What we need is a really good picture of the 'patch' on the airplane that shows details, once and for all.
That has always been the case and remains the case. Until then it will always be a matter of how much confidence we have by the best studies we can apply. We can determine the alternate possibilities with some reason, which we've done. No paint (and I don't buy that the surf and sand would completely scour all traces but leave the font tracings, etc.) and other fingerprints tell us much about where it would and would not logically have come from.
Rivet patterns would be damning or upholding, if they truly matched anything we could find. Not matching, we're left looking the 'wild card', which is where we've been for a while.
That drives us to reviewing things like the Miami patch as a possibility - or probability, as one may choose to see it - and into the depths of trying to understand what happened to make that occur. That leads to all the exploratory conjecture that we get into as we try to make sense of this or that detail and how it might have fit.
So, there I go again, off into 'dreamland' as some see it - no, it's not the preferred stuff of the hands-on, right-now hardheaded A&P who deals in black and white / airworthy or not realm - which I know well and have lived by in a long career, but of one now trying to get into the mindset of the guy who was chosen by Earhart to accompany her on that domestic leg to do her bidding to get the ship fit to her terms. I suppose that does throw me into the Gary LaPook world of 'channeling Noonan', as I've seen it (sorry Gary, wherever you are - but here I do the same, it seems) - now I seem to have dabbled with channeling Bo McNeeley. What a lout I am, eh? The alternative is to shrug one's shoulders and say 'let the barn build itself'. Bah, I'd rather try to build, just in case we find a horse.
If it came from that wing panel on the PBY that is inboard of "panel splice" at wing station 11 (which appears to be the case) then we're dealing with .045" parent skin, per the manual. But, if the shoe fits, given that Ric openly shared a template of 2-2-V-1 with Elgen Long, then where are the details in return? Ric's raised a very fair point on that, and I know that Ric and Mr. Long have had a good relationship - it seems incongruous that we'd have this hint of 'here 'tis' with no real substantiation from the man himself. So, Mr. Long, if you did that, people here who care about the search have put a fair bit of effort in - so if you know something we don't, then please, by all means... but not this shadowy 'byte', please - surely was not you who'd do that?
As to the PBY, we know 2-2-V-1 is an .032" T (thickness) component; what was an .032" T panel doing placed where there was .045" T skin? If we have located the wrong station and the skin is not .045", I welcome the correction - but I just looked at what Bill Mangus pointed out and have come to the same conclusion as he. So if 2-2-V-1 is a patch for that area on a PBY, it should have been .045"; if it is an .030" skin as shown outboard, then one greater gage is expected - so again, if the assumption on thickness is in error - AND if the shoe truly fits, then by all means, please share the details - we hunger for truth and labor for it, this would help.
There is another problem with the PBY. The
PBY manual also points (table 2-7) out that minimum fastener size in .032" T skins is 1/8" - a full size larger than the bulk of the rivet holes we see in 2-2-V-1; that same table denotes a pitch of 3/4" - which does not match the 1" pitch we see on 2-2-V-1 for the 3/32" rivets.
Conversely, minimum rivet sizes for .045" T skins on the PBY per that same table would be 5/32", at a pitch of 13/16", just in case our placement of that skin is correct. This would raise another challenge for the proponent(s) of a PBY fit.
But if 2-2-V-1 despite all these things truly matches the PBY fastener pattern (it does not because there is no staggered double row, for one...), then it is a complete bastard fit for some reason, but if it happens to match - again, please show the details.
TIGHAR is criticized for the yellow tape, etc. that was put there to help scale and align things, etc. - but it certainly was NOT to draw a false case. It is so hard to know just what to do when working in the abstract that others may see - and so far, 2-2-V-1 is nothing if not abstract. The crux of that criticism seems to be "it ain't standard Electra stuff so it ain't Earhart's stuff, an' all that tape stuff don't help". It is fairly clear that 2-2-V-1 is, whatever it may be, likely a bastard altogether - and THAT is THE POINT - and those who tried to show the abstract fitment labored hard to give us scale and more understanding of how the thing did align, as best can be reconstructed to the Electra parent frame. No, it isn't standard - and I wouldn't expect it to be, to cover a large window that the original designer never envisioned.
So, with 3/32" fasteners at 1" pitch, it does not appear to be a logical bastard child of a PBY, nor the B-17, nor anything I could find on a B-24. No, it is also not a clear fit to anything STOCK on an Electra - EXCEPT that it just happens to be the right 'envelope' size for that oddball window in Earhart's ship, happens to have fastener sizes and pitch that are logical to a bird of that weight and build in that era, and I saw nothing on any other type - including having now studied the C-87 as reasonably as I can, short of climbing all over one. The C-87 was, I thought, a very good idea but I found no smoldering cigar, let alone a smoking gun. Should another find more, hats off.
Yes, problems remain - of course there are still fair challenges to 2-2-V-1; but more light is on it now than before, and the alternatives are still not emerging so strongly. I would welcome more open challenge instead of article-comment snippets and back-channel emails. I have tired of trying to reason with such commenters offline and find them for the most part single-minded in denying any notion TIGHAR may have, including most probably where we might report the restrooms to be located at the AF Museum...
So if one would put up a PBY case as an alternate or a barnburner, then by all means - give us the details; if one won't do that, one simply isn't going to go far in this search with such limited thinking.
Bah. 'Tis a lovely overcast day here, nice a cool. I think I'll now go move a piano for fun.
