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[Martin X. Moleski, SJ]

From Tom Swearingen:

great job on the video---very informative. It answered a lot of the questioo=ns that i was going to ask.--Such as-Amelia possibly landing in the lagoon instead of the reef. How do you think that the bearing parts got to the camp site if she landed on the reef a long way away?

My guess is that the bearing parts are from the Coasties, not the plane.

Have you found any sizable fuselage parts that might explain where the plane went down?

Not yet.

I doubt the Amelia and Fred would have been able to move parts from the reef landing site to the seven site. That's a long way.

Agreed.

Also--engines---pretty heavy, but when attached to the intact airframe that  may float with enough water, is it possible that the engines are just off the reef in the deep water?

That seems to be a likely hypothesis (guess).

I've seen pictures of submerged aircraft (Truk) and they are fairly recognizable.

TIGHAR has photographed two Devastators underwater recently.  Of course, they are in a lagoon (I think) and the currents are not what you'd find around Niku.

I looked at Google Ocean around the reef, and it drops of to 2000 feet rapidly, near the shipwreck site, so it might be possible that the engines or other airframe parts are embedded in the ocean floor, or the slope leading to the reef.

What do you think?

I think it's worth trying to see what, if anything, is there.

[Andrew M McKenna]

The bearing sleeves were found in the "Carpenter's shop" of the old village, not at the suspected castaway campsite which is on the other end of the island.  We wanted to excavate the carpenter's homesite thinking that various materials not put to immediate use would have ended up there.  We were right that a lot of stuff ended up there, including the bearing sleeves, but unfortunately not much of it is consistent with AE's aircraft.  We still don't know that the bearing sleeves are consistent with AE's aircraft, but apparently they were used in aircraft in general at least during WWII.

Andrew McKenna