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[Martin X. Moleski, SJ]

"Mid-South Man Searches for Amelia Earhart's Plane":

New Nauticos expedition heading out this spring.

Nice hardware--autonomous sonar subs ("Remotely Operated" seems to conflict with "Autonomous").

[Ric Gillespie]

Looks like my old buddy Dave Jourdan (Nauticos) has found himself another sponsor.  More power to him.  I wish him a safe voyage but what he's looking for ain't where he's looking. 

It's encouraging to see that sponsors are out there.  We just need to find one for ourselves.

[Harry Howe, Jr.]

Ric
Maybe the Nauticos guys have been minitoring the ROV video thread on here and will give the Gardner reef a "look see" while they are out there in their sub.  I think it's called a "scoop".   I hope not.

Thanks for all the hard work  you guys did and are continuing to do.
Sometimes this Forum is better than a Clive Cussler Novel, Truth is indeed stranger than Fiction.

[Ric Gillespie]

Maybe the Nauticos guys have been minitoring the ROV video thread on here and will give the Gardner reef a "look see" while they are out there in their sub.  I think it's called a "scoop".   I hope not.

I won't be losing any sleep worrying about it.

[Harry Howe, Jr.]

Ric
Maybe a cooperative effort?
Ask them to take a swing along the Reef with their sub and share what they see, or don't see?

Hey, the worst they might say is No Way?, the best is Sure.?

[Ric Gillespie]

Ask them to take a swing along the Reef with their sub and share what they see, or don't see?

I'm guessing, but knowing the level of technology they need to search to 18,000 feet and the kind of ship it takes to deploy that kind of technology, they'll be spending somewhere in the neighborhood of at least $75,000 per day. Nikumaroro is ballpark 400 nautical miles from where they'll be working.  The technology they'll be using will be appropriate for searching the relatively flat ocean bottom up around Howland.  The reef slope at Niku is an entirely different environment.

Besides, they are as much convinced that they are right as we are convinced that we are right.

[Randy Reid]

My take on this is: This is a good thing.

If Nauticos doesn't find the Electra it eliminates some of the (landing?) area from speculation and will give more credibility to the TIGHAR hypo. The big plus in this scenerio is it doesn't cost TIGHAR anything and narrows down the search area.

If Nauticos finds the Electra in the "Long hypo",  the TIGHAR hypo is wrong. C'est la vie.
There will be a lot of "I told you so's". Then we can move on to another mystery. Maybe the "white bird".

Randy

[Ric Gillespie]

My take on this is: This is a good thing.

I agree.

If Nauticos doesn't find the Electra it eliminates some of the (landing?) area from speculation and will give more credibility to the TIGHAR hypo. The big plus in this scenerio is it doesn't cost TIGHAR anything and narrows down the search area.

Not in any significant sense. The Pacific is a big place.

If Nauticos finds the Electra in the "Long hypo",  the TIGHAR hypo is wrong. C'est la vie.
There will be a lot of "I told you so's".

Undoubtedly - but there would still be the question, Who was the castaway of Gardner Island?

Then we can move on to another mystery. Maybe the "white bird".

I very much want to resume that search.

[Jeff Victor Hayden]

And then of course that would leave the question of 'whose plane is the one TIGHAR found' then?
Jeff

[Randy Reid]

JVH,

if you are talking about the "airplane" in the ROV stills thread. I am not convinced there is an airplane there. Some of pieces, wire or rope in the stills look a lot like debris found all over the ocean.
Somewhere in the Ameliapedia, there is a picture of the Norwich survival site. If, and I stress if, this junk was thrown off the island either by humans or natural forces, guess where it is going to end up. And this is just a tiny bit of what must have came off the Norwich wreck and from other occupants of the island.
I am hoping like everybody else that some day we will know what happened to Earhart and Noonan, but until somebody can show me something that actually looks like an aircraft part I am going to remain skeptical.

sorry for thread drift,
Randy

[Ric Gillespie]

For the record, I haven't seen anything in ROV footage that is identifiable as an airplane part.

[Jeff Victor Hayden]

I would dearly like to show you an airplane in the condition of the one in picture 1. Intact and resting serenely on the flat sandy bottom of the ocean, within reach of divers. In fact I can show you hundreds of plane wrecks in these conditions, you would recognise every one a s a plane.
That's not the case at Niku. The scenario is the landing on the reef and the subsequent destruction of the plane starting at the reef line and continuing over a number of years as reported by the Gilbertese settlers. Then being washed down the side of a volcanic outcrop bit by bit down to depths of 300 metres and more. The only way to recognise it as a plane is from tiny bits and pieces and/or coral/sediment covered outlines. See picture 2, you won't recognise it as an airplane but, it used to be parts from an airplane. Now cover it in sediment and coral and leave it for 75 years.
In really bad air crash investigations, 700 mph dives into ground, there's very little to be seen that you could describe as an airplane. Just a lot of aluminium in a small area where it shouldn't be is the usual diagnosis.
IMHO we are looking at airplane wreckage, in a lot of bits (not ditch and sink) it's been through a meat grinder, deteriorated and covered in sediment and coral, it's been there a long time. Time and money will tell.

Jeff

[Randy Reid]

JVH,

I wasn't going to reply, but I need to get my post count up so Marty will give me another star .

I am not sure I could identify a torn piece of aluminum as an aircraft part, but I could give it a pretty good guess as I worked on aircraft structure for about 10 years. I also worked on a repair group where part of the job was to evaluate whether there was enough of the airplane left to salvage. Granted this was not on submerged aircraft.

Randy

[Monty Fowler]

Heck, maybe Nauticos will up the "barrel" count by 3 or 4 ... how many 55-gallon drums were tossed over the side of ships in that part of the ocean, over the decades. The Waite search only found one. I know, my bad.

LTM, who would rather count sheep than barrels,

Monty Fowler, TIGHAR No. 2189 CER

[Jeff Victor Hayden]

JVH,

if you are talking about the "airplane" in the ROV stills thread. I am not convinced there is an airplane there. Some of pieces, wire or rope in the stills look a lot like debris found all over the ocean.
Somewhere in the Ameliapedia, there is a picture of the Norwich survival site. If, and I stress if, this junk was thrown off the island either by humans or natural forces, guess where it is going to end up. And this is just a tiny bit of what must have came off the Norwich wreck and from other occupants of the island.
I am hoping like everybody else that some day we will know what happened to Earhart and Noonan, but until somebody can show me something that actually looks like an aircraft part I am going to remain skeptical.

sorry for thread drift,
Randy

Ignore the wire and rope, that could be from anything. Although how it got underneath the 'aircraft' wreckage remains a mystery. If any of this stuff came from the norwich city I will be amazed, a shipyard that is so technically advanced to be using riveted aluminium structures in 1911 how cool is that. If they made ships using that technology they wouldn't even make it out of the dockyard.
Jeff