Current Status of Niku 7 video analysis

[Don Dollinger]

Having the US Navy pick up the tab, that's the way to go.  Hey Rick how many attack submarines would you guess sank off the coast of Niku?

LTM,

Don

[jgf1944]

Having the US Navy pick up the tab, that's the way to go.

That, Don, would be an interesting "historic" scenario. The order to investigate a plan to locate AE's aircraft off Niku. Isl. comes across my CINCPAC desk. I pass it to that Ensign who failed to read the uniform of the day posting last week. He, zippideezip, gets back to me that the word in the archives is that AE crashed and sank in 17,000 feet of Pacific Ocean near Howland Isl. Deja Vu all over again. JGF     

[Ric Gillespie]

Earlier this year we made a request through the State Dept. for USN support.   They turned us down.

[tom howard]

Couple off shots of the NC that i've not seen before.  Fantastic, thanks Ric. Will have to read and re read a few times for it to sink in, waiting for the 'informed' debate  ;)

I love the old photos of the wreck,
But may I ask chris what you are reading and re reading? Is there a formal written report stating measurments of objects and analysis of objects on the slope I am missing or are you talking about the short question and answers of Dr.Glickman? I dont want to miss anything.

[Ric Gillespie]

Is there a formal written report stating measurments of objects and analysis of objects on the slope I am missing or are you talking about the short question and answers of Dr.Glickman? I dont want to miss anything.

No formal report yet.  There is lots more analysis that must be done before we'll have formal reports stating measurements and analysis of objects

[Chris Johnson]

Couple off shots of the NC that i've not seen before.  Fantastic, thanks Ric. Will have to read and re read a few times for it to sink in, waiting for the 'informed' debate  ;)

I love the old photos of the wreck,
But may I ask chris what you are reading and re reading? Is there a formal written report stating measurments of objects and analysis of objects on the slope I am missing or are you talking about the short question and answers of Dr.Glickman? I dont want to miss anything.

Tom,

its the way my mind learns, read and re read till it sinks in, thats all :)

sorry forgot to say, the new bulleten and the Bevington object one.

[richie conroy]

Hi All

In attached images, Object A is speculated to be part of Electra landing gear along with surrounding debris.

My Question is were would object B, be located around landing gear area if that is what we are looking at ?

Both object's appear man made.

Any input welcomed  :)

[don hirth]

Re: Conroy's 'A' and 'B'. IMHO, the 'lengthy' metallic looking item is not natural. Item B appears to be non-natural, as well due to different texture, coloration and comparitively 'smooth' perimeter edge. My assumption is that there was no 'distance recording' technology on either
submersible. e.g. 8', 10', etc. etc.

[Ric Gillespie]

My Question is were would object B, be located around landing gear area if that is what we are looking at ?

I'm afraid I don't have an answer to that. I'm somewhat handicapped in analyzing these images because I spent so many hours in the ROV "cockpit" looking at the reef slope in real time.  After "finding" a part of the aircraft a few thousand times only to have it, on closer inspection, turn out to be just some funny looking coral - I've become pretty jaded.  I have great respect for Jeff Glickman's expertise, but I'm a hard sell on the underwater imagery.  Personally, I think Richie's "A" may be manmade.  I'm less confident about the other stuff but I'm willing to be convinced if we can make a reasonable correlation between a thing underwater and some part of the airplane.

[Ric Gillespie]

My assumption is that there was no 'distance recording' technology on either
submersible. e.g. 8', 10', etc. etc.

When we wanted to check the size of something we swam up to it and extended Esmerelda's manipulator arm.  Her claw could be opened six inches so we opened her claw and held it up to the thing we wanted to measure.  Of course, to that we had to notice what we wanted to measure while we were there.

[Bob Lanz]

Ric, are there a few items that you held to claw up to you can share so as to give a clue as to the scale of things down  there?  Preferably in the HD photos that have been released so far.

[Ric Gillespie]

Ric, are there a few items that you held to claw up to you can share so as to give a clue as to the scale of things down  there?  Preferably in the HD photos that have been released so far.

I don't have time to do that right now and it wouldn't help anyone gauge the size of objects in the debris field anyway.

[John Balderston]

Hi all, I've been working on matching up the wreckage depicted in the Niku VII "Debris Field" video with the 2010 Niku VI "Wire & Rope" video, and so far have come up empty.  However, my gut keeps telling me the area at the tail end of the "Debris Field" video is the same "neighborhood" because of what appear to be bigger pieces of structural wreckage, but probably either slightly further north and/or deeper because we can't see any rope. 

Anyway, in scouring the "Debris Field" video, in the final seconds I'm seeing what appears to be a rectangular box-shaped object with a control panel on one end.   I looked at every image of NR16020 flight deck and radio equipment I could find for a match and came up empty.  Then in Mike Everette's research paper "NR16020 Radios: Technical Analysis" I noted the open question about whether a separate direction finding (DF) receiver was installed; if so likely the Bendix RA-1.  I did a web search on RA-1 equipment and was intrigued with what I found.

Attached find a snapshot from the "Debris Field" video at the 2:00 minute point, and an image of the Bendix RA-1 receiver box and link to exerpts from the Bendix RA-1B manual courtesy of the AAFRadio website.  I believe the comparison is quite interesting and worthy of further study.  What do you think?

[Irvine John Donald]

Interesting John. What are you suggesting the orientation of the debris field object is lying in?  Is the snapshot from the standard or HD clip?

[John Balderston]

Interesting John. What are you suggesting the orientation of the debris field object is lying in?  Is the snapshot from the standard or HD clip?

Irv, thanks for your reply.   I believe the ROV is generally running north to south along the reef slope with some maneuvering to position the camera aperture.  I believe the "radio box" is faced almost perpendicular to the reef slope (facing west), and pointed somewhat downward.  The ROV is headed south-southwest; the "box" is the ROV's 11 o'clock.  We see a front quarter view of the box; the control panel is on the right. 

The snapshot is from the HD video - the very end of the two-minute clip.