Amelia Earhart PNG Theory

[David Billings]

@Squawk7700....

"The MAGIC SCRAP"....

Indeed, another detective story... That period in mid-to-late 2014 was quite amusing when three persons demolished the "Magic Scrap".. artifact "2-2V-1" as coming from the Electra. I was one of two people from Australia involved, the second Australian was in MEL and another was an American in WA State who also contributed....

The idea that the "Magic Scrap" had come from the Electra started in1991 after it was found (some say in dubious circumstances) on Nikumaroro. No-one believed it as TIGHAR would not subject it intense examination and the markings on it had been said to be 1940's vintage. In 2014 it came up again as "coming from the Electra" as a brain snort from Jeffrey Neville who as a Moderator on the TIGHAR Forum had quite a sway of followers and some prestige. He proposed that it was a cover patch applied when a RHR window had been removed.

I was in SIN looking after F100s and had some time on my hands in the evenings and weekends and had with me some fuselage drawings of the Electra Fuselage structure and I could see that the insertion of a window into that RHR area would necessitate cutting through a longeron and would weaken the back end. Neville was proposing that when the window was removed and the covering plate riveted on that the structure had been beefed up inside which accounted for the four rows of horizontal rivet holes in the "Magic Scrap". The American guy in WA State sent me a photo of the Electra in the Hangar at DRW and I could see straight away that the lighting in the hangar showed that there was a big ding in the aluminium panel that had been hastily riveted in place in Miami, meaning that the missing piece of longeron had NOT been repaired and neither had the plate been reinforced behind, negating everything that Neville was saying. Luckily also I had a nice clear photo of part of the rear RHS fuselage showing the modified window as put in and the framing surrounding it. I enlarged the photo. I started drawing in a CAD programme on my laptop because I knew the rivet pitch was 1.5 inches and could assess what the dimensions of the aperture were from the numbered frame stations on the fuselage drawing and from astute scaling with a millimetre rule on the laptop screen !.

I contacted Jeffery Neville and told him what I was doing and sent him my drawing . The guy in Melbourne was doing the same thing at the same time and posting on WIX.. In Melbourne and Singapore two guys came to the same conclusion... the "Magic Scrap" dimensions was too big to fit the window aperture in accordance with what we were seeing in the rivet pattern and the subsequent dimensioning we were able to produce.

Jeffrey Neville had to agree, he was after all, a Quality Assurance Inspector and we were giving him the proof. Someone at his Forum was furious. Eventually this led him to resign from TIGHAR and I understand he took a few other people with him, out of communal thinking, I suppose. Neville now occasionally contributes to a website opposing his former abode.

Thanks for that, I didn't know Greg Daspit was on my rear, not that it matters much.....

Addendum: On 13th May, when I replied on the "Magic scrap", I forgot to add that the piece of aircraft skin 2-2-V-1 had been identified in mid-2017 by the New England Aircraft Museum as coming from the starboard outer upper wing skin of a C-47 A or B model as they held a template of the "scrap"and checked it against an old wing they were fitting onto a DC-3 they had at the Museum. They notified TIGHAR of this. Nothing has been said on the TIGHAR Forum about this as far as I am aware.. It is known that a C-47A crashed on SYDNEY Island in the Phoenix Group during WWII while doing a low pass over the island.....

@CONSO...

What do you say to propertee 64's suggestion ?

Regards,

David