Well David, I know nothing of navigation, so I can't comment on your argument with the broader community here. Quite frankly, it's a bit over my head.
But that aside for a moment, the basic idea of AE/FN aiming for a stretch of clustered atolls/islands that they would be likely to hit doesn't seem that odd to me, it's just a variation on the TIGHAR hypothesis (althoug Nonouti is a hell of a long ways off from Howland...a nerve-wracking long time to test your bet on Plan B, after missing Howland). There have certainly been more outlandish ideas about the Electra's disappearance over the years.
A landing on the tideflats in the atoll fits very nicely in a number of ways:
-She had plenty of terrain to land on.
-Much of this terrain is either exposed or very shallow (perhaps depending on the tide), which may have given her the ability to send radio signals until the battery runs dead, fuel runs out, or the saltwater rises high enough to interfere with the electronics.
-If we buy that Betty's scribbled "N.Y.?" meant "New York City?" and not "New York?", then an American pronounciation of Nonouti would be similar.
-It fits closely with Mabel's recounting (only two things need tweaking:the word "reef" to "sand spit", or "sandbar", and then take the view that the "unchartered island" mentioned in Mabel's recalling didn't refer to an unchartered, isolated seamount, but to a known island (part of an atoll) that was too small for international maps to bother to recognize.
-It fits exactly the story told to Mabel by her son (after all, we have to treat them separately as Mabel and her son have mutually exclusive stories: any veracity established with one does not automatically translate to the other). This is kind of the exciting part, about natives rescuing AE, FN unfortunately passing away, etc.
-The object in the GE images is relatively protected...I wouldn't expect storms to send in pounding waves at such shallow (a few feet) depths, just swift currents.
-There are a lot of other items you could tick off, like some of the radio triangulation lines going not that far from Nonouti, etc.
So it all sounds great; like a Clive Cussler novel! The old man would be proud.
Of course, the obvious problem with all of this is that Nonouti was under British protection since the 1890s, and populated before that. I don't know if they had a full-time magistrate on the atoll during the '30s, but there must have been periodic visits, as well as deliveries of goods/communication. The more you read up on it, the more you realize that these "lonely" atolls/islands had a surprising amount of traffic between them. And then of course during the war itself, the northern Gilberts were a scene of considerable activity, especially Tarawa, which should be familiar to all of us. So I have a hard time believing that AE could have landed somewhere within the atoll, and it escape the attention of the outside world in the subsequent years, regardless of whether she was dead or alive.
For awhile I thought mabye the takeaway from the discussion this week was that, even though Nonouti is a dry run for us, maybe the basic hypothesis of her flying towards closely clustered islands and then landing on a tideflat might be applicable somewhere else...
...except Nonouti is almost exceptional in its tideflats. No other location in the area has that characteristic, until you get much further south. Too far south for AE/FN.
However, if you are still certain that AE/FN went down on Noumatong, or on the Nonouti spit, or on any one of several small islands dotting the atoll, you're best bet is to purchase more recent photos than the ones GE is using (which date to 2005). Digital Globe has several available for purchase (I think they're roughly $24 bones a pop), and some are categorized by date and % cloud cover. That way you could see Noumatong with no cloud cover (and it also has a spit to the north), as well as peer through the ridiculously shallow aquamarine sea.
Good Luck!
Just don't spend your paycheck there, because while your apt to get some amazing photos, it's unlikely the Electra will be in any of them.
