAR's assessments in the latest issue of TIGHAR Tracks  (July 2025), which I just received in the mail a few days ago.  It's a fascinating story, and this article deserves our careful reading and discussion here in this new Forum thread that you have just begun for us.
   Randy, thanks also for mentioning your recollection of past TIGHAR Tracks articles, which led me to go back to this one, also by Ric, in the April 2020 issue:   [https://tighar.org/Publications/TTracks/2020Vol_36/TIGHARTracks36_02_April2020.pdf] 
Ric's analysis there is so convincing that I still accept its conclusions, and intend to do so until I am presented with good evidence that the antenna lead-in wire (2-2-V-1a) that was found entangled with our favorite artifact dates from later than 1936-37.  According to Ric, all the evidence then available to us in April 2020 supported the conclusion that it was a pre-war wire.  This fact led Ric into the following line of reasoning, now quoting him (p 19):
   "What is pre-war aircraft fairlead wire doing on Nikumaroro? If the identification of 2-2-V-1a is
correct, the logic is inescapable:
  Both the metal and the wire are aircraft debris.
  They washed up, tangled together, in the massive storm that hit the island February 1990.
  It is inconceivable they are from two different aircraft.
  Artifact 2-2-V-1a is from a pre-war aircraft, therefore, 2-2-V-1 is also from a pre-war aircraft.
Debates about whether 2-2-V-1 is from a WWII aircraft are moot.
   NR16020 was the only prewar aircraft that came to grief anywhere near Niku.
   Therefore, 2-2-V-1 is a piece of Earhart's Electra...."

Quote from: Randy Jacobson on August 05, 2025, 07:38:12 AMI'm confused.  The latest TT still discusses this item as possibly coming from the patch panel.  What is the latest hypothesis for the origin of this piece? 

I think that last mailing promised a full discussion in a forthcoming TT.

But I have been wrong before and my memory is worse than it ever was.

In the latest TIGHAR Tracks, Rick documented what appears to be buckling from the start of the RHS patch panel.  The aluminum plate discovered early on in the Niku searches, 2-2-V-1 has been thought to be that patch panel, as the rivet pattern doesn't fit anywhere on the Electra.

Lots of metallurgical tests on the panel seem to place it as coming from a later time period, IIRC, and there finally was a match to another WWII aircraft.  Am I wrong?  I thought this was discussed in some prior TIGHAR Tracks, but I'm having difficulty finding them online.

I'm confused.  The latest TT still discusses this item as possibly coming from the patch panel.  What is the latest hypothesis for the origin of this piece?   

Wow, I hope I still look that good at 128!

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