NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
Re: Earhart plane fragment may be authentic
From: Don Seltzer
Date: 2014 Oct 30, 12:10 -0400
From: Don Seltzer
Date: 2014 Oct 30, 12:10 -0400
I followed the links to the report on the TIGHAR website, and was a bit puzzled as to what was fact and what was conjecture. There are several references to rivet patterns in the 'artifact' matching underlying structures, but on first reading it was hard for me to distinguish between documented stringers and stiffeners in the Lockheed plane, and added stringers that were the conjecture of the researchers. There was also this curious claim regarding the fuzzy takeoff photo in Miami, 'So far, Jeff Glickman has been able to confirm that four of the five lines of rivet holes on the artifact match rivet lines that are detectable on the patch. I have looked at the published 1937 news photo of the window patch, and can not see any of these lines of rivet holes. If Glickman has used some sophisticated image processing software to resolve these lines, why haven't they included these enhanced images in the report? Another glaring omission in the report is the failure to provide any accurate dimensions to any of their photos and diagrams Don Seltzer On Thu, Oct 30, 2014 at 3:01 AM, Paul Hirosewrote: > "A fragment of Amelia Earhart's lost aircraft has been identified to a > high degree of certainty for the first time ever since her plane > vanished over the Pacific Ocean on July 2, 1937, in a record attempt to > fly around the world at the equator. > > "New research strongly suggests that a piece of aluminum aircraft debris > recovered in 1991 from Nikumaroro, an uninhabited atoll in the > southwestern Pacific republic of Kiribati, does belong to Earhart's > twin-engined Lockheed Electra... > > "The patch replaced a navigational window: A Miami Herald photo shows > the Electra departing for San Juan, Puerto Rico on the morning of > Tuesday, June 1, 1937 with a shiny patch of metal where the window had > been." > > http://www.foxnews.com/science/2014/10/29/amelia-earhart-plane-fragment-identified/ > > When this story surfaced in July, I said it was strange that navigator > Fred Noonan would tolerate the loss of one of his sextant observation > windows. However, the photo in this new article shows another window on > the same side of the aft fuselage, so maybe the broken one wasn't a big > deal. > >