I don't know what your experience might be involving bureaucracy and the shedding of responsibility...
Well, 37 years of working with various government agencies for purposes of both research and reporting, ranging from the EPA to local regulatory bodies in multiple states, including CA [shudder], to the NIH. Including reviewing reams of data all the time as well. And, as you might have noted, the ability actually to research the existence of available archived records, beyond just asking one or two people then taking their word for it that those records don't exist. You know: professional research, which is part of what I do for a living, as opposed to the amateur version, which you're doing.
Sorry to be snarky, but there are some things where my expertise is, in fact, greater than yours, and so forgive me if I cop a little attitude here at what seemed a rather condescending comment, though I realize that was unintentional on your part.
The CAB wants legitimacy for their investigation, so they invoke the Lockheed name in their report to give weight to their guesses.
So did they also "invoke" the Lockheed name to "give weight to their guesses" about the aileron boost unit, in noting that it "was given a complete disassembly and inspection at the Lockheed Aircraft Corporation, Burbank, California"? Did they just toss Lockheed's name to give themselves legitimacy when they note later they "requested Lockheed Aircraft Corporation to perform certain ground tests" to check for the possibility of wing flap interference? Did they simply make up everything they claim Lockheed did to make it all sound good?
The CAB would have provided Lockheed with the witness statements as to flight paths, so to that extent those flightpaths were indeed part of the Lockheed investigation. Note the reference to the school house and the radar building in the flightpath map. These were probably landmarks used by witnesses in describing the flight. None of this means that Lockheed gave those paths any credence.
The report notes that "based on performance data" - not witness statements - the inner boundary was considered the only possibility. And the references on the map could also have come from topo maps, airport maps, the "aerial photo taken 9/17/61" that the plot in the chart was traced from, etc. "[L]andmarks used by witnesses..." is a pure guess on your part, so stating "probably" is a bit much.
The explicit statement that Lockheed considered the inner path to be the only possible one should tell you how much weight Lockheed gave in the end to the other paths that were offered as possibilities.
The report doesn't claim Lockheed gave any "weight" to other flightpaths. It does state their study "encompassed" reported flightpaths. As it certainly should - because a thorough and comprehensive report should include all reported data for comparison...making it all the more odd that you criticize the chart doing just that.
If the other reported flightpaths in the envelope are based on witness statements, it gives you some clues as to where they might have been located, and what angle they saw things from. And if the reported flightpaths are based on information from other pilots or ATC, it allows a comparison of normal flightpaths to that of an aircraft in trouble. Either way, it makes absolute sense that Lockheed would indeed have included the multiple-flightpaths envelope the CAB report states it did, and for CAB to include those multiple paths from the Lockheed report.
Look, what I and others are trying to say with increasing frustration is this: we're all on board with looking at the facts that DO exist, and trying to reconstruct the missing bits you're interested in from them.
But I'm not the only person who has tried to point out that you can't take a "surmise" and a "probably" and a "conjecture" and an "I have no trouble imagining..." and then string those together to reach any usable conclusion. You can't
prove anything based on conjectures
alone - you can only construct conjectures based on fact, not "feelings".
However, you seem increasingly unwilling to accept anything at all in the published reports as fact. To you, the CAB report might as well be non-evidence. That being the case, it's kind of pointless to keep on surmising - at least until you have more data you
are willing to accept.
Because I do respect what you're doing, I'm going to bow out of this discussion unless/until I find more documents. Also because while I think it's OK for me to express some frustration with what I and others consider increasingly illogical arguments, I don't think it's OK or acceptable to keep hammering at you about it. Which I will end up doing if this thread continues along current lines.
Hoping to be back in late January, as noted previously, and wishing you a Happy New Year,
c