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Author Topic: Photos from Symposium  (Read 94804 times)

C.W. Herndon

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Re: Photos from Symposium
« Reply #105 on: June 14, 2012, 01:35:48 PM »

The local airport (the Grant County International Airport, in Moses Lake, Washington) has a small fleet of PBY's.  I'm sure I could get permission to examine one's sheet metal.  Any suggestions for where on the beast to look first?

John, it's the PB4Y-1 (Liberator type) not the PBY (Catalina type). If they have the Liberator type then it's worth a look, nose and tail end of fuselage.

John, the Navy PB4Y= Army B-24.
Woody (former 3316R)
"the watcher"
 
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John Ousterhout

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Re: Photos from Symposium
« Reply #106 on: June 14, 2012, 09:38:18 PM »

"John, the Navy PB4Y= Army B-24."
The nice folks with the PBY's already informed me of the difference, and (in great detail) what TIGHAR was looking for.  No, they're not members, but yes, they're followers of the TIGHAR activities! They're obviously interested in "The Search".   I encouraged them to join.
Note that the most recent version of the movie "Always" was filmed here.
Cheers,
JohnO
 
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C.W. Herndon

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Re: Photos from Symposium
« Reply #107 on: June 14, 2012, 10:03:34 PM »

Right on. Stay after them!
Woody (former 3316R)
"the watcher"
 
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Gary LaPook

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Re: Photos from Symposium
« Reply #108 on: June 18, 2012, 07:02:43 AM »

Who says Ric doesn't like me?

gl
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Andrew M McKenna

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  • Here I am during the Maid of Harlech Survey.
Re: Photos from Symposium
« Reply #109 on: June 22, 2012, 02:43:17 PM »

Just getting back to something Gary said about the Monte Carlo Simulation after the symposium

"If you agree with TIGHAR, that the Monte Carlo simulation produces the most accurate estimate of the position of the aircraft at 1912 Z, then you must also agree that this means that they couldn't have landed on Gardner. I am attaching a marked up copy on the Monte Carlo printout. The circle I placed around Howland is 69 SM (60 NM) in radius. I drew the 157° line through Howland that goes to Gardner but the simulation shows that they were unlikely to be closer than 55 SM offset from this line with a higher probability of being more than at a 100 SM offset. I drew  in lines that are parallel with the 157° line to Gardner offset by these distances. Since Euclid said parallel lines never cross, these lines maintain their spacings forever. This means that if AE turned to fly the 157° line from where the simulation places them, then they would fly down the offset line, not the correct line to Gardner, and that when they flew by Gardner they were at least 55 SM and, more likely, they were more than 100 SM to the west of that island, which makes it very difficult for them to see the island.

See: Monte carlo offsets-2.pdf (194.6 kB - downloaded 28 times.)

gl
"

As Randy Jacobson pointed out at the symposium, the MC simulation tries to take into account as few variables as possible, so the result of the simulation does not include the assumption that Fred managed to get a celestial sun shot that am, and therefore was unable to calculate the distance between his position on the sun LOP and the distance to the advance LOP that ran through Howland.  The MC simply shows that there is a probability that they ended up SW of the LOP through Howland. 

However, if Fred had been able to get his sun shot, he would have been able to calculate the distance to the advanced LOP through Howland, and if SW of Howland, he would have then navigated the aircraft to the advanced LOP and intersected it at a point South of Howland.  How far south is dependent upon where you put them in the MC simulation, but looking at the MC results, if they were at the SE side of the MC probability results when they took their sun shot, and then navigated to the advanced LOP, they could have intersected the LOP well south of Baker Isl.  This leads to the scenario where AE would say "we are on the line 157 - 337" and "we are flying N and S", i.e. the intersect the line, fly north for a bit, don't find what they are looking for, and then turn south assuming that Howland is down the LOP somewhere, only to find Niku instead.

The point being that flying the 157 LOP from the end of the MC simulation doesn't really accurately portray what we might expect from a Navigator such as Fred as it don't include a morning sun shot as one of the variables.  I think even Gary would agree that FN was a good enough navigator to get them to the advanced LOP through Howland, what he couldn't control (and this assumes Fred was unable to get proper star sightings overnight) were the variables that might have driven them south of course and therefore put them on the LOP south of their intended target.

Gary is a far superior navigator than I am, so no doubt he will shoot holes in my understanding, but one of the takeaways from the symposium for me was that the MC simulation did not include the assumption of a sun shot.  The sun shot would help them correct for E-W position, but not for N-S position.

Andrew

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Heath Smith

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Re: Photos from Symposium
« Reply #110 on: June 22, 2012, 07:52:46 PM »


I believe that FN would have had a very good idea where there were longitudinally just based on the sun rise alone.
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Martin X. Moleski, SJ

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Re: Photos from Symposium
« Reply #111 on: June 22, 2012, 07:57:14 PM »


I believe that FN would have had a very good idea where there were longitudinally just based on the sun rise alone.

Agreed.

That's why I think the "200 miles" and "100 miles" messages reflect accurate information about how close the aircraft was to Niku. 

That, in turn, is why I consider the New Britain hypothesis not credible.  They were well past the point of no return (calculated elsewhere by Gary LaPook, I believe) at the time Fred made those estimates, and therefore well past the point of being able to fly 2000+ miles back to New Britain.
LTM,

           Marty
           TIGHAR #2359A
 
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Heath Smith

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Re: Photos from Symposium
« Reply #112 on: June 23, 2012, 04:46:44 AM »


I agree. Having spent many hours looking at the radio logs, fuel consumption, etc, the only way that Electra could have made it to New Britain was by floating there at which point it would be disassembled then hand carried up in to the jungle. Not likely.
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C.W. Herndon

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Re: Photos from Symposium
« Reply #113 on: June 23, 2012, 04:58:19 AM »

I like it Heath! Very perceptive.
Woody (former 3316R)
"the watcher"
 
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