2-1

Courtesy of National Archives.

A nagivator's bookcase found during Niku I (1989).

• "Found Objects--Navigator's Bookcase."

For a time, it seemed as though this might have been the "smoking gun" that would prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the Niku hypothesis was correct. Further examination of the numbers stamped on the bookcase proved, instead, that it was a Consolidated Aircraft Part Number 28F4023, officially described as Box-Furn., Navig. Book & Paper Stowage. Although designed for the PBY (Consolidated Model 28), this particular bookcase had been modified for installation in a B-24 type airplane. Early examples of the Consolidated Model 32 (B-24C and some B-24D/PB4Y-1 aircraft, a total of 1,653 machines) were equipped with PBY bookcases. Later, Consolidated designed a special bookcase for the Liberator which carried a 32F... part number.

"The best candidate might be the B-24J that crashed on the reef at Canton in 1944 but was not salvaged. We've long suspected that many of the B-24 parts we've found on Niku, such as the navigator's bookcase that was found a few meters from where we later found 2-2-V-1, are pieces of that wreck that washed ashore at Canton after the war and were brought home to Niku by locals who worked there" (Gillespie, Forum, 24 September 2004).

"Based on our understanding of the evolution of the Consolidated Model 32, there shouldn't have been a PBY bookcase aboard a B-24J but I can't find a B-24C or D that was lost anywhere in the region" (Gillespie, Forum, 7 June 2011).